RSTs Mk II: Getting More Tale

#765: “Three Yolks, Two Whites”… The Sausagefest 2019 Story

GETTING MORE TALE #765:
“Three Yolks, Two Whites” …and One Fucked Up Tent: The Sausagefest 2019 Story

It’s better than Christmas. It’s better than birthdays. It’s more rock and roll than Lemmy snorting coke off Ozzy Osbourne’s cock. It’s Sausagefest.

We look forward to this rock and roll party every year. It is the highlight of our calendars. We meticulously plan out songs, sketches, jokes, and food. Mountains of meat, sizzling to a soundtrack of pure integrity (with a couple musical exceptions). Male companionship? More like brotherhood.

Preparation is key. I started recording bits for my Sausagefest contributions late last year. All my introductions were “finished” weeks ahead of time, which gave the rare opportunity to listen and go back and fix things that were not working.  It was worth it.  The intros were well received and Uncle Meat enjoyed the Rob Gronkowski bits that I poached from Family Guy.

Meat and I left town after lunch on Friday, and as per our new tradition, stopped at Value Village to buy new T-shirts for the party.  The more ridiculous the better, for him.  He found a stupidly bright pink shirt depicting a Dr. Aftab Patla, and for me a shirt that said “OFFICER OF ROCK” on the back.

“Should have said ‘cock’,” commented my pal Jason.

This is the kind of stuff we find funny.

Aftab Patla
Officer of Rock

It was a blazing hot Friday and as soon as I had my new tent and canopy set up, I went down to the river for the first swim of the weekend.  Many of the boys had already arrived, and our glorious leader Tom pulled in at the same time we did.

There was an issue early in the evening.  Apparently the old laptop that has been playing the Countdown ever since they did the switch to mp3 has a bad audio out jack.  The backup plan was to play the Countdown off Meat’s phone, but it refused to play the tracks in the right order.  As a team we re-numbered all the id3 tags and renamed all the tracks until his phone miraculously began to do what we needed.  All of this done in a big open field on a Samsung phone.

The legendary 100 song Countdown was inaugurated this year by Styx with “Renegade”.  We were treated to a slew of classics (Black Sabbath, the Kinks, Drive By Truckers, Queensryche, Tenacious D, etc.) and a few duds (Afroman).  There is a certain, shall we say, younger element that has grown as Sausagefest expanded.  These highly respected youngsters were responsible for voting in some pretty incredible music from rock to funk.  Where they confuse me periodically is shit like Afroman.  You will hear me ranting about the rap songs on this year’s video, included at the bottom.

Afroman was one of nine songs that were given to me to introduce.  I refused to do it; instead I ranted for a bit about being stuck with a shit song, and asked my radio buddy Erik Woods to do it.  So picture that deep radio voice announcing, “this song is called ‘She Won’t Let Me Fuck'”.

I will give the young fellas credit for one thing.  When I arrived, I found out they were already campaigning for votes to get “Beth” onto next year’s Countdown.  This is, of course, because in 2015 I had to blast the song at full volume to wake up Uncle Meat, and even that wouldn’t do it.   Personally I would love if “Beth” made the Countdown next year, as a little wink to the Meat Man, who is not a morning person.  You’ll see that in the video as well.

Max the Axe wanted to grab breakfast at the Spatula early Saturday morning.  We roused the Meat Man, who was more than a little displeased to find out we arrived before they actually opened.  I took the brunt of the blame even though it was Max (his own band leader) who wanted to go!  And this is where things go slightly sideways.

Hungry LeBrain
Meat & Max

The Spatula opened just five minutes later, and Max the Axe threw a wrench into things immediately by ordering eggs with “three yolks, and two whites”.  Our server didn’t seem to be in the best of moods, having already referred to Sebastien Munier as “Mr. Tattoo” when he walked in.  Max’s order was probably not the first one she wanted to take that morning.

“I don’t understand what he wants,” she said to us.  “I’m just giving him two eggs.”  The rest of us nodded in agreement.  Three yolks and two whites?  Who the fuck orders that?

“The chefs know how to make it!” testified Max in his own defence.  “They use the leftover egg white to make Hollandaise sauce.”

I did my research on this, and just to make everything even funnier, Max got that 100% wrong.  According to every recipe I consulted, Hollandaise sauce is made with yolks, not whites!

Max ate his two eggs in peace, but we were actually a bit perturbed at a new, teeny-tiny menu.  The legendary Flesherton Fillup breakfast is gone.  So is the steak and eggs.  It’s all gone, replaced by a simplified menu where you have to build your own replica Flesherton Fillup by ordering the extra meats and add-ons yourself.

“When did you get rid of the Flesherton Fillup?” asked Meat.

“Oh, we haven’t had that in a long time,” said the server.

“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?”

An underwhelming breakfast couldn’t derail us, though we will consider finding a new breakfast joint next year.  Here’s a fact you didn’t know:  the legendary Max the Axe is a garage sale aficionado.  Who knew that rock stars spent their weekend mornings hitting up garage sales?  We took Max to a couple garage sales on our way back, and apparently he just missed an old quadraphonic receiver ($5.00) by about five minutes.

It was a lazy afternoon spent (mostly) in the river, socializing and playing with my new waterproof camera.  With flawless timing, Zach the Lamb Lord served up his perfectly marinated side of lamb.  He outdid himself this year, with perhaps the juiciest lamb ever cooked by anyone.

The second evening’s continuation of the Countdown rewound a bit for those of us (like me) who fell asleep early the night before.  As the sun slowly began to turn into fire behind the trees, we all listened in.  Some were cooking steaks, some playing Frisbee, with the rest of us sitting attentively around the fire.

