I am fortunate, oh so very fortunate, that I still have my old VHS tapes. Watching them again, over 30 years down the road, has been the closest I’ve ever come to real time travel. These tapes were my childhood! I sat in the basement, remote control in hand, recording as much music as possible from, well, MuchMusic!
The Pepsi Power Hour was in its infancy, with J.D. Roberts in the hosting chair. One by one, each video rolls out in the order I recorded them. In many cases that means the order in which I first heard them!
The good fortune that I even have these tapes goes further, back to my parents. They had pay TV, meaning we had MuchMusic when it first began, not when it became free in the late 80s. They bought a VCR and pretty much let me monopolise it when the Power Hour was on. Even though it was the middle of the big “Satan scare”, they let me watch the Power Hour, unlike the Dolphs, the weirdo neighbours across the street. They didn’t even let their kids watch Dr. Who. Here I am watching Ronnie James Dio slaying people with his sword in “Holy Diver”. A few clips earlier, a bathing suit clad teacher was dancing on desks in a Van Halen video. Then there was Kiss. Were they really “Knights in Satan’s Service”? My mom asked me that question, but she didn’t stop me from watching. That couldn’t have been easy, considering the subject matter of “I Love It Loud”.
So I kept recording videos, and stored the tapes safely, as if knowing that 30 years down the road I’d be wanting them again. Iron Maiden came up frequently on the earliest tapes, and I can’t help thinking of my dad.
The only Iron Maiden videos my dad liked were “Aces High” and “The Trooper”. He approved of the lyrics and explained them to me in historical context. I knew all about the Battle of Britain long before I hit the age that they teach you about it in school. I knew the Charge of the Light Brigade, what a “Cossack” was, and where it happened. That’s because of Iron Maiden and my dad! He used it as educational material. He really seemed to like those lyrics.
Today, my friend Tom who is a teacher uses rock music in the same way — to teach.
“Aces High” was always a personal favourite. Not only was it a great song, but also a great video. The single had some of the best cover art you could find on a Maiden vinyl. “Aces High” received many spins, on the turntable and the VCR alike. At that age, my sister was like a little shadow, and copied me with everything. We watched videos together. We also went to the same school. In one class, she and her friends were asked about their favourite songs. My sister said “Aces High” but they wrote down “Ace Is High”. Come on, people! It’s not that kind of song! She was in the 4th grade.
Now I sit, watching my tapes, reliving old memories fresh and new once again. What a lucky guy I am.
GETTING MORE TALE #738: Mike and Bob’s Cross-Kitchener Adventure
September 29, 1990.
Mike and Bob rented a video camera at Steve’s TV. That afternoon, they began filming (full title) Mike and Bob’s Excellent Cross-Kitchener Adventure Part II. They recruited amateur film maker (and Mike’s sister) Kathryn (Cujo 3: Revenge of the Schnauzer) to tape their adventure. The result has, 29 years later, finally been edited down by Mike into a proper director’s cut.
It started with us and an idea. We wanted to show off our home town to our friends living elsewhere in Ontario. The best way to do that was with a video.
Bob and I spent the afternoon driving around Kitchener in his Dodge Daytona, with Kathryn on camera, tunes blasting. Bryan Adams, Northern Pikes, Barney Bentall, Grapes of Wrath and…Wilson Phillips…. Wilson Phillips? Driver picks the tunes. That’s always been the rule. For once, I’m proud to say I didn’t have my license yet. It means I can’t claim to have picked Wilson Phillips!
Downtown Kitchener is familiar, but completely transformed today. In our film, we captured both Sam the Record Man and Dr. Disc, just down the street from one another. Neither exist anymore. Dutch Boy, the old movie theatres, stores and restaurants disappeared years ago but at least we got them on tape.
We stopped by Grand River Collegiate Institute, so you can see what it looked like (on the outside) almost 30 years ago. Stanley Park Mall, before complete renovation, is another filming location. Back then, “JohnnyCash” machines were some of the first popular bank ATMs. Today, younger people often don’t believe me they were real. They were real, and here’s one in our movie! Off to Pioneer Sports World, which today is a nothing more than a shopping plaza with restaurants and outlet stores. In 1990, it had a water park, mini-golf, driving range, video arcade, and go-karts. All of this is gone now, but preserved in our little movie.
The old McDonalds on Victoria Street was torn down long ago, but we were recording when we stopped for fries. Our order came to $5.38 total. Kathryn couldn’t resist taking a break from the camera and heading into the McDonalds Play Place. It was always a sad time when you realized you were too big for the Play Place. Looks like for Kathryn, that day may have been September 29, 1990.*
For personal history, I’m glad to find my old bedroom still preserved on film. There it is, my old stereo. My tiny record collection! About 15 to 20 LPs in there? My old posters. A decent model tank diorama. My old Judas Priest shirt, the first rock shirt I ever owned. Another shirt discovered in this movie did not survive. Oh, and there’s the cutest (but grumpiest Schnauzer in history), Crystal Belle.
We also visited Kitchener’s most controversial landmark: “Aphoria”, a worm-shaped piece of art in front of the old courthouse. We certainly made our feelings about the monument known in our film. My position hasn’t changed much since.
