I don’t remember everything that happened at the Record Store, I admit, and I remember less and less each passing year. Certain events and characters have slipped my mind. Fortunately we have the written word to remind us. Here is an abridged conversation.
David: “Didn’t there used to be a crazy dude who came to (your old store in) Kitchener in a Helix jacket?
Mike: “I am unfamiliar with that gentleman. We did however receive visits from Snake the Tattoo Man (who was in a Helix video). He threatened Neil.
Matt: “I do remember the Helix jacket guy, and he was a little crazy…I can’t believe you don’t remember that guy Mike…although it wasn’t nearly as good as the jacket “Rokken With Dokken”.
GETTING MORE TALE #792: The Summer of ’93 – Live Album Explosion
Keeping up with new releases is challenging for anyone. Today, every band is releasing a box set, live album, compilation, EP, or even (gasp) new material! This is not a new phenomenon. As a young collector in an earlier time, 1993 was particularly challenging. I was suffering from “live album burnout” due to a number of double lives that year. I dutifully picked up the most important ones to me, as much as I could afford.
I plotted things out. The first batch of live albums on my radar that year were as follows:
Four of my favourite bands in one brief chunk of time, with two of the four being doubles. I had to budget this out somehow.
I’m not sure when I bought Van Halen’s album, but I most likely bought it first. The dual CD set was at Costco for thirty-something bucks so I put it in the cart. I know it was early in the year because I remember listening to it in the car while driving to school for final exams, which occur in April. Specifically I remember listening to the live version of “Cabo Wabo” on my way there.
I found the Van Halen album underwhelming. Too much stuff from For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge and some clattering solos made it a struggle to finish in one sitting. Sammy Hagar would later comment that the album sucked because too much of it was re-recorded in the studio. I just thought it was a drag.
Kiss were (and are) my #1 band, so I dutifully bought it as quickly as I could. I didn’t get it on the day of release (May 18), but I do know the exact date that I purchased it: May 20. I know this because I remember that we had to get home from the mall (Fairway Park Mall’s HMV store) in time to catch the series finale of Cheers. I got the free poster with my cassette copy. I chose cassette for strategic reasons. Double live albums were a bigger investment, so I liked to get those on CD. I was already starting to distrust the cassette tape format. I’d hate to buy a double cassette set and have one of the tapes go bad. Alive III was a single tape, so I went for that and stayed with that until I got a double vinyl reissue a couple years later.
The Ozzy was a limited edition package. I needed that special grille cover with the two “tattoos” inside. I couldn’t afford it so I put it on my birthday list. I accompanied my mom to HMV to make sure she got the right one. Killed the surprise, but also the anxiety of not getting the exact version I “needed” for my collection!
Ozzy Osbourne had already supersaturated the market with live albums, and his was tedious to listen to. I gave it more it than a fair shot, as I wanted to really hear how Zakk approached the live versions differently than Randy or Tony had. It was an exercize that paid minimal dividends, wading through minute after minute of numbing “extra extra crazy” Ozzy monologues.
I decided to hold off on Iron Maiden as long as I could. The idea of a single disc live Maiden album was a little off-kilter for me. An album of tracks from 1986-1992 didn’t sound all that appealing to me. Maybe I should wait until the second disc, due in October, came out so I could listen to both equally. Maybe I should skip A Real Live One entirely. The album seemed a hasty entity, being released so Maiden could tour to support new product. The cover art was also lo-fi sketchy, compared to predecessor Live After Death.
Good or bad, I decided to hold off on Maiden for the time being. I had enough live metal to digest anyway.
Kiss was the only album I was happy with, though it was clearly an inferior offering to Alive I and II. Unlike Osbourne, it wasn’t too long, and kept the filler to a minimum.
When the next batch of live albums rolled out, I was weary.
Testament – Return to the Apocalyptic City EP – summer 1993
The Bon Jovi live disc came with a pricey special reissue of Keep the Faith, a limited edition. I immediately put that one on my Christmas list and did my best to pester my mom into buying it. I had to make a decision about the others. I scratched Satriani and Testament off my list. They weren’t going to be priorities this time.
As for the final call on Iron Maiden? The decision was made for me when I found Live at Donington, once again at HMV. What was this? It looked like a bootleg, but wasn’t. It had no liner notes. Absolutely bare minimum packaging. Nary an Eddie in sight. It was a “limited edition“, and a double CD with a complete concert. The easy choice was to buy this instead of the other two albums. For the time being, at least. I finally did get all three albums, when I was working at the Record Store, in 1996. The Boxing Day sale enabled me to get both live Maidens and the recent Tesla greatest hits for a reduced price. It took me three years to get ’em!