I had four more song intros on day two.  Another radio buddy, Jason Drury, helped me out with an intro for the B-52’s “Rock Lobster”.  Jason is from Ramsgate in the UK but everybody seemed to have different ideas of where he was from.  “Who was that Australian guy?” or “Who was that Irish guy?”  Day two of the Countdown had some smoking good tunes, including surprises like “Women in Uniform”, a non-album single by Iron Maiden.  When Tom posts the full tracklist for the entire Countdown, I’ll do the same.

“Women in Uniform”
Jason Drury

Sausagefest may have ended, but the next morning offered its own unique challenge:  waking up Uncle Meat.  “It’s going to be pretty difficult to spin this to make you look good,” he said pointedly, and he’s right.  I’m not asking anyone to take my side in this.  However, if you don’t think it’s funny as hell, that’s not my problem.

I had to be back in town at a certain time.  “When should I start the process of waking him up, given that I want to be home by noon?” I asked his roomate Zach.

“I’d start now,” he said bluntly.  It was 8:00 am.

I gently woke him by telling him I wanted to start getting ready to go.  He could nap a bit longer but I would eventually need his help taking down the canopy.  I put on Kiss Alive II and toiled on packing up my stuff.  I stopped the album a couple times while I was working, but when “Beth” came on, I did what I had to do.  I blasted it for him.  This was his alarm clock.

I waited a while longer, asked some advice.  I shook his tent a little and told him to get up.  An anonymous man (who has an excellent real first name) suggested I remove a couple of the tentpoles.  That seemed reasonable.  It didn’t do much though.  I gave it a little more time, and then removed the final two tentpoles.  Meat lay there motionless.

“Is there anyone even in there?” someone asked.  Oh, he was in there.  Trust me.

“Maybe now you should take the top of the tent off,” said a second anonymous man.  Unnecessary.

Like an animal trapped in a net, first an arm thrust forth.  It failed to penetrate the tent.  Then an unsuccessful leg kicked up.  Then another arm, and another leg.  Then, as the frenzy built, the tent transformed into a ball of limbs, trying to smash their way through.  If you stuck that crazy rat from Stranger Things 3 in a bag, it would have looked a lot like Meat in his tent.  We watched the activity from a distance, guffawing so loudly that I have never come so close to actually piss myself laughing.  I could feel a bead of pee forming.  The futile struggle to open the tent, from a safe orbit, was simultaneously pants-wettingly funny and tear-forming sad!  Max was the first to have mercy on Uncle Meat, and opened the tent for him.

Because I gave him the tent, he threw one of the tent poles into the forest in retaliation.  That’s OK; I have lots of spares!

He was justifiably mad.  So was Chuck, for me blasting “Beth” at a still fairly early hour.  These people don’t get it.  You cannot go anywhere with Uncle Meat when you want to, unless you take extreme measures.  You are at the mercy of his whims, his hangover, and his appetite for cigarettes.  Oh sure, he’ll keep you laughing the whole way home (at least when his voice isn’t completely fucked) but actually getting him packed and into the vehicle is its own entire movie to itself.  The Sausagefest spinoff movie would have to be called Bedsheet Puptent:  The Waking of Meat.

I got home 30 minutes earlier than I had to be, which was fucking perfect.  So, thank you Meat for not bearing a grudge, but I got home in excellent time.  Thank you for your cooperation!  I cheered him up by messing with Dave Haslam on the way home, in the car behind us.  That put the smile back on Meat’s face.  Even though Haslam was completely innocent in all this, he had to pay the price to get Meat back in a good mood.

It was actually a nice ride home, spent listening to a soundboard bootleg from Iron Maiden’s Matter of Life and Death tour.  “That was their best album since Seventh Son“, he said.  I claimed Somewhere in Time.  It matters not.  It was a great listen, even though a few days earlier Meat was complaining about a live Kiss show sounding “too bootleggy”.

It was an awesome Fest, but aren’t they all?  I’ve never experienced a dud.  Our most excellent host and his companions in the shenanigans put on a great show every year.  Stay tuned for the full Countdown.  Until then, enjoy the video which captures the flavour of the Fest.  See how many songs you recognize from the Countdown!

 

#764: Go Wild!!

GETTING MORE TALE #764: Go Wild!!

It’s a rite of passage for children and adults alike:  going to see the animals at African Lion Safari in southern Ontario.  The children thrill to the sights of lions, rhinos, elephants and all sorts of exotic birds.  Adults panic at the monkeys climbing on their cars.  Sure, you can always visit the Safari in one of their tour buses, but that’s no fun.

At the African Lion Safari, the animals run free while the humans stay safely locked in their cars.  Open doors and windows are prohibited, and you absolutely must not feed the animals.  I saw what happens to fools that do.

We won’t get into the ethics of animals in captivity — that is not what this story is about.  Many are passionate about animal rights, and that’s a good thing.  This is just a simple tale of our adventure at the Safari in the early 2000s.  Incidentally it’s also the last time we went.

It started with a conversation.  “When was the last time you were at African Lion Safari?”  My sister Kathryn, our friend Shannon, and I decided to relive our childhoods.  The key was driving through the Safari in your own car.  Tour buses are for chumps.  To do this, you had to be willing to accept potential damage to your vehicle.  I’ve never seen anyone rammed by a rhino, but windshield wipers are regularly ripped off by excited monkeys.  My sister was driving a white Neon, and she decided she was willing to accept whatever happened.

