RSTs Mk II: Getting More Tale

#680: The End of an Era

It was the year 2000.  Not just the dawn of a new century, but a new store.  Even though I was a store manager myself, I only found out about the expansion through the grapevine.

We were at a party when Tom said to me, “You’re going to be so relieved when the new store opens.”

What?…what new store??

“They didn’t tell you?  I can’t believe they didn’t tell you.  Yeah, they’re opening up a new store and moving head office with it.  The head office people are finally going to be out of your hair when they move it.”

“Head office” was a little room in the back of my store.

Nope, nobody told me!  In fact, nobody ever told me in any official capacity.  Even when they had started building the place and deciding who would staff it, nobody ever officially told me.  Even as they chose staff members from my own crew to run it, they didn’t tell me.  Communication at the Record Store was dysfunctional.  I heard again in passing from one of my employees that was being sent there, as if I already knew.  This pissed me off, but Tom was right.  I was hugely relieved to have the head office people moving out.  Good riddance; now they could go and micromanage somebody else!

Life was peachy for a couple years.  I had them out of my hair, and I took over the back office when I began running the store website.

All things end, and in 2003, they moved me to the new store as well.  Sales were down at my old store, and I had some problematic staff members.  So they shuffled around managers and I took over the other store.  I hated working there.  It may have been new, but it never felt like “home” like my old store did.  They told me that being comfortable wasn’t a good thing.

I didn’t enjoy managing the second store like I did the first, and I hated the location.  It was smaller.  There was no room behind the counter and I was always bashing into things.  It had fewer listening stations.  I missed my old regular customers, and being micromanaged again sucked!

I finally left in 2006 and the store soldiered on with a new manager.  But again, nothing lasts forever.  In the Brave New World that is music retail, a lot of record stores bit the dust.  Now it’s 2018, and an era is coming to an end.  The store that I uncomfortably managed is closing this year.  Even though working there was not fun, it’s still a sad day for me.  It might never have felt like home, but it kind of was for three years.  Huge chunks of my CD collection came from that store.  My mint Black Sabbath Black Box, my Queen 3″ singles, and a Japanese import Deep Purple box set* all came from that location.  So did dozens of Record Store Tales.

As the sun sets on my old store, it’s bittersweet.  Not a lot of great memories there, but sadness just the same.  Any time a record store closes, it’s a loss for music fans.  The inventory will be consolidated with another store that is moving to a bigger location, but it’s hard not to see it as another one biting the dust.

 

 

 

* Review forthcoming.

#679: Cancer Chronicles 12

The good news is that Jen’s recovery has been amazing. She virtually back to full strength and still getting stronger.

Thank God for this, because I don’t think we could handle any more bad news on top of what we already have.

Our other loved one who has cancer is…not doing well.  Surgery was successful but more spread has been found.  This news is fresh and we do not know the path forward.

The future is unknown.  There are new experimental treatments that might be effective.

We are trying to continue our lives as normally as possible.  Sausagefest is less than two months away.  Cottage season has begun.  We don’t want to live our lives in a cocoon and our loved one doesn’t want us to either.  But we are in a state of shell-shock and knowing how to feel or what to think is just not happening right now.

#678: Robots

GETTING MORE TALE #678: Robots

Long-time readers know that mikeladano.com started as a site about music, but has grown beyond that.  Mike Ladano (that’s me) is passionate about music, but that’s not all.  You may have noticed that in addition to collecting rare Japanese import CDs with bonus tracks, I also like to collect tape decks and cars and trucks and planes that transform into robots.

The music/Transformers connection is pretty solid.  First there was a Bruce Springsteen-like character who debuted in the Marvel comic series.  Then, Stan Bush and Weird Al Yankovic contributed tunes to 1986’s Transformers: The Movie.  (Weird Al’s song was “Dare to Be Stupid”, and you should certainly know Stan Bush’s songs “The Touch” and “Dare”.)  Two decades later, Linkin Park had the lead single from 2007’s Transformers.  In fact, Linkin Park have songs in all five Transformers “Bayverse” films.  Some members are so deep into the ‘bots that they even have their own Transformers action figure.  In 2013, Hasbro released a limited edition golden Linkin Park Soundwave figure designed by Joseph Hahn!