That busy 1993 list doesn’t include live home videos released that year (Ozzy, Van Halen, Bon Jovi, Kiss) or the albums that I didn’t even know about (Live Cult). I had to draw the line and audio has always been my priority over video.
Too much is too much, and in 1993 we just had too much.
Do you remember what live albums you bought in 1993? Comment below!
I get a lot of hits from people hoping to buy my stuff. This one popped up recently in my search terms:
“vince neil dragon guitar for sale”
Several years ago, the Vince Neil “dragon guitar” by Washburn was on sale so I picked one up. So did my buddy Thuss — except he did sell his. This is his story of how it (eventually) went down.
GETTING MORE TALE #791: The True Story of Thuss’s Vince Neil “Dragon Guitar”
BY THUSS
Lebrain and I had matching guitars for a while, that we both bought at the now defunct Future Shop. They were on clearance and we got them for a really good price ($70 plus tax, originally $300 each, limited to 2500 pieces). They were Washburn dragon guitars which were “autographed” by Vince Neil. The only real autograph in the package was Vince Neil’s actual signature on the certificate of authenticity. After a couple years I decided to sell mine as I never really played it anymore and had moved onto different hobbies.
So I did what everyone else did, and put it up on Kijiji. I wasn’t in a hurry to sell it so I put it up for more than double what I paid for it. I had a few bites, but nothing serious until one guy from Toronto wanted it. He was desperate for it! But there was only one problem: he didn’t drive. First he came to me with an offer of triple what I paid for it if I delivered it to his house. As I said I wasn’t in a hurry to sell it, so I answered no.
I didn’t hear from him for a week or so. Then he emailed back, and asked if I would meet him at the bus station downtown for what I was asking for it. Again I said no, because I hate driving downtown and I didn’t want to pay for parking just to make a sale.
Again a week passed, and he emailed me back. He said “OK”. He’d take about six buses and meet me at my house and he will give me what I’m asking for it. I said sure, and not surprisingly he never showed up.
At this point I had another offer from a dad wanting to buy it for his son. His offer was below what I was asking, but still well above what I paid for it. I accepted, and when they came to pick it up, the son was so happy to have a guitar. He was really excited to start playing, so I’m glad I sold it to someone who would appreciate it.
I thought this was the end of the story but come a month later, the original guy emailed me and said one of his friends was going to drive out to my house so he could pick it up. “Sorry,” I told him, “but I sold it to someone else.”
Guitar-guy immediately emailed me back, and he was pissed! He told me he said he wanted it, and was going to pick it up, so why did I sell it to someone else? I said it was almost two months since he first contacted me and I moved on and sold it to someone else. Finally that got rid of him and I never heard from him again. You meet some “interesting” people on Kijiji. At least I didn’t tell him LeBrain had one too!
Everybody eventually hits that age, when they are “too old” to go trick-or-treating for candy. Highschool seemed like a good age to draw the line. Time to start handing out the candy instead of collecting it. We all have to grow up eventually.
Do we?
Naw, screw that!
In the 10th grade, a new Halloween tradition was inaugurated. As told in Getting More Tale #548:
We started preparing for Halloween in late August. We began by making heads out of papier-mâché. Ours were crude, but when dressed up with sunglasses, hats or wigs, did the trick. Then we would begin working on an audio tape. This was a 60-minute long compilation of scary bits from Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden albums. We hid some speakers outside and would play the tape on a loop for background scary sounds. Kids loved it. Really small ones were scared, so we had to stop the tape and turn on the lights for them, but 95% thought it was awesome (including parents). We’d see kids across the street, and they’d make a beeline for our house as soon as they saw it. My favourite costume was the one I made in grade 10: Alice Cooper.
Oh, that Alice Cooper costume! I painted flames on an old black jacket so it would look something like Alice’s. I wore his makeup. I had fake tattoos (not knowing that Alice didn’t have any). I had a pair of handcuffs on my belt. Best of all though, was the sword I wore on my hip. It was actually a fireplace poker, but you couldn’t tell in the dark.
