Record Store Tales

#1169: Discontinuing the Tapes

RECORD STORE TALES #1169: Discontinuing the Tapes

In 1995, the writing was on the wall.  After struggling for years as a new CD/tape store, the boss discovered a goldmine:  selling used CDs.  The story has been told a dozen times or more, but the short version is this.  In early 1994, the boss brought a small tray of used CDs into the store, priced them, and they sold out immediately.  I think the discs came from his own collection with a few from his brother.  He realized that he could buy used CDs from the public for a few bucks, and then flip them for double or triple the price.  The hunger days ended soon after.

Profit margins on new CDs and tapes was slim.  After you factor in shipping, overhead, paying the part-timers, and an expensive magnetic security system, the boss was left with little for himself, if nothing at all.  He could not survive like that forever.  With used CDs, he could control his own costs.  This was something rare in retail.  Costs are usually determined by your supplier.  You could negotiate for better rates, but it was nothing compared to used CDs.  We could pay five or six bucks for a CD, and sell it for ten or twelve bucks.

You know what happened next.  Expansion!  Waterloo opened, followed by a second store in Kitchener.  These stores had 90% used stock, with a small chart for new releases.  They didn’t carry cassette tapes, at all.  While this surprised me, it was a smart move.  We were ahead of the curve by not carrying cassettes in those stores.   We didn’t even carry used tapes.  For one, it was harder to check them for quality compared to CDs.  For second, it simplified things greatly by only focusing on discs.  One product, one display system, one storage system.  You could take the disc out of the case, hide it behind the counter, and put the empty case on the shelf.  The security system was replaced in this simple way.

Eventually the original Stanley Park Mall store had to close.  Rent in malls is higher than that in plazas.  It was the only store that still carried a full selection of new CDs and tapes.  It closed at the end of 1995, right after Christmas.  And we weren’t allowed to tell people we were closing.  Technically, it was a move.  A new location had been procured in Cambridge.  It too was to follow the 90% used model.  Although we called it a move for the purpose of good optics, the reality was that one store closed and another very different store opened in another city.  The manager was the same, and they took the unsold stock and sold it as used, but it was a new store.

Closing Stanley Park put us in an awkward position.  In 1995, we lived in what was essentially a two format world:  CDs first and foremost, with cassettes still strong, but dying off bit by bit every year.  More and more releases were coming out on CD only.  Vinyl?  In 1994, only Pearl Jam had a mainstream vinyl release.  We carried Vitalogy on vinyl.  It was beautiful.  The boss opened a copy to look at it.  He ended up selling that one to his brother.  But what about that awkward position?  Here we were, going into the Christmas season and selling gift certificates to a small but significant number of people who still only had cassettes players.  We were selling gift certificates to people who were not going to be able to redeem them for cassettes except for a small window:  the six days following Christmas.  Many of those people had been customers for five years, since we opened.

“If someone complains about it, tell them to talk to me, I’ll take care of it.”  The boss was not the kind of person who relished giving people their money back, but I am sure he handled those cases as best he could.  We did special order cassettes for customers for a short period of time in some of these cases; they were isolated cases.  We had some cassettes returned in the new year as well, which had to be dealt with.

I do remember some angry customers.  “Where am I gonna buy my tapes now?” asked one guy who was unhappy, to say the least, that we were closing up, moving to a new location, and ceasing cassettes completely.  I suggested the HMV store at the other mall, but even they were noticeably cutting back.

For me, it was interesting to have lived through these changes in formats.  As a fan, I watched vinyl decline in importance to the point where nobody in highschool bought records anymore.  That was 1986.  Then I lived through the advent of CD, and its eventual replacement of the cassette.  I was working in the front lines at the Beat Goes On when Napster came along, and I saw shelf space once reserved for CDs now showcasing bobbleheads.

I wouldn’t trade it for the world.  All apologies to the inconvenienced!