I should state for the record, because this really cheeses off a lot of Transformers fans:  I hated the old cartoon.  It was too kiddie, with nonsensical plots and characterisations.  The Marvel Transformers comic series, originally written by Bob Budiansky and later Simon Furman, was grittier and geared to older kids.  It ran 80 issues, from 1986 to 1991.  It was better than the Sunbow cartoon, and the Michael Bay movies too for that matter.

I “stopped playing with toys” around 1987, but still collected the comics for another year.  The Transformers toyline and comic were officially cancelled in the early 90s, but even that was short-lived.  Much like Optimus Prime himself, the toys wouldn’t stay dead for long.

1993 saw the debut of Transformers: Generation 2.  This consisted of a rebooted toyline with old and new toys, and a new Marvel comic continuing the storyline of the original.  While in Frankenmuth, Michigan I picked up issue #1 of the comic, in a special fold-out cover.  Unfortunately, the new G2 comic was adapted to the 90s: Big guns, and grittier action.  Meanwhile the toys were increasingly designed with kids in mind.  They sported bright colours and gimmicky play features, like squirting water.  Around the same time, while checking garage sales with buddy Peter, I ran across a massive stash of original mint condition Transformers comics that I was missing.  50 cents a piece!  I was back collecting the comics once again.

I regret that I didn’t buy any Generation 2 toys.  Some of them, including “Laser Rod” Optimus Prime, were really quite excellent.  I thought I “shouldn’t” be buying toys at my age.

When did that all go out the window?  In 2006 I quit the Record Store and started at Aecon Industrial.  I was teamed up with a fantastic lady named Julie in their Quality Assurance department, and she showed me the ropes.  She was also responsible for getting me back into transforming toys.

We had a little office to work out of, and on the shelf was a small black Beast Wars toy.  Beast Wars was a 90s incarnation of Transformers, a complete reboot after the commercial failure of Generation 2.  This time, a new cast of characters featured robots that turned into life-like animals, on a flashy new computer animated TV show.  Julie brought in a small Beast Wars toy that belonged to a nephew.  It was a bull of some kind, and when we needed a break we’d fiddle with it.  That’s what started it up again.  I remembered how fun those little toys were.  Like 3D puzzles that you solved by twisting and turning parts around into new formations.

I made a trip over to Toys R Us to see what they had:  Star Wars Transformers!  These were famous vehicles from the Star Wars movies that transformed into robot likenesses of their drivers.  There was a Vader/TIE, a Luke/X-Wing and many more to collect. Unfortunately they were not very good toys.  The whole concept was dicey from the start.  Darth Vader flies a TIE Fighter that transforms into a giant robotic Darth?  That never made a lot of sense, but the toys were just not good.  They were flimsy and the robot modes often had giant wings and spaceship parts hanging off the back.

A couple years later, things changed again.  Hasbro realized there was a massive market out there for old men buying nostalgia toys.  They began issuing new versions of old classic characters from the 80s, and that was all I needed to jump back in with both feet.  You could even buy “Encore” reissues for some of the original figures from 1984, ’85 and ’86!  Therefore, for just a few bucks you could get a brand new replica of the original Optimus Prime, with only a few minor changes (smaller smokestacks so kids won’t poke an eye out).

I buy both Encore reissues, and brand new iterations of old characters.  The new toys satisfy a lot of the wants of collectors today.  Unlike the old ones from the 80s, they have better articulation.  Elbows, knees and ankles all move so you can put your toys in the most action-packed poses.  But they’re not perfect.  They come with fewer accessories and sometimes lack the gimmicks of their 80s counterparts.  Materials are cheaper today, and toys are sometimes misassembled or defective right out of the package.  Design flaws and bad QA are a constant issue.  Toys are made so hastily that some can’t even transform properly like they’re shown on the packaging.

Sounds like Hasbro needs a full-time play-tester.  I’m available.

#677: Rock Clocks (Happy Mother’s Day!)

No Sunday Chuckle this week — a special post instead.

 

GETTING MORE TALE #677: Rock Clocks (Happy Mother’s Day!)