We needed tunes.  Stopping at an HMV store, my sister and I both bought CDs that were indicative of the times.  Although it was far from my favourite album, I re-bought Crush by Bon Jovi.  For the third time in a row, they re-issued their new studio album with a bonus CD.  Keep the Faith had a bonus live album, while These Days was loaded with rarities on the second CD.  I was disappointed but not surprised that I would be buying their new album twice, as it was becoming the norm.  Crush was the weakest of the three albums.  It was the first to be co-written by Billy Falcon, and it was a sign of things to come.  But I had to have that bonus live CD.

Kathryn picked up a double Savage Garden.  She was very much into the Australian pop rock duo, as they reminded her of an earlier band she loved — Roxette.  Like Bon Jovi, Savage Garden reissued their album with a bonus live CD.  Don’t scoff.  Savage Garden (or just “Savage”, as I learned their fans shortened it) could really write songs.  Unlike Bon Jovi, they didn’t rely on external songsmiths.  And Steve Smith of Journey played drums on their second album.

We had the tunes, we had the white Neon, and we lined up to enter.

It was a scorching hot August day; thanks to God for air conditioning.  Taking the car allowed us to linger in certain habitats, and skip through ones we were less interested in.  Early in, we saw one family that must have been feeding animals, because now they had a big brown bear leaning on their car, staring through the closed windows.  This is why you don’t open the windows or feed the animals.  Fortunately there are park workers in zebra-striped trucks roaming the grounds to keep an eye on things.  Injuries are rare, though recently a trainer was badly hurt by an elephant.

We were having a great time right into the monkey habitat.  Unlike most drivers, we were hoping to catch a few monkey passengers.  Swiftly, one attached himself to Kathryn’s side view mirror.  I say “himself” because he sat on that mirror with his legs wide open, balls blowin’ in the wind.  He was having a great old time, sitting on her side view with his balls dangling free.  I like to think that Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life” was playing at that exact moment.  It looked quite relaxing and comfortable for our monkey friend.  His balls hung like red Christmas ornaments.

You can tell this story is pre-cell phone cameras.  Otherwise we would have video and photos to prove it.

As Monkey Nuts let it all hang out over my sister’s mirror, I noticed behind us a car full of children.  They had New York license plates, and they were pointing and laughing hysterically.  At first I thought they were laughing at the testicles, like I was.  They were not.  I figured that out when Monkey Nuts jumped ship for somewhere else to hang.

“What are they laughing at?!” I asked with frustration in my voice.  They were still pointing at us!

“Don’t worry about it!” scoffed Shannon.

I was still puzzled.

We figured it out in short order.

After exiting the Safari, we all got out of the car to stretch our legs.  Then, it was all clear.  On the roof of my sister’s white car was a perfectly hilarious monkey poo.  While Mr. Testicles was distracting us on the side view, a friend of his must have been on the roof, using it as his own personal commode.  After leaving his deposit, it began to cook in the hot August sun.

As Jon Bon Jovi said himself, “Say it isn’t so. Tell me it’s not true”.  Ah, but it was.

Our first stop on the ride home:  a drive-through car wash.  It was tragically too late.  The poo residue was stuck on there, and good.  She was going to have to clean this one up manually, and she was on her own with that.

Savage Garden probably said it best on “The Animal Song”.

“Cause I want to live like animals,
Careless and free like animals,
I want to live,
I want to run through the jungle.”

Let your balls hang free on the side view mirror of life.

#763: L’Empire contre-attaque

GETTING MORE TALE #763: L’Empire contre-attaque

We didn’t have a VCR in 1980.  You could rent them; this was usually reserved for special occasions.   That meant, unlike today, we couldn’t just watch the latest Star Wars any time we felt like it.  The best way to re-experience the movie was on your own, with action figures and soundtracks.  The Empire Strikes Back was my favourite album at that time.  I played certain tracks on those records so often with my kid fingers that they started to skip.

I used my parents’ big living room hi-fi.  Giant wooden speakers as heavy as oak doors.  A turntable, an 8-track, and a receiver.  Once I discovered Star Wars, I think I used it more than they did.  The Empire Strikes Back came in a luxurious gatefold, with photos from the film, liner notes, and a generous booklet.  It didn’t take long for the rips and tears to set in; that record was well loved.  Usually, I would plug in the set of headphones and listen quietly while turning the pages of that booklet.  On weekends, my sister and I would probably set up a big battlefield and re-enact the movies, with the soundtrack playing in the background.  The most frequently played tracks were “Yoda’s Theme”, “The Asteroid Field” and of course “The Imperial March”.  Sometimes we would ambitiously re-enact the entire movie in sequence using the whole soundtrack.

We had to improvise.  There were lots of characters and vehicles we didn’t have.  When the Wampa ice monster attacks Luke Skywalker and knocks him off his tawn-tawn, we had to use Chewbacca as a stand-in for the monster.  Before we had a Boba Fett, we used a Micronaut with an actual missile-firing backpack.  We didn’t have an AT-AT, so we used my sister’s cardboard Jawa sandcrawler.  The centrepiece of our play time was usually my huge Millennium Falcon toy.

Before anyone gets too nostalgic for the good old days, I’ll remind you those Kenner toys were actually quite shit.  My two biggest toys, the Falcon and the X-Wing, both broke immediately out of the box.  The wings on the X-Wing never worked right and I had to wedge marker lids in the wings to keep them open.  The hinge for the boarding ramp of the Falcon snapped when my dad put it together.  He tried to glue it, but ultimately the door was held on by an ugly piece of masking tape.  Sturdy toys they were not, and parts were always popping off.  The guns refused to stay on the wings of the X-Wing.  The canopy of the Falcon always popped open mid-flight.  It too eventually got locked down by masking tape.

