Record Store Tales

Part 14: Record Shows, Parties, and Quiet Riot
You do strange things when drinking

You do strange things when drinking

RECORD STORE TALES Part 14:   Record Shows, Parties, and Quiet Riot

Guys from record stores do know how to party.  The only true allnighters I ever pulled happened during the years at the record store.  Everything else I called an allnighter, I actually slept for a couple hours.

But trust me folks…guys from record stores play the best music when they party.  One night in London (Ontario) we stayed up for what seemed like forever, playing the dumbest fucking drinking games.  My drink was Captain Morgan’s (spiced) and Coke.  However we were playing this stupid fucking card game.  I think it was called Kings in the Corner or something?  Each card was a rule?  2 of anything meant you take two drinks, 3, meant you take 3 drinks, etc.  And then on some cards, like 6, you’d GIVE 6 drinks to someone else.  And a joker meant you took a shot of Wild Turkey.  Here’s the photo of my first shot of Wild Turkey from that very night.

r-l: Me, Tom, Meat

Like I said, we knew how to party.  From that night forward, when I got loaded, my nickname became “Jim”.  And as I took a shot, they’d say, “Here comes Jim!!” Anyway, who gives a crap about that?  There’s loads of people who partied harder.  We party better. 

The best stimulant imaginable is music, and I heard some of the best music ever at those parties. The first time I ever heard Kyuss was at the party at Tom’s place in London.  He didn’t start with Kyuss, though.  He started with some bootleg Black Sabbath video from 1970.  It was taped in some…well, it probably was a highschool cafeteria.  That’s what it looked like.  It was awesome.  It was easily in the top five times I ever truly had my mind blown.

During “Black Sabbath” itself, Ozzy got this crazed look in his eye!  You could see it!  Then he just started going mad on stage, thrashing about, that leather jacket of his flailing about him.  Ozzy’s said before he has another person inside him when he gets crazy, someone they call “Him”.  Maybe what they captured on tape that night was an appearance by “Him”?  Who knows?

The cool thing though is another of my top five mind-blows of all time happened that night too.  Kyuss. I made a nice bed on the floor out of pillows and blankets and stuff, and I passed out in front of the stereo.  I woke up a short time later, as some of the guys were heading out (walking) to catch last call at the local pop shop.  I just kind of laid there listening to the music…I was falling in and out of consciousness to this heavy, drony music.  It was awesome.  I didn’t know who it was.

I was told the following morning that it was Kyuss.  Tom told me he left the Kyuss / Queens of the Stone Age split EP in the player.  From that I pieced together that the song I must have heard was “Fatso Forgotso”.   I still remember how it rolled over me like a wave that night.

We had to be up fairly early the next morning, as we were hitting a record show in London.  If you don’t know what a record show is, I’ll take a moment to explain.  If you do, skip the next paragraph

A record show is usually held in a large room like a conference room in a hotel, for example.  Dozens of vendors gathered their best, their overpriced, their rare, and their shelf warmers for you to pick through and haggle over.  They are a record store dude’s dream, and his VISA card’s nightmare.

Just to give you a taste, here’s some of my best finds.

  • At the show in question, I actually found the first two Japanese Quiet Riot albums with Randy Rhoads.
  • Elsewhere, I found a great book about Alice Cooper called Billion Dollar Baby that we’ll talk about another time.  I later found out it was worth many times what I paid.
  • LP of Faith No More’s incredible Angel Dust album which came with an exclusive remix of “MidLife Crisis”.
  • Oh, this isn’t a find, but we did see Greg Goddovitz (Goddo) at one.  He was wearing socks and sandals.

We had a greasy breakfast (sausage, eggs, toast, OJ) and headed out.  I remember it was freezing.  Then you get to the hotel, pay your admission (usually somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 or so) and go in.  And then you’d be sweating your parka off in this crowded room full of long-hairs, skullets, and mohawks.  Guy to girl ratio:  About 4-1.

Anyway, as I mentioned, I found these two Quiet Riot albums with Randy Rhoads.  I want to post a more detailed blog about this later on, because I truthfully don’t know if I bought a bootleg or a promo.  As far as I know there has never been a CD release of these two albums.  Yet, that doesn’t exclude that Sony might have pressed some sample copies as a prototype before deciding not to proceed.  Or perhaps they were threatened to be sued, who knows?  Metal Health was released on Pasha/Columbia which later was absorbed by Sony.  My CDs are marked as Sony promos.  Everything about the CDs screams “official” except that I am certain they didn’t officially release a CD anywhere at any time.

Regardless, they sound great and I paid what was then a fair price for a bootleg, which would have been $30 for a new, mint bootleg.  I would have been willing to pay up to $35 for a good sounding bootleg and they would always let you sample it anyway.  So I consider this one of my best scores.  I’ve never run across any other copies, bootleg or otherwise, since then.  It was meant to be.

We drove back to Kitchener tired as hell but it was worth it.  I’m sure there are people out there who don’t understand how you could pay $30 for a bootleg CD when you can just download it for free.  And I’m sure someone else could explain it to you better than I can, because I don’t really have a good reason why it’s worth it.

Except I fucking love music, and when you fucking love music, especially when it’s one of the first bands you ever liked, that’s what you do.

Part 13: Klassic Kwotes II

As with the first Klassic Kustomer Quotes, everything below is true.  Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty.  Here’s 10 more.

  • “Yeah, I’m the original drummer for the Rolling Stones.  I was first.  I helped those guys form the band.  Then they stole all my shit.  Bunch of assholes.”  Said to me by a confused guy about five years my senior.
  • “Where the fuck are my sunglasses?  I left them right here!  You must have taken them!  Where the fuck are my sunglasses?”  Said to us by a guy who had forgotten that he was wearing his sunglasses on his head.
  • “All five Backstreet Boys released solo albums on the same day!  How come you don’t have them?  Walmart has them!”  No such releases ever existed, by the way.
  • I admit that sometimes our “we buy used CD’s” sign could be confusing.  But I was still as surprised as any to hear the question, “How much will you give me for my royal wedding collector’s plates?”

 

  • After both a debit card and a credit card being declined, I was asked, “Will you take a cheque?  No?  How about my Sears card?”