Making the annual audio tape was a long, arduous process. We’d fast-forward through our tape collections to record tiny bits of songs, and loop them. The ending to “Children of the Grave” and the intro to “Powerslave” were perfect. Occasionally we’d throw in the middle of “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” with the narration and creepy violin. Black Sabbath’s “The Dark” was almost custom made for our needs. As time went on and our collections grew, we had more music to choose from. Any time one of us would buy an album with music perfect for Halloween, one of us would excitedly phone the other. In later years I was fond of the middle section from “Nightcrawler” by Judas Priest. But it was tedious work. You couldn’t just play the same sections over and over again, you had to space them out so kids wouldn’t get the same bits repeated while you stood there handing out candy. We spent hours upon hours making this tape that would only be used for one night. Blank tapes were a commodity. We were always using them up, and looking for something to erase. Halloween tapes were first to go. Besides, we wanted to do it again the following year, but better!
Our scary tapes would be augmented by flashing lights courtesy of…a flashlight. Eventually, Bob figured out how to hook up a microphone to our primitive audio setup. We could then speak directly to the kids!
“You…across the street…come here for a treat! Muahahahah!”
Mom & dad didn’t approve. To them we just made a big mess and a lot of noise. Indeed, I can remember trying to wash off that Alice Cooper makeup at the end of the night. I left a black ring around the tub. But my dad hated handing out candy, so I hope he appreciated that he was relieved of that duty. Considering how long we prepared, it was actually a long ongoing mess. Ever made papier-mâché? No neat and tidy way to do it. Those heads were the most work, and we left a trail of destruction in the basement, forming and painting them. But once they were out on the front porch (either decapitated or as part of a fully clothed “body”) they sure were effective.
Bob eventually went to college, and the traditional Halloween House was discontinued. I did it a few times without him but all the fun was gone. The idea was briefly resurrected in the late 1990s, at T-Rev’s place. As told in Record Store Tales Part 148:
T-Rev had this cool “alien head” — he got it back in ’97 or ’98 from a convenience store. It had alien head suckers inside. He asked the guy at the store, “how much for the alien head?” The guy answered, “If you buy all the suckers in it, you can have it.” So he did. (The candy was awful by the way. I did my share, trying to help him consume it all.) But he got this alien head out of it, and with it, made a cool alien costume. And for the Halloween party that year, I wore the costume.
I would sit in a chair on T-Rev’s front porch, still as could be. When a child would approach the door, I would suddenly move and say “Na-nu, na-nu”! The reactions were priceless. Some were scared, so I had to unmask and show I was just a regular guy.
“Give some candy to the Jedi over here!” I said, gesturing to the kid dressed as Darth Maul.
“I’m no Jedi!” he protested. I should have got my terminology right. I apologized to the Sith lord.
Even the Sith story is from 20 years ago. Not having kids, today Halloween has fizzled out. There are no trick-or-treaters in our building. Most people today doing a “haunted house” experience at home buy expensive decorations at chain stores. They get featured the in newspaper for having done an awesome job. That’s terrific. But we did everything ourselves. Everything. Nothing was “store bought”. We improvised everything with what we had, spending weeks putting it all together. Too bad the newspapers don’t cover kids who do everything themselves! We would have been featured every year.
Have a happy Halloween and don’t forget to brush those teeth!
A sequel to Record Store Tales Part 1: Run to the Hills!
GETTING MORE TALE #789: Run 2 the Hills
I still remember the first time I heard Iron Maiden. I actually remember many childhood listening sessions involving Iron Maiden. Some were solo, some were in groups. We could talk as the day is long about how amazing Iron Maiden were in 1985. Are they actually the greatest heavy metal band of all time? Sure, but we don’t need to get into that here.
The two albums with the greatest personal impact in the early days were Piece of Mind and Live After Death. It was those two albums that I owned on vinyl, and therefore had the lyric sheets to examine. Playing them today enables me to use a sort of spiritual time machine. I can transport my consciousness into the body of my 12 year old self and feel what it was like listening to Maiden when it was all new to me.
Iron Maiden had a forbidden quality, unspoken but undeniable. They seemed far, far more dangerous than anything I’d been interested in before. Styx? Michael Jackson? Kids’ stuff. Iron Maiden had historical lyrics, good for educational value, sure. For a young Catholic in the mid-80s, they were definitely adult entertainment. Suddenly, the lyrics I was hearing were dominated by death, something that teachers and parents tried to steer kids away from. Early Maiden is thick with death, like a metal mortuary.
“Fly to live, do or die.”
