RSTs Mk II: Getting More Tale

#558: Easter Eggs

GETTING MORE TALE #558: Easter Eggs

“Easter eggs” – Hidden content that you have to really search to find.  Often refers to hidden DVD/Blu-ray bonus features.  The first DVD Easter egg I heard of was on the original “steelbook” version of Terminator 2.  If you go to the right menu and punch in the exact date of Judgment Day, you can access a super-extra-extended version of the film, only visible in this specific way.  Another great DVD Easter egg was on Fellowship of the Ring.  Click around, and you will find a clip from the MTV movie awards where Jack Black has pierced his own wiener with the One Ring.

The term “Easter eggs” is common vocabulary today, and has expanded to include secret cameos or information in films too.  Recent examples:  The appearance of the droid Chopper from Star Wars: Rebels in the new film Rogue One.  Or brief glimpse of Lexcorp trucks, in Man of Steel.  They’re designed not to be immediately noticed, but only detected by die-hard fans after repeat viewings.

The old Record Store has Easter eggs too, so secret that I don’t think anyone who still works there even knows about them.  But they’re still there.

When I first began Record Store Tales, I made a decision to never publicly identify the name of the store.  For that reason, I’ll remain vague.  Back in the olden days when everybody more or less got along, at least two Easter eggs were hidden somewhere on the store website.  They were nods and winks at two employees:  myself, and one other guy who had been there a long time.  They are still there, hidden unless you know where to look.  They were never removed even after both of us left.

There is one more Easter egg, that only two people know about:  Tom (co-founder of Sausagefest) and myself.   Tom owned a franchise at the time.  When he eventually moved on to something else, he asked me to do him a favour.  He wanted to leave his mark in some way on the place.  I can understand that.  Tom, T-Rev, a couple others, and I put our blood, sweat and tears into that store.  It wouldn’t be right to call us “original members” or “founding fathers”, because there was only one owner who started it all.  T-Rev and I weren’t owners, we had no stakes.  It was all just pure passion.  We were there in the very early days as we made the baby steps.  We contributed all our energy to that place, helping to build it and make it grow.  I can’t speak for Tom, but I personally am very proud of that.  Tom pushed to be the first one that carried vinyl.  T-Rev helped actually build the stores, putting up shelving and all the works.  I trained dozens of people and came up with the idea of a store newsletter.  It’s not as if they have a “wall of fame” with our pictures on it.  Tom leaving his mark seems pretty justifiable.

So, he asked me to sneak something in there, and I did.  Tom’s little tribute is still on the website.  Only he and I know where to look.  His franchise was always kickass, and he personally supplied me with plenty of great rock from there, including autographed Helix records, some Foo Fighters singles and a rare live Judas Priest.  He had a 25 cent bin of vinyl that always had good stuff in it.  Let’s all raise our Romulan ale to a true rock and roll animal, the mighty Tom.

#557: Just Joking

GETTING MORE TALE #557: Just Joking

Ever heard a joke that made you almost too uncomfortable to laugh?

In my second year of university, I was in a history class and one of the students missed a previous lesson.  He asked if he could borrow some notes, so my friend Tim offered.  “Thanks!” he responded, and then added jokingly, “Hey, who says white people never help out black people?”  Yes, he was black, and Tim and I were white.  We laughed, but a part of us felt like laughing at that joke was taboo.  It clearly wasn’t, he was obviously just kidding, but it hit that grey area of discomfort.

Here is an example from the Record Store.  One of our regular customers named himself “Richard the Indian”.  Super nice guy, usually easy to deal with.  Loved heavy metal.  He had a native status card proving he’s indigenous and entitling him to a tax discount, but he also absolutely looked it.  He had long straight black hair, and wizened eyes.  Even though he referred to himself as “Richard the Indian”, I didn’t like calling him that to his face.  It didn’t seem “right” to me.  So, he was usually just addressed as “Richard”.

He listened to his music on a CD Discman.  He was always have problems with it, and I saw pieces falling off it once. It was “a piece of junk”, according to him.  “This thing must have been made by Indians!” he joked, playing on the stereotype that all Indians are drunk and lazy.