 

  • “I saw Journey play the Casino last weekend.  They were AMAZING!  Steve Perry was amazing!  He still sings the same as he always did!  And he even still looks the same!”  Said to me by an excited lady who had no idea that she saw Journey with Steve Augeri.  Steve Perry quit the band five years earlier.  By the way, Augeri doesn’t even remotely resemble Steve Perry except they both have brown hair.
  • “It still plays fine.  I played it on the way here.  It didn’t skip.”  Said to me by a guy who didn’t noticed that his disc has a giant crack in it.
  • “Hey man, the owner always gives me a discount.”  This was a pretty common one.  Not many people had a discount, certainly not many that I didn’t know.  But this one kept going.  “I’m the one who gave him the idea for selling used CD’s.  I said, ‘Hey man you know what you gotta do?  Sell used CD’s.  That’s what you gotta do.  Sell them used CD’s and you’ll make a mint.’  That’s what I said to George.”  The owner’s name was not George.
  • “Hey, if I buy a blank CD, can you guys just load it up full of good tunes for me?”  Comment not necessary.
  • And of course, my favourite.  “I’ve gotta take a shit real, real bad.  Can I use the can?  Like I gotta go so bad man, you have no idea.”  I’ll admit, it was against company policy to let any customer use the washroom in any situation, but I had to break the rules on this one.  After all, I actually had someone take a shit in my store before.  No, I’m not talking about me.  There’s this girl, and she shit her pants in the store, and I don’t think she even knew it.  I still see her at the mall sometimes.  You never…ever…forget the face of someone who took a shit in their pants right in front of you.  The smell…was ungodly.  She stepped up to the counter.  She asked a question.  She asked numerous questions.   The stink was so bad!  I stood as far back as possible without trying to look like I was stepping back as far as possible.  I stepped on a CD case against the wall, the crack was audible.  And she kept asking questions.  I will never be convinced in a million years that this girl even knew she had shit her pants.

 

Part 12: The Pepsi Power Hour

RECORD STORE TALES Part 12:  The Pepsi Power Hour

I’m going to take you back in time a bit.  Back to a time before the record store….

I remember back to the 80’s and early 90’s when MuchMusic was king. Back when there was no Jersey Shore and they played actual music videos.  There was no internet at that time, so you had to go to the store to buy your music (more often than not, on cassette). To hear new bands, you watched videos on Much and listened to the radio. There was no YouTube.

There was this frickin’ awesome show on Much back in the day — you remember it. It was originally only on once a week (Thursdays at 4 if I recall) and was hosted by one John “J.D.” Roberts. Yeah, the CNN guy. After he left, the hosting slot rotated between Michael Williams, Steve Anthony, Erica Ehm and Laurie Brown and then finally the late Dan Gallagher. Despite his long hair, Dan didn’t know a lot about metal — he didn’t know how to pronounce “Anthrax” and had never heard of Ratt. But that show was by far the best way to hear new metal back in the day.

That show was THE POWER HOUR.

It was so popular that they eventually had two a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4, which was awesome for me since by 1989 I was working every Thursday at Zehrs.  I could still catch one a week, usually.

I remember tuning in, VCR at the ready to check out all the new videos and catch onto the newest bands. There was this band called Leatherwolf that I found via Hit Parader magazine and first heard on the Power Hour. I loved that band. There was another band called Sword from Montreal. Psycho Circus. Faith No More. Skid Row. Armored Saint. Testament. You could always count on the Power Hour to have Helix on. That show rocked.

They had some of the best interviews as well.  Usually they’d have someone come in and co-host for an hour.  They had everybody from Gene Simmons to Brian Vollmer to Lemmy.  In depth stuff too, at times.

Then in 1990 something else cool happened. I discovered a magazine called M.E.A.T (the periods were for no reason at all, just to look cool like W.A.S.P. but eventually they decided it stood for “Metal Events Around Toronto”). M.E.A.T was awesome because it was monthly, free, and had in depth articles clearly written by knowledgable fans. There was no magazine with that kind of deep coverage. Even Slash loved M.E.A.T, at a time when Guns hated rock magazines! I loved M.E.A.T so much I eventually sent them $10 to subscribe to a free magazine.  I did this on a yearly basis.

I discovered a whole bunch of great bands via that magazine. I Mother Earth, Slash Puppet, Russian Blue, Jesus Christ, not to mention they were way ahead of the curve on alternative. They had a Nirvana concert review back in 1989. They got behind Soundgarden way before they were cool. And you could count on them hanging onto the oldies. They’d put an indi band from Toronto on the cover one month, and put Black Sabbath on the cover the next month.  Next issue they’d have an in-depth interview with Kim Mitchell.  They’d talk about bands that nobody else did.

Their CD reviews were my bible! My music hunting was probably 90% based on their reviews, especially since by then the Power Hour had changed into the 5 day weekly Power 30 hosted by Teresa Roncon, and sucked.  The started playing too much thrash and grunge and never gave the old bands a shot anymore.

Things have changed so much now. I never get into new bands anymore, back then I used to just eat them up. I guess new bands just don’t interest me anymore. I like my old time rock and roll. I did buy the new Sheepdogs, twice.  The last new band I got totally and 100% excited about was The Darkness, and that was, what…2003?

Yet I can’t get into these new metal bands. The music sounds so sterile to my aging ears. The rock has lost its balls. The album I have been most excited about in 2012 was the new Van Halen — a band that is approaching 40 years old. But my God does it rock.  Kiss and Black Sabbath both have new records coming out, and I’m excited about them, but I could two shits about the new Nickelback.

In a lot of ways, it’s a better time for music now.  With eBay and Amazon I’ve managed to fill nearly every gap in my music collection.  There are some bands that I now have complete sets of, and others that I am achingly close.  I’m missing 4 Maiden EP’s and 1 Deep Purple import, for example.  Back in the 80’s you didn’t have access to this.  You didn’t even have access to an accurate and complete discography.  It wasn’t until the internet that this kind of information was even available.

Aside from that, today kind of sucks for music.  Sure, it’s easier to find new bands now, but we did OK in the 80’s.  M.E.A.T turned me on to lots of bands, and they were always giving away sampler cassettes.  Much played all the new videos by all the  metal bands at least once, basically.  You had to work a little harder, but we only appreciated the music more.  It wasn’t disposable.

And there were a lot more new bands around that just plain rocked!

Part 11: Klassic Kwotes I!

1. Once, we opened a CD case to find a small piece of paper inside.  The customer said, “Ahh, can’t forget my spliff paper!”