My mom has always been creative.  Ever since we were kids, she’s been making things.  In my earliest memories, she learned how to make ceramics at home.  A prized possession of mine is my Darth Vader lamp.  It’s made of two ceramic pieces, the base and the Vader bust.  It has coloured lights in his chest, and his lightsaber lights up as well.  I got Vader, while my sister had an R2-D2.  I still have that Vader and she still has her R2.  Then she even bought a kiln so she could fire her ceramics at home.  My dad called it “that damned kiln” or “that god-damned oven” while my mom expanded to teaching ceramic classes in the basement.  She even started making stained glass ornaments!  My dad hated that we had a cottage industry in the basement, and her stuff always fought for space with my Transformers boxes.  But dad had to admit one thing, which is the ceramics not only paid for themselves, but also my mother’s annual vacations.

Vader lamp, far left

When I started working at the Record Store, one of my mom’s more successful creations were functional clocks.  You could buy a clockwork and put it in anything really, but CD clocks looked cool.  I convinced her and the Boss to work out a consignment deal.  I brought home a bunch of defective CDs that were written off in the back room.  I had her make a variety of clocks — Pink Floyd CDs, Bob Marley’s Legend, or anything with a cool picture on it.  We also had a few basic ones with just numbers glued to a blank CD face.

They weren’t great sellers, but she moved maybe two dozen over the years.  It didn’t cost the Boss anything to stock them, maybe 18″ of shelf space behind the counter, but it was more of a favour than a business move.  As cool as they were, they got dusty up there on that shelf, and were tricky to clean.  The little metal hands bent easily, and if you wiped too hard you could mark up the clock face, or remove one of the numbers!

One gimmick came up with was allowing customers to buy custom clocks made.  They could either a) bring in a CD to be made into a clock, or b) use one of the defects in the box in our back room for a clock.  We did a few of those, though it meant my mom had to go out and buy more clockworks.

I’ll never forget this one guy.  He came in one day but it wasn’t for a clock.

He approached the counter and asked “Do you buy CDs?”

“Yes we do!” I responded, and he pulled a CD from his jacket pocket.

I looked at the cover and did not recognise the name.  I flipped it over and looked at the back.  No label, no bar code…definitely some unknown artist.

“I’m sorry,” I said as I began explaining the part that I hated explaining.  “I’ll have to pass on this one.  We just generally don’t buy things like this because they tend to just sit on the shelves for years.  I can’t find a record label on the back, I don’t know this artist, and there’s nothing under this name in our system.”

“Oh, well that’s me,” he answered.

“Oh this is you!  Well, that’s cool, but still, it’s just not the kind of thing we would buy for stock.  The best I could do is offer to sell it on consignment here for you.  But I’ll be honest, we don’t sell a lot of consignment CDs here unless it’s a pretty popular local band.”

“Can you make it into a clock?” he asked while pointing at my mom’s CD clocks.

“You want to make it into a clock?  Yes, absolutely we can do that!”

That took a twist I didn’t expect!  “I want to give it to my wife as a gift,” he said.

Well sure, why not!  I took his order down in a little yellow receipt book.  He chose the style of hands and numbers (gold coloured) and a week or so later, he had his clock.  Two AA batteries not included.

Here’s another clock memory for you.  Can you guess how often people looked up at the clocks and said, “Woah!  Is that the time?”  More frequently than you’d think.  No, those clocks don’t have batteries in them, they’re for sale and they’re all showing different times, you dumb ass.

We ended the clock collaboration shortly after.  At least I tried.  Not all my ideas were good ones.  It wasn’t a failure, it just wasn’t worth the effort after the novelty wore off.  It demonstrated one thing that remains true about retail:  things only have a limited shelf life.  People don’t want to see the same stuff sitting there year after year.  It was true for virtually everything we sold.  Bobble heads, action figures, Simpsons characters, Osbournes figures, accessories and impulse buys…they were all shuffled from one location to another when they were “dead”.  Then you’d sell a few more, and the product would die again.  Shuffle the remains to a sale bin in a third store and you’ll probably clear them all.  One of our stores had the Metallica McFarlane figure set opened up on display with the big stage and everything.  I was aghast!  You don’t open a toy for display, you idiots.  Nobody would buy it.  And guess what?  That open Metallica set was a shelfwarmer, as it slowly suffered from shelf abuse.

The only thing that was timeless and the never-ending star of the show?  CDs.  Music.

I left in 2006 and I know that music stores have changed in the last 12 years.  They’ve all had to diversify, and the old store I used to manage now sells board games and used Nintendo cartridges.  I got out at exactly the right time.  My passion has always been for the music.  The rest is just window dressing.