Admittedly, we didn’t put much effort into making Mike and Bob’s Cross-Kitchener Adventure at the time. We only had the camera for a day. It’s what our old film teacher Mrs. Beckman would have called “just some kids goofing off.” True, but maybe with 30 years’ time, that has some value now. We didn’t script anything; we had no way of editing it, so there didn’t seem much point. We had to just film everything in sequence and what we had on tape was what we got. Before transferring it to digital, the movie was an hour long, and completely unwatchable to anyone but us. I’ve since sunk several hours into Mike and Bob’s Cross-Kitchener Adventure, and I think I may have salvaged it. At 32 minutes, this is more like what we would have done at the time if we had a way to edit tape.
If you’ve read this far, I’m not going to beg you to watch Mike and Bob’s Cross-Kitchener Adventure. Old friends that remember those days will not want to miss it. Most won’t care. Whichever category you fall in, I recorded an audio commentary track to go with it (which helps a lot). Choose which version to watch from the videos below. Or watch both!
* The date was determined thanks to the film. I had an old Hit Parader calendar and I mention that it was Alex Skolnick from Testament’s birthday. That made it September 29, 1990. This jives with the colour of the leaves and my own memory of the day.
I’m breathless because I found all my VHS tapes. Every last one of them!
The first one to go in the player is the most important to me.
In 1989, Bob and I made a music video for “Nothing But A Good Time” by Poison for a highschool project. Until now I’ve only been able to describe it to you. In Getting More Tale #455: How to Make a Music Video (The Old-Fashioned Way) I went into as much detail as possible into how two kids made a music video. That was fun but it was disappointing that I couldn’t show you the finished product.
Ladies and Gentlemen, filmed on location in Kitchener (1988 and 1989), here is “Nothing But A Good Time” by Poison, as interpreted by Mike and Bob! Get a good look at the town and Grand River Collegiate Institute as it was 30 years ago.
God damn I’ve been waiting a long time for this!
In 1988-1989, a teenage LeBrain and his buddy Bob were very active in the school film program. We both took the highschool film course, and loved it. I remember writing an essay comparing the early and later films of Steven Speilberg, and scoring 98% or 99% on it. I just loved film and still do today, but Bob and I had our eyes on a different prize. We wanted to make a music video.
We both had guitars, and another kid in the film club named John had a camera. A kid from drama class named Dave offered to be the drummer. We didn’t have any drums (or even sticks), but that’s OK; Journey used the “no drums” thing as a gimmick in their video for “Separate Ways”. Taking that as inspiration, I got Dave to hit rocks and tables with chopsticks. We tried to access the drum kit in the school music room but it was booked. We could still do it, thanks to Journey. We could make an awesome music video!
It was our vision, so Bob and I got together one Saturday afternoon and spent several hours planning and doing rough storyboards.
The Charlie Awards were film awards for highschool kids, and Bob and I sought to enter our video that year. It was fall, and we began planning. The first thing we needed to do was pick a song. Wanting something upbeat that would allow us to run around a lot and make rock poses, we chose Poison’s “Nothin’ But A Good Time”. There was only one problem, which was that neither of us owned the album. So, I conned my dad out of the $10 to buy a copy at A&A Records & Tapes. I told him it was for a school project, which is true, but I didn’t tell him it was for a non-credit school project. Nor did I tell him the tape would then become part of my permanent music collection!
Bob and I plotted out what we needed to film. We wanted an intro similar to what Poison did in their very fun video (although this opening has since been edited out, probably due to “Rock and Roll All Nite” playing in the background of it). We got an English teacher, Mr. Payette, to help us out. In the school cafeteria, Bob’s character was sweeping the floor, playing air guitar and lip-synching to Van Halen’s “Jump”. Then Mr. Payette stormed in! “I pay you to clean the equipment, not play with it!” he yelled, nailing his part in just one take. Bob, not used to a nice guy like Mr. Payette yelling, was visibly having trouble keeping a straight face: but it worked! In the next shot, we utilized jump-cuts to have Bob’s leather jacket, sunglasses and guitar suddenly appear on him. And then the song began.
Since we had no idea how to make a music video and synch up the cassette audio afterwards, we had to figure it out as we went. We wound up shooting the “band” miming the video multiple times in many locations. Rockway Gardens in Kitchener was one such location. The school stage was another. We also did an incredible scene in a Geography class that was just terrific. We wanted a really angry looking teacher for that one, so we asked the Science teacher Mr. Marrow. He was a nice guy, but he sure could look mad when he needed to! For this shot, we taped a Samantha Fox swimsuit poster to one of the geography maps. Marrow pulled the map down, only to reveal Miss Fox! He then gave the camera a glare and stormed out. It was great. We filmed some guitar solos at the same time.
We spent a few months filming shots for the video, gathering scenes from different locations. We took some inspiration from the Beatles and had all of us rolling down a hill, jumping around on rocks, me doing several power slides…all kinds of rock and roll. Still winging it, we figured we would have more than enough great shots when it came time to editing.
