Record Store Tales

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.

Part 4: A Word About B-Sides

Hysteria singles collection

RECORD STORE TALES Part 4:  A Word About B-Sides

My definition of a B-side:

A song that is found on the B-side of a vinyl or cassette single, but not on the album; or a song on a CD or digital single other than the main track, not found on the album.

A well known example:  “Hey Hey What Can I Do” by Led Zeppelin.  Up until the release of the Led Zeppelin box set in 1990, this great song was only available on the 7″ single for “The Immigrant Song”.

I’d known about B-sides for a while thanks to George, the neighbor next door with the Kiss albums.  He had a couple Iron Maiden 12″ singles such as “Aces High” with unreleased studio tracks on the B-side, usually two per 12″.  I’d also been aware of Maiden tunes like “Women In Uniform” (technically an A-side) that weren’t on any albums that we’d ever seen.

Right from an early age I’d always been a collector.  I had a massive collection of Lego.  Then later on I had a collection of Star Wars figures that put all others in the neighborhood to shame.  Then it was GI Joe and Transformers.  I didn’t do anything small.  When music came along, it inevitably became the next thing in this obsession.  Quiet Riot was the first band I pledged to complete (still incomplete 27 years later).  As I expanded out to more bands, I pledged to complete a lot of collections….

When Def Leppard came out with Hysteria I went wild for that album.  Definitely still to this day my #1 album of 1987; and that was a year that included new records by Kiss, Aerosmith, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and a band I hadn’t quite discovered yet at the time called Guns N’ Roses.  Yes folks, I rank Hysteria higher than Appetite.  But listen, I’m not going to get into that debate right this second.  I’ll save it for another day.  I’m just giving you the setting.

I was really passionate about the Hysteria album and early in 1988 I acquired the Animal EP on cassette.  That 4-song EP contained three tracks not on the album:  “I Wanna Be Your Hero”, “Tear It Down”, and an extended mix of the title song.  I really got into “I Wanna Be Your Hero”, hard.  It’s still a great track.  That really set off a fire for me to collect these rare songs.  This was the first really awesome B-side track that I’d found so far.  If it was this good, there must be more coming…

I was in highschool, and on a weekly basis, I trekked into my local Zellers store to peruse the 7″ singles.  Some you could get as cheap as 99 cents.  Any time Def Leppard came out with a new video, I knew there was a new 7″ single to be had.  Up next came “Hysteria” itself, and I rapidly found a copy at Zellers.  On the flip side was a song called “Ride Into The Sun” (a re-recording of an early Def Leppard track) and it blew me away.  It was fast and heavy, there was nothing else like it on Hysteria.

In the summer came “Pour Some Sugar On Me” which appeared at my Zellers soon after the video started running.  The B-side was “Ring of Fire”, not a standout track, so I figured by now, Def Leppard were running out of good unreleased songs.

Me at the time, awesome hair

That fall, “Love Bites” started airing on Much, so I knew there would be another single to be had.  This one proved to be more elusive.  I finally tracked it down, not at my local Zellers, but at a Radio Shack store in Port Elgin, Ontario.  They rarely had any, but they did have this.  This time, the B-side was a live track.  “Billy’s Got A Gun” was definitely my least favourite B-side so far.  It wasn’t my favourite song on Pyromania, and it wasn’t a good live rendition either.

Hysteria continued to spawn singles.  “Armageddon It” was yet another game-changer for me.  Walking into Zellers I could barely believe my eyes:  A picture disc 7″ single!  I’d seen 12″ picture discs before, but I didn’t even know they made them in 7″.  And best of all it was only $1 more than a regular single.  I ran home with my prize, but puzzled over the B-side.  It didn’t appear to be even by Def Leppard.  The song was called “Release Me” and it was performed by Stumpus Maximus and the Good Ol’ Boys.

The notes on the flip side of the disc indicated that never in their travels had Def Leppard come across a talent as great as Stumpus Maximus.  And there was a picture of him.  A bald bearded man balancing a hat on his nose, with a backing band sillouetted behind him.

I cautiously played the single.  The strains of the Engleburt Humperdinck cover poured out of my tinny, shitty equipment.  It wasn’t even good!  This sucked!  Then it got weird.  Stumpus started screaming the lyrics in the most gutteral scream I’ve ever heard.  I’m telling you people he made Mike Patton sound sane.  Stopping, burping, and picking it up again, Stumpus screamed all the way to the end.

I got the joke.  But who was Stumpus?  I noticed right away that the sillouette of Stumpus’ backing band matched a photo of Def Leppard on the previous single.  A reading of the very long and small liner notes on the Hysteria album revealed that Stumpus Maximus was their roadie – real name Malvin Mortimer.