During these huge play battles, my sister and I would take over the entire living room floor.  There was a coffee table that usually acted as Imperial headquarters.  You could park a TIE fighter on the shelf underneath.  All the while, John Williams and the London Symphony spun behind us.  I’d flip sides and cue up another track, or just play “The Imperial March” again.

When we were done playing Empire, we would do our own original stories.  We usually set these “pre-Empire“, since Han Solo was frozen in carbonite at the end of the movie.   He was a favourite character and we had two Han Solo action figures:  original Han and Hoth Han.  I loved Hoth Han.  Not only did he look cool but he was the only figure you could take his gun and plug into a holster on his hip.  It was hard to really make good coherant “pre-Empire” stories though, because we also wanted to play with other cool figures like Lando, and Yoda.  It didn’t particularly matter because we had tremendous fun without a logical story.

I’ll say it again:  improvisation.  We built a custom multi-level Cloud City out of cardboard boxes.  It had sliding doors and sort of an elevator.  We made our own figure-compatible vehicles out of Lego.  Before I had a figure of Han Solo frozen in carbonite, I took my Solo and put him in a glass of water.  If I put him in the freezer for a few hours, I’d have a frozen Han ready to go for the next adventure.  My dad was bemused to go into the freezer and find Han Solo in there so frequently.

No matter the story or setting, the Millennium Falcon was there.  You could fit several figures in it, with two in the cockpit, one in the gunner’s chair, and several tossed into the opening rear compartment.  The cool thing about the gunner’s chair was that it rotated in sync with the top quad-cannons.  The Falcon’s rear compartment was equipped with a space chess table (called Dejarik), a Jedi training area (you know, for that one scene), and a smuggler’s compartment with secret hatch.  This made it more of a playset than a ship, but it did have several features that made it more a ship than a playset as well.  Close up the rear compartment, raise the working landing gear, and you are airborne.  The Falcon also had sound effects and a large battery compartment where the escape pod would have been.  While playing on the living room floor, if the track “The Asteroid Field” was playing, you just had to get the Falcon ready for take off.  Close the ramp, the canopy, and the rear compartment.  Raise the landing gear and you were space-bound!  Then I’d fly the ship around the living room in sync with the swells and crescendos of the theme.  It really felt like Star Wars at that point.

In 1981, the first Indiana Jones soundtrack was released, also composed by John Williams.  It was official then:  Williams was my favourite.  I didn’t have very many records; most of the others were “Story Of” soundtracks with full narration and dialogue.  That was another way to re-live a movie in a pre-VHS household, but I kept coming back to the actual movie scores.  I outgrew the “Story Of” records but not the scores.  Even so, nothing topped the original two-record set of The Empire Strikes Back.  When Return of the Jedi was released in ’83, it was only a single record.  It didn’t have as many memorable cues.  I loved and cherished it, but not as much as Empire.

Besides, in 1983 something else happened besides the end of the Star Wars trilogy.  I was getting older, and there was this new song out.  I heard four words — “Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto“, and my world shifted once again!  But that, friends, is another story.

 

#762: When Is Your Art Really “Done”?

GETTING MORE TALE #762: When Is Your Art Really “Done”?

 

“Where are the starting points and where are the end points? When’s a song ‘done’? What the fuck does that mean anyway? ‘Done’? When’s a record ‘done’? Where does a record start; where does it end?” — Lars Ulrich, Some Kind of Monster

When Lars Ulrich asked the rhetorical question “When is a song ‘done’?” he wasn’t just yammering meaningless bullshit.  In fact he was colourfully paraphrasing Leonardo Da Vinci, who said “A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned.”  Da Vinci might be the best known example today of someone who laboured over his art.  Many of his paintings, including the Mona Lisa, conceal previous unseen versions beneath layers of paint.  Scanning the paintings with modern technology, we have been able to discern Da Vinci’s works in progress.  It is a little like peaking inside the mind of a creator as they create.

Imagine you’re finishing a painting of something completely imagined inside your head.  How much time will it take to be “done”?  Perhaps you have to make that sky a little more blue, or cloudy, to match your vision.  You will never be able to take a photograph of your imagination, so painting something is by its very nature a compromise.  You must decide when you are satisfied that you have accomplished your goal.  Let’s say you added that cloud to your painting.  It looks good to you.  Then you take a step back and look at the whole painting.  The corner where you added that cloud now looks too busy.  Did you overdo it?  Was the painting already “done”?

The same applies to music.  Axl Rose laboured over Chinese Democracy for 15 years.  There are, of course, some major differences between recording a Guns N’ Roses album and working on a painting.  With the rock album, there is far more outside pressure and this can become the dominating influence.  Even if outside forces end up pushing you to do something opposite from what they want, it has now effected your music.  The music will not take the same shape that it would have without that outside pressure.  Is that a good or bad thing?  It can be either!  Axl re-recorded the album at least once, and continually updated it as new members joined the band.  By the time 2008 rolled around and the record was “finished”, dozens of musicians and producers and managers and writers had made some kind of impact, no matter how small.

Let’s not forget George Lucas either.  The Star Wars creator fiddled with his movies continuously.  Do you really think the 1997 special editions were the first Star Wars that were changed?  Not even.  The initial updates happened in 1980, when George re-titled Star Wars as Episode IV: A New Hope.  He fidgeted with them steadily, even beginning a fairly recent conversion to 3D until he sold the rights to Disney in 2012. (Only Phantom Menace was released in 3D, with Disney putting the project on hold in favour of the sequel trilogy.)