Do you laugh?  I let out a slight uncomfortable chuckle.  Some of the staff felt uncomfortable too.  “I know he’s just kidding, but it makes me feel weird when he makes Indian jokes,” someone told me.  “I feel like I should laugh, but also shouldn’t.”

The ins and outs of retail are labyrinthine.  There have been jokes that flat-out were not funny.  One guy thought he was hilarious with this joke:  Q: What does Marvin Gaye have in common with one of his records?  A: They’re both black and have a hole in the middle.  That joke got no laughs because it wasn’t funny at all.  In other situations, I have laughed and then realized too late that the customer wasn’t joking.

So what do you do?  If you work in retail, when in doubt, don’t laugh.  Do not.  At worst you’ll appear humourless, at best you’ll avoid the wrong reaction!

 

#556: Shazam Kazaam! It’s a Fire in the Sky!

GETTING MORE TALE #556: Shazam Kazaam! It’s a Fire in the Sky!

Do you recall a 1996 kids’ movie called Kazaam starring Shaquille O’Neal as a genie? If you’re like me, the answer is “no”, because you’re too old.  From browsing the shelves of your local video stores, over the years you may have seen the VHS or DVD for Kazaam. It was a legendary flop, but not enough to kill Shaq’s movie career permanently. In 1997, he starred in DC Comics’ Steel (technically a Superman spinoff).

Something strange started happening a few years ago on the internet (home of the strange).  People came out of the woodwork remembering a completely different movie: Not Kazaam, but Shazam, starring Sinbad instead of Shaq, as a genie. A simple case of convergent movie making a-la Deep Impact and Armageddon? Not this time. Sinbad says he never made such a movie, and there is no record of such a thing ever being made, anywhere by anybody.  Not in this universe.

This isn’t one or two people who say they’ve seen the nonexistent Shazam. It’s hundreds of people (so they claim), and some have vivid memories. A man named Don, who used to work at his uncle’s video store, says he distinctly remembers the two copies he had in stock. He claims that he had to watch it many times, because customers told him it was defective and he had to check.

kazaam-shazam

This kind of mass delusion has been called the “Mandela Effect”, named for the strange phenomenon of multiple people who remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s. Some think they may be transplanted natives of an alternate universe where the movie did exist, or Mandela did die in prison. Some think the movie (and every written record of it) was destroyed on purpose (somehow). Of course the truth is, these folks are just mixed up. They’re confusing something that Sinbad did with the Shaq movie, and people have even found pictures of Sinbad wearing a genie-like turban (from a 1995 Sinbad the Sailor movie marathon he hosted) that may have increased the confusion. No alternate universes necessary.

The simplest explanation is that memory is very fluid, and I have had my own experience similar to this. It too involved two movies with similarities.

In 1993, the sci-fi thriller Fire in the Sky was released and I was an instant fan. Alien abductions are such a neat subject, and Fire in the Sky depicted one of the most famous. Travis Walton disappeared in 1975. When he reappeared, he told a tale of being taken on a craft by strange beings. The movie elaborated on this with a scene set on the alien space ship.

The harrowing scene had Walton on an operating table with all sorts of alien mechanisms ready to poke and prod. The scene came to a terrifyingly sudden end as a sharp metal needle-like device made its way to his open eye. It touched the very surface of his eye…and jump cut to Travis waking up back on Earth!

The sequence seared itself into my memory. What a scare! I remembered the whole thing very clearly.  How could you forget it?  A few years after, I bought a used copy on VHS. I watched the whole thing on the edge of my seat. I cringed and waited for the spaceship scene with the needle and the eyeball.  I remembered vividly. My minds eye could see the needle indenting the surface of his eye….

But that wasn’t on the VHS version. The needle never touched his eye. The scene cut away prematurely, and ended before that happened…but I REMEMBERED!  I had seen it.  I knew what I had seen, because I have an “eye thing”, and stuff touching eyes generally grosses me out.  I don’t wear contacts for that reason.

I returned the tape to the store and explained it was an edited version with some content removed. I put myself on a waiting list for another copy. Perhaps the widescreen version would be un-edited.