We did not expect editing to be easy and it was not. Not in the least. At our disposal, we had a state of the art VHS editing suite. The school board owned it, and each high school got to keep it for a couple weeks a year. We had access to the suite in early ’89, around March. Bob and I stayed late at school every day for two weeks trying to get the video done by the deadline. We also had permission to skip a few classes. Still figuring things out as we went, we did not realize that the audio synch was a huge problem.
Bob pieced together the editing technique we would use. He chose a “master take” of us miming on the drummer Dave’s front lawn. This was a good master to use, because the audio was excellent. Bob was pumping the song through his car stereo, so we had a nice loud audio track to edit to. Then, when the video was done, we’d overdub the original song from the Poison cassette onto the video. Although it was hard work, the video pretty much edited itself. Bob and I both had plenty of shots we wanted to include, so it was just a matter of inserting them at the appropriate points. We had seen so many music videos over the years that cutting it was like second nature, once we figured out how to do it.
That’s when we ran into the audio synch issue.
Cut completed, we dubbed in the brand new clean audio direct from the Poison tape. By about halfway through the song, we started noticing problems. Even though every shot was perfectly synced in with the “master track”, the clean audio overdub was not. We struggled and struggled, trying to cue it up differently, and make it synch. We just couldn’t do it. By the end of the song, each line of the lyrics was off synch with our lips by at least one line. We called in the film teacher to help us. That’s when we learned something that we didn’t know about cassettes.
“Where is the original audio coming from on this video?” she asked. We explained that Bob had a great car deck, so we used that for our master take.
“That’s the problem then,” she said, telling us something we did not want to hear. “Car tape decks and regular cassette recorders often run at slightly different speeds,” she explained. “That’s why your audio is off. Either the car deck is playing the song fast, or this tape deck here is playing it slow, or both.”
There was nothing we could do with the technology at hand. We had no way to slightly speed up the cassette so it would match the video. And we were out of time on the editing suite. It had to go back, and if we couldn’t change the tape speed then we’d be stuck with a video we couldn’t synch up.
Using what little time we had left, we re-edited the end of the video slightly, to try and bring the words back into sync where they were the most glaring. We were able to fix some shots, but we were out of time and had to declare the project finished.
Bob and I attended the Charlie awards and saw some really amazing video work. In particular there was some clay animation that was brilliant, but there were also plenty of videos that were not nearly as good as ours. We got a special mention, but did not win a Charlie award, because of the audio synch. It was bittersweet, but Bob and I were both really proud of that video.
GETTING MORE TALE #736: San Fransisky? Did you drove or did you flew?
One of the first friends I met when I started at the Record Store in 1994 was Christina, better known as “San Fransisky”. I’ll get to that in a minute as it requires an explanation. San Fransisky was a friendly, outgoing girl who worked at the dollar store around the corner called A Buck or Two. When I was the rookie in my first months at the Record Store, she would come in and chat, which helped me feel welcome at the Mall. Our store played her store in the Mall bowling tournament, and I think they probably beat us.
San Fransisky was Portuguese and proud of it. Her house had one of those front rooms for your shoes, and another room that was strictly decorative. You didn’t go into that room or sit in it, it was to be admired from outside. My memory is hazy on one detail, but I could swear that room had a stuffed (taxidermied) dog in it. But what about that nickname “San Fransisky”?
When she used to call my house, the call display showed her dad’s name Fransisco. This led to my dad doing his best Sid Dithers impression. Remember Sid Dithers, Eugene Levy’s overtly Jewish character on SCTV? His catch phrase was “San Fransisky? So how did you came here, did you drove or did you flew?”
Every time she called the house, the name came up “Fransisco” and my dad would howl, “San Fransisky? How did you came here, did you drove or did you flew?” Nobody in our house even called her Christina. It was San Fransisky. That’s the effect my dad can have when he repeats the same joke over and over again.
She was cool; we used to go out to eat, see Rangers games, and enjoy general good times. The owner at the Record Store knew San Fransisky long before I did, and according to legend they once had this conversation:
Owner – “Hey Christina, ask me if I’ve ever had sex in my store.”
San Fransisky – “No! I don’t want to know that! Gross!”
Owner – “Go ahead, ask me if I’ve ever had sex in my store!”
San Fransisky, sighing – “Have you ever had sex in your store?”
Owner – “I’m not telling! Hahah!”
I like to think that he did it over in the rap section.
Nothing lasts forever and the Record Store eventually moved out of the Mall. We continued to hang out with San Fransisky after hours but problems in the friendship began to emerge. I was never much of a night owl. I didn’t go out to bars, or to dance at the clubs, but once in a blue moon. San Fransisky thought that if I wanted to meet someone, I needed to get out to the bars. I didn’t like the music, the crowds, or even drinking that much. I would decline but she’d really push, and push persistently. People who really know me also know that I hate being pushed. If I say no to something, please just respect that.
“Mike if you came out you’ll really have a good time,” she’d insist. “You know if you keep saying no, people are going to stop asking you to go out.” I knew that, and eventually that’s what happened.