And that includes CD clocks.  Sorry mom!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#675: 5% (This House is Not for Sale)

For 16 years, I have been waiting for a phone call.

GETTING MORE TALE #675: 5% (This House is Not for Sale)

My dad, an old school banker, used to tell me, “Never pay somebody rent when you can put that money towards owning something of value.”

I lived in a rental apartment with T-Rev for a little while in the 90s, but mostly I lived with my folks.  That allowed me to save a lot of money for a place to live.  In 2002 I bought a condo.  I was lucky.  It was the first and only place I looked at.  It was 10 minutes away from work, 10 minutes away from my parents, and absolutely perfect for me.  I soon as I saw it, I started planning where the stereo would go.

I wanted to have my own place before I turned 30, and I was the first Record Store employee to buy one.  I could tell the office Bully was jealous.  When I told everyone I bought my own place, they all sent their congratulations, except the Bully.  She sent a back-handed email about how I had it easy living with my parents all this time.  I hit “delete”, but I did not forget.  It was a pattern of belittling that continued over the years.

I wasn’t trying to boast.  Just sharing my happy news with people who I thought were my friends.

I got married, continued to work hard, and a couple weeks ago, I finally got the phone call from the bank that I had been waiting 16 years for.  “Congratulations!  You are now among the 5% of Canadians that own their homes with no mortgage!”

What a feeling!  It doesn’t seem like 16 years.  More like 10.

Back when I moved in, I insisted that only I carry my treasured CD collection.  If any jewel cases were broken, I could only blame myself!  (Only a couple broke.)  My whole family helped.  We had the place painted later that night and I was entertaining my first guests two days later!

First movie played at the new place:  Star Wars Episode I.

Those kinds of things are important, you know.

After I got married, we meant to find a bigger place.  We both had great jobs and the time seemed right.  Unfortunately Mrs. LeBrain got sick – really sick.  Epilepsy has changed our lives and we have not been able to move.  Too many far more important things to do.  We’ve outgrown this place, but we will make it work.

We own it free and clear.  It’s ours.  The roof over our head is a security blanket that we never take for granted.

 

#674: Bad Moon Rising

GETTING MORE TALE #674: Bad Moon Rising

A sequel to Getting More Tale #455:  How to Make a Music Video (The Old-Fashioned Way)

Best buddy Bob and I shot and edited a successful music video for Poison’s “Nothin’ But a Good Time” in the 11th grade.  We were sent to the local Charlie awards, representing our school in a film competition.  We didn’t win one (audio sync issues caused by the unreliable cassette format) but by summer holidays, I was back to the drawing board.

I called up a couple friends:  Danesh and Anand.  They came over and we hashed out an outline for a horror movie.  The truth is, I just wanted an excuse to do another music video but I needed a different concept this time.  It had to be a step up.  That summer, I was enthused about Leatherwolf’s second album, and their cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising”.  I thought it was the perfect track for a cheesy horror movie.  Any 80s horror film needed a heavy metal theme song.  Leatherwolf’s “Bad Moon Rising” struck me as perfectly fitting.  “I hope you got your things together, I hope you are quite prepared to die.”  So I had the idea of a double feature:  a horror movie with a heavy metal music video accompanying.  The other guys were into it.

Over a fun afternoon in the basement, we came up with our little movie.  Bob was no longer available.  He would be in college the next year.  It was my first film project without him.  As the film’s lead actor, we chose David Kidd, who was the “drummer” in my Poison video.  He was a drama geek.  His nickname was “Emperor Kiddspeare”.  He’d be perfect.

At the start of grade 12, we approached the Film Education teacher about our new project.  She was not enthused and objected to the music video.  “Why don’t you just use the original song?” she asked about “Bad Moon Rising”, when I explained the concept of the heavy metal tie-in music video.  She just didn’t get it.  The video was the whole seed of the idea!  Maybe she was completely unaware of the metal/horror relationship, based on past movies such as Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm St.  We proceeded with the project anyway.  Trying to make your own horror movie is like a rite of passage.  Hasn’t every school kid tried?

We only shot one scene.  It was a hospital scene where the lead character played by David moved a chair with his mind.  It looked great although we were already short on footage.  We had to loop a couple shots to edit together the full scene.  So we did, and it was a start.