Every copy of the VHS was the same. None featured the full contact eyeball scene.  Can you guess why?

Because the shot, as I remembered it, wasn’t in that movie.  It existed…but it wasn’t in Fire in the Sky.

It was in Star Trek: First Contact. In the flashback scene when Picard is abducted by the Borg, he is operated on. A needle makes its way to his eye…and actually touches the surface before Picard awakes. Picard was just dreaming! But that was the origin of the eyeball-touching that I had misremembered as being in Fire in the Sky. I was so sure that I returned every tape that didn’t have the shot, but it was me that was wrong!

 

Two science fiction movies, two alien abductions, two eye-related medical procedures (both on the right eye)…combined into one memory.

I can understand the confusion of the Shazam/Kazaam people. I have experienced it myself. You can be absolutely certain of something until confronted by the real memory, as I was. If anybody else saw the same two movies I did, then I bet at least one of them confused the same two scenes too.

Personally, I’m happy to not live in a universe where Sinbad made a genie movie.

 

#555.5: A Short Visit to Sonic Boom

GETTING MORE TALE #555.5: A Short Visit to Sonic Boom

Yesterday I took Mrs. LeBrain to Toronto to see a neurosurgeon.  It was a great meeting; very positive, but we will get more into that in a future tale.   (Look for an upcoming Getting More Tale story called “Seize the Day” if you want to know more.)   After the meeting with the doctor, she had some tests.  I didn’t need to be around for the those, so with a couple hours to kill, I went down to Sonic Boom on Spadina.  I was accompanied by Mrs. LeBrain’s Mom, who insisted we cab to the store.  It was a rainy miserable day outside.  Wet, cold, windy and unpleasant.  The cab ride wasn’t unwelcome.

I’m glad I shaved my beard down to a goatee the other day, because almost every dude in that store looked the same.  Bearded hipsters buying vinyl, left right and center, lookalikes all!  I tuned out the background noise and focused on the cool.  Upstairs they had two colouring books I almost considered getting.  Do you know anyone who is a huge fan of either James Franco or Benedict Cumberbatch?  If so, I am happy to report that Sonic Boom had colouring books of both.  (They also had Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation.)  I spied the new Mastodon among the new releases, but headed downstairs where the real treasures usually lay.

Although I put in a Herculean effort, there was little to be found.  Maybe I have too many CDs, because everywhere I flipped it seemed to be “got it, got it, got it, got it…”  Aaron asked me to look for Danny Michel and a few other titles.  Nothing to be found.  I was struck by how just about everything seems to be reissued on vinyl today.  The Spice Girls’ first album, Spice.  I fail to comprehend.  It doesn’t compute.  I considered buying some Kiss reissues, but I didn’t really want to come home with something I already owned.

With some persistence I did liberate three titles:

  1. The Sword – High Country (CD, used, $9.99)
  2. Queen – The Game (2 CD remaster, used, $9.99)
  3. Rush – Agora Ballroom, Cleveland Ohio, May 1975 (vinyl, new, $32.99)

The Queen set was in the recent arrivals, and that is a nice score.  I’m nowhere near complete with my Queen remasters, but when I can pick them off one by one, used?  That’s the best way.  The Rush on the other hand is something of a chance I’m taking.  This is a radio broadcast vinyl, and I’ve never bought one of those before.  They had several available.  I don’t have anything live from Rush in 1975, so that was the key factor.  Also a non-album track:  “Bad Boy”, a Larry Williams cover.  180 gram coloured vinyl to boot.  Should be good times.

Not a knockout shopping excursion, but not a waste of time either.  We walked back to the hospital (although Mrs. LeBrain’s Mom would have preferred a cab) and got soaked, but it’s good to stretch the legs when it’s a long day of driving and sitting.  Besides, we enjoyed looking at the Toronto scenery.  The fruit and vegetable markets smelled great.  They even had bonsai trees.

Back in the hospital waiting room, I was able to do a little research for my Kiss Re-Review series in progress.  Guess which album I have to write up next.