I really pissed her off once in the winter of ’96. She was setting me up with one of her friends. It was a skating date, and it was OK. Nothing happened for a while. Several weeks after, we all went out together again as a group to go bowling, loser having to sing karaoke afterwards. San Fransisky brought two of her friends, and I brought two of mine. One of them happened to be my ex. Turns out, the girl that San Fransisky was trying to set me up with, didn’t appreciate that I brought my ex bowling. Ah well. I screwed up that night absolutely gloriously even after that. I lost at bowling, and I had to sing. When I sing karaoke, there’s one song I always go to: “The Immigrant Song”.
I don’t know if San Fransisky had ever been more embarrassed in her life. I had a great time, but I was definitely on her shit list.
She was starting to get a little demanding as a customer at the Record Store too. She wanted better discounts than I was allowed to give, and she wanted more money for her used DVDs than I was permitted. There was a dispute over the movie Bubble Boy. She wanted way more than I could pay, and the disc was pretty scratched up too. She wouldn’t let it go.
The next bump in our friendship involved a guy named Hercules. I have no idea what his real name was. San Fransisky met Hercules at the bar. If I remember the details correctly, she didn’t know his name so she called him Hercules. I remember Hercules lied about his age and his name, which set off alarm bells. T-Rev and I met him once, but soon after he told San Fransisky that she was not to see us anymore. He was that kind of boyfriend. We didn’t like it, but we were cut off. T-Rev may or may not have felt like inflicting violence upon Hercules, but he is a peaceful man who finds violence to be the last refuge of the weak minded. If someone got mad and challenged T-Rev to a fight, he’d laugh and say, “Sure, because if we fight and I win, that means I was right, and if you win that means you were right.” We knew Hercules wouldn’t last long. San Fransisky was an independent girl with lots of friends. It wasn’t in her nature to be locked down like that.
Eventually San Fransisky re-emerged, told us that Hercules was done, that we were right. That was that and we all moved on. But, like many things, friendships often have a trajectory in life. We were all changing. T-Rev moved to Sarnia, and I drifted away from San Fransisky.
Our friendship ended permanently after I bought a place in the same condo complex that she lived. We were briefly in contact again, but she got mad at me when I was mentioned I was interested in buying a used microwave oven from a friend of hers, and then changed my mind because new ones were so cheap. I just went over to Canadian Tire (or “Newfy Speed N’ Sport” as T-Rev used to call it) and bought a small one out of box. It just seemed like I should have a new clean microwave for my first place. She was pissed that I reneged on the deal; sorry about that.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was fittingly over a CD. We met at a CD store, and we departed over a CD. This story was recounted in Record Store Tapes Part 313: Not Allowed Lending! We were living in the same building, and she was having a party upstairs. Keep in mind, I knew how well she took care of her CDs and DVDs, because she used to trade them in to me at the store.
The story continues as follows.
A few weeks after I moved in, she came down to my unit. She was having a party upstairs. She needed some music.
“Do you have any Beatles?” she asked me.
“Yup, I have the Red and Blue albums. They’re excellent. The Red one probably has all the songs you’d want for a party.”
She asked me about a couple more CDs. Van Halen was one. I got them out of my CD tower.
“You’re going to take care of these, right? And you’ll return them tomorrow morning?” I asked pointedly.
“It might not be tomorrow morning but I’ll bring them back, of course.”
I knew how this girl took care of her own CDs. I had bought enough used discs from her at the store. She always bitched when I told her the discs were scratched up. She never put them back in the case, and left them out all the time. Knowing her ways of handling discs, I added additional instructions.
“I want you to be careful with these discs, and put them back in the cases when you’re done. I also want you to make sure nobody else touches my CDs. Only you. I want them back exactly as they are.”
She gave me this flabbergasted expression. What she said next was the sentence that ended what was left of our “friendship”:
“What do you care if they get scratched?! You work at the store!”
That was it. I told her I wouldn’t loan her the CDs if that was her attitude. She went upstairs in an angry huff, and we never socialized again. I ran into her now and then, and she was always bitchy. The friendship was over.
She moved out of the building later that year, got married and de-friended me on social media. I’m not even sure what her new name is. I do know one thing that has not changed. I still have those Beatles CDs, in the exact condition I bought them in. That microwave still works, too!
It’s been at 15 years since she moved, but I hope San Fransisky is out there doing well. Some personalities are just not meant to mix for extended periods of time, but there are more good memories than bad. Bowling, arcades, playing cards, eating food, and mini-golf. Good times. Such a shame she couldn’t take care of her CDs!
GETTING MORE TALE #735: Quite Possibly the Worst Music Video I’ve Ever Seen Vigilants – “Run For Cover”
Recording music videos from the TV as a kid was a fine art. My method was to keep the machine on “record-pause” as videos were playing. Then all I had to do was un-pause and I’d be able to start recording almost immediately. I’d lose maybe a second of video. Then I’d pause again at the end, waiting for the next “good song”.
The Pepsi Power Hour was an amazing way to discover new (or old) bands. By recording the videos, I could hear the songs over and over. If there was a new band I was curious about, I’d take a chance and hit record. If I didn’t like the song or band, I’d just rewind and record over it. The Power Hour would play virtually any kind of metal. Their intro had Slayer’s “Angel of Death” as the theme music! From Poison to Cro-Mags, they would play it. Venom were regular favourites.