“To ashes his grave.”
“If you’re gonna die, die with your boots on.”
“You’ll die as you lived in the flash of the blade.”
“Iron Maiden wants you for dead.”
“For the love of living death.”
“Death in life is your ideal.”
“He killed our tribes, he killed our creed.”
“Fought for the splendor, fought to the death.”
“They dropped down dead, 200 men.”
Heavy stuff. Adult frowns could be felt through the walls as we listened to our Iron Maiden albums. At that age, every time I listened to Maiden, or Priest, or Sabbath, a little bit of the Catholic guilt always lurked behind me. “This is bad stuff,” whispered the voice in my head. “Not wholesome. Very dangerous. You’re playing with fire.”
I spent a lot of time with my best friend Bob pouring over the lyrics. He didn’t have Live After Death on LP like I did, only cassette, so my lyric sheet was indispensable. By no measure did we understand all that we were reading, but we picked up enough. We all knew the legend of Icarus, so “Flight of Icarus” was cut and dried. We picked up on a lot of it, even if we didn’t understand every line and verse. It was clear their songs were stories, like mini-movies. And entertaining they were! We had actual discussions about this stuff, in between sessions of arguing about which Maiden member was coolest. (I liked Adrian best. Nobody picked Dave Murray. George Balasz used to say that Dave looked like he was always thinking “I got something dirty on my mind”. The rest of us disagreed.)
I was always mentally prepared for any confrontation with any Catholic teacher who took issue with my choice of listening to Iron Maiden. I gathered some of their more educational lyrics, like “The Trooper”, which I could dissect on a dime. It even taught me a new word — “acrid”. I noted that even in some of the most negative sounding songs, like “Die With Your Boots On”, there was a positive twist. “The truth of all predictions is always in your hands.” We didn’t know what “Die With Your Boots On” was really about (Nostradamus); that one really eluded us. The message that we honed in on was “the future is not set” and nobody is doomed to a particular fate.
One track that I thought the teachers would have objected to the most was “Powerslave”. Lines like “I’m a god, why can’t I live on?” would be considered blasphemous. Later on, after learning some Egyptian history in highschool, the lyrics suddenly made complete sense. The pharoah was considered by his people to be a living god. That’s it! Now the lyrics made sense. The pharoah, in first-person storytelling, approaches death and realizes too late that he will not live forever. Their faith is a lie. He fears death, and after succumbing, he feels pity for his successor. “For he is a man and a god, and he will die too.” It’s quite a poignant tale when taken apart. It would make a fantastic short story (as I tuck the idea away for future expansion).
And “Aces High”? That song was so significant that I wrote an entire chapter about it. When school finally got around to covering the Battle of Britain in the highschool, I already knew the story. I knew it because Iron Maiden were the launching point. My dad took over my World War II education from there. If I was going to be learning history from long-haired-hooligan music, he was going to make sure I knew the whole story. They showed the ensemble film Battle of Britain in class, but for me it was a re-run of “movie night with Dad”.
Maiden passed the lyrical integrity test for a 12 year old. The didn’t sing lovey-dovey nonsense that I couldn’t relate to. Not all the songs could be brilliant, of course. Even then, I knew “Quest for Fire” wasn’t good. “In a time, when dinosaurs walked the Earth…” What!? No! I knew that humans and dinosaurs weren’t contemporary to each other; how come Steve Harris didn’t? One minor misstep. Most importantly, Maiden passed the feel test. The power of the music combined with Bruce Dickinson’s confident, defiant air-raid siren voice. It stirred a boy’s sense of personal strength. You could feel it. The effect was almost like a drug. Almost, but far more nourishing for the soul.
It doesn’t take much to regain those old feelings. The right setting and the right Maiden albums are all it takes. Then I’m running free. Yeah!
I visited an old store recently. It was the first one I managed. Well, not exactly. I visited the location that replaced my old store, a few feet away from its original location in a strip plaza. I hadn’t been in the moved and refurbished store before. My first impression was that it felt smaller and cramped, but that could be just an optical illusion. It could be physically smaller; or it could just have a lot more stock.
The store today includes a lot more DVD and Blu-ray content than before, which was always the goal. I don’t really buy movies anymore so I skipped ahead. When I go music shopping, I’m looking for music. There was a small bargain bin, not as large as the old, but with the same old stock. Need any Our Lady Peace?