I don’t want to use the word “disappointing” for this Sonic Boom trip, because I am very pleased with my new albums.  I told Uncle Meat I wanted some more The Sword, and Sonic Boom delivered.  I’m more surprised than disappointed that I was only able to scrounge up three finds this time.  Every visit is different, and I’m sure that next time I return (either in the fall with Aaron, or sooner for more tests) it will be another story.  Sonic Boom is still an absolute must for any music fan visiting Toronto.  Don’t miss out, and be sure to check out the new arrival bins.  They are often the key to many great finds.

As always Sonic Boom gets 5/5 stars.  And so does Mrs. LeBrain for being a tough-as-nails trooper.

 

#555: How to Be Annoying

GETTING MORE TALE #555: How to Be Annoying

Nobody really liked working with Dandy.  What Dandy did was decide who he liked and who he didn’t.  If he liked you, he wouldn’t annoy you repeatedly.  If he didn’t like you, then he just didn’t care – he’d do whatever he wanted, the more annoying the better.  One or two higher ranked people never saw his annoying side.  For the rest of us, he’d act like an idiot on a dime.

One of his most annoying habits was dancing at work.  He’d put on one of his favourite bands – the Dandy Warhols, or the Toilet Boys – and dance around the store.  And when he danced, his white belly would pop out from his too-tight black T-shirt – not a pretty sight.  I’ll admit I’m not the most svelte of specimens but I keep my white belly under ample amounts of shirt!  I’ll never forget the sight of him belly dancing when the Toilet Boys came on.

He also liked to embarrass other people as much as possible.  For example, when Joe Strummer died.  Customers were jumping on the Clash bandwagon, but I really didn’t know anything about the band.  I knew the hits from having heard them in the store, and there were songs that I like. I know one of the drummers (Terry Chimes) was briefly in Black Sabbath.  But I knew next to nothing else about the band members.  Due to his name (Strummer) I assumed Joe was the guitar player.  To this day I only own one Clash album (London Calling).  It just wasn’t my background.  My youth was a heady mix of British and North American classic rock and metal, and I never even bought a punk rock album until the mid-90s (Never Mind the Bollocks was my first).  Once Dandy realized I didn’t know who Joe Strummer’s was, he made sure to tell everybody.  Loudly.

“Hey get this!  We were listening to the Clash – Mike thinks Joe Strummer is the guitar player!  HAH HAH HAH!  He doesn’t even know!  HAH HAH HAH!”

But then the next day he would be nice as pie to me, and picking on somebody else.  Usually the infamous Spoogecakes.

Spoogecakes and Dandy weren’t exactly two of a kind.  She liked Lord of the Rings, Finger 11 and the Showboat soundtrack (we’ll talk about that one another day).  He liked drugs, makeup, and whatever was on-trend.  The only thing they had in common was annoying me.  Like for example, one time Spoogecakes hid my hat somewhere in the store and thought it was freaking hilarious.  I found out later on that she had a crush on me and this was an attention-getting game.  Kind of like something you’d do in grade school, annoying the girl you like for attention because you didn’t know what else to do.

It was Dandy who coined her original nickname:  the Angry Walrus.  His opinion was that she had that kind of face, and always seemed angry.  (She did definitely always seem angry.)  Apparently the name stuck immediately.  It was like a freight train that could not be stopped and I was the last one to hear about it, because I was the manager and nobody wanted to tell me.

Dandy:  “Damn, you have me scheduled to work with the Angry Walrus tonight.  That sucks.”

Me:  “Who the fuck is the ‘Angry Walrus’?”

I was so frustrated with both of them that I really didn’t even give a fuck anymore.  Thankfully I was soon transferred over to another location, and I never had to work with either again.  Thank fuck!

#554: LaLoofah

GETTING MORE TALE #554: LaLoofah

Ever had a nickname that you acquired accidentally that you didn’t care for?  Who hasn’t?

What about a loofah, have you ever heard of those? It’s a spongey thing that some people use to clean themselves in the shower.

On June 5 2014, the subject of loofahs came up during the Tedious Tiresome Trivia segment on The Craig Fee Show on 107.5 DaveRocks. Craig didn’t know what a “loofah mitt” was. Having seen one in my own shower (not my loofah I assure you), I tried to be helpful and sent him an email. I probably should have clarified that it wasn’t mine, because what did I get for my kind gesture? Mockery!