 

#1168: Christmas Crack

A sequel to #106:  My Favourite Aunt
and #287:  Closing Time

RECORD STORE TALES #1168: Christmas Crack

Closing time at the Beat Goes On wasn’t always easy.  At 8:45, we shut down all the customer listening station and began tidying up for cashout.  If people came in during the last 15 minutes, we reminded them that we were closing soon.  Some were respectful of that, and did their shopping within the allotted time frame.  Some brought in CDs to sell at the last minute, always an irritant.  Others purposely seemed to take their time, as if to put us in our place.  “How dare they tell me, the customer, that I only have 15 minutes to shop.  I’ll take as long as I want.”  Retail employees always have to put up with the worst behaved adults, so much so that we often forget the good ones.

December 23, probably 2002, I was closing up with a newer employee name Lori.  We were closing per normal procedure, getting ready for the big chaos on December 24.  Straightening the CDs on the shelves.  Filing things away.  Shutting down the customer listening stations.  Cleaning, counting the minutes.  Having a perfectly pleasant closing.

In came a mid-30s disheveled looking woman, lugging an absolutely huge black garbage bag.

“Hey guys!  Looking for some used CDs?” she asked with a huge smile on her face.

It was never a good sign when used CDs arrived inside a huge black garbage bag.  It didn’t speak well for the quality of the discs inside.

Had the bossman/owner been there that night, five minutes before closing on December 23, he would have seen dollar signs.  I know exactly what he would have done.  He would have told the woman to put the bag on the counter, called me over, and instructed me to race through the piles and check every disc for quality.  Then we would have had to check every once for pricing and current stock, so we could make an offer.  With a garbage bag the size she brought it, we’d probably be there until close to 10 that night, especially since we would have to log each disc.  It wouldn’t have been the first time he kept me that late after closing at Christmas time.  “We will need this stock after the annual Christmas blowout,” he would have thought to himself.  As a bonus, she looked desperate, so we could lowball her too.

Not feeling like a slave to the cash register on December 23, I took the initiative and turned her away.

“You’ll have to come back tomorrow,” I said as my part-timer continued to tidy up for closing.  “We’re done at nine.”

“But it’s not nine yet!” she protested.  “Where am I supposed to get the money?”

Ah I see.  Crackhead, as I suspected when she walked in with the garbage bag.  We had a lot of those.

“Well, we’re going home…it’s the day before Christmas Eve.  All the pawn shops are closed now.  You can leave the bag here for us to look at tomorrow morning if you want to.”  I gambled that she’d say “no” to that idea.  Crackheads were not the most trusting people.

“Well can you just look at a couple of them and give me a few bucks?”

I decided that I just didn’t want to.

“Sorry.  We’re cashing out.”

Should I have looked at her discs, at least until it was time to lock the doors?  Yes, I should have.  But then we’d have to ID her, log the dics, and pack them up.  Did she even have any ID?  And I just wanted to go home.  My boss called it “old dog syndrome”.  I called it “I don’t get paid enough to deal with crackheads at closing time” syndrome.

So the unhappy woman packed up her garbage bag and lugged it out the door, off to who-knows-where.  Not to buy crack though.

Merry Christmas.

#1165: Zero the Hero (The True Story of My Favourite Album of All Time)

RECORD STORE TALES #1165:  Zero the Hero
The True Story of My Favourite Album of All Time

1984.

It wasn’t I that owned Born Again by Black Sabbath.  That would have been Bob Schipper, who had all manners of metal in his cassette collection.  I knew very little about Black Sabbath when I first discovered music at the end of 1984.  Though Ian Gillan was not the lead singer by the time I became interested in bands like Black Sabbath, he was for all intents and purposes the lead singer to me.  Magazine coverage of Black Sabbath goings-on were beyond my reach, and this would be the last Sabbath album for a few years anyway.  To me, Black Sabbath were:  the two guys with the moustaches, the guy with the long black hair, and the drummer…who looked completely different in the music video for “Zero The Hero” than he did on the Born Again cassette cover.  How was I to know that original Sabbath drummer Bill Ward had been replaced by a guy named Bev Bevan?  I was just starting out on my rock journey.  I had the puzzle pieces in my hands, but no picture to guide the assembly.

It all started when Bob came over one day raving about this song called “Zero the Hero”.  “You gotta hear it!  It goes, ‘Whatcha gonna be, whatcha gonna be, Zero the Hero!'”  Bob was right that the chorus was pretty cool and memorable.  The effects on Gillan’s voice on the chorus lent it a metallic sheen.  He let me borrow the tape a bit to listen.  I enjoyed it.  Master of Reality was another one we listened to together.  He liked a song called “Children of the Grave”, especially the spooky outro.  Born Again had some spooky stuff on it too.  This would come in handy a little later on.