But I had just started my first part time job, at Zehrs at the mall.  This cut into my after school hours and the film project dissolved.  I don’t have the scene we shot; it is lost for good.  So is our script.

For a project of that size, I really needed a partner with the dedication and creativity of Bob, but he was off in college doing his own thing.  We couldn’t get it done in grade 12 without him.  Grade 13 was also hopeless for a film project.*  Everybody was far too busy trying to get into University.  Everybody except Emperor Kiddspeare.  He seemed to go off the rails a bit when he started smoking.  First, he burned a “lucky horseshoe” into his hand with a cigarette lighter.  Then he just stopped showing up for school.  Danesh and I used to (jokingly) calculate the odds that he was dead during Algebra class.  Every once in a while, he would actually show up, throwing all our “calculations” to the wind.  Either way, I didn’t have Bob, and Dave was a write-off.  There would be no more highschool film projects.  Bad Moon Rising was dead in the water.

Emperor Kiddspeare ended up becoming a goth, and is very popular in the local industrial music scene.  The last time I saw him, a decade ago on a sweltering hot July day, he was wearing a full length leather trenchcoat.  Good on him.

* Partially.  One weekend, Bob and I rented a camera and we shot a video for our long-distance girlfriends.  It was called Mike & Bob’s Cross-Kitchener Adventure.  I still have that but it’s not particularly watchable.

#673: Message of Love

GETTING MORE TALE #673: Message of Love

The old saying goes “Better late than never”.  This is often true, especially in music.  It is never too late to discover an old band.  Be it Led Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy, or Queen, it has been pretty easy for me to catch up.  As is my modus operandi, when I discover a band I tend to jump in headfirst and not look back.

I took a similar path with Journey.  Journey were never considered “heavy metal”, and although metal magazines did cover them, I was never exposed to their music as a kid.  If they were not on the Pepsi Power Hour in the 1980s, then chances are, I didn’t hear them until later on.

Prior to official “discovery”, I think I only knew two Journey songs.  “Any Way You Want It” was used on the Simpsons in a memorable scene.  I also remember hearing “Wheel in the Sky” on the radio while eating out with my sister and my grandmother.  “Who is this?” I kept asking.  The song was incredible!

I didn’t find out for many years that it was Journey, although I did form an idea of what Journey sounded like otherwise.  Dream Theater covered “Lovin’ Touchin’ Squeezin'” on their Change of Seasons EP.  “I hate that song!” said T-Rev upon seeing the EP.  I didn’t care for it either.  But I was still curious why Joey Belladonna from Anthrax counted Journey as one of his favourite bands.  Something to do with the singer?

I really had no idea who Steve Perry was.  I heard of him.  I didn’t know he was one of the most influential singers of the 70s and 80s!  In 1994, his solo album For Love of Strange Medicine was released.  It was my first year at the Record Store and I still didn’t really know who he was.  I remember stocking the CD, but I kind of blew it when I sold my first copy to a customer.

“This is supposed to be great,” said the lady buying the Steve Perry CD.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to make conversation where I shouldn’t have.  “He’s a great guitar player.”  Wrong guess.

“He’s also an amazing singer!” said the lady with class, trying not to embarrass me.

I will never forget calling Steve Perry a great guitar player.  What a clueless poser I was!

My moment of discovery finally came in 1998.  T-Rev, Tom and I were in a mall in Burlington, as I recall.  The new Journey song came on:  “Remember Me”.  This was one a one-off track from the Armageddon soundtrack.  It was credited as “Journey (featuring lead vocals by Steve Augeri)”.  As I would later find out, Steve Perry quit the band and was replaced by a similar sounding Steve.  I didn’t care about that, because the song was incredible!  I looked forward to eventually getting the CD, which I would have been buying anyway for new Aerosmith and Our Lady Peace.

That was my gateway:  a soundtrack song with a replacement singer, from a shitty Michael Bay movie.  Embarrassing yes, but the truth it is.

My bosses and co-workers cringed as I jumped right into my new favourite band.  First up:  Greatest Hits, remastered of course.  Bought it, loved it.  It was a little light, with all those ballads, but I expected that.  It was songs like “Only the Young” and “Separate Ways” that slayed me.  To me it sounded as if Bon Jovi ripped off every trick he had right from Journey.  Early Bon Jovi, for sure.  Not everyone agreed with me on that, particularly Bon Jovi fans, but I don’t think it’s a stretch.