There was a decent bin of used vinyl and this is where I spent most of my money. Unfortunately, I cannot detail for you what I purchased as it’s all intended for Christmas gifts. I can tell you that I bought some 12” singles and an interview picture disc. The interview disc was way overpriced but the singles were cheap. I also picked up Fleet Street by Fist on vinyl, a surprising find. I always wanted the album with “Thunder In Rock”. I paid $9.99 which is a bit on the high side for a copy in this condition.
The CD selection was a lot of same-old-same-old but there were a couple things I always meant to pick up. One was Alice Cooper’s Classicks for $5.99. 24 years and I never bothered to pick up this compilation. It’s good to have for the live tracks from the Trashes the World video. A full Trashes the World soundtrack would be preferable, but I’ve waited long enough. I knew they always have a copy or two in stock, and they did.
I was disappointed that the soundtracks section had been severely downsized. Now, historically, soundtracks were one of our worst-selling sections. It was always too large for the store, bursting at the seams with titles we had in stock for years and years, often in duplicate. The solution shouldn’t have been to downsize it so severely, but to just get more selective about what to buy. I did find one score, which was Jerry Goldsmith’s Star Trek: Insurrection for $6.99. (I wish I didn’t sell my Goldsmith Planet of the Apes score back to the store for nothin’, back in the day. I’m trying to expand my own soundtracks section.) They could have a great soundtracks section, they just need someone who knows their soundtracks to recalibrate the CD master list.
The store was clean, but I spotted a couple problems that only an ex-manager would see. These things would have gone down as red X’s if it was the old bosses inspecting me.
Ace Frehley filed under Kiss. That’s fine for most stores, but not the way we did things. We specifically gave most solo artists their own section so we could be more organised than the competition. We could only file an artist under their main band if their solo career was minor, or if only one album was in stock. Otherwise that artist needed their own header card. Otherwise you’re going to run into filing problems — I know from experience! Staff are going to file Frehley under both “Misc F” and “Kiss” unless they make a Frehley header card…which we had before…I know because I made it. Perhaps the rules have changed since the changing of the guard.
Big Brother and the Holding Company filed under Cheap Trick. The album is called Cheap Thrills, hence the mistake. We used to put this one under the Janis Joplin header card; she was their lead singer. It’s the one with “Piece of My Heart” on it, Janis’ biggest hit. It’s always been a problem getting this album filed correctly. It used to end up lost and forgotten under “Misc C”. But if you file it under Janis, it sells right away.
I enjoyed my visit, with some good buys and a couple overpriced records. It was good to see they were so busy, just like the old days. Filing is still a problem, just like the old days! I wonder how that manager does on their surprise store inspections? Better than I did, I assume!
GETTING MORE TALE #787: Mix CD 19 – “The Green Album”
As we’ve done in the past, let’s have a look at a mix CD I dug up, from about a decade ago. It’s an interesting mix, made mostly of stuff I found online. Any time I’d gather at least 80 minutes worth of downloads, I’d burn them to a CD. I considered that to be a much more permanent format. This disc is really just an archive of things I downloaded during a certain period of time in 2008. The title 19 suggests that it’s the 19th such archive CD that I burned. More than that though, I made it a good listen. As usual there are surprises and a few attempts at buffoonery. Let’s dive in.
The first thing to notice: There are 23 tracks on the CD, but 19 listed on the front sleeve. That means I hid four comedic bits somewhere between the songs, to be discovered by surprise. That’s why I left off the track numbers.
The opener “Big Yellow Joint” is a jingle from the TV show Arrested Development. Remember the Banana Stand? In the 60s it was a popular place to meet to buy and sell weed! But that’s out of the way quickly and it’s “25 or 6 to 4” by Chicago from a very poor quality mp3. “25 or 6 to 4” is the definitive rock song with a horn section. Find me a better one.
Then, seamlessly, it’s an old childhood favourite: “Bad to the Bone”! When you make a mix CD, the software generally defaults to a three second gap between songs. I liked a tighter flow than that, so I always used one second or even no gap. This disc is almost 80 minutes long so I used every second I could find. The transitions on my mix CDs are always top notch. After George Thorogood, it’s Pat Travers with “Snortin’ Whiskey”. I was probably hearing these tracks on the radio a lot at the time, so I downloaded ’em and burned ’em.