Hysteria was not dead yet.  There was one more single to be had, and once again I picked it up in a 4 song cassette format.  This single was “Rocket” which was presented in both remixed and extended remixed forms.  The other two songs were live versions of “Women” (taken from the Def Leppard home video) and “Rock of Ages”.  These versions were better than “Billy’s Got A Gun”, but I had a pretty clear idea that Def Leppard were not a great live band.

“Rock of Ages” however contained a little surprise.  This extended live take included a medley of rock and roll classics right in the middle of the song!  Def Leppard performed the most memorable moments of “Not Fade Away”, “Radar Love”, “Whole Lotta Love”, “My Generation”, and “Come Together”, changing the melodies and riffs slightly to meld seamlessly into “Rock of Ages”.  I gotta tell you people, it’s a fucking brilliant version.  Hunt it down.  Do what you have to do.  You’re listening to the tune thinking, “I know this part, what the fuck is it?”  And then you realize it’s “Come Together”.  It’s really cool.

That was the last of the singles off Hysteria.  It would be years before my Def Leppard collection would pick up again.  Sadly Steve Clarke died in January of 1991 — the first of my heroes to go.

So I’ll dedicate the blog to Steve, whose band Def Leppard is really responsible for why I have more CDs in my house than dollars in my bank account.

Part 3: My First KISS

It went a little like this.  The year was 1985.  I was familiar with “new” Kiss (aka, non-makeup Kiss) thanks to Much Music who played “Heaven’s On Fire” in regular rotation.  Old (aka, makeup) Kiss was a bit more of a mystery but I knew songs like “Rock And Roll All Nite”.

My first awareness of Kiss came from comic books.  Buried in the ads within my Incredible Hulk comic were ads for posters of all the hot stars at the time.  David Cassidy, Brooke Shields, and Kiss.  Seeing their faces and hair, I actually assumed that Kiss were women.  I thought so for months.

When I got into music and Kiss took off the makeup, I really liked their songs.  The music was catchy, it rocked, and it had power.  George the next door neighbor had a near-complete Kiss collection on vinyl.  He was a bit of an outcast, but he was a good way to learn about rock music because he was four years older and loved an audience.  So we’d go over there to listen to Kiss records and learn about the band.  Later on I’d go over there to tape his Kiss albums too.  The only drawback was that George would attempt to play bass to every Kiss song as you taped, and the bass would bleed-through onto the tape.  For a long time, I had a permanent record of George playing bass on Unmasked, until it was finally reissued on cassette in 1988.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Like I said, his collection was near-complete.  I knew the two albums he was missing:  The Elder, and Hotter Than Hell.  I got the call one day from Ian Johnson.  He wanted to arrange a trade for my Atari cartridge, Superman.  It was a pretty weak game, and my sister didn’t want me to trade it away, but it turns out that was the best trade I ever made.  From Ian I acquired my first two Kiss records:  Kiss Alive, which I still have that copy of, and Hotter Than Hell.

I played Hotter Than Hell, liked it, but decided that I needed to up the ante and call George.  He picked up the phone.

“George, do you still need the Kiss album Hotter Than Hell?”

A pause.  “Yes, why?”

“I have a copy here,” I said, knowing he was going to lose his mind.

“I’ll be right over.”

The negotiations were intense.  I knew I had Balasz by the ol’ ball sack.  I also legitimately liked the album and wasn’t too keen on parting with it without getting something worthwhile in return.  The album was scratched to the point that it was worthless to a serious collector but we were just kids and he’d never seen Hotter Than Hell before.

In the end, I walked away with a Sony Walkman, my first Black Sabbath cassette (Paranoid), and an Iron Maiden 12” single for “Running Free” (and I think “Flight of Icarus” too but I don’t have it anymore).  The singles were in excellent condition.  I also wound up with a mint condition Abbott and Costello LP for Who’s On First which I gave to my dad for Christmas that year.  All in all, a pretty good haul.

As an added bonus, George taped Hotter Than Hell for me.  No bass on that one thankfully.  It quickly became my favourite Kiss album.  It still is my favourite today.  I guess that’s what happens with your first Kiss.