Next I acquired their Time3 box set, at which point I finally got a proper Journey education.   From their progressive jam band beginnings to a bitter ending at the close of the 80s, the Time3 box set got me up to speed.  Almost.

One thing was missing:  Journey’s 1996 reunion album with none other than Steve Perry.  Fortunately for me, one of my regular customers (whom the bosses hated because he chewed gum when he spoke) brought me a mint condition Japanese version of Trial By Fire, complete with bonus track.  Something about the album clicked with me, and to do this day — do I dare say it? — I think it’s my favourite Journey.  Trial By Fire is exceptional.  It is diverse, perhaps even more so than prior Journeys.  It is passionate, and Steve Perry’s seasoned voice is the real journey.

Of course all this new Journey love meant I was playing them in store, constantly.  One kid named Matty K absolutely loathed every time Steve Perry sang “Whoa-oh-oh oh” in any form.  Everybody else probably thought I lost my shit.  What can I say?  Journey’s music actually made me feel good.  Of course I wanted to play it often, and I’m sorry the others hated it.  And hate it they did!

Steve Perry didn’t want to tour after Trial By Fire and so was replaced by Steve Augeri for a couple releases…who was then replaced by Jeff Scott Soto in a killer lineup that didn’t last…and Soto was replaced by current singer Arnel Pineda.  His remarkable story is the stuff for a whole other article, but I still love Journey.

Since I missed out the first two times around, I would love to hear a Journey reunited with Steve Perry once again.  It doesn’t matter that his voice has changed.  There is nothing quite like hearing him sing.  Or play guitar?  I can’t remember!

#672: “The”

GETTING MORE TALE #672: “The”

In the spring of 1996, the Record Store chain expanded to its third location. This was a life-changer for me, as it was my store — the store that I had been assigned to manage.  I spent eight years at that location, and that’s where most of Record Store Tales came from.  Myself and a young employee who was obsessed with Pink Floyd stocked the place.  It took weeks to manually clean, input and price thousands of used CDs.  We had fun working in a closed store away from the public, but the used CD stock we opened with was very monotonous.  It was just overflow crap from the other stores; a lot of the same-old-same-old.

When training the new young Floyd fanboy, the Boss told him, “When you enter a band’s name that starts with ‘The’, skip the word ‘The’.”  This makes sense for three reasons:

  1. Speed of data entry.
  2. Saving on the cost of expensive Dymo tape for the labeling gun (for the header cards).
  3. Alphabetical listings becoming much more tedious and cumbersome when scrolling through hundreds of “The” bands.

It’s pretty logical.

  • BLACK CROWES = The Black Crowes
  • FABULOUS THUNDERBIRDS = The Fabulous Thunderbirds
  • FUGEES = The Fugees
  • KINKS = The Kinks
  • SEX PISTOLS = The Sex Pistols

This worked especially well with Fugees and the young guy’s favourite band, Pink Floyd.  Both artists had a “The” in their name in the past.  You don’t call them “The Pink Floyd” but it was certainly possible you’d see something when they still had the “The”.  Dropping the “The” on our header cards kept things simple.

The young fella got it, but followed it a little too closely.

One of his header cards said simply:

  • THE

“What is this one?” I asked and he showed me a CD by The The.

I told him to change it to The The, but he didn’t get it.  The Boss told him to drop the “The” on every header card.  But the header card didn’t make sense without it.  He wouldn’t change it, so I did it myself.

It seemed pretty clear to me then, and still does now.  The name “The The” just doesn’t make sense on a header card when it’s just “The”.  Tell me I’m wrong.

I was at Sunrise Records the other day, where I found The Best of Sword on CD.*  I eagerly put it under my arm, since I was missing the three previously unreleased bonus tracks.  (In case you didn’t know, Sword recently reunited and are recording a brand new studio album.)  But guess where I found the CD?  Or, rather, guess what two bands were filed together under the same name?

  • SWORD

Sword is from near Montreal, Quebec.  The Sword is another band altogether, from Austin Texas.  They both play heavy metal but are nothing alike.  In this case, there need to be two header cards, and one needs the word “The”.  It’s another rare exception.  The Sunrise store should have made these two header cards:

  • SWORD
  • THE SWORD

Even better:

  • SWORD (Montreal band)
  • THE SWORD (Texas band)

But clearly nobody who worked there knows enough about either band to see this.