A really terrible sounding mp3 of “Sonic Reducer” by the Dead Boys reflects my love of the movie Hard Core Logo. It started with the H.C.L. version of “Sonic Reducer”, and then Pearl Jam’s cover. If I liked those, I figured I should download the original. But all this proves to me is why you need to buy the CD. Downloaded versions suck. This is sonically not up to par and I’m surprised I was satisfied by this 10 years ago.
The first audio hoodwink follows the Dead Boys. It’s a 30 second clip from the movie Walk Hard, starring John C. Reilly as Dewey Cox. This clip features Jack Black as Paul McCartney, Paul Rudd as John Lennon, Justin Long as George Harrison, and Jason Schwartzman as Ringo Starr.
Having a chuckle at the Dewey Cox clip is a perfect way to transition over to a couple good reggae songs by Inner Circle: “Sweat” and (of course) “Bad Boys”! Have a laugh, then get down and dance. I like what I did here, if I do say so myself! Going from that back to rock and roll is tricky, but I think I pulled it off with the very poppy “Fire, Ice & Dynamite” by Deep Purple (Mk V). It’s an oddball rarity, only ever appearing on a Deep Purple DVD as a video slideshow.
One of my favourite 80s songs, the Grateful Dead’s “Touch of Grey” still pleases today. I can only handle the Dead in small doses, but this is my favourite of their songs. It’s probably 50% pop and 50% nostalgia. In keeping with the 80s, it’s Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, a live version with the 1999 lineup supposedly intended for the Sandler flick Big Daddy. Immediately following is a live version of “Dead Flowers” from an earlier time. Ah, Limewire! I remember regularly typing in searches like “Guns N’ Roses rare” or “Guns N’ Roses live” and downloading anything I could get my digital digits on. It was also hit and miss in terms of quality. These are bootleggy but not excessively so.
I remember watching Napoleon Dynamite a fuck of a lot back then. I used the presentation Napoleon gave about the Loch Ness monster for the next unlisted comedy bit. Then it’s another rarity, also only available as a bonus track on a DVD: “Nobody Knows What It’s Like to Be Lonely” by Motley Crue. The track is 7:05 long, and every fan of Too Fast For Love needs to hear it and have it. “Song to Slit Your Wrist By”, which I used to think was by Motley Crue but is actually by Nikki Sixx’s 58, is a waste of time that I shouldn’t have included. I thought I had downloaded a rare Japanese bonus track. In a cruel twist, Motley included a 58 song on the Japanese edition of Generation Swine, forcing me to seek it out, not realizing it wasn’t actually Motley Crue.
In the very first instalment of Getting More Tale called That Crush on Avril, my not-so-secret affection for Avril Lavigne was revealed. Let’s be honest, folks — her second album rocked. I still like it. She’s never rocked heavy like that since, and I’ve long since gotten off the train. This CD has a rare acoustic version of “Complicated”, but far better then that is Weird Al’s parody “A Complicated Song”.
“Why’d you have to go and make me so constipated? ‘Cause right now I’d do anything to just get my bowels evacuated, In the bathroom I sit and I wait and I strain, And I sweat and I clench and I feel the pain, Oh, should I take laxatives or have my colon irrigated?”
In 2008, Harem Scarem released a free official download: a recent live version of “Hard To Love”. This was intended as a final gift to fans, since the band were breaking up. Temporarily, thank you very much! The live version shows off the band’s impressive singing abilities, and of course being an official download, the sound quality is all but perfect. I followed that with a live radio performance by ex-Tesla guitarist Tommy Skeoch, a song called “I Left the Circus”. Well, I think technically he was kicked out of the circus. It’s a jokey song about Tesla. According to Skeoch in the intro, one of the guys from Tesla heard it and took it well. “Although he’s kind of a pompous fuck and I don’t really like him.” I’m glad I downloaded this; I don’t know how you’d find it today. Who knows what radio show I downloaded it from. The LeBrain Library™ is a storehouse for things like this. I keep things that the record companies lose in massive fires.
Too soon?
In the late 80s, Robbie Robertson had a popular single called “Somewhere Down the Crazy River”, from his solo debut. Some like it, some hate it, but it’s a remarkable song. It sounds both retro and futuristic. It featured a weird electronic instrument called the Omnichord, and an explosive chorus accompanied by Sammy BoDean. A lot of this CD, scattershot as it is, features songs I enjoyed in my youth, but don’t own the albums. I should fix that.