As I discovered bands, I tended to hear the stuff that most popular in my own neighborhood.  W.A.S.P., Iron Maiden, Kiss, Judas Priest, Van Halen, ZZ Top.  I heard some of The Police as well, but my closest friends were rockers.  Metal heads.  There was a serious division in music back then:  Heavy Metal vs. New Wave.  You couldn’t like both.  To us, everything that wasn’t metal was “New Wave”.  If you liked Corey Hart, you were a “Waver”.  If you liked Tears For Fears, you were a “Waver”.  In our neighborhood, you didn’t want to be a Waver.   Basically a Waver would be a slur along the lines of “gay” or whatever the kids were saying back then.  I remember “hurtin’ eunuch” was a phrase that kids like Jeff Brooks would throw around at kids like me.

Anyway, I threw myself into metal full-time and counted Black Sabbath as one of the bands I liked.  I didn’t own any Black Sabbath, but I could name two songs that I liked.  I think Ozzy Osbourne had something to do with the band, and that singer with the black hair was also in Deep Purple.  I was learning.  I didn’t know his name, and I didn’t realize that Ronnie James Dio was also in Black Sabbath (mind blown there) but I was piecing that puzzle together.  I had a few of the edges together, and now I would work on the body:  collecting the music.

In the mid-80s, Bob and I were too old for going trick or treating at Halloween time.  Instead we gave out candy at Bob’s house.  We wanted to go all out and really make a cool “haunted house”, and for that you needed sound effects.  Instead of spending valuable allowance money on one of those corny Halloween tapes, we made our own.  We did this by looping the scary bits of Black Sabbath songs.  Bob especially liked that haunting whisper at the end of “Children of the Grave”.  We made loops, maybe 10 of them, adding in our own bits via an external microphone.  Then we would loop “The Dark” a few times, until the side was full.  Bob would go home and eat lunch, and come back later that afternoon to work on more Halloween stuff.  We were very resourceful and creative.  To this day I have never used pre-made Halloween sounds.  I always made my own by looping bits of songs.  It worked.  Kids would either go straight to our house for candy like a bee to honey…or they would run past terrified!

[Bob and I learned from this experience when a young girl cried at our house.  If we saw anyone really really little approaching, we would kill the sounds and turn on the lights.  It wasn’t our goal to make kids cry.]

I managed to record the music video from the Pepsi Power Hour one afternoon.  I called Bob over to watch it with me.  It was (and remains) one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen in my life.  A Frankenstein looking guy and a Franken-Hitler guy appear to be resurrecting a dead body as…a nerd?  They force fed him eggs with ketchup, while he grinned the whole way through.  Then, a horse walked backwards down a flight of stairs in a mansion.  Meanwhile, scenes of the band playing live were cut in, and you could hardly see Gillan’s face.  It was weird…and heavy.  We hated it.  But I loved it.

Finally one day in highschool I said to myself, “Why the heck haven’t I taped Born Again off Bob Schipper yet?”  I wanted that song “Zero the Hero”.  I popped over one afternoon and borrowed it.  I put it in deck “A” of my Sanyo dual deck ghetto blaster, with a Maxell blank 60 in “B”.  I hit “dub” and began recording.  For whatever reason (and I tried a couple times), I could not get a good copy of that tape.  It wasn’t the best blaster in the world that I was using, but there was so much warble in the copies I made, I got fed up.  I called Bob and asked if I could just buy the tape from him.  I knew it wasn’t in regular rotation at his house.  He said “OK” and I gave him $2 or $3 for it.

I was finally able to listen to Born Again properly.  I liked a few songs such as “Trashed”, “Disturbing the Priest”, “Born Again” and “Keep It Warm”.  It played better on my Walkman, so that’s where most of my listening happened.  That meant it was often on the way to the cottage, or at the cottage, where I used my Walkman most.

I don’t know when Born Again became my favourite album of all time.  I really don’t.  The tape grew on me through the years, but the poor quality of that old WEA cassette made listening hard.  It probably elevated to “among my favourites” when T-Rev found me a vinyl copy in 1995, a full decade since I first became acquainted with it.  A decent CD reissue followed a few years later, and then it hit serious heavy rotation.