You can obsess over and overthink art.  You can also rush it, and end up with something “unfinished” that might actually be better.  This often happens out of necessity.  Black Sabbath famously recorded their first album in two days.  They had been playing the songs live for months and were tight as hell (pun intended) but also had a very limited amount of time in the studio.  Maybe they would have loved to stay in there, experiment with different amps and guitars, get different sounds, but there was no time.  And so the debut album Black Sabbath pukes overloaded guitar, and you can hear amps hum.  You couldn’t have made it better if you tried.  (Zakk Wylde will try and will not succeed.)  Whatever they did on that album, they did out of necessity and it just happened to work.

Though my “art” is usually the written word (and occasionally video), I also love recording song introductions.  This is for our annual “Sausagefest” party, and it’s something that allows me to really get creative with sound.  In recent years, in addition to introducing the songs, I also create an introduction for myself.  It’s sort of an audio collage of things I found funny.  This started out of necessity — it was the only way I could get my comedic bits into the evening!  Now it’s something I work and obsess over.  And this is the question I’m currently struggling with:  When is it “done”?  I started recording bits for it almost a year ago, and I began piecing the whole thing together on May 11.  Now we’re at the tail end of June and I’m still making changes!

Without giving it all away, I like to begin my intro with a certain, recognizable musical theme.  You’d know it.  This year, a certain unnamed rock band recorded their own version of that classic theme.  I happened to be playing that album in the car when I realized, I had to use it!  As soon as I got home, I started editing the audio track that I thought was “finished”.  In a couple minutes, I removed the original theme and replaced it with the 2019 rock version.  It was a few seconds longer than the original so I also had to extend the space it fit into, but that’s pretty easy to do.  Now I’m even happier with the intro.

When will it be “done”?  It will be “finished” when time is up and I’m forced to turn it in.  Until then, I continue to listen for room to improve.

I’m no Leonardo, or a Lucas, and I’m not even a Lars Ulrich (although we have shared the same hair style on numerous occasions).  I do, however, have a keen understanding that art is never done in the eyes of the creator.

 

 

#761: Gimme Some Reggae!

GETTING MORE TALE #761: Gimme Some Reggae!

Like many things, I was first exposed to reggae music as a child.  And like many things I was exposed to as a child, Catholic school did not approve!

It was grade six, the same year I discovered Quiet Riot and Van Halen.  The ironic thing was first hearing reggae in class.  There was a film we were watching, the details of which are now lost.  Most likely religious in nature.  The music might not even have been specifically reggae.  It was Caribbean music of some sort, and I remember steel drums, but what I remember most was the teacher’s comment.  A few kids mentioned that they liked the music in the film (I was one).   The teacher responded, “The music was fine, but that kind of music is usually about drugs.”

She kind of put a wet blanket over it.  I felt deflated.

At home, I asked my mom if this was true.  “Some is,” she said.  “Some.”  The door was left wide open.  My mom was good to me.

The following school year, MuchMusic debuted on Canadian television.  It began as a pay TV channel, but we had it as part of a package including movie and sports channels.  We had to talk our parents into getting it, but the fact that there was a package with sports made it easier.  My mom could watch more Blue Jays, at least when my sister and I weren’t hogging the TV with music videos.

In 1984, MuchMusic played music videos and nothing but.  Now it’s the opposite.  In 1984, there weren’t many music videos to choose from.  There are two specific videos that I remember Much playing in regular rotation right from the beginning.  They were “Voodoo Chile” by Jimi Hendrix and “Buffalo Soldier” by Bob Marley.  I didn’t care for Jimi (way too advanced for my age) but I loved Marley.  “Buffalo Soldier” clearly had nothing to do with drugs.  And that hair!  I couldn’t figure out dreadlocks.  What were they?  How did they do make them?  Dreadlocks looked cool, in an alien way.  Novel and interesting.  My sister and I loved watching Bob Marley videos on Much.  He was one of the few artists we actually agreed on.  I hated her Corey Hart and she hated my W.A.S.P.!

She and I were always in tune with each other on reggae.  There are no other genres of music that we agree so much on.  In the 90s, we rocked it to Inner Circle.  Like everyone else on the planet, we discovered them via Cops.  My dad watched Cops a lot!  He loved that stupid show and it became a Saturday night ritual.  We’d play a game where we’d point out any time a male was not wearing a shirt.  When “Bad Boys” came on at the beginning, my sister would hit that floor and dance!  And she did the same at Bob Schipper’s wedding, where she requested the DJ play that song.  We tore up the floor for that song, and avoided dancing completely otherwise.  Some may forget this, but Inner Circle had more than just one hit.  “Sweat” is actually a way better song than “Bad Boys”.

She had the cassette single for “Bad Boys” and in the summer at the cottage, we’d be cruising with my old buddy Peter in his car.  She always wanted him to blast her tape of “Bad Boys” any time we were stopped at a red light on the main drag.

I didn’t buy any Bob Marley until I was in my 20s.  Until that point, I adopted a pretty strict “metal only” policy to my music collecting.  There were few exceptions.  Kim Mitchell wasn’t metal, but he’s still firmly in the rock camp, occupying a quirky Zappa-esque corner to himself.  The kind of thing that some more adventuring metal heads were into.  The 1990s forced me to loosen my “metal only” policy.  When I began at the Record Store, I befriended Aaron and acquired my first Marley album from him.  It was the deluxe edition of Catch A Fire.  Go big or go home.