2. We were once approached by a man in a cheap suit at the counter, who asked, “Do you like the drugs?  Do you like the crack?”

3. “You got any Luta?” I was once asked by a large man with a heavy Carribean accent.  Luta, that’s what we all heard, like “loo-tah” with emphasis on the “loo”.  We asked him to spell it?  He couldn’t.  I said, “Is it L-u-t-a?” to which he responded, “Yeah, man.”  Well a search for Luta revealed nothing.  We went back and forth for 10 minutes before he finally mentioned “Dance With My Father”.  Luta.  Luther.  Luther Vandross.

4. “Don’t worry, I ain’t got AIDS or nothin’!”  This was once said to us by a man who handed us a Beach Boys box set, covered in his own blood.

5. “Do you have any of that lesbian music?” This was asked of me by a middle-aged lady.  All I could respond with was, “Uhhh…I don’t think that’s an actual genre of music?”

6. We once saw a guy looking at the booklet for the new Fleetwood Mac album, The Dance.  We asked if he would like to listen to it, and he said, “Nah.  Just checking out the babes.”

7. “Dave Matthews Band, and Matthew Good Band.  What’s the difference?”   Uhhh…they both spell, and pronounce, their names differently.

8. We had a big sign, and all our ads said “WE BUY USED CD’S”  One day a guy pulled up on a bike with a milk crate full of records on the back.  It was close to 40 degrees (celcius) that day but he pulled up on a bike.  A bicycle, leather jacket, 40 degrees, milk crate full of records.  He was really pissed off when we told him we didn’t take records.  “Well you should fucking advertize that!  Do you know who I am?”  Obviously a mover and a shaker, you and your whack bike.

9. Remember that Japanese lady that was asking me about Chris Cornell when I first started at the record store?  If not, read back.  She kept coming back, and back, and back.  We’ll call her N.  One day, N came in, and she was in a bad mood already.  “Where’s my treat?  Where’s my treat?”  What?  “My treat?  Are you retarded?  Where’s my treat?”  We had a sign outside that that, “bring your used CDs in for some brand new beats, come in you owe yourself a treat!”

10. “This right here…this is the best CD in the whole store,” said a kid holding a Creed album.

11. This next one, I mean absolutely no disrespect or meanness.  It was just cute, ’tis all.   A young fellow with a Scottish accent came in one day, and said, “Excuse me sir, but do you have any of Mr. Arrow Smith?”  I got him their latest, which was Big Ones at the time.

12. “Whoops.  I just tooted!” said N another time.

13. Again, this one was frequent.  “Do you have anything by that country guy who always wears the hat?”

14. “Is it true that Marilyn Manson once killed a kid?  And he tried to get rid of the body by burning it in the oven?  But the cops came, and Manson escaped out the back door.  The cops said, ‘Smells like children’ when they opened the oven, but Manson was outside listening and that’s how he named the album Smells Like Children, right?”

 15. Yes, the above is a real question.

16. There was another Manson one, this one about time travel.  If you check one of his albums, whichever one was released in 1996, the liner notes reveal one song was written and recorded 1997.  Typo or mindfuck, or…time travel?  My customer said to me, “Manson travelled forward in time to 1997, to the day the world will end.  Then he travelled back in time to now, to warn us about the end of the world.”  Marilyn Manson invented time travel?  Well then what the fuck has Stephen Hawking been doing all these years?

Part 10: What’s it like, working in a record store?

Yours Truly

Everybody always wanted to know how awesome it was to work in a record store.  They all had this Empire Records idea of it when the truth is much closer to High Fidelity.  I kind of considered myself a combination of the John Cusack and Jack Black characters.  I ran the place like Cusack, but I was a Jack Black-like smartass.  Black played a character named Barry.  You know that scene where the guy in the suit is looking for the song, “I Just Called To Say I Love You”?

Customer: Hi, do you have the song “I Just Called To Say I Love You?” It’s for my daughter’s birthday.
Barry: Yeah, we have it.
Customer: Great great… Well, can I have it?
Barry: No, you can’t.
Customer: Why not?!
Barry: Because it’s sentimental tacky crap that’s why! Do we look like a store that sells “I Just Called to Say I Love You”? Go to the mall!
Customer: What’s your problem?!
Barry: Do you even know your daughter? There’s no way she likes that song! Oh oh oh wait! Is she in a coma?
Customer: Oh, okay buddy. I didn’t know it was Pick on the Middle-Aged Square Guy Day. My apologies. I’ll be on my way.
Barry: Buh-bye!
Customer: Fuck you!

I never quite went that far, but I was always fond of the subtle insults.  I was also known for being stubbornly obtuse.  Like for example, the guy who couldn’t pronounce “Triumph”.  I knew very well what band he was looking for, but he kept saying, “Tramp”.  He didn’t know how to spell it either.  Just the very idea that he couldn’t spell nor pronounce the word “triumph”…how could I not have fun with that guy?  I eventually sold him The Sport of Kings, when I felt like he’d earned it. 

Spelling was an issue in this part of town.  We had a lookup terminal where you could search for inventory on your own.  The best question I ever got at that terminal was, “Mike, how do you spell ‘metal’?  I don’t spell so good.”

In short, stuff grinds your gears just like it does at anybody’s job.  There are times when you saw a number on call display and just did not want to answer.  Just like any job.  Annoying callers, annoying customers, lazy customers who made you do absolutely everything for them, including pick what they want to buy!

You had sales quotas just like any day job.  You had responsibilities to get done.  If they weren’t done, you can’t just say “we were really busy” if your sales numbers weren’t big.   And you had to do things accurately.  In any environment where you buy and sell used goods, you had to be sure of what you were buying and what you were paying for it.  This is made just as difficult in a music store as anywhere else, due to the multiple versions, reissues, special editions, and imports of a CD that determine just what it’s worth.  You could go from offering $2 to $20 for a single album, the exact same title, just a different version thereof.

Same album different versions, and none of these are even the standard version. How would you price them?

And customers really hated being told their discs were “too scratched to re-sell.”  They really hated that one.

You got to listen to tunes all day, that was true.  That is something that I thankfully still do today, thanks to the radio.  I actually prefer the radio to choosing store play discs.  You were so tightly constrained by various rules, which narrowed the scope.  I actually loathed picking store play discs.  If I was working to someone else, I often just said, “You pick, I’ll pick something later.”