Keep it warm, rat:  I love this album for all its flaws and overreaching.  It brings me back to that bedroom, dubbing scary music with Bob.  It brings me back to listening on my Walkman at the cottage at night.  It brings me back to that place where I escaped all the bullies and teachers, and was alone with my own imagination.

Yes, Born Again is my favourite album of all time.  I play it more often than I should, sometimes twice in a row.  No remix or reissue could make me love this album more.  I am Born Again!

#1164: It’s Not Personal: An Uncle Paul Story

RECORD STORE TALES #1164: It’s Not Personal: An Uncle Paul Story

Jen and I have withstood a lot of funerals over the years.  Some were really great tributes to the people we lost.  Others, less so.

When Jen’s mom died, she wanted a Catholic funeral, so of course we obliged.  Jen and I are both what you might call “lapsed Catholics”.  We were both baptised, but stopped practising the faith decades ago.  While preparing for Jen’s mom’s funeral, we were asked if we were Catholics.  Not sure how to respond while still getting Jen’s mom the funeral she wanted, we both answered yes.  Father Imperial (yes, that was his name) knew we were lying.  We had separated the ashes into two urns – a big no no.  Catholics believe you can only get into heaven if your ashes are in one urn.  (Yay dogma!)  His disappointment was visible when nobody in the church knew the responses to the Catholic service.  We did our best, but that was not a good funeral for us.

We had Uncle Paul’s funeral in 2023, but the pressure wasn’t on us this time.  I was asked to be a casket bearer, but I used my gammy right arm as an excuse not to do it.  (I’m glad I didn’t; I watched the casket being carried down stairs and over headstones, and I could not have done it.)  We just sat in the church and paid our respects.  The funeral wasn’t very personal.  In most of the other funerals we’d done, the pastor asked for stories and personality traits that he could read during the service.  Those were good funerals.  People laughed, people cried, people shared memories.  Uncle Paul’s wasn’t like that.  It was very impersonal.  It could have been for anybody.

11 months later, there was a memorial service for people lost in the last two months of 2023.  It was the same priest presiding, and Uncle Paul was to have a candle lit in his name.  We all decided to attend the memorial mass.

We weren’t familiar with the area and had to park six blocks away.  The church was packed and we were not able to sit together.  We sat and did the things you do at a Catholic mass.  You stand, you kneel, you stand, you kneel.  Our kneeling bench wasn’t working, so that was awkward.

Finally they started reading the names of the people lost, so a candle could be lit in their name.  It wasn’t alphabetical, so we just listened and waited to hear Uncle Paul’s name.

“Paul Laderno,” said the priest.  The same priest who presided over his funeral.

“They didn’t even say his name right!” I whispered to my mom next to me.  I didn’t care if anyone heard me.  I was very upset.

How hard is it to say our name?  I now had a new variation to add to our long list of mispronunciations.  It felt so impersonal.  It felt like nobody cared, except us.  A real disservice to a great man, who was indeed a man of faith.  He deserved better.  “Laderno”.  Normally I’m the one to see the humour in things, but I didn’t this time.

We had a nice visit with my Aunt Maria after the service.  That made up for the disappointing mass.

Uncle Paul’s resting place is now capped with a stone, a marker so cool it deserves to be shared here.  This is the kind of memorial he deserves.  On the back, a crisp picture of his beloved vintage ‘Cuda.  A Blue Jay logo sits in a corner, waiting for my Aunt one day.   This is closer to how I’ll remember him.  Always there for his cars and my aunt.

We don’t often talk about cemeteries and headstones being cool…but my uncle’s is cool.

 

 

 

 

#1163: Not A Review of the Movie ‘Elf’ (2003)

RECORD STORE TALES #1163: Not A Review of the Movie ‘Elf’

December 2004 was a low point. My mental and probably physical health too were…not good. I was managing two record stores against my wishes. I was in charge of the Beat Goes On on Highland Road, and Oakville. Oakville was supposed to be somebody else’s store, a franchise. Well, things went from bad to worse and I found myself driving to Oakville every day for many weeks in November and December, in a car that was not long for the grave.  I was going to work, coming home, drinking red wine and going to bed.  It was a cycle of endless days and weekends too.