His response, which was live on air, was that I needed to renew my “Man Card”.

I let him know that the loofah mitt “is not mine, sillypants” (exact words). It was too late, the damage had been done. Thousands heard his mockery of my Man Card status. I made the mistake of speaking up, and Craig wasn’t about to let it go. On June 10 he re-ignited the loofah issue, again stating that I needed to get my Man Card updated. The nickname “LaLoofah” began to take off. If we hashtagged it, it would have been trending.  On June 25, DaveRocks listener Duncan dubbed me with his own modified version of the nickname: “Optimus LoofaBrain”.  That one’s not bad.

The LaLoofah nickname only died recently. That’s why I’m bringing it back. I hated the name but now miss the attention. Can’t stand my reviews or opinions? Then go ahead – call me “LaLoofah”, the derogatory nickname of choice for your friendly neighborhood LeBrain!

 

Optimus LoofaBrain

#553: Jesus’ Lyric

GETTING MORE TALE #553: Jesus’ Lyric

Many record store employees drink.  Record store people are just people, and some people drink.  And some drink, a lot. I was never much of a drinker, not until I moved in with T-Rev in ’98. Then I caught up pretty quickly (Captain Morgan’s and Coke, not beer), but I still couldn’t compete with those guys. (In fact, I still remember when I went out for my 30th birthday. I was accused by the Operations Manager/Bully of “faking” that I was drunk. I’m a light weight, and she was just a meany.)

Like me, some of the younger folks, they just couldn’t pace themselves.  The difference is they’d be drinking while having to open the store the following morning.  A lot of them would be out partying, and then we’d get the inevitable phone call the next morning. “I’m sick. Can you cover for me today?” It happened more than once, not naming names.

One guy, who helped me set up the first store that I managed, came into work hungover so many damn times. The first time, I had to send him home. He was absolutely useless. He was actually trying to work with his head down touching the counter. He was slowing me down, so I sent him home and somebody else came in.

The same guy came in hungover one Saturday morning, later on, after we opened. He had his head down on the counter when a customer approached him. He raised his head.

jasons-lyric“Uhh, excuse me. Do you have the soundtrack to Jason’s Lyric?”

The hungover employee stumbled over to the computer.

“It’s a movie soundtrack,” clarified the customer, seeing Mr. Hangover was struggling.

“No. We don’t have it.”

The customer asked him to check to see if one of our other stores had it, so he picked up the phone.  The customer went back to browsing while Mr. Hangover was making the call.   We only had three stores at the time.   One of them had Jason’s Lyric used on CD!

Mr. Hangover then walked out onto the floor to tell the customer about the CD. Only problem:  he didn’t remember who asked.   Or the exact name of the CD he asked for.  So Mr. Hangover approached somebody who looked right.

Walking up to the unsuspecting stranger he said, “Hey man. They got your Jesus’ Lyric over there.”

“What?”

“They got your Jesus’ Lyric soundtrack CD at the other store that you asked for.”

Overhearing this, the correct customer identified himself, and things got sorted.  No big surprise ending here:  Mr. Hangover was let go soon after!

#552: Alive!

GETTING MORE TALE #552: Alive!

In the spring of 1996, we opened up the big store that I managed. It was our biggest store to date. There were a lot of good times at that location, and hundreds of incredible musical finds. Around the same time, I began replacing my cassette collection with CDs in earnest. Cassettes don’t have the longevity or the sound quality of a CD. Most of my tapes were starting to sound awful, especially the ones purchased from Columbia House, who manufactured their own at a lesser cost.

Upgrading my Kiss cassette collection to CD was an early priority. Some of the first Kiss tapes I bought, like Asylum, had degraded so much they were unlistenable. The early (Canadian) CD releases had issues too; they were not perfect. Both Hotter Than Hell and Alive II (disc one) had severe problems with digital noise in specific spots. On Alive II it was “Love Gun” that was the issue. There was a terrible scratchy sound encoded onto the CD.