Lo and behold, I still have a copy of the store play rules!  I’m a packrat.  I keep everything.

  • Forbidden bands list:  Kiss, Rush, Frank Zappa, Spinal Tap, Dio, Judas Priest
  • Nothing heavier than Metallica’s “black” album
  • No musicals, no classical, no instrumental
  • Must play one new release in every shift
  • Must play 5 discs in shuffle mode, must never play album all the way through except in specific promotional cases
  • Each of the 5 discs must be a different genre
  • No songs with swearing
  • No rap
  • No comedy
  • Could only play discs that were in stock for sale instore

Jazz, soul, indy, and oldies were encouraged.  Hard rock was especially discouraged. 

Of course we broke the rules. If I knew there was no chance of getting caught, I’d bring in my own discs from home all the time.  The best shift I ever had, I played all 5 discs of the Kiss box set, in a row!  I played lots of shit with swearing, all the time.  It wasn’t intentional of course, it’s just that sometimes a great album has swearing on it, and I like to listen to great albums.  Sinatra at the Sands, for example.

We sold Sinatra at the Sands in minutes, by the way…by playing it instore.

I played Dio all the time when I could get away with it, even though he was strictly off limits. 

I remember Tom walking in, during Holy Diver. 

“Wow.  That’s ballsy man,” he said.

I played Spinal Tap once, but one of my buddies got written up for doing the same thing.  Seriously.  That time I was playing Spinal Tap, there was this guy seriously rocking out to it.  He didn’t look like a fan though.  He walked up to me and said, “Sounds like you got some Sons of Freedom going on here!”  Oops!

And I played heavy stuff too.  I know I played Maiden in the store, any night I could.  (Astute readers will recall that Maiden is where we started.  Go back to Part 1 if you haven’t.)  I remember two little kids laughing at Bruce Dickinson’s shrieking during a live take of “Fear of the Dark”.  But, I also remember lots of cool kids in Kiss shirts, buying their first rock albums, and it was cool corrupting those kids.

So what did I have to complain about?  Well, I only played those albums when I could get away with it.  Which wasn’t often.  There was usually someone  in there store who could give you shit for it.

So you’d have to put up with the following:  Much Dance xx, Big Shiny Tunes, TLC, Christmas music all day while seasonal, Dave Matthews band, Linkin Park, plenty of new country, and whatever was the flavour of the month at the time.  There’s a reason I know entire albums inside and out by shitty band like The Dandy fucking Warhols.  I could tell you every fucking song on the first two Coldplay CDs.  I had the unfortunate fate of having to listen to the self titled album by Blur every fucking day for a month.  There are bands that I legitimately like, such as Oasis and Kula Shaker, that I rarely play at home anymore because I have heard them so many Goddamn times.  It sucks when you can’t stand music you actually like.

The record store will do that if you spend too many years there, and I spent too many years there.  Gratefully, I love music again.

The worst thing about the record store though were the cliques, and from what I’ve heard, many record store were like this.  You either fit in or you didn’t, and I definitely did not fit in.   They were all into the latest indy rock bands, and all wore sunglasses.   I’ve never been a sunglasses kind of guy.  Indoors, I think they’re just pretentious.  I tried, oh but I did try.  I went to their shitty bars and drank and pretended to have a good time, but I just couldn’t pretend that I liked the Dandy fucking Warhols.

But, if I didn’t experience all that, I guess I wouldn’t be LeBrain!

Part 9: Back to Toronto


Regardless of the Kiss concert experience, and swearing to never to return to Toronto, Trev and I were both back there two weeks later.  We hit all the record stores one Sunday afternoon, did the whole record store tour, and were back late afternoon.  Awesome day.

I came looking for Deep Purple, and Deep Purple I scored!  I picked up the 25th Anniversary Edition of Deep Purple In Rock, which is a gorgeous CD.  Coming in a delicate CD case with autographs etched into it, it must be handled and stored carefully.  Mine is still pristine despite it being one of the greatest rock albums of all time.  I simply keep it in a plastic sleeve on my shelf, and never let the case itself leave the house.  I can put the CD into another case for transportation, or listen to it in mp3 format.

Yeah, I’m obsessive, but you break that case on me and you die.  They don’t make that sucker anymore!

I also snapped up the accompanying single for “Black Night”, which was numbered and came with two bonus Roger Glover remixes that did not make the 25th Anniversary album.  I can’t recall picking up anything else, but I’m sure I did.  Trev and I, we didn’t do record store shopping small. If we went down there specifically for an $80 Japanese import, we wouldn’t leave without it.  And yeah, we did pay $80 for a Japanese import when we wanted it badly enough.  Often, it might have been just for one or two songs.

Appropriately, I was wearing my Deep Purple Machine Head T-shirt.  I’ll never forget this detail. 

The same homeless man that helpfully told us that the solution to our transmission problem was to “pack that sucker full of grease” was back in the same place.  As we passed him, he asked for some change, and commented, “Right on, awesome album, man!”

Gotta give the guy credit for his taste in music, if not his skill with transmissions.

Part 8: You Wanted the Best

DISCLAIMER:  To properly get myself in the mood, I have Kiss Alive II on as I type. 

Some of the guilty parties

When Kiss announced their reunion tour in 1996, I knew I’d be going.  Obviously, there would be no question.  I’d never even seen Kiss before!  Original lineup for my first time?  Score! However just to be different from the crowd, I wore my Kiss Revenge shirt that day.

One of  Tom’s buddies that worked at Sunrise scored us the tickets.  The seats were decent, nothing special, we were way up, but it hardly mattered with the giant screens that Kiss had started to use.  Transportation was also included, for a few bucks of gas money, this same buddy of  Tom’s was driving us in his 1988 Shitmobile.

I remember it was a Wednesday night, but I don’t remember the opening act.  We missed them, thanks to Tom.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. I remember in the stop-and-go of the 401, we got rear-ended.  Tom’s bud got out, looked at his car, gave the thumbs up to the other driver, and we were back on our merry way.  The only reason I remember this now is because with hindsight, it was an omen.

We got to Toronto, and we had to check out the record stores before the show as well.  I wish I could remember what I bought that night but I want to say it was the the Japanese import version of Quaternary, by Motley Crue.