My boss took me aside; had a meeting with me behind closed doors.

“Mike, I noticed you’re not doing well with the whole Oakville thing.”

There was no such thing as mental health time off in my world.  I wouldn’t have known you could do that.  Could you, in 2003?

My boss suggested that I use the commute time to listen to “old cassettes that you haven’t played in a while.  That could be fun for you.”

That’s when I learned that listening to Winger when you’re stuck in 401 traffic isn’t actually all that fun.

I took a break one afternoon in Oakville and walked over to some crappy store that sold everything from soda pop to small appliances.  I saw Elf on the racks, the Christmas movie starring Will Ferrell as…an elf.  I was skeptical.  I heard mixed things.  But I was in a shitty headspace and I needed a pick-me-up.  Retail therapy.  Elf and a soda pop went into my shopping bag. I may have even bought a bag of chips.

I had Sunday off, and I watched Elf in my pajamas that morning.  And I laughed.  I was immediately enthused because the beginning reminded me very much of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, what with the animation and the snowman.  I was also following Jon Favreau’s directorial career with great interest.  Peter Billingsley was in the movie.  I truthfully loved it from day one.  I still love it.

My dad on the other hand calls Will Ferrell “that annoying guy” because of this movie.

I remember wrapping Christmas presents with my mother in law Debbie while watching Elf.  I don’t really know if she liked it or not, but she liked watching it with me.  I think she liked a lot of it.  James Caan.  Mary Steenbergen.  Bob Newhart.  These are fantastic actors, and James Caan provided that “realistic” perspective that an absurd movie like this needs.  To sum:  Buddy the Elf (Ferrell) realizes he’s too tall to be an elf, and then Papa Elf (Newhart) finally tells him the truth:  his parents were human, and James Caan is his dad, and he lives in New York City.  And so off Buddy the Elf walks from the North Pole all the way to New York in order to meet his real dad.  Chaos ensues of the culture shock variety.  James Caan, as the biological father thrust into this situation, is the point of view the audience needs to make it work.  The scenes with he and Buddy are often some of the best.  Having said that, there is a badass snowball fight in Central Park, and some great singing from Zoey Deschanel, who doesn’t seem to question the weirdness of this elf guy who’s falling for her.  (Look for a cameo by Tenacious D’s Kyle Gass.)

Wonderful movie in my opinion, with clever use of perspective to make Buddy tower over his elf kin.  Hilarious performances by Peter Dinklage, Faizon Love, and Leon Redbone as the snowman.  Family friendly fun.

So, I thought, “I’ll buy this for Grandma for Christmas.  She enjoys light movies that make her smile.”  I was basing this on a years-before viewing of Ernest Saves Christmas that she enjoyed with us.  And I don’t know if she ever watched Elf.  I asked her a few days later.

“I don’t think I got it Michael,” she said.  “I fell asleep, and when I woke up, it was still the same scene playing.”

She was watching the animated DVD menu.

I didn’t buy Grandma movies for Christmas after that!

#1162: Luta

Expanding upon Record Store Tales #11:  Klassic Kwotes

 

RECORD STORE TALES #1162: Luta

It was 2003, and I was managing the Beat Goes On location on Fairway Road.  A newer employee named Lori was on the shift.  She was great with customer service, but even she could not help the large man with the heavy Caribbean accent that walked into our store that evening.  He was friendly, upbeat…and infinitely frustrating.

“You got any Luta?” he asked Lori.  I always listened to the employee interactions with customers so I could step in when necessary.  This one perked my ears up because I had never heard of any artist named “Luta”.  I had been in the store about eight years at that point and had heard just about every name you can think of, from “DJ Rectangle” to “Who” (not THE Who, not THE GUESS Who, not DOCTOR Who, just Who).  So, when an unfamiliar name came up, I was always willing to help a less experienced employee.

Lori searched “Luta” to no avail, so I stepped over to her terminal to help.

“How do you spell it?” I asked the man.  He didn’t know.  “Loo-tah” is how he pronounced it, with emphasis on the “Loo”.