Unfortunately the tape I used was a 120 minute Scotch.  Little did I know then about the issues with 120 minute tape.  It stretched.  The sound quality decreased.  And we didn’t have the greatest equipment at the time as it was.  It sucked to have my favourite Kiss album in such low quality for such a long time.  At some point in the 80’s, probably around 1987, it was reissued on cassette and I got a proper copy.    Then, at another point in the 90’s, I began replacing a lot of my cassettes with CDs.  I don’t remember when I first got Hotter Than Hell on CD but it was probably in my University days.  Unfortunately that CD had a manufacturer’s defect, the whole damn bunch of them.  Somebody at quality control was asleep at the wheel and there was this horrid scratchy sound on every copy of that CD.  Same issue with Alive II.  On Alive II, I can remember the sound issue happened during “Love Gun”.

During my third year at the record store, I happened upon a German copy of Hotter Than Hell.  You can tell the German ones, because Kiss were forced to change their logo in Germany.  The SS’s looked too much like another pair of SS’s that you may recall from your history books.  Kiss replaced them with backwards ZZ’s, and it still looks pretty cool.  A lot of people try to collect German copies of every album just for the altered logos.  Anyway, the German CD had no sound defect, and that was my default copy for a couple more years.  Finally in 1998, Kiss officially issued their remastered discs, and it took a while, but I finally found Hotter Than Hell and bought it.  Again.

When you love an album that much, you’ll go to any extent to have the best possible version available to you.  And when they inevitably remix and remaster that baby again, you can bet I’ll be the first sucker in line to get it.

Part 2: Gimme an R!

RECORD STORE TALES Part 2:  Gimme an R!

When I was growing up in Kitchener, you had only a few choices of who it was OK to listen to. In 1984, your status depended on your listening choices.

Quiet Riot and Twisted Sister were both “finished” by that point, if you liked them you were not cool anymore. Kiss were kind of cool, but only if you only liked their newest album. The stuff with makeup was “lame” and “old fashioned”.  Van Halen were passé by the time David Lee Roth did “California Girls”.  Judas Priest was OK, but the singer had short hair. And Ozzy?  He scared us.  Even then we couldn’t understand a word he said, plus he looked like a monster on his records.

Your only real choices were: Iron Maiden, W.A.S.P., or Helix.

And no matter who you were into primarily, everybody liked Helix. Why? Well, mainly because Brian Vollmer lived on Breckenridge Drive. I could probably see his place from my parents’ bedroom window.

Fritz (Helix) and LeBrain

Fritz (Helix) and LeBrain

All the kids who lived on Breckenridge, like Ian Johnson, would always tell stories about Brian, who lived three doors down. Brian’s got a cool car, he’d say. Brian got a Christmas card from W.A.S.P., and it was so fucked up…something about “Slashing through the toes, in a one horse open slay…” But then again, Ian Johnson also told us he knew George Lucas and he a squad of ninjas who had a secret base in his basement.

Ian Johnson did not have a basement.

So, Helix were the band you had to like. But the stories of Brian Vollmer and his bandmates were considered heresay at best. I had never actually seen Brian in the flesh. He was considered a legend, a myth, like Loch Ness or Sasquatch. Ian, after all, couldn’t be trusted.

Well, fast forward two decades, and now Helix is now a rock institution. They keep truckin on, with new members and new records, but Brian Vollmer is still at the helm, proudly still asking us to give him an R.

Of course, in this day and age, everybody has a website, and an email. The first time I ever wrote to Brian a few years ago, I asked him if he did indeed live on Breckenridge. He confirmed for me that he did, with his first wife, during the early 80’s. Ian told the truth! (I never did email George Lucas to find out about that part of the story.)

Hell, just last night I was surfing http://www.planethelix.com and saw the very Christmas card from W.A.S.P. “Slashing through the toes”. Brian had scanned it and added it to the memorabilia on his site.

Every time you went to the grocery store in 1984 or 85, you’d take a second look at all the long haired guys. I swore I saw Brent Doerner buying soda at Zerhs, but I lost him in the crowd.  Or was it Brian Doerner?

Again, fast forward a few years. When the movie “Fubar” came out, Sum 41 contributed a version of “Rock You” to the soundtrack. I was working at the record store, and a gentleman came in and asked if he could listen to it. He used to be in Helix, you see, and wanted to hear Sum 41’s version. It was Brian Doerner, Helix’s drummer in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Brent’s twin brother. The Doerners are very distinct looking, I should have recognized him immediately. I of course identified myself as a big fan, and we had a nice chat. Brian Doerner turned out to be the nicest guy.

I saw Helix in 1987 and again in 1996, and again from the second row in 2006 (opening for Alice!), and a bunch of times in 2007. They were great every time.  It’s funny because I can’t think of too many kids in the 8th grade who still proudly listen to the same music then as they do now.  They’re all probably embarrassed that they used to listen to Mr. Mister, or Boy George.  I don’t mind boasting that I was never into the trends.  I knew what I liked then, I know what I like now, and although my tastes have grown and expanded tremendously, I never felt embarrassed by my roots.  I still love Maiden, I still love Helix, more now than then.