The rest of us were done long before Tom (please see back to Part 6, Re: Tom’s record shopping habits) and we were waiting, and waiting…

“I just have to check blues.”

…and waiting and…

“Almost done, just need to see if they have that Louis Armstrong that I need.”

…waiting and waiting…

“They didn’t have Louie.  But they did have a pretty awesome live Coltrane I’ve never seen before!  OK, country…I swear I’ll be quick.”

We entered the venew to the strains of “King of the Night Time World”, which of course meant we had already missed “Detroit Rock City!”  Fucking Tom!

On the bright side, I was being rocked by Kiss, in the flesh!  Four giant inflatable Kiss statues adorned the arena.  The pyro was so hot we culd feel it where we were, in the nosebleeds.

Paul flew to his platform in the middle of the floor for “Love Gun”.  Gene spat blood, breathed fire, and flew during “God of Thunder”.  Peter elevated during his solo spot.  Ace fired fireballs out of his guitar during his.

The setlist was pretty pedestrian, which is pretty much the only negative thing I have to say about the reunion-era Kiss.  They played nothing outside of the first 6  studio albums (Kiss to Love Gun).  They did play two “Kisco” songs overseas, but here we only got the basics.  It was obvious that, as fans, we’d get no rarely heard original lineup tunes such as “Rocket Ride” or “Mainline”.

However, we were rocked deaf.  We exited the venue into the still warm June air.  It was 11:30.

Tom’s buddy parked a fair hike away, so he was going to go get the car while we waited.  Fair enough.  Record stores were still open in downtown Toronto, so we hit  Tower.

I was disappointed in Tower, we were hearing they were the next big store that was going to put us all out of business, but they never did.  Tom bought some obscure country (Jerry Jeff Walker, perhaps?) and we waited for buddy.

And we waited.

And we waited.

Half an hour.  45 minutes.  An hour.  Something’s not right.  Something’s…fucky.   None of us carried cell phones back then.

Suddenly I noticed buddy walking towards us.

Walking. This ain’t good.

“The transmission’s fucked,” he helpfully informed us.

I was opening the store at 10:00 the following morning, by the way.

Now, the rest of the night is a blur of misadventures jumbled in my memory.  What I don’t remember is why we didn’t just call a cab or two so we could all just get home, while buddy called a tow truck?  I guess my buddies were all just broke.  Yet, I had a credit card!

Now, I do remember raising this issue.  I offered to pay for everybody to get home.  I know I raised that .  I can’t explain why we didn’t do that.  I also can’t explain why I didn’t just tell them all to take the first boat to Fuckoffity Land while I called a cab for myself. I remember the following events, although I cannot put them in precise sequential order, it went something like this:

  • Stopping at a Subway because we were starving, but they had no bread!

  • Finding out that a limo to Kitchener would be cheaper than a cab to Kitchener.  Again, I recall mentioning that I have a credit card!

  • Stopping at a sidewalk cafe for drinks and paying something like $20 for a glass of Coke.

  • Some homeless guy helpfully telling us the the solution to the transmission problem is to “pack that sucker full of grease!”  Where to get the grease approaching 1:00 am on a Thursday morning, we never found out.

  • Calling my sister from a pay phone, to tell her not to worry that I wasn’t home yet.  (My parents were on a vacation and it was just us in the house.)

  • Going to buddy’s car, which was parked in a really shitty parking lot on some shitty side street.  Sitting on top of buddy’s car were three dudes eating pizza.

These three dudes were piss-loaded.   It wasn’t that they were up to no good, they were just loaded.  We asked them to please get off the car, they obliged, and they argued amongst themselves.  I do remember one striking detail, which was they all called each other.  It was a racial slur, I won’t repeat it here, but it starts with a “p” and refers to a country in Asia that used to be a part of India.  Anyway, that’s what they kept calling each other as they argued.

“You’re wrong, P****!”

“No, YOU’RE wrong, P****!”

I remember one of the guys trying to tell us he knew a way for us to each make a million dollars a year.  They were annoying as hell, and they tried to get us into their argument, whatever it was.  They fucked off eventually.

The plan now was, buddy had called both a tow truck, and his sister.  He would ride home with the tow truck.  The rest of us would ride home with his sister.

His sister was a saint.  She was at the same Kiss concert as us.  She had just gotten back home to Kitchener when the phone rang.  She came back to Toronto to get us, and back to Kitchener, dropping each of us off at our houses.  A fucking saint.

I think I rolled in at around 4:00 am.  I remember lying in bed, ears still ringing, room getting brighter from the rising sun.

I had to open the store at 10:00.

I never went anywhere with Tom’s buddy ever again.

Part 7: A Shitty Story

DISCLAIMER:  THIS CHAPTER BEST READ ON AN EMPTY STOMACH.

 

RECORD STORE TALES Part 7: A Shitty Story

August 1995.  Beautiful warm summer day.  The sun was up early and so was I.  It was Sunday, the best day to work the store.  Sunday was just a four hour shift and in the summer, very slow.  It was your basic fun day to be at work, cleaning away and listening to tunes in air conditioning.

I usually walked to work.  I put on some shorts and a big baggy T-shirt and headed out on foot.  The best way cut across this school and park with two baseball diamonds.  While walking I couldn’t help but think of how great life was.  The sun was out, it was summer, I only had to work four hours.  My family was at the cottage that weekend so I had the place to myself when I got home too.

Right in between the first baseball field and the second, I felt my stomach gurgle a little bit.  I’d had the farts a bit that morning but that was nothing unusual.  I continued along my walk.  It sure was a quiet day in town that morning.  I loved the way the sun was shining through the leaves.

As the gurgles continued, I entered the mall.  I strode down the empty hallway to the big glass window of our store and opened the door.

Just when I had closed the door, locked it behind me and was in an enclosed space, I let off another stinker.  It was rotten, like a rotten egg had just been dropped behind me.  It was powerful and sour.  They kept coming too, in little squirts here and there.  I started to feel crampy.

I picked out my music for the day (Joe Satriani), opened the door letting out the smell, and waited for customers.  I was really starting to feel rotten.

I worked the first two hours just farting up a storm.  Unsurprisingly, I didn’t have many customers that day.  They could probably smell me down the hall.  I don’t know what I ate, but I know what my sausage farts smell like, and this was worse.  I wasn’t feeling too mobile anymore, so I pulled up the chair.  Suddenly I really had to shit.  I was still farting too.