One afternoon in 1986, I was recording away when J.D. (John) Roberts announced a new band coming up, called Vigilant. (Over the years I’ve seen it spelled as Vigilants and Vigilante, but I will continue to use the spelling as it appeared on TV that day.) I recorded it — decent enough hard rock song — and I kept the video because their labelmate Lee Aaron had a cameo in it. Lee Aaron was and is Canada’s Metal Queen, so I thought the band must be OK. But dear God, what a video. What a horrendous video!
Let’s break it down.
We got the asshole record exec who won’t give a band a shot. We have Lee Aaron at reception, and a stripper entering the offices! What could this be about?
The stripper plays the record exec a tape, and then suddenly enters: more strippers! How many? Who knows, but you can play “count the strippers” with your friends if you like. The song is playing, but we still haven’t seen the band.
It’s well over two minutes before the band burst into the room, guitars in hand, to play along to their song. The fashion of the day: checkers, stripes, tassels, and tight tight pants. Pants so loud that Jon Bon Jovi himself wouldn’t have been seen in them. The bassist has one of those narrow body basses that were trendy at the time. The drummer? He doesn’t even show up until the 3:00 mark. Poor drummer! The point of course is that the strippers have far more screen time than the guys in the actual band, the hallmark of the stinkiest of the 1980s. Sulfer-stinky!
The one on the left is in roller skates.
The plot thickens when a roadie enters, with a flash bomb. He’s going to blow up the band! But then, Lee Aaron pulls the old switcheroo. And the roadie, though good at plugging in flash bombs, doesn’t seem to know how to unplug them. Guess who gets blowded up! Not the band or the strippers, I’ll tell you that!
Don’t worry, it’s a happy ending for everybody. Including the lead stripper, it’s heavily implied….
Please enjoy (?) the music video for “Run For Cover” by Vigilant (or Vigilante, or Vigilants) featuring Lee Aaron. The song actually wasn’t that bad. The verses were nothing to write home about, but the bridge and chorus are pretty good! Generic as hell, but it was the 80s. (Oh, and check out the funny MuchMusic bumper before the actual video, featuring Loudness singer Minoru Niihara!)
GETTING MORE TALE #734: The Spaceman’s Wife and the Demon Sex Addict “Guitars, Makeup and Murder”
Today, another in a long string of sad days in KISStory, we will dissect Ace Frehley’s incendiary statement to his ex-bandmate Gene Simmons. (If it was written by Ace at all. The statement appeared on Ace’s wife’s Facebook 22 minutes before it appeared on his.) He was responding to a recent Gene Simmons quote:
Gene – “They [Peter Criss and Ace Frehley] were in and out of the band — fired — three times. For drugs, alcohol, bad behavior, being unprofessional…they weren’t carrying their load. So the short answer to your question is we’d love to have Ace and Peter join us here and there. And if they don’t, it’s not going to be because of us. But they’re never going to be in Kiss again.”
Ace has been quite clear in recent months – he wants to be back in Kiss for their End of the Road tour. The fans would be on board for that. Kiss, meanwhile, continually shoot down these hopes, while proclaiming their show to be the best live performance ever. They have questioned Ace’s ability to do a gruelling tour like this. It seems Frehley has had enough of Gene’s trash talk. Perhaps on his next covers album, Ace should tackle “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, because it sure sounds like he ain’t gonna take it anymore!
Let’s look at Ace’s statement piece by piece.
“Gene, your memory is really incorrect!”
Gene forgets the words to his own songs, and often inflates his own history. At this point I think Gene simply “remembers” what he wants to.
“…I was NEVER FIRED from KISS, I quit twice (not 3-times) of my own free will, because you and Paul are control freaks, untrustworthy and were too difficult to work with!”
Gene was clearly talking about both Ace and Peter in that sentence about being fired “three times”. Peter was indeed in and out three times. But Ace is right, he was never fired from Kiss. He quit both times. The reasons he quit are not as clear as he’s making it sound. He had severe substance abuse problems at the time and probably wasn’t thinking clearly or even functioning normally. Yes, Paul and Gene are control freaks when it comes to their brand, but I’m sure they have a different perspective on who was difficult to work with. Ace’s statement could very well be the pot calling the demon-kettle black.
“…Your slanderous remarks about my bad habits over the years has cost me millions of dollars and now that I’m over 12-years sober you’re still saying I can’t be trusted to play a whole nights show! Well that’s exactly what I’ve been doing for the last 12-years with different configurations of ‘The Ace Frehley Band’ to you and Paul’s dismay!”
Slander is only slander when it’s not true. Ace’s “bad habits” are well documented. Being sober for 12 years is an achievement to be proud of, but I don’t think that is what Gene and Paul are talking about. Once bitten, twice shy. They’re very wary of working with Ace under those high-pressure situations. A tour that like can cause a relapse in anyone. It is not going to be an easy tour for those guys at that age. It really helps to have younger guys like Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer behind them on tour.
“…I’m also the most successful solo artist to come out of the original KISS lineup, and proud of it!…You and Paul have tried to derail my solo career multiple times over the years unsuccessfully.”