A customer who enjoys The Sword could be very disappointed by picking up The Best of Sword.  Likewise, a fan of Sword might have thought the live Greetings From… CD was a reunion CD by the French Canadian metalers.

This is why it is critical to have staff who know music.  It’s the kind of proficiency that in our insta-knowledge internet era, most people don’t maintain anymore.  Proper header cards were a problem when I was managing the old Record Store too, and it was the same root cause:  It’s hard to find staff who know and care about this stuff.  And it’s not impossible to learn it.  The truth is, if I were a young The Sword fan today I would already know there was another band called Sword, because I would have stumbled upon their albums and looked them up on Wikipedia.

You could take this header card business too far, of course.  Just as you don’t need both “Pink Floyd” and “The Pink Floyd”, a record store doesn’t need two Queensryches or two L.A. Guns.  But you do need two Swords…with “The” and without.

* Here I am nitpicking about proper filing of header cards, when I should be complaining about the mistakes on this Sword CD.  Right there, on the back and inside covers, is a massive typo:  “Get It Whole You Can”.  Inside, the liner notes make the classic “there/their” screw-up.  Can’t believe nobody caught these before they went to print, but there it is.

 

 

#671: A Clockwork Orange

Expanding on Record Store Tales Part 58 – Klassic Kwotes VII

 

 

GETTING MORE TALE #671: A Clockwork Orange

“Do you like the drugs?” asked the creepy customer looking for the A Clockwork Orange soundtrack.

Let’s back up a bit.

One of our early employees, Scott, made a critical error one Sunday at the Record Store.  This is a great lesson for every retail employee, everywhere worldwide.  Never, ever, ever tell a customer that you have something if you can’t sell it to them.  Just lie.  Claim you don’t have it.  If you say, “We have it, but I can’t sell it to you,” then you are opening a potentially big can ‘o worms.

A very creepy dude came in one afternoon asking for the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange by Wendy Carlos.  It is a potent mix of classical music and synthesizer compositions.  Beethoven was a major part of the film’s plot, and Beethoven is also a huge chunk of the soundtrack.  This customer wanted the soundtrack to psych him up for his court date.

That’s right.  For his court date.

Too much information?  Customers often shared with us the weirdest details of their lives.  We didn’t need to know he wanted A Clockwork Orange to pump himself up for court.

Thinking he was being helpful, Scott said, “Yes we have a used copy, we just bought it today.  But we have to hold it for 15 days before we can sell it.”

Scott was an honest guy.  According to the bi-laws, all used inventory had to be held for a 15 day waiting period.  In a business where buying and selling stolen goods was always a danger, this helped protect us, and any victims of theft.  15 days gave the cops time to go over our purchase reports and see if anything matched up.  If they did, then we already took the seller’s ID.  The cops can track the thieves that way.

The 15 day holding period was standard but not all stores honoured it.  We did, without fail.  There was no breaking the 15 day hold.  Not even for your court date.

The creepy guy tried to cajole Scott into selling the CD early and wouldn’t let up. He needed it before the court date, not after!  He had to get psyched up!  So much was riding on this one CD.  The soundtrack was still somewhat rare as a used CD.  The 1998 reissue was yet to come.

Eventually the creep tried to bribe Scott.  “Do you like the drugs?” he asked, implying he could get Scott anything he needed.

To his credit, Scott didn’t budge, though he certainly wished he never told the guy about A Clockwork Orange in the first place.  The customer asked to speak to the manager instead (me).  He came back then next day when I was working.

The guy walked in, wearing a green suit and carrying a briefcase.  He told me the whole story about how he “needed” that CD to get ready for court, but that nobody else in town had it.  He begged me for the CD, though with me he neglected to ask if I “like the drugs”.  He even said he’d pay over sticker price, but there was nothing I could do.

Scott was a little shaken by the creep.  It’s not every day you are solicited at your workplace by a drug dealer bound for court.  I can’t help it, but I think of him every single time I see the soundtrack for A Clockwork Orange.

Oh, and by the way:  he did buy the CD when the 15 day waiting period was up!  I didn’t ask how his court date went.  Apparently well enough.