There was a kid at work, Matty K, who was way, way, way into reggae and all the associated activities.  He was whiter than white, but damn he sure knew his rap and reggae.  I began to enjoy Snoop Dogg because of him.  At night before closing the store, he always liked to play one of DMX’s prayers.  Ironically, of course.   It is reggae music that I always think of when I think of Matty K.  Listening to Marley and Peter Tosh at the store.  One of the few things we agreed on musically.

When I need something lighter, particularly for summer drives, I have a lot of genres to choose from.  Marley’s One Love compilation usually does the job.  I find it palatable to just about any passenger.  It raises the spirits and raises the roof!

#760: Eliminated Headlight

GETTING MORE TALE #760: Eliminated Headlight

As children, we were told many stories of what being a kid was like in the 1940s and 50s.  The greatest toy was Mecanno.  (My dad’s Mecanno #7 set was a treasured possession.)  Movies were 12 cents on Saturdays, and you could stay as long as you like.  (Once my dad went to go see Red Rider with his pal Jerry Irwin.  He stayed for four — well, three and a half — showings.  Then his father phoned the theatre looking for him, as he was supposed to home a long time ago!  Boy did he catch hell at home!)  One thing my dad always emphasized to us was how sad he was that all his childhood toys were gone.  His little brother wrecked some, and his dad threw out the rest.  He says they’d be priceless today.  All gone; somewhere in a Guelph landfill.

When kids move away from home, they don’t take everything with them.  Things like old toys get left behind.  That’s how my dad lost all his stuff.  I had trust in him that the same wouldn’t happen to me, and my sister.  The number of times we had to hear about his lost toys, his Mecanno #7 set, and all that stuff…I assumed he wouldn’t do that to us.

I assumed incorrectly.

A few months ago my sister was over at his house, went down into the basement to look at the board games…our old childhood board games…and they were gone.

We found some of them in a storage bin, but the rest had been thrown out.  That included my copy of Chopper Strike, a turn based combat strategy game that came with intricate little pieces and a massive two-level board.  I bought it at a garage sale for a couple dollars in the early 80s.  It was complete.  The game came with an army of plastic jeeps and helicopters.  The copters had rotating blades, and the jeeps had moving anti-aircraft guns.  Lots of easily lost components.  Rare for an such an old game (1976).  We played it over and over and over again as kids.  I thought it would remain safely stored at the old house.  It cost over $50 to replace it with a complete one again (thanks, Mom).

At least my dad saved some of the obviously valuable games, like our original Star Wars and Transformers.  Everything else from Admirals to Careers ended up in the trash, lost forever.  Feeling bad, my mom bought my sister a new Careers game on Ebay (and replaced my Chopper Strike).

I thought that was it.  I thought the point was made.  I thought our possessions were safe again.

Wrong again.

Some of my old model kits are at the cottage.  The cottage is a great place to build a model.  My ZZ Top Eliminator kit has safely lived at the cottage for 30 years.  A few years ago I took it out, dusted it off, and secured a few loose pieces with glue.  The last time I saw Eliminator, it was fine.

This time, I noticed a few things on my shelves had been moved.  When I returned them to their proper places, I saw Eliminator was now a one-eyed cyclops car.  A headlight came off and was nowhere in sight.  It’s gone.  If it had simply fallen off, it would be on the shelf, next to the car.  I only had two suspects.  One of the two was more credible, while the other claims to know nothing.  I know it was my dad!

“You can always pretend it was in an accident,” said my sister.

I used to think my stuff was safe in the hands of my dad.  Now I realize I need to keep valuables far, far away from him!

#759.5: Getting There

Didn’t get much writing done this weekend — sorry about that.  It’s the time of year when the annual Sausagefest begins to dominate my creative time.

I finished all my recordings this weekend, though I’m going to sit on them a few days before I submit them to Uncle Meat.  I want to make sure they’re perfect and I’m happy.  Nine songs/nine intros plus associated sketches and bits.  63 meg; over an hour of play time.  Several months of recording dating back to last year, with one track having over 100 layers of audio!

I say this every year, but I think these are my best Sausagefest intros and bits yet. Next task: new tent and new camping equipment. 2019 is gonna rock. Less than a month to go!

#759: Talk, Talk

GETTING MORE TALE #759: Talk, Talk

I was browsing local news stories, and one came up that had me choking on my coffee a little bit.

It was an interview with the owner of the old Record Store, who had opened up a new location.  In the interests of keeping everyone anonymous, I’ll paraphrase instead of quoting the portion that had me shocked and annoyed.

“We want to appeal to the hardcore music fan, the kind that just want to come in and talk about and listen to music.  Hopefully one day we can have chairs and make it a hangout atmosphere.”

Sounds good.  Sounds a bit like Sonic Boom in Toronto.  Nothing wrong with that.  Except it contradicts the very first lesson he taught me at the Record Store! In Getting More Tale #575, I described a scenario where he set me up, in order to teach me something valuable about customer service.

He knowingly asked me to go help an annoying, very talky lady.  After a chat that lasted longer than I care to remember, he said to me “That’s your first lesson.  Don’t get into conversations with customers.”

I realise that times change, and with them so do business strategies.  I’m sure somebody will say, “Well that was different.”  I can’t help but think of all the times I got scolded or received dirty looks for talking “too much” about music with customers.  The impression I got was they would have preferred an impersonal assembly line.  Serve the customer, plug the CD wipes for $5.99, get the sale, and move on to the next one.  Don’t encourage extended conversation.  The handful of customers I created relationships with ended up being long-termers, however.  My dad tells me I have the gift of gab like my grandfather.  My regulars enjoyed our chats, though the bosses didn’t.