The differences between my boss and myself were obvious the day that Kiss Alive! came in stock, used.  It came in one of those old “fat” CD cases.  It was the first chance I had to buy the first Alive! at an affordable used price, in such great condition. The boss and I had very different personalities, almost opposites. I was a music obsessive who collected things and wanted to know all the obscure facts. He liked music but just wanted to sell CDs. I grabbed that copy of Alive! and handed it to the boss to ring in with my staff discount.

 

He sighed and gave me a look. “Don’t you already have this?”

He sounded like my dad. When I’d come home, he’d say, “More Kiss? Don’t you already have Kiss?” My boss had a lot in common with my dad.

I had the tape, but the cassette had the songs in a different order.  This was a fairly common practice.  Song order would be swapped around on cassettes, to keep sides one and two about equal in length. That reduces the amount of actual tape used to manufacture it, and therefore cuts costs. It would be cool to have a CD copy of Alive! to listen to the songs in the original order.

“I have it on cassette and LP,” I explained.  “I listen to the tape, but this CD is different.  The songs are in a different order,” I finished.

He looked at me again and responded in a mocking tone, “Hey Mike, look at my shoes. The left one is different from the right one. Do you want to buy it?”

“No because I don’t collect shoes,” I answered. “I collect Kiss.”

He shrugged with frustration. I really think he was more just pissed off that I had taken some good stock for myself.

Oh well.

Staff taking “good stock” was an ongoing issue, but because getting stock at a discount was one of the established perks of working at a used CD store, there wasn’t much that could be done. I’ll give him credit; the boss considered the staff discount to be part and parcel of the job for all of us.  He eventually put a limit on how much we could buy at a time. Meanwhile, my dad would look at my collection and say “sell, sell, sell!”

He ended up getting that copy of Kiss Alive! back, when I upgraded to the 1997 remastered edition. And then he ended up getting that 1997 remastered edition back when I upgraded to the Kiss Alive! 1975-2000 box set.

He might not have understood my wants and desires as a collector, and he may have complained about me taking all the good stock, but he ended up making money when I sold back my equally good stock. No harm, no foul. Hopefully, I have bought Kiss Alive! for the final time.

#551: “You’re Wrong on Unmasked” (Intro to the KISS RE-Review series!)

GETTING MORE TALE #551: “You’re Wrong on Unmasked“
(Introduction to the kiss-logo Re-Review series)

When mikeladano.com launched five years ago on March 9 of 2012, one of the earliest projects on hand was posting a complete series of Kiss reviews.  This included every compilation I’d ever listened to, every studio album, every official live album, every B-side.  As comprehensive as it was intended to be, it was not 100% original.  Most of it was recycled from old reviews I wrote long ago and posted elsewhere.  Posting the old Kiss reviews was a good way to kick-start the site with loads of content right off the bat.

There was, however, a certain sense of dissatisfaction, as there often is with any old writing that is repurposed for something else.

Several months after the series was completed, I received a text from a girl I knew named Lee.  Out of the blue, she sent me this Kiss-related note:

“You’re wrong on Unmasked”.

“Pardon?” I texted back.  We’d never talked about Kiss even once.  She’d didn’t read my stuff.  I didn’t get it.

“You’re wrong on Unmasked.”  Then a followup: “Eric told me to text that to you,” she added.  “I’m not sure what it means.”

Ah, that made sense.  Lee played darts with Uncle “Eric” Meat, legendary Kiss fan and one of the Jedi masters who instructed me in the ways of the Rock.   Apparently, Uncle Meat felt I was too harsh on the second of Kiss’ two disco albums.  He urged me to one day revisit it.  Having moved on to other series since (including Iron Maiden, Van Halen, Aerosmith, and King’s X) I wasn’t too interested at the time of going back and doing any Kiss over again.

Still…I’ve improved as a writer since Kiss.  Some of those reviews are over a decade old.  Plus, the other series (particularly Van Halen) were so much, much better than Kiss.  That text message planted the idea in my head of one day re-doing all of my Kiss reviews fresh, from scratch, the way they should have been done.