I said, “Is it L-u-t-a?” to which he responded, “Yeah, man.”  Not that I doubted Lori’s search, but I typed it in, as well as “Lootah” and anything else I could think of.  Our database was alphabetical, so as long as you had the first few letters right, you could scroll up and down and see what was similar.  I found nothing.

“Are you sure it’s Luta?” I asked.  “One name, just Luta?”

“Yeah man,” he responded.  “You don’t know Luta?” he laughed in his accent.

“No I’m sorry, I have never heard of him before,” I responded in the negative.

“‘Dance With My Father’,” said the guy.

Suddenly, it clicked.  “Dance With My Father” was a new hit by Luther Vandross.

Luther.  Luta.  Luther Vandross.

Mystery solved!  The lesson here is, at least know the first and last names of the artist you’re searching for when you walk into a music store!

#1161: The Last Note of Freedom: Season 2024 Comes to an End

RECORD STORE TALES #1161: The Last Note of Freedom: Season 2024 Comes to an End

As much as Record Store Tales is about music, and personal music history, it has also become a related sub-story about mental health and seasonal affective disorder.  It was only during the early years of publishing Record Store Tales that I was forced to deal with it.  This has been a musical journey, and a rocky road of personal struggle, triumph, setbacks, and triumph all over again.  A big part of my problem is my seasonal affective disorder, which I have been open about for years.  I get depressed in the winter:  facts!  My genes are Mediterranean, and I was not built for snow or months of dark skies.  And so, it is sad to say that the cottage season of 2024 is officially at its end.  But what a year it was.

The year of drones!  Every year I want to level up my video-making abilities.  I never know what exactly that will be until I stumble upon it.  One year, it was the discovery of super-slow-mo videos.  This year I took the skies!  My cottage videos were dominated by drones this year.  A satisfying artistic triumph, and a super fun hobby that I highly recommend.

I called this chapter “The Last Note of Freedom” because that’s the song that I chose to use in my last cottage drone video of the year.  The same David Coverdale song that was inexplicably used in my high school graduation slideshow.  It always signals endings and beginnings to me, besides being a great song.  A good one one which to end the summer 2024 flying season.  Maybe this winter we’ll see if I can fly in the snow.

Meanwhile, back at home, this was also the summer that we discovered deep dish pizza.  I have always been curious but wary.  This summer, we found not one but two local places that serve up (and deliver) reasonably authentic deep dish.  (The “delivery” part is important because I don’t really enjoy going out to eat.)  And so, along with droning, deep dish pizza will become a winter activity when we have the blues.  I very much enjoy the thick gooey cheese, and the tomato sauce was a lot more enjoyable than I expected.  While it is not for everyone, and definitely a very different kind of pizza, I would say that deep dish is indeed pizza.  (There’s a whole debate about this.)

More food experiments will happen as we hunker down for another cold winter.  I’ve always wanted to try one of those ramen places, and soup is perfect for winter.  We also have to try a few “indoor steaks” when we start to go into beef withdrawl.

Yes, I’m optimistic.

And so as we say goodbye to summer and the cottage, we look forward to what comes this winter.  Lots of music, lots of new things, and always with a focus on creativity.

 

#1160: Halloweens Without Bob

RECORD STORE TALES #1160: Halloweens Without Bob

A sequel to #790:  Helluva Halloween

 

The first Halloween costume I distinctly remember wearing was a robot suit.  My mom and dad got a big cardboard box, cut out a head hole and some arm holes, and helped me decorate it with tinfoil.  Then another box became the head.  I drew on buttons and knobs with crayons.  I was so excited to be a robot that night.  That is, until I saw an older kid with a way better robot suit.  His had lights!  I briefly wondered if he was a real robot and dismissed the thought.

My costumes were sometimes store-bought, sometimes home made.  Darth Vader was a plastic mask and glow-in-the-dark sword.  Frankenstein was a costume I made myself, using cardboard to cut a square-ish wig, and green face paint.  It was so difficult to wash all that green off in the bathtub that night.  There was a green ring around the tub that my dad was furious about.  It’s very likely I went out as Empire Strikes Back Han Solo in 1980.  I already had the costume:  a blue hooded snow coat, goggles, with a gun and holster.  Another classic Harrison Ford costume was Indiana Jones.  I used brown makeup to simulate a 5 o’clock shadow, and had a rope-whip and a gun.  I was mistaken for a cowboy, which really peeved me.  How could you have not heard of Indiana Jones in 1981?  Maybe my costume just wasn’t good enough.