Now he’s talking about making conversation a main feature of the store.  Does that mean he was wrong and I was right all along?

#758: Len Mix Vol. I and II

GETTING MORE TALE #758:  Len Mix Vol. I and II

In the early 2000s, the best way to “share” music (note the quotations) was to burn a CD for your friends.

I had a customer, now friend, named Len. I knew him originally via some mutual highschool pals. I recognised him because he was in a Kiss air band when I was in grade 10.  I befriended him later on as a customer at the Record Store, and I learned more about his taste in music and his collection. We were on the same page in virtually every way musically.

Len had a neat way of tracking his music, in the days before computers made this easy. He made a black and white photocopy of every CD cover, and filed them all in order, in a huge binder with title, year and tracklist. A work intensive process I’m sure, but it benefited me tremendously as you’ll soon see.

Len loaned me the book and said “pick anything you want me to burn for you.”

I still have all the CDs Len burned for me! One was a Kiss rarities disc (we’ll look at that another time), and another was all Bon Jovi B-sides. He made me a CD copy of the first Hurricane EP with a non-vinyl bonus track. And he put a whole ton of miscellaneous songs on two CDs that I titled, obviously, Len Mix!

The title confused a few people.  I remember I had a girl over and she saw the CDs.  “Are those all songs by the band Len?”  At that point I may have realised I should have picked another title.

I made a list of songs that Len had that I wanted.  They were generally big singles from bands I liked, that I didn’t own the album.  A lot of songs I was exposed to on the Pepsi Power Hour in the 80s.

Let’s have a listen then, shall we?

LEN MIX Vol. I

Autograph’s “Loud and Clear” is a killer rocker, far less commercial than “Turn Up the Radio”.  I do have the album today (on CD), but I don’t own the Krokus that follows.  “Midnite Maniac” is still enjoyable, especially since I haven’t played it in over 10 years.  Kingdom Come’s “Get It On” is one I own a couple times over now, and I think I like it more today than I did in the beginning.  Y&T’s “Summertime Girls” is horribly cheesy, and yet so much guilty fun.  It’s bright, it’s catchy and I don’t give a fuck!  I still don’t own it properly on album.  Nor do I own “Run Runaway” by Slade, a song I have liked since I was a little kid.  I should pick up a Slade compilation, shouldn’t I?

According to MSG, “Love Is Not a Game”.  I have this one on vinyl today, but Len Mix is still my only CD copy.  Next, a very important song for your Ozzy collection.   “Close My Eyes Forever” is by Lita Ford, featuring Ozzy in a stunning duet.  Yet it may as well be an Ozzy song featuring Lita if that’s what you prefer.  You can’t get it on any of the Ozzman’s albums.  Today I have it on a Lita CD.  Then King Kobra advise us to “Never Say Die”…”Iron Eagle”, baby!  I still don’t have this album, and the song is a guilty pleasure.  Not one of King Kobra’s proudest moments.  You gotta admire that they all cut their hair for the music video, though.

I was always jealous that Len owned a four track copy of Def Leppard’s “When Love and Hate Collide” CD single. Mine only had two tracks! So I requested that Len burn me the demo version of the song that I did not yet own.

“Why Do You Think They Call It Dope?” asked Love/Hate. I ask myself why I still do not own Blackout in the Red Room!  It was rare back then, but there is no excuse today in the age of Discogs.  The Blink 182 song that follows it sticks out like a sore thumb, but I still like a lot of Blink.  Travis Barker is a tremendous drummer, and these guys wrote some great pop punk.  Then Kingdom Come are back with their tremendous ballad “What Love Can Be”, followed by the incredible British band Thunder.  They had a number of great tracks on hard to find albums.  “Low Life in High Places ” classes up the CD by several increments, but then Y&T are back to crash the party.  “Contagious”, like “Summertime Girls”, sounds a bit dated today.  Yet it’s just so damn catchy.

The next two songs are ones I have happily acquired on CD.  Actually, Keel’s “The Right to Rock” is here on LP and CD.  It’s an old classic I grew up with, and so very 1980s.  So is Aldo Nova’s “Fantasy” but in a completely different way.

Len had some extra space on the end of this CD and so threw on Axel Rudi Pell’s “Tear Down the Walls”.  I have not played this song in over a decade, but it sounds great!  Far more modern than anything else on this disc, but Len was right to add it!  Discogs tells me that the stunning lead vocal is by Johnny Gioeli of Neal Schon’s band Hardline.  Of course!

LEN MIX Vol. II

That’s it for Len Mix Vol. I.  The rest of the songs went onto Vol. II, which like Vol. I, begins explosively.  Kingdom Come had a few bangers, and “Do You Like It” is the best of them.  This one comes from their underappreciated second album In Your Face.  (Legend has it that some stores thought the band was called “Kingdom” and the album Come In Your Face, and refused to stock it.)

The next three songs in a row are ones I still need to own on CD or LP:  More Y&T, Autograph and Krokus.  So far, all the Y&T songs have been pretty weak (though catchy and fun).  “Mean Streak” is anything but weak!  Y&T’s heavy metal roots are on full display with a riffy blast.  Then it’s Autograph’s return, with the previously mentioned “Turn Up the Radio”!  This song is probably better known today then it was in the early 2000s, thanks to video games and radio nostalgia.  Krokus’ “Ballroom Blitz” cover was one that, like “School’s Out”, I grew up thinking was a Krokus original!  Fortunately in time I learned the truth.