2 o’clock rolled around.  I made it halfway through the day.  The rest should be no problem.  Halfway there.  Point of no return!  Hah.  Whatever.  Piece of cake.  Only a few people came in.  The cleaning could wait.  I’d just tell the truth.  I really wasn’t feeling well.  Besides I could really just catch up the next day anyway.

I farted again.  It felt good.  I felt a tremendous amount of relief.

Then, the horror struck.  The feeling that something wasn’t right.  The smell.  I looked down, to see a tiny trickle of liquid shit rolling down my leg….

There was someone in the store!  Holy shit, I couldn’t leave!  Oh fuck.  Oh fuckity-fuck-fuck!

Although I was in complete denial of it at the time, there was no way that guy didn’t smell me.  There was just no fucking way.  It was unavoidable.  It was a wall of stench just hanging there, stale, in the air.  It was incredible.  Still, the man had etiquette.  As he paid for his cassette, he politely asked me, “Are you feeling OK?  You’re turning green.”  I told him I had thrown up earlier.  He wished me well and left.

Completely and totally freaking out, I waddled over to the door and locked the store.  We didn’t have a washroom.  I had no choice, I had to make it to the mall washroom and fast.  I prayed to God that it would be empty.  I improvised a “back in 5 minutes” sign.  I tried to waddle anonymously down the hall.  I hung a right.  Down another hall.  Why the hell were the washrooms so far away?

I entered.  It was empty.  I entered a stall.  Bracing myself for whatever lay ahead, I took a deep breath and prepared to look down below.

It was bad.  A deep puddle of rich brown liquid shit lay in my undies.  Luckily, it had acted as a bowl, to catch most of it.  A few streams went down my legs, but none reached my socks.  Small victory.  I’d take that.

I had no choice, there was only one thing to do.  I removed my shorts, and then carefull removed the underwear while maintaining the bowl shape.  The flushed them down the toilet.  I prayed that it would not plug.  It did not.

Grasping a generous amount of toilet paper, I cleaned myself up the best I could.  The washroom still empty, I wet some paper towels as well.  My shorts had been stained through.  I cleaned them as best I could but they were definitely tainted.  Luckily, my baggy shirt, when untucked, more than covered the stain.

I sat there on the store chair the next two hours, not moving my ass once.  I phoned up Tom who was in Waterloo.  “I just threw up man,” I lied.  “What should I do?  Should I go home?  I have two more hours to go.”

Tom urged me to go home, but some perverse sense of duty prevented it.  I’d hang in there.  That day, our store earned a record low amount. $99 in sales, for the day.  That record stood the whole time I worked there.  Even on the worst snow days we’ve ever had, my record stood.

I closed up shop.  Spraying our vinyl chair with a healthy dose of Lysol, I wiped it down.  It stank.  I cleaned it again until the smell was gone.  The last of the evidence was wiped clean.  I waddled home, the shit now drying in the crack of my ass.

As I walked, the friction turned to heat, the heat turned to burning, and the burning turned to agony.  I walked through the park, now occupied by many people watching a baseball game.  I strode between the crowd and the diamond, the only pathway.  I walked like I had a pickle up my ass.

I got home, tossed out the shorts, ran a shower and cleaned myself thoroughly with generous amounts of soap.  After my shower, I just ran a cold bath and soaked.  Ahhh.

When you have a day like that, you can handle anything, I guarantee it.  I am not ashamed of my incontinence.  Rather, there is a lesson here.  Shitting your pants is definitely a good reason to close the store early!

Part 6: The Record Store, Year 1
Myself on the left, Trev on the right.

We were pretty slow most evenings.  You could study for exams at work most nights. Fridays got busy, but Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights were dead.  That didn’t mean we doing nothing.  Rule #1:  “If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean.”  We had scheduled to do something every night.  Mondays was cleaning the mirrors which lined the store walls.   Tuesday was putting away new stock, which always came Tuesdays.  Wednesday was checking the security tags on every cassette in the store.  Every fucking cassette.

For the first 2 months or so, it was just me and the owner.  Once September hit, he hired this other guy, Trevor.  I didn’t like him at first, he was the “other guy”.  He was the same age as me, also finishing school at the same time as me.  We shared similar musical interests.  Influences we shared:  Guns N’ Roses, Van Halen, The Four Horsemen, Kim Mitchell, Rush, and any bands with amazing drummers.  Over the course of the years, he introduced me to:  Steve Earle, Oasis, Metallica, Megadeth, Max Webster, anb Buddy Rich.  I give him a lot of credit for expanding my horizons during those days.

A lot of memorable releases came out that first year.  Superunknown and Purple were already out, but I was on board for some major ones.  Nirvana Unplugged was the biggest release of the fall 1994 schedule.  There was an Aerosmith hits disc, a Bon Jovi hits disc, and the Eagles reunion album which was absolutely massive.

The new Tragically Hip, Day For Night, came out on a Saturday.  We sold out by Sunday.  The boss drove down to Scarborough to get more on Monday.  Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy came out on vinyl the week before the CD was released.  We got just five in.  He didn’t expect it to sell, but we sold out before my shift even started.  Interestingly, none of the customers planned on playing it.  They either a) didn’t even have something to play it on, or b) were keeping it sealed as a collector’s item.  It definitely was a cool package.

Some poeople have a “swear jar”.  We had an alarm jar.  If you forgot to de-tag a customer’s purchase and thusly set off the alarm, you had to put a dollar in the jar.  We would use the spoils on our annual Christmas dinner.  It created some friendly competition between us.  That first Christmas is when I started working directly with Trevor, and I started to like him due to his excellent musical taste.  But in the alarm jar game, we were always about equal.  Sometimes you just forgot!

One lady may well have stolen something and set off the alarm, and I’ll never know, because, well….  As she was walking out the alarm went off.  I asked her to come back in the store and check to see if she had something from another store that may had set it off.  She was so upset at the alarm, she really wanted to show me she had nothing on her person.  So, she removed her top.  “See I’m not hiding anything in here!”  Covering my eyes, I told her it was quite alright, I believed her, and she could go.  First time I’d been flashed on the job.  Not the last.

She wasn’t even drunk.  They actually used to serve alcohol at this mall.  There was a licensed restaurant right next door to the store.  The regulars would start in the morning and keep going.  You’d see them in there every day, and they’d wander in completely plastered.