True, Ace has had the most successful solo career, but there’s not much competition. Saying that Paul and Gene have tried to derail it? Multiple times? That could indeed be slander. Where’s your proof, Ace? Did Gene go to Megaforce and say “Don’t promote Ace’s records”? Of course he didn’t. Innuendo like this just comes across as someone making excuses for their own perceived lack of success. Gene was probably not all that helpful in the 80s, but shouldn’t that be water under the bridge this many years later? Gene wrote songs for your new album, Ace! Frehley was invited to be the opening act for Gene’s solo tour. It went so well that Ace hired Gene’s solo band. The point is, Gene’s been doing a lot lately that should have benefited both of you. That’s not derailing anything. Anything else should be ancient history now.
Of course, maybe by “derailing”, Ace’s wife refers to the time in the 70’s that Gene and Paul “tried to have Ace killed“.
“…I’ve tried to be nice and friendly by inviting you and Paul to perform on my past albums for eOne Music, give each of you guys one of my prized Gibson Les Paul 59’ models, but today’s comments have made me realize you’re just an asshole and a sex addict who’s being sued by multiple Women, and you’re just trying to sweep it all under the carpet!
“…The icing on the cake was when you groped my wife and propositioned her in Los Angeles at the Capitol Records building behind my back, when I was trying to help you out at one of your ‘Vault Experiences’ which I only found out about several weeks later…she was planning on pursuing a suit against you, but I told her to call it off!!!”
Woah! Heavy shots fired!
Having Paul and Gene performing on Ace’s solo albums was a dream come true for the fans. This is the kind of thing they have always wanted. Kiss heroes working together! United front! The cooperation between members over the last few years has been an unexpected treat. Now suddenly Ace is bringing up Gene’s womanizing. Whether the event Ace’s wife is alleging ever happened as stated, we don’t know. Gene is a flirt and may have been making inappropriate jokes. But if it did happen, airing it in public isn’t helping anyone. Deal with this stuff privately! If Ace wants back in Kiss, how the hell does he expect that to happen now?
“…Well now the gloves are off after your terrible comments today and I’m thinking that this really may be ‘The End Of The Road Tour’ for you guys!!!”
Hopefully it’s the end of the road for real, because listening to Paul singing is painful. He was one of the true greats. Now he’s the worst singer in Kiss, but I digress. “Gloves are off”? What does that even mean? Are we about to witness a geriatric street brawl? That outta be amusing.
Now, here’s the real kicker below:
“….Without a complete and heartfelt apology, an offer to give me my old job back, and removing Tommy from the Throne that I created… THE SHIT WILL HIT THE FAN AND THEY’LL BE NO STOPPING IT – IT’S ON!!!”
(Oooft, grammar. “THERE’ll be no stopping it”.)
Hahah! Hah. You’re joking, right Ace? When does Gene Simmons offer complete and heartfelt apologies? Very rarely, and not after being attacked by ex-bandmates. To demand his old job back in this way is not only ridiculous, but a flight of pure fancy. This will only put Kiss’ backs up to the wall.
If Ace had any chance of joining Kiss on tour this year, I’d say he has blown it completely. I will say it: Ace Frehley will never be on the same stage as Kiss on the End of the Road tour. That door has closed.
Let me put what Ace is asking in my own words. Tell me how it sounds to you.
“Gene, you better stop talking shit about me, and you better apologise to me and my wife for what I’m alleging without proof! After that, I want you to fire Tommy Thayer regardless of whatever contracts you have in place or what your relationship is. Even though I haven’t played stadiums in almost two decades, your only option now is to welcome me back with open arms! If you don’t…empty threat! Empty threat! Empty threat!”
I am in no way defending Gene Simmons or Kiss. Gene could have spoken far more kindly of both Ace and Peter over the years. Kind words are free to offer, and solidarity does a lot for a band’s image. Ace’s statement simply escalates this in a childish, juvenile way.
We are now in the Twilight Zone with a group of bickering children. Rock and roll, baby?
I was never going to be a rock star. I knew that. I couldn’t play a song all the way through. A fella could dream, though. I carefully plotted out my super-stardom.
First I needed a name for a band. In highschool, my best friend Bob wanted to call our band Paragon. “Not Paradox,” he stressed, “but Paragon. It means we’re among the best.” We used Paragon as the name for our non-extistant band until Bob graduated highschool, at which time a real band used the name. When Bob and I went our separate ways (he sold his guitar), I settled on the name Godspeed. I wasn’t interested in doing anything “wimpy” and I wanted a name that got that across.
However, once again a real band took the name I wanted for my fake band. I needed to get more original, instead of just picking a word I liked. I came up with Joy in Blue. I liked the name because it summed up what I wanted to do with music. Listening to music is a joyful experience, but you can still get dark when expressing those inner emotions. Hence, Joy in Blue. I still like it.
I drew up some logos. Not the best ones ever, but I wanted something a kid could easily draw in a binder. Like Kiss. I even wrote some music! In 1994 I poured everything I had into a song called “Midnight”. It was roughly 20 minutes long. I had some parts recorded. The rest of it, I was unable to play — all I could do was hum it! It was meant as a Rush-like epic in eight parts. The truth is, it was easier to mash my ideas together into an eight part song than to try and write eight complete songs.