I remember when Paul Hackman was killed in 1992. It was the total Cliff Burton accident; he was thrown from the tour bus in a crash. My friend Mike McNeill was in a band opening for Helix at the time, he was there.  When we first met in my record store, that’s one of the first topics that came up:  Helix!

Playing the albums today, you can hear that so many of them are solid all the way through. The first two, Breaking Loose and White Lace & Black Leather have that 70’s sound, as only an indi band in 1978 could sound. I think those albums probably only sold about 2000 copies each at the time. But they are solid, the band was writing varied music. And they were always superb musicians. Brent Doerner’s a really talented guitar player, with an amazing stage presence.

“Billy Oxygen” from the very first record , aptly titled Breaking Loose, is a marvel.  Drums:  Brian Doener.  Fast, accurate, and hard, like a good jazz drummer.  Bass solo courtesy of Keith “Burt” Zurbrigg.  Brent Doener took the lead vocal on this, a song he wrote and garner the band some of their first airplay.  The lyrics seemed to be about a spaceman named Billy Oxygen, who went to other planets looking for people to party with.  Not exactly Arthur C. Clarke-ian, but to a me, any sci-fi reference in a song was cool.  (That’s why we older rock fans love Savatage, those silly Trekkies.)

When I was in University I tried my hand at bad, bad science fiction short stories.  Suffice to say, none of it survives today with good reason.  However, Helix had a little moment in my fiction:  My spaceship was called an ES-335, named after Billy Oxygen’s ship in the song.  And only a little while ago did I learn that ES-335 wasn’t the name of a spaceship at all.   An ES-335 was a Gibson guitar.

There were other science fiction moments in Helix songs as well. “Wish I Could Be There”, from the same album, is one such song.  It’s about a guy who dreams of going to space.  That song represents their epic, their “Stairway to Heaven”.   “Time for a Change” from the second album spoke of nuclear war, if we do not change our ways, a common theme in the sci-fi of the era.

I should clarify, however, that we didn’t even know about these first albums back in 1984.  The earliest song we knew was “Heavy Metal Love”, and even that was pretty new.  We were vaguely aware that they had existed before 1984, but we didn’t know for sure because there were no music videos before that, and those records were out of print.  You couldn’t walk into Sam The Record Man and ask Al King for them.

Occasionally we would hear rumours.  Usually these “little known facts” would come from that one uncle that everyone had, the one who wore no shirt, watched a lot of football, and had a handlebar moustache.  Usually this stereotypical uncle would say, “Yeah, Helix have been around a long time, like 20 years, I saw them when they were still a country band.  My buddy was in the band too.”

Some nights I sat up in a sweat about this.  A country band?  Helix?  Sure, I didn’t hate country music, my dad played that Johnny Cash stuff and it’s alright.  (I even saw Johnny Cash live in ’83, before I ever heard of Helix.) But Helix were rockers!  Rockers were about breaking loose!  They sang about their heavy metal loves!  They told us not to do what people tell you to do, and to always be yourself!  If a bunch of country guys were now posing as rockers to make a buck, well, that would be a black mark on Rock N’ Roll.  Why?  Because it would prove that our dads were right:  Rockers were just in it for the money.  If we couldn’t trust Helix, you couldn’t trust any of them.  Especially W.A.S.P.

We didn’t speak of these things often.  It was bad to speak of these things.  But each of us dreamed—nightmared—about finding a copy of an early Helix album in our uncles’ musty collections.  And in the dream, there they were always on the cover.  A black and white photo.  And they’re wearing cowboy hats.

It never came to that.  When their first two albums, Breaking Loose and White Lace & Black Leather, were finally issued on CD in 1992, they sounded pretty damn good.  It’s classic rock, but harder, much harder.  And best of all, it sounds like home.  Everything about those two albums sounds like right here.  If I played them for you, you’d hear nothing.  But to me, I can’t understand how nobody else can hear that these albums were born right here in Kitchener,Ontario.

Brian Vollmer and I, back in in 2007 at Planet Helix!

Brian Vollmer and I, back in in 2007 at Planet Helix!

The kids from Kitchener 1984 didn’t hear about Helix until MuchMusic started throwing “Rock You” into heavy rotation.  The song was everything we needed at the time.  It was catchy, yet you and your tone deaf friends could all chant it.  Hey, maybe that’s the same reason hip-hop is popular today?