After a final sketch from the movie Superbad (“I’m gonna cry myself to sleep every night. When I’m out partying”) it’s the ultimate rock comedy of all time. Can you guess what that might be? No, not Spinal Tap. No, not Bad News either. It’s Van Halen’s isolated vocal track of “Runnin With the Devil”!
Weird CD indeed, random but with a lot of effort to make it cohesive and listenable. I’ll give myself:
“It is with sadness that we announce that as of October 27, 2019, The Spatula Diner will be closing its doors.”
Sadness? For the staff, surely. For us, it’s more like mixed emotions. Yes, the Sausagefest crew has enjoyed breakfast there for almost two decades. We hadn’t planned on returning in 2020 even before the closure. A shrunken menu and poor service made up our minds for us. Our favourite meal was the breakfast monstrosity known as the Flesherton Fillup. Under new management, it ceased to exist. Remember when Uncle Meat had this conversation in July with the server?
“When did you get rid of the Flesherton Fillup?” he asked.
“Oh, we haven’t had that in a long time,” she responded.
“We were here last year and you had it then, I’m just surprised,” said Meat.
Condescendingly she answered, “Isn’t a year a long time?”
Relatively, but when you’re in a location like Flesherton Ontario where the business is seasonal, expect to be asked that question more than once.
Admittedly, we could have been…more considerate as customers. We could have called in advance to let them know they were about to be slammed by 30 hungry, sweaty guys. I would have preferred to do it that way, but was shot down every time!
Goodbye, Flying Spatula. Many a good steak-n-eggs and Flesherton Fillups were enjoyed there. But your time had come and parting isn’t always such sweet sorrow.
GETTING MORE TALE #785: Seasons End (Oh Deer) + BONUS Nutshell Review: El Camino – A Breaking Bad Movie + BONUS Star Wars – The Black Series 6″ figures “Abandoned” Video Reviews
“Be careful of the deer problem,” said my dad when I phoned him from Lucknow, about 20 or 30 minutes away from the cottage.
“Don’t worry, I’ll drive safe,” I reassured him in that voice that hardly reassured him.
“You know about the deer problem?” he asked to confirm.
No, but now I did. Funny thing; I’d been driving up to the lake by myself for over 20 years and never came close to hitting a deer. There are warning signs along all the major roads, some with flashing yellow lights. Turns out Thanksgiving 2019 was my first on-the-road deer sighting.
It got dark quick after Lucknow, and soon it was like pitch. I had been driving slower since the sun went down but it was Jen who saw the deer first. I slowed down carefully until he jumped away unto the brush. The guy behind me wasn’t paying attention and almost rear-ended me.
It’s so strange to review the dashcam footage afterwards. What felt like an eternal moment of tense surprise was really only seven seconds.*
Until that moment, we were wrapped deep in Iron Maiden. I played the first album, with Paul Di’Anno, and the bonus tracks for the full-on experience. This was music I’d been listening to for 35 years and under the weight of all that nostalgia, I immediately began singing along. I remember “Charlotte the Harlot” coming up just as we were detouring past a town called Dorking. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s funny. Once completed, we switched over to Piece of Mind. That’s the Maiden studio album that I have the longest deep relationship with. Every word was dancing on my tongue, even “Revelations”. But then again, I remember having that song memorised back in highschool. My friend Andy and I sang it back to a rap kid named Patrick Barnes who claimed that metal lyrics are just unintelligible noise and nonsense.
All this Maiden reminiscence led to the writing of a new future chapter of Getting More Tale called “Run 2 the Hills”, a direct sequel to Record Store Tales Part 1. Look for that one in the near future.
We had the near miss with the deer after both albums were complete, and I’d started on random tunes from Powerslave. “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” was the song playing when Bambi was spared by some good driving.
Upon arrival, I had get my Netflix fired up to watch El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie. Nutshell review:
EL CAMINO: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019 Netflix)
I didn’t think I cared where Jesse Pinkman went at the end of Breaking Bad. Turns out, I cared enough to watch this well-written coda to a great TV series. Aaron Paul rules, equipped with very little dialogue and only his body language. Paul gives us a hard insight to the PTSD-infested survivor Pinkman. Every cameo you desire is in store via relevant flashbacks, fleshing out the original series a little bit. After a while, you, like Pinkman, are disoriented and can’t remember if you’re watching past or present.
4/5 stars
It was a little freaky when I finished the film, went on Twitter, and saw Bryan Cranston announced that Robert Forster had died, just after I watched his final film.