In 1984, my mom sewed us elaborate Ewok costumes.  While I wore mine that night, I wore a different costume to school:  that of a Cobra trooper from GI Joe!  I painted some red Cobra logos on a blue helmet, pulled my shirt up over my nose like a balaclava, and armed myself with a rifle.  Back when you could bring toy guns to school!  Weren’t those the days?  School was very particular about Halloween.  You had to participate.  If you didn’t bring a costume to school that day, the teacher would take a garbage bag, cut some holes in it, and force you to wear that.  I’m not kidding.

I went out for Halloween one more time in grade nine, but that was the last year.  I may have only gone to one house:  the “fudge house”.  There was an elderly couple who made home-made fudge.  It was so good, and so popular, that some kids would change costumes and go two or three times.  It was very sugary fudge, but so good.  Then, the era of Bob-Halloweens began!

From grade 10 onwards, Bob Schipper and I started making out own haunted houses.  That’s its own story, but I dressed as Alice Cooper that year. I painted up a black jacket with flames and wore a sword at my side.  Doing Halloween haunted houses was our thing for a few years, each time getting more elaborate.  We had mummies, scary sounds, flashing lights, spiders and cobwebs, and lots more.  It was a passion project.  We would spend a month or two preparing for Halloween.  November 1st always sucked.  Nobody likes cleanup.

When Bob moved on to college and doing his own things, I was left to man the fort by myself.  My first Halloween alone was 1991, and a lonely one it was.  I began preparing to do the haunted house, alone.  Without Bob’s collaboration or input, I made my usual mix tape of scary sounds.  I always took these sounds from cassettes I already owned.  The bit from Judas Priest’s recent “Night Crawler” with Rob Halford talking about the monster at the door was my latest addition to the scary sound library.  When I put the tape together, my sister said there’s “too much Judas Priest!”  She was right, but without Bob, I was left to my own devices.  I did what I wanted to, for better or for worse.

1991 was a lonely Halloween.  It wasn’t fun anymore.  It was a lonely time in general.  Up until then, I looked forward to our Halloween creativity.  I didn’t bother anymore after that.  We were seeing fewer and fewer kids at the front door, and for me, without Bob, what was the point?

 

#1159: The Community is Dead – Long Live the Community!

RECORD STORE TALES #1159:
The Community is Dead – Long Live the Community!

Once Upon A Time, the old WordPress music Community was an important part of our daily breakfast.  It was a wonderful way to connect and talk music with like-minded folks.  It was even a good way to seek support in our lives.

Then in 2023, the Community died.  I don’t know why, and I no longer care.  It’s possibly a “type of feint, or fake technique, whereby a player draws an opposing player out of position or skates by the opponent while maintaining possession and control of the puck.” People just…disappeared.  Ghosted.  I actually don’t want to know why.  “Let the past die,” Kylo Ren said.  “Kill it, if you have to.”  That is done, but not by my own hand.

I knew it was dead in 2024, when several people from the old Community refused to watch or acknowledge my trip to Toronto with Aaron, the Community’s spiritual leader.   It was a shunning, with intent.  Rest in peace, Community!

Whatever their issues are, I hope they find peace and harmony, wherever they went and whatever they are doing now.  I miss them. But there was a silver lining.

A new Community awaited me.  A bigger, more welcoming Community.  A Community that stretches from Australia to America, east coast to west, and up north to Canada.  A stronger Community. For me it began as the old Community died in 2023.  Marco D’Auria encouraged me to work with the Contrarians, and suddenly I started getting invites to appear on other shows, such as Rock Daydream Nation and My Music Corner.  With these fine folks, together, we have rebuilt what was lost.  Bigger, better, faster, stronger!

I welcome you to the Community!  A place where we support each other, collaborate, and celebrate the power of music!  A place where you will not be judged for your mistakes, nor shunned.

Welcome…I bid you welcome!

#1158: I dated a witch!

Welcome to a series of posts related to Halloween 2024!  Holen has written some guest posts, and I have my own bag of treats planned.  Enjoy!