The video for “Rock You” was equally cool.  There were whips, chains, nearly naked girls, leather, guitars, and fire.  The best part of the video was when Brent Doerner comes out of the water with his Les Paul screaming the guitar solo.  And then your friends would debate:  “Could that guy really play under water?”  “No way man, he’d get electrocuted!”  “Are you sure?  That looked awesome though.”  It was catchy, but you could still be a tough guy if you liked this band, because clearly they got lots of girls.

Come to think of it, Helix seemed to get lots of girls.  There were girls in every single video that we had seen!  Granted, the one in “(Make Me Do) Anything You Want” was doing ballet and stuff, but she was still alright.

Oh, and by the way, Ian Johnson also took credit for the “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'” video.  He said, and I quote because I will never forget this, “Yeah, that was my idea.  I told Brian that he should make a video with a lot of girls in it.  So, he did.”

But then again, Ian Johnson also said that he wrote the Disney movie “Bambi”.

But that, dear friends, is another story.

Part 1: The Beginning – “Run to the Hills”

 

RECORD STORE TALES PART 1:  The Beginning – “Run To The Hills”

I still remember the first time I heard Iron Maiden.

Maybe it’s this way for some when they remember the first time they heard the Beatles, or the Stones. Or for those younger, maybe it’s like the first time they heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or “Fake Plastic Trees”. The first time I heard “Run To The Hills” was monumental to me, but I didn’t realize yet what the massive impact would be.

It was Christmas of 1984. I was a mere 12 year old looking for musical direction.  I hadn’t been much interested in music prior to that.  I had albums by Quiet Riot and Styx, but my majority of my collection was John Williams’ movie soundtracks.

I really wasn’t interested in music yet. I had yet to dedicate myself to any particular style. At the same time that I would listen to Quiet Riot, I somehow also thought Billy Ocean was cool.

Well, the video for “Loverboy” was nifty….

I had always been kinda afraid of heavy metal bands.  Guys that wore spikes, like Judas Priest or Iron Maiden. Kiss literally scared me when I was buying my first comics (there were always ads for Kiss posters inside comic books), and I know I wasn’t the only one. The neighbor kid was scared to death of Gene Simmons spitting up blood. Bands like Maiden and Priest looked like a bunch of hooligans, definitely up to no good, definitely out to hurt people, including kids.

Boxing Day, Bob came over. It was tradition, every Boxing Day, Bob and I would get together and compare our Christmas scores. Bob scored a cassette tape called Masters Of Metal Volume 2 and I was given an Atari game called Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron.

In my basement, we sat down to play the video game. Our goal was to take the game as far as humanly possible, to see what happened when you shot down so many planes that the Atari didn’t have enough characters to display it anymore. (Incidentally, disappointingly, like most Atari games, it just starts counting up from zero again.) We sat there playing that game so long that Bob had to go home and eat lunch, then come back. But what he left behind while eating was Masters Of Metal.

“Run To The Hills” came on. Some people speak of moments of clarity: That was my moment. The music was fast, powerful, dramatic and melodic. The lyrics were cool and you could mostly sing along. Most importantly, the music and lyrics seemed to combine with the game experience. When Dickinson was singing “Run to the hills, run for your lives!” it meshed perfectly!  Too bad Aces High wasn’t out yet!

A moment like that could quickly pass into history and be forgotten for most people.  As the day wore on, I realized that I had found something. This music kicked ass!  I was brought up on movie soundtracks.  This stuff had the same drama, but with guitars!   This was even better than Quiet Riot and AC/DC, so I said at the time.

It didn’t end there of course. We played through Masters Of Metal, finding a few more diamonds. “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming” By Judas Priest was definitely a close second to “Run To The Hills”. We were fixated on Accept’s “Balls To The Wall”.  We’d play it over and over again laughing hysterically at the lyrics.  But the song still rocked!  I can still remember when MuchMusic started the Power Hour, and they played that video.  There’s little Udo Dirkscheider, in his camo pants, and crew cut, rocking with these skinny German guys with long hair.  It was fucking hilarious!

We skipped (what we then thought was) the crap…Lee Aaron, Anvil, Triumph.  I grew into them later, particularly Triumph.  Something to do with double guitars, maybe.  I digress.  We always came back to Iron Maiden.  Always.

Bob would bring other tapes over as the months and years went by. W.A.S.P., Motley Crue, Black Sabbath. Now Bob’s a father of four who doesn’t listen to rock music anymore, which makes me sad in a way.  I’m not sad for him, because he’s got a great family and always has.  I’m more sad because I don’t think he can ever appreciate what impact our shared experiece of rocking out had on me.  Listening to Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and the rest.  The was it, the beginning.