We had a few regular psychos at that mall.  There was Johnny Walker, who would just walk around the mall talking to himself, all day.  Literally, all day.  The story goes that he was quite rich.  He didn’t need to work, wasn’t capable of work, and just came to the mall and walked around all day, talking to himself.  Sometimes he would argue with himself and he had been ejected from the mall a couple times.  He came into the store a couple times but never caused any problems on my shifts.  One time, he even bought a cassette.  It was like the madness turned off.  He spoke to me, bought the tape, and walked out.  Madness set back in, and he’s off arguing with himself.  I wonder what happened to Johnny Walker?  He’d been walking the malls since grade school, sometimes changing malls when he got permanently ejected from one.

Then, there was Sue.  Sue had been in an accident years before, and had a walker.  She moved very  very slow.  She had a bit of a crush on the owner.  She stalked him relentlessly and gave him Christmas gifts.  She’d park her walker right there in front of the counter and talk his ear off for hours.  Hours!

One day, a large Japanese woman was shopping.  The owner said, “Go ask that lady if she needs help.  Then he stood back and waited.  I didn’t know it, but he had just given me my first challenge.

“Hi, can I help you find anything today?”

“No thank you though,” she answered, then almost immediately, “Do you have Soundgarden?”

I showed her what Soundgarden we had both new and used.  We also had the latest copy of M.E.A.T Magazine, and Chris Cornell was on the cover.  I’ll never forget that detail.

“Do you like Chris Cornell?” she asks.

“Yes, he’s actually one of my favourite singers.”

“Oh!  Really!  I love Chris Cornell.  He’s sexy.”

It was too late now.  I had opened Pandora’s box.  She opened the magazine to his picture inside.  She went on:  “I like when he wears his sexy black boots.  Chris Cornell wears black Doc Marten boots.  Do you know the boots?  Chris Cornell wears black Doctor Martens boots.  Do you like Doc Marten boots?”

I was on my own.  The boss just stood back.  I couldn’t even figure out a way to improvise my way out.  I was a rookie  I decided that this woman was most likely a lil’ crazy and I played the polite card.

“Yes, I do…”

“Chris Cornell is sexy.  Did you know that Soundgarden had an original bass player who was Asian?”

I did know that.  “Yes, his name was Hiro Yamamoto…”

“Yes Hiro Yamamoto.  He is Asian.  There are not many Asians in rock bands did you know that?”

This went on for a good 20 minutes.  After she left (not without asking my name, fuck!) my boss came to speak to me.

“That’s your first lesson.  Don’t get into conversations with customers.”

And of course we had the drunks.  I remember one jolly drunk came in that first Christmas Eve.  We all wore ties Christmas Eve, that was the tradition.  It was a tradition I kept every year to my last year at the store, even when I was the only one left who still did it.  This drunk came in, a big Grizzly Adams dude just reeking of alcohol.  He was definitely in great spirits though.  First he asked us why the ties?  The quick-witting Trevor answered, “I’m wearing mine because it makes me feel important.”  We laughed.  I then went over to see if he needed help finding anything.

“Hi there!” I began.

“Not yet, but I will be when I get home.  Hahahaha!” he answered.

Ultimately the jolly drunk guy couldn’t remember what to buy, so he bought $100 in gift certificates for his grand kids.  That was a great sale, and the best part was that it turned out to be $100 of pure profit for the store.  The bearded drunk guy probably lost it, because all my years with the store, they were never redeemed!

After Christmas, the owner confided in Trevor and I that he was going to be opening a second location.  This location would be in Waterloo.  It would be easily accessible by one high school, two universities, and one college.  He would be splitting his time between our store and setting up the new one.  Ultimately this meant he’d be in much less and we’d be getting more hours, and also bhe was bringing a new guy in.

I walked in one Tuesday to see this black-bearded behemoth behind the counter.  It was kind of awkward because the owner didn’t introduce us at first.  I looked around for an hour, stealing glances at this big grizzly bear of a man with the thickest blackest beard you can picture.  Finally he introduced me to Thomas, later to become Tom, the legendary founder of Sausagefest.  Ahh, but that comes much later.

TOM

Tom was a wicked cool guy who expanded my musical tastes even further than Trevor had.  Tom and I had many influences in common.  I had met another kindred spirit.  Influences:  Black Sabbath, Dio, Rainbow, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Van Halan (not Van Hagar!) and Johnny Cash.  Music he would introduce me to:  Miles Davis, Willie Nelson, Fu Manchu, and the whole stoner rock scene in general.  His place was plastered with rare Marillion posters.  Tom was serious about music.

Tom was so serious about music that it was actually hilarious.  Kids, this is the difference between liking music and loving music.  Nobody loves music as much as Tom.  Dare I say it, Tom loves music even more than me.

One night in Toronto, we visited the big HMV on Yonge St.  Tom was methodically working his way through every decent section of the store.  Long after Trevor and I had finished shopping, Tom was just finishing browsing rock.  With a handful of discs by Rainbow and Saga, Tom would then announce, “OK…I just have to check country.”

20 minutes would pass.  “Alright…on to jazz.”

20 more minutes.

“I just have to check blues.”

10 more minutes.

“Oohh…I wonder if they have the soundtrack to the Godfather.”

Checkout.  Trev, Tom and I usually checked out of that store $200 lighter.  Each.

Then, repeat.  We walked down the street to Sam’s, and finally to Virgin.  Rock, country, jazz, blues.  Every store.  That was Tom, three stores, one night.

Seriously those early days at the store were the best times I ever had working.  Working hard or hardly working?  No, we worked hard.  If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean.  We ran that store with the owner making guest appearances, adding to it with our own creative ideas.

I graduated school in the summer of 1995, and hadn’t decided on my next move.  After that I was putting in increasingly more hours at the store.  It gradually built up from a part time job to full time.  When the new store opened, Tom split hours between the two of them so there were plenty of day and night shifts available, usually alone, which were the best times because you could play whatever you wanted!

I remember Tom walked in one night when I was playing Dio.  Back in 1995 you could not play Dio in a mainstream record store.  That would be like the equivalent of playing Michael Bolton in one today.  He was so far removed from what was selling at the time.  But I was rocking out to Holy Diver and Tom appreciated that I had the balls to do it.