The problem with Joy in Blue was that there was nobody capable of playing the music I was hearing, a minor inconvenience. I had bigger things to plan. Album titles, projected year of releases — I plotted out the next 30 years of Joy in Blue. It was going to start with our demo tape, which would get a commercial CD release. Then three studio albums and a live record. Finally after the live record, I laid it all on the line: a double concept album! To appease the “old” fans, a few records later we’d go back to basics. I called that LP Back to the Garage, and it was to be done with the same spirit as the first demo. I knew when I wanted our box set to come out, and my solo album Sweat.
Jesus Christ…a solo album….
Think that’s all crazy? I even wrote out who I wanted to produce each album. For our early material, I wanted David Bendeth. I really liked the heavy groove he got on the Sven Gali album. I wanted to see if we could get Bob Ezrin for the concept album, and self-produce the Garage album ourselves. As we got into the tail end of our career, I realized Wolfgang Van Halen would be old enough to produce records. Therefore I pencilled in Wolfie for our last three or four albums. I also knew that I wanted us to do a proper farewell, not drag things out forever. Final albums, box sets and live recordings were planned.
All of this without being able to play more than two minutes of a song. It would have been glorious though, had I been able to figure out the music part!
What is the most important information to possess when you’re shopping? Is it your shopping list? Is it money?
No friends, that is not what matters most. What you need to know most of all is where the hell you actually are.
I was working at the Record Store in the late 90s. We had big red gift certificates in different denominations. They had our logo printed on them. You could use them at any of our locations. They were pretty standard gift certificates, like any other store might have. Today virtually everybody has switched to magnetic gift cards instead, which undoubtedly saves on paper.
A family came in one afternoon looking to spend. They had over a hundred dollars in gift certificates. Enough for the whole family to enjoy. Collectively they had numerous questions, but were courteous and friendly. I spent roughly an hour with them, helping them find songs and retrieving CDs for them to listen to. They narrowed down their pile of CDs to the discs they wanted most. Then we got to the checkout counter.
I made sure each case had the right CD inside, and I made sure each one was clean. I rang them up and told them the total, when the man handed me a little blue HMV gift certificate.
My heart sank.
“This isn’t us, this is for HMV,” I informed the man.
“This isn’t HMV?” He was stunned!
No! This isn’t HMV! Didn’t you notice all our massive signage? Also, all our CDs are used! When was the last time you saw a used CD at an HMV store? My mind was screaming all of these things silently as the man.
What bugged me the most wasn’t all the wasted time on these people, it was that he was actually angry! Angry at who? If it were me, I’d be super embarrassed but I sure as hell wouldn’t be angry. I would also be sure to buy something — anything — to make up for all the time the store spent on me. This guy escorted his family out, leaving all the discs with me at the counter.
I’m sure the boss man was thrilled when I told him this story, and how effective all our store signage was!
Now a story of my own, but without the temper tantrum.
As many of you know, my friend Jason and I collect Transformers. There are not really any decent toy stores in Kitchener. We have a Toys R Us and an EB Games. Up in Waterloo, there’s a good store called J&J’s, but they don’t carry Transformers. (I did, however, buy up their GI Joes.) Cambridge is the place to be for toy shopping.
I took a day off work to go toy shopping with Jay. First we hit a place called The Toy Society, which is an excellent store for vintage action figures. A little bit of every genre. It’s hard to leave without spending money. But Jay and I had a specific goal that day, which was to check out our friend Dan’s new store.
Dan owns B&K Collectables, which if you collect Pops, is now the place to go to get ’em. He also carries vintage G1 and new Masterpiece Transformers. His prices are high but when I buy a vintage figure from him, I know it’s complete and in working condition. He’s never let me down, and I have scored several rare boxed G1 figures from him over the years. He used to sell by mail, but in 2016 he opened an actual storefront, in a shared space with a computer store.
Jay and I hadn’t been there yet, and so partially planned this day to check out Dan’s store. We knew roughly where it was, on Queen Street down by Len’s Mill Store. We parked and started looking.
“This must be it,” said Jay as we entered a toy store.
We looked and took it all in. There was a guy working near the back.
“BIG DAN!” shouted Jay.
The guy turned around. He was big but he was not Dan.
“Did Dan hire someone?” I whispered to Jay.
“Sorry, is Dan around?” said Jay to the started toy store guy.
“No,” he answered simply, but probably confused.
“OK, thanks,” we said as we looked around for a bit. The store was cool but he didn’t have any Transformers. We had to be in the wrong place. Turns out, it was a store called Playin’ Around. B&K Collectables was still a few more doors down!
Once we found Dan, we had a laugh at our embarrassment. As usual, his assortment of vintage figures was impressive. I had my eyes on a complete G2 Megatron, but Jay was more excited about G1 Blitzwing.
“Holy shit you have Blitzwing!” said an excited Jay. A customer over in the computer half of the store was amused by his excitement. “I can’t believe you have a G1 Blitzwing, is he complete?”