RECORD STORE TALES #1158: I dated a witch!

 

A sequel to #904:  2000 Dates and #616:  None of My Exes Live in Texas

 

I have held off telling this tale long enough!  There are many reasons why I haven’t told this story until now, but here are the two main ones:

  1. I didn’t want to upset my grandmother.
  2. I don’t know anything about witchcraft at all, therefore I don’t want to seem like I’m making fun of someone’s religion.

However, I also think it’s amusing to say the sentence, “I dated a witch once”.  So here we go.

I explained in Record Store Tales #904:  2000 Dates, I did a lot of online dating in the year 2000.  Every time, it seemed the girl had something unique about her.  For example:

  1. One girl was the cousin of Haywire singer Paul MacAusland, and suffered from I osteogenesis imperfecta, the same disease that affected Mr. Glass in the Unbreakable trilogy.  We went out once, and she wasn’t into me.
  2. Another girl was in AA and I actually attended a meeting with her, which was a bad idea.  We went out a few times.  She wasn’t sure if she wanted a friend or a boyfriend, so I stopped calling her.
  3. One was legally blind!  She got into that movie The Cell with Jennifer Lopez and Vincent D’onofrio for free.  She was starting a new life in a new town and I don’t think I was her best prospect.  I stopped hearing from her, until one day she accidentally emailed me.  I think we went out twice total.  She had awesome black dreads.

This story is about none of those women.

Cynthia was from Toronto.  She shared her surname with a prominent Star Trek character.  She was into Sloan and A Perfect Circle.  She took horrible care of her CDs.  We wanted to listen to music, and I suggested 4 Nights at the Palais Royale by Sloan, but the discs were all mixed up in her collection.  I knew it wasn’t going to work out.

We had one day together.  I drove up to Toronto, got lost, and had a huge panic attack on my way there.  No GPS, but I did have a cell phone.  That was actually the end right there.  It had nothing to do with her.  It was the drive.  I knew I’d never do that drive again.

Besides listening to music, I watched Cynthia work.  She was an online psychic.  I’m a sceptic, but the kind that would like to be convinced.  She got on her computer, opened a word file, and began responding to emails.  She scrolled through her word file, found a paragraph she liked, and hit “copy”.  “This one will work,” she said.  She had all her “psychic” readings pre-written; she just selected one that applied to the question.  “I do real ones sometimes,” she justified to me.  Sometimes.  Not that night though.

We went for a walk, we talked, and Cynthia tried to explain her religion to me.  She was a “weather witch”, she told me.  She practiced Wicca.  Wicca and witchcraft, she explained, were not interchangeable terms, but she was both.  I was pretty clear that I was comfortable where I was spiritually, but hey, cool.  I very much had a “you do you” attitude when it came to religion.  We were both raised Catholic, so we had that in common.  She had two roommates, also Wiccan.  They had a picture up in their main entrance of their horned god, which was interesting, but they didn’t laugh when I commented that their god appeared “horny”.  Come on, cut the new guy some slack!

I made it home on Highway 401 in one piece.  I knew I’d never be going back.  It was a matter of telling her.  She did not take it well.

Cynthia had made for me a little magic pouch to protect me on the highway.  When I told her I could not do that drive again, she was quite upset.  “I’ll take the bus to you!” she offered.  There were tears…I felt awful.  I had described her as a “stage 5 clinger” before, which is unkind but not untrue.  It was the first time I had experienced something like this.  I went from indifferent dates, to this!

I went out the night of that phone call with some friends to a round of mini-golf.  It helped me get my mind off things.  I shared that I was slightly afraid she’d cast a spell on me.  You always say “Oh but magic and witches aren’t real,” but I thought, “Cynthia didn’t think so.”  What’s real?  And what the hell did I know at age 28?   We laughed a lot during that round of mini-golf, but then my friend Will prank called my car phone pretending to be an angry friend of Cynthia’s.  That took some calming down after.  Later, I was teased at a staff party by my co-workers about the kinds of spells she would put on me for dumping her.  You can see why I haven’t told this story before.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to all these people I went out with during that period of time.  Married, with adult kids now?  Do they even remember me?  I’m the one writing all this; maybe I’m the clinger after all.