Tom went to a lot of concerts.  After we had bonded over the mutual love of metal, I joined him and many of my future Sausagefest friends at a Black Sabbath concert.  It was Motorhead opening on the Sacrifice tour, and Black Sabbath headining, supporting their final studio album (17 years and counting!) Forbidden.  They played at Lulu’s Roadhouse just down the street.  A few weeks later we saw Queensryche in Toronto on the Promised Land tour.

Trev, Tom and I would have many adventures.  Such as that time seeing Kiss in…ahh, but that’s another story.  Before I talk about Tom and Trev again, I need to tell you a really shitty story.

TBC…

Part 5: The Dream Job

RECORD STORE TALES PART 5:  The Dream Job

Of all my highschool friends, there was only one who had a job that he enjoyed.  Peter worked at Steve’s TV, still pretty much the best video store in town.  All my other friends worked at the typical places.  One guy worked at the closest convenience store every weekend.  Two more worked in the McDonalds kitchen. A few more worked at rival fast food places.  All pretty typical for kids at age 16.

Peter on the other hand (who later became the best man at my wedding) had his wicked job.  Back then there wasn’t much to choose from, the biggest chain store was Jumbo Video.  Everything else was pretty crusty, except for Steve’s TV.  Steve’s started in the late 70’s.  Back then they had one room, one wall of videos (3/4 VHS and ¼ Betamax) and a small bin of video discs, the precursor of laserdisc.  They used to offer package deals:  Rent a VCR and five movies for a weekend for a special price.  Not too many people had VCRs back then.

The store grew and grew and relocated pretty close to home.  That’s where Peter worked during highschool, that and learning an electrical trade with his dad later on.   We used to call him “TV Pete” because TV seemed to be his big love back then, so working at Steve’s TV was totally appropriate.  Peter used to borrow movies from work, tape them, and bring them back the next day.  Peter always had copies of all the new releases, and a library hundred of titles big.

I first became interested in working in a record store in highschool.  There was a small record store in Kincardine, Ontario that sold a mix of CDs, LPs and cassettes.  I bought a couple titles there over the years, including Out of This World by Europe, and Judas Priest’s monstrous Painkiller.

I thought to myself, what a great summer job that would be.

Instead, during the fall of 1989 my dad told me to go into the local Zehrs store, and speak to a man named Don.  I went out and got myself a haircut.  It was the first time I had a hair cut in 5 years where I didn’t ask the barber to “leave the back long.”  I cut ‘er all off.  It was a bit of a blow, as my hair had become…well, not great, but it was long enough that it was my trademark.

Neck still itchy from the clippers, and wearing some ill-fitting dress pants, I walked into the Zehrs store.  The conversation was brief.  My dad must have told the guy that I was getting my hair cut, because he told me my hair was “fine”.  He outlined the requirements of the job, and asked me if I could start the next day.   I accepted.  I was employed!  I began plotting my next order from Columbia House.

During my tenure there I bought my first CD.  (Trash by Alice Cooper.)  Other albuims to follow were Fair Warning  by Van Halen, Damn Yankees, Slip of the Tongue (Whitesnake), the charity CD Stairway to Heaven / Highway to Hell, Black Sabbath’s We Sold Our Souls For Rock And Roll, Ozzy’s Live E.P., and the debut album by Badlands were all bought during the first few months with Zehrs money.

I didn’t like the hours, which interfered with the Thursday edition of the Pepsi Power Hour.  I still caught the Tuesday edition on most weeks, but this meant my metal intake was now cut in half!

It was a job.  That’s all it was.  It was something to keep my dad off my back and make money to spend on albums.  That was pretty much it.  Monthly, the Columbia House catalogue would arrive.  There was never a month when nothing was ordered.  I was trying to explore everything.

But that was nothing, next to the dream job.

1993. Fuck yeah.

In July 1994 my dad once again came to me.  “Go see the guy at the record store in the mall.  He wants to talk to you.”  I put on my cowboy boots (the closest thing I had to dress shoes) and walked over to the mall once again, the same fucking mall where the Zehrs was.  It was awesome.

The store had been open three years.  There had always been a place in the mall to buy music.  This new store was replacing a failed A&A Records, and many predicted the same thing would happen to the new store.  The young guy who started it came to my dad for help setting up an account.  My dad managed the Canada Trust at the mall, and because of that connection, I was the first person thought of when he needed a new part-timer.

The owner worked all day, all night, every day, and rarely even paid himself for three years to keep that place afloat.  He employed his brother and during the busy times hired part-timers.  Then he hit upon the idea of selling his own used CDs at the store.  He brought in a tray, marked it to about half price, and all the discs sold.  He worked up a pricing scheme and was soon buying and selling.  That’s when I came into the picture.

I’d already known about the used discs.  I bought Kiss My Ass for $11.99 there, the previous week.  It had just come out so I was fine with saving $10 on something I only really wanted a couple songs from.  Other than the used stuff though, everything there was overpriced.  It was one of those stores, the ones at the shitty malls with no selection and high prices.  That was all about to change and I got to be in on the ground floor.

I worked there in training for the whole summer, and by fall I was closing all by myself.  Those were the best nights.  Those were the nights when I got to pick the music myself.  We didn’t have many store play discs, and some albums were out of bounds anyway, but I gave a few a shot.  Jar of Flies by Alice In Chains was in the player pretty much every night.  I also found that I really liked David Lee Roth’s “multi-faceted” latest, Your Filthy Little Mouth.  The only problem:  We had a stack of 10 of ’em, and nobody wanted any of them.

The store owner was a shrewd businessman but musically clueless.  While he was playing Anita Baker and Don Henley, kids were coming in asking for Pigface, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails, and Ministry.  He ordered a pile of David Lee Roth discs, in 1994.  What the hell was he thinking?  He did the same thing again with Motley Crue’s latest.  There must have been 20 of them sitting there.

Very quickly in my tenure there, I picked up many treasures.  Rush Chronicles, a King’s X / Faith No More split live bootleg, numerous rare singles, and deleted back catalogue titles like Twisted Sister’s You Can’t Stop Rock and Roll.  We had the catalogues in front of us, so any time something decent was deleted, I made sure I snapped it up.  I already had a lot of this stuff on cassette, but cassettes don’t last and I wanted to replace them all.

During my time at the record store, I pretty much accomplished that.  If you come back, I’ll share some of the cool treasures that you may never see yourselves.