The computer customer walked over. “OK, I have to see what a G1 Blitzwing is, if it’s this exciting.”
Jay explained to him, “He’s a triple changer! He changes into a plane AND a tank.”
“Ahh,” said the guy.
You have to have fun with shit. Here I am with Jay, two guys in their 40s buying toys in the hundreds of dollars. The computer guy thinks we’re nuts. We also walked into a store and accidentally scared a guy by yelling “BIG DAN!” It’s funny. The guy with the HMV gift certificate could have made that experience so much better for everybody if he just saw the humour in it (and bought something for all my efforts).
Don’t be angry. If you’re a dumb shit, just own it and laugh it off. Ponoby’s nerfect, nam.
There are a few stories I held back from the original Record Store Tales because I didn’t want to get anyone into any trouble. In this case, 24 years have gone by so I think it’s too late for this story to do any damage. I was 21 years old, and as green as spinach.
When I first started, one of the earliest lessons I was taught was “Do as I say, not as I do.” That came in handy the one time I witnessed a customer get physically hit by staff!
He was a kid. He didn’t get hit hard. It was a light smack on the brim of the hat. And it was still shocking.
This kid came in wanting to return a CD. I was still in training. The guy behind the counter wasn’t too happy about the condition it was in. He concluded the kid was trying to rip us off. There was a bit of an argument about it. The kid threatened to go downtown to “Mister Disc” from then on, and that’s when he got smacked in the head and called “Junior”!
“Do as I say, not as I do,” indeed! So I never hit any customers! The kid never came back, but could you imagine if that happened in 2018? You’d have vigils and boycotts and Twitter going into overdrive. In 1994, you just had an embarrassed kid leaving with his tail between his legs.
GETTING MORE TALE #730: It’s 2019. How do I play a record backwards?
The fellows from Spinal Tap once lamented that there must be a conspiracy between the Dutch and the Japanese to eliminate any audio medium that you can play backwards.
There’s no proof, but Spinal Tap are not the kind of band who require proof. The Dutch (Phillips) developed the compact cassette. The Dutch and Japanese (Phillips and Sony) created the CD together. You simply couldn’t play either format backwards, like you could with the good ol’ LP. When the record was “finally” replaced by CD, it really did seem like playing music backwards to look for hidden messages was over and done. How was Satan to communicate with teenagers like he did in the 1980s?
The 90s and early 2000s were a dark time for backwards messages. It seemed like playing albums backwards would forever remain a thing of the past. It was actually a real thing that some people did! I have. I played my Iron Maiden Piece of Mind LP backwards to find out what the hell Nicko McBrain was saying at the start of “Still Life”. With the record on the platter, I cued the needle and spun the record backwards with my index finger. It didn’t work very well, because I couldn’t keep a constant speed. The pitch was all over the place. Plus Nicko was using a comical accent, with reverb added. Playing it backwards with a wobbly pitch meant I still could not tell what Nicko was saying!
This method of playing records backward wasn’t good for the player, the needle, or the vinyl. We knew that; we just didn’t care. We had cheap shit and it really didn’t make a difference. The time to play a record backwards was when you had cheap kiddie equipment.
“Oh my God, Chicago kicks ass!”
So how can kids play music backwards today? Without being able to play back-masked messages, can they truly enjoy the albums as completely as we did? Thankfully, playing your records backwards is easier today than ever. Thanks to “computer magic” (using Spinal Tap’s words) you can do it quickly and more easily than ever before.
STEP 2: Record your vinyl (forwards) into Audacity using a USB turntable. Or, even easier: load any track from your computer into Audacity. For this demonstration we’re using the aforementioned “Still Life” by Iron Maiden. The backwards spoken word Nicko bit is isolated by deleting the entire rest of the song. (I’ve also boosted the volume on this part, which is quite quiet. Now you can see the waveform more easily.)
STEP 3: Highlight the entire track. Click “Effects” and “Reverse”.
STEP 4: Press play! With just a glance you can see the waveform is completely reversed.
What’s Nicko saying? Even playing it backwards at a constant pitch, it’s still impossible to tell what it is without enlisting the help of the internet, who have already solved this riddle.
“Hmm, hmm!” sniffs Nicko. “What hoo said de t’ing wit de t’ree bonce.” Roughly translated: “What said the thing with the three heads?” You might recognise “what hoo said de t’ing” as one of Nicko’s favourite phrases. It appears again on Maiden’s “Black Bart Blues”. Then he warns, “Dooon’t meddle wit t’ings you don’ unnerstand.” Good advice for anyone. Then finally, a belch! It’s still all but unintelligible, even digitally reversed.
We had much more success with an older record, Great White North by Bob & Doug McKenzie. On the track “Black Holes”, you can choose to highlight and reverse only the backwards part of the track. When you do it in Audacity, it’s a perfect digital reverse. You can play it and it’s indistinguishable from any of the rest of the album. In the waveform below, you can see the reversed section highlighted. When you play the whole track like this, it’s perfectly seamless.
Now you can say that you learned something useful today. Go ahead and try it on your Slayer albums now!
mikeladano.com 