House of Lords albums were hard to come by at the time, and back then I didn’t own any but their first.  On this CD is the ballad “Remember My Name”.  This is from the second album Sahara which I now happily have.  I don’t particularly care for this one, as it has that overly saccharine faux-romantic sound that was too common in the late 80s into 1990.  But then like a kick in the face, it’s an Udo-less Accept with “Generation Clash”!  Though David Reese’s tenure in the band was brief, this song is a triumph.  I am happy to own the oddly titled album Eat the Heat today, because this darkly sparse prowl is still ace. What a voice on Reese, who could reach for those Udo screams when necessary.

Hey mom,
Have you always followed the golden rule?
Cause this just happens to be my first love.
And that being a must – a must.
That being playin’ my guitar!

It’s hard to come down from such a peak, and unfortunately the fall is broken by an out-of-place Blink 182 song.  “All the Small Things” is such a diametrically opposed song, it’s like cold water dumped on your head!  Two older goodies are not far behind:  “Blackout in the Red Room” by Love/Hate, and the amazing acoustic ballad “Loving You” by Kingdom Come.  It’s oh-so-very Zep, but what the hell.  Zep weren’t making that sound in 1989 and there was obviously a demand for it.

The aforementioned “School’s Out” by Krokus marks their last song on this set, meaning that via Len Mix I got all the Krokus songs that I knew as a kid.  Then it’s Y&T’s final song, the ballad “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”.  It’s not one of their finest moments, but I would have requested this one because I had it on VHS but nothing else.  With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, Y&T were obviously aiming to score that “hit ballad”, but Meniketi’s always perfect voice is still a pleasure to listen to.

Thunder’s “Dirty Love” from their first album reminds me that I really need to buy some Thunder.  Then comes a band from whom I only know one song.  It’s a good’un called “You’re So Strange”, though the band had a silly name:  Kik Tracee.  Their ace in the hole was singer Stephen Shareaux.  What a set of lungs on this guy!  He was one of many who auditioned for the vacant vocalist role in Motley Crue in 1992.  Gotta wonder what kind of music they could have made with a pair of lungs like Stephen Shareaux’s.

Moving on to the end, it’s the final Autograph song “Blondes in Black Cars”.  I don’t think it’s their best moment, but I sure have a lot of childhood memories associated with the music video. I pretty much discovered what puberty was all about thanks to that video. I must have worn out that pause button.

MSG’s “Gimme Your Love” was their other single from Perfect Timing, an album I now have on LP but would like on CD for the bonus tracks.  I’m getting the feeling an Amazon order order is forthcoming.  Following MSG is a remix of “Armageddon It” by Def Leppard, from the same since-acquired single as “When Love and Hate Collide”.  At 7:44 it’s a bit much, but I’m a Def Leppard completionist.  Once again Len had a little bit of space at the end of a CD and so wisely included the brief Dokken instrumental “Without Warning”.

It’s important to note that these CDs would have taken Len a bit of time to put together for me.  Few of us kept our music on computer.  Len would have been painstakingly switching discs in and out of his computer to make these for me.  The addition of bonus tracks shows how much care he put into it.

For Len Mix Vol. I and II, I’d say the verdict is clear.  These were a blast to listen to again.

5/5 stars

#757: The Demise of CD?

GETTING MORE TALE #757: The Demise of CD?

I don’t know if you’ve heard.  There’s this newfangled audio format that’s all the rage.  It’s called the “record”, or “long player”.  “LP” for short.  The technology is actually ancient.  It’s based on a needle running over a groove, picking up the vibrations, and converting it into sound.

Certainly not as sophisticated as the digital music that most of us consume today.  There are none of those pesky 1’s and 0’s being decoded.  It’s simple tech and maybe that’s why the LP has become so popular in recent years.  We’d never disparage the use of the LP.  It’s a physical medium, and it’ll last a lifetime if properly cared for.  Physical product is everything to the true music lover.

But what of the CD?  The compact disc has been our friend and companion since 1982.  Like many friendships, we have had our ups and downs.  For many of us, the CD still reigns supreme.  It’s smaller than an LP.  It’s easier to keep in mint condition than LP.  On a typical non-audiophile household setup, it sounds better than LP and is certainly superior to mp3.  For convenience, you can convert the CD to mp3 files and take it with you in just one click.  It’s a lot trickier to do that with an LP.  For many of us, the CD is the perfect format.  Plus they have all the bonus tracks, bonus discs, and musical extras that are rarely included on the LP versions.

Canadian comedian and rapper Tom Green recently announced his very first solo album.  It is being produced by Ship to Shore Phono Co.  It will be on green vinyl…but there will be no CD release.

Here we are in 2019, and Tom Green is releasing his solo debut…with no CD release.  This isn’t some indi artist.  This is a well known comedian who started in the CD age, made it big on MTV, and later became a fan favourite on Big Brother.  No CD release, just LP!  Cool, right?  Sure, but what does this mean for the beloved compact disc?

I’m not entirely sure.

These things go in phases and there is always a chance that CD will experience a nostalgia phase like LP is right now.  But it’s hard to get nostalgic about that little silver 5” disc.  Kids of today know them as those quaint things their parents had lying around but they weren’t allowed to touch.  Are these signals for the beginning of the end of CD?  Will there ever be a special “CD Store Day” for those of us who still think the silver discs are superior?

Time will tell.