In the morning I wrote up the rough draft of my new Maiden chapter while it was all fresh in my head, but I otherwise accomplished very little, creatively speaking.
I tried, I really did try. When mom & dad stepped out of the house for a few minutes I thought I could squeeze in time for a Star Wars Black Series video review. You’ll see what happened. Something like this occurred any time I attempted to make a video. So what you see is what you get; I gave up!
Abandoned Reviews
For entertainment use only. Back off, fanboys!
Instead of using my creative juices for this one final weekend of the lake this season, I decided to pour it into cooking instead. I picked up three beautiful steaks and a pound of lobster tail. I made some garlic butter, clarified it, and put the tail on the grill. Everything was phenomenal. I felt like we ended the season right with these meals.
There was the traditional turkey dinner the following night too, stuffed with goodness, but I feel the lobster tail and the steaks really put a cap on the season.
The drive home was enabled by Twisted Sister’s Live at the Marquee and The Razors Edge by AC/DC. I don’t know how often I’ve played The Razors Edge in the car since it came out before I could drive. Could this have been the first time? I liked it better in the car than I do sitting at home. As for Twisted Sister, Live at the Marquee is by far their greatest live product. The raw heavy stage purity can’t be touched.
And now we are home, preparing for the arrival of winter routines and monotony. Hibernation begins. But spring will return again, and with it, so will the roadtrips, the steaks, and the sun.
Stay warm, my friends!
* It was just a young deer When you start having more frequent animal sightings in cottage country like this, it means they are being displaced from somewhere else. There has been a lot of building and development this year.
In my earliest memories, watching television with my mom and dad, I remember thinking greasers in black leather jackets looked so cool. And I think that single impression had a cascading impact through my life.
It probably started with the Fonz. Arthur Fonzarelli. Happy Days was one of the most popular TV shows of the 1970s and it was on in our house all time. At least until Chachi showed up. My dad did not like Chachi. But we all liked the Fonz and his pals, Ralph Malph and Richie Cunningham.
I remember discovering rock and roll thanks to TV. Shows like Happy Days and The Hilarious House of Frightenstein. Similar to Fonzie was Bowser from Sha Na Na. It had to be the black leather and black hair. That and the low voice. I was obsessed. I’d go nuts every time Bowser was on. Along came John Travolta in Welcome Back Kotter. I loved Vinnie Barbarino. The black hair and black leather jackets are the only common thread.
The next black hair, black jacket dude to come into my life was Ric Ocasek. The Cars were “Just What I Needed”, but the song that hooked me (like everyone else) was “You Might Think”. There was a music video TV show that was on WUTV Buffalo 29 in the early 80s: The Great Record Album Collection. It was on right after my after-school cartoons.
I would have seen my first Van Halen and Quiet Riot videos on The Great Record Album Collection, but I absolutely fell for The Cars thanks to that show. Everybody loved “You Might Think”, but for me it was also the singer. He had that look that I thought was the absolute pinnacle of cool. Black hair, jacket, glasses, the works. Plus he was in a band! It couldn’t get any cooler. If you used the most advanced lasers to freeze every atom in your body to the point of absolute zero, you still couldn’t come close to Ric Ocasek’s state of cool. He was a dominant force in the music video, the visage towering over the beautiful object of his affection. I didn’t think about how it was creepy that he was watching her from the windows and mirrors, no. Didn’t occur to me at all. Put on a black leather jacket and I guess you could get away with anything.
The death of Ric Ocasek has hit me pretty hard. I’m trying to figure out just why his passing has impacted me more than the usual. I think it has to do with the very young age I first encountered him, thinking absolutely nothing could be as cool as that guy in the video. But look at him — he’s not handsome in the classical sense. He was awkward looking, skinny and gangly. Kind of like I was. If that guy could become so cool by singing a song…could I too?
At least this depression has led me to a rediscovery of The Cars, who I haven’t played in a long time. Hearing their brilliance, song by song by every damn song, reassures me that Ric was anything but just an empty jacket.
And you know what? I’d still like to be as cool as Ric Ocasek. I’d rather be him then, say, David Lee Roth. Ocasek’s cool was effortless. It was natural. And that’s what made him the coolest of all.
As for the final call on Iron Maiden? The decision was made for me when I found Live at Donington, once again at HMV. What was this? It looked like a bootleg, but wasn’t. It had no liner notes. Absolutely bare minimum packaging. Nary an Eddie in sight. It was a “
mikeladano.com 