So that’s what we’ll be doing:  Bigger, better, fresher.  The old reviews are fine, but feelings change, even in as short a period as five years.  Sometimes you might feel different about an album from day to day, even for an album you’ve owned for 30 years!  It will be interesting to compare.  The new reviews will be bigger and beefier, with more info and more photos.  Plus, Uncle Meat will even be joining me on some albums to add his own ratings and comments!    Just as a remastered CD forces you to buy the album again, my “remastered” reviews will hopefully force you to read about Kiss one more time.  There will even be a review of a rare officially released Kiss song that I was unaware of when I did the first series!  (It was on a tribute album, recently acquired and also featuring other luminaries such as Alice Cooper and Def Leppard.)

For these reasons, and in the effort of creating a truly high-quality series of reviews deserving of the Hottest Band in the Land, we will be taking one last in-depth look at the official Kiss catalogue.  One more time!  (It won’t be necessary to re-do budget compilations like 20th Century Masters, but everything significant from Wicked Lester to Sonic Boom will be given a second look.  Reviews from Monster onwards were fresh from the start, so we won’t need to look at those a second time either.  Besides, we have already posted reviews for three separate editions of Monster!)  There may even be room for some additional reviews outside the traditional discography.

2017 promises to be the year of  kiss-logo at mikeladano.com.  Get ready to shout it out loud!

Original KISS reviews are below:

KISS – 20th Century Masters –  The DVD Collection (2004)
KISS – 40 (2014 Japanese with bonus track)
KISS – 40 (“Best of Kiss 40” 2015 Universal Japan)
KISS – Alive! 1975–2000 (2006, 4 discs, Best Buy bonus CD, iTunes bonus track)
KISS – Alive! (1975)
KISS – Alive II (1978)
KISS – Alive III (1993)
KISS – Alive IV: Kiss Symphony (2-disc edition, 2003)
KISS – Alive 35: Live at Credit Union Centre, Saskatoon SK, Nov 10 2009 (Concert Online)
KISS – Animalize Live Uncensored (VHS, 1985)
KISS – Animalize (1984)
KISS – Asylum (1985)
KISS – The Best Of Kiss (Green Series) (2008), Playlist Your Way (2008), Legends of Rock (2009), Superstar Series (2009)
KISS – Best Of Solo Albums (German import, 1979)
KISS – The Box Set (Deluxe mini guitar case edition, 2001)
KISS – Carnival of Souls (The Final Sessions) (1997)
KISS – Crazy Nights (1987)
KISS – Creatures of the Night (1982, 1985, 1997)
KISS – Deadly Demos (1995 bootleg CD)
KISS – Destroyer (1976)
KISS – Destroyer (Resurrected) (2012, originally released 1976)
KISS – Destroyer (Resurrected) (2012 Universal, replacement CD)
KISS – “Don’t Touch My Ascot” (2015)
KISS – Double Platinum (1978)
KISS – Double Platinum (1978, 1997 foil embossed reissue)
KISS – Dressed To Kill (1975)
KISS – Dynasty (1979, 1997 Japanese import)
KISS – Exposed (VHS 1987, DVD 2002)
KISS – “God Gave Rock ‘N’ Roll To You II” (1991 CD single)
KISS – Gold (2005, Universal)
KISS – Greatest Hits (1997, Europe only)
KISS – Greatest Kiss (1997 European, Japanese, North American versions)
KISS – Greatest Live Hits (2015 Concert Live limited edition)
KISS – “Hell or Hallelujah” (2012 single)
KISS – Hot In the Shade (1989)
KISS – Hotter Than Hell (1974)
KISS – Icon and Icon 2 (2010)
KISS – Ikons (2008, Universal)
KISS – Jigoku-Retsuden (2008) (aka Kiss Klassics)
KISS – Killers (1981)
KISS – Kiss (1974)
KISS – Kiss Rocks Vegas (3 CD/1 Blu-ray Japanese import, 2016)
KISS – Kissin’ Time in San Fransisco (1974 or 1975 bootleg)
KISS – Lick It Up (1983)
KISS – Love Gun (1977)
KISS – Love Gun (2014 Deluxe edition)
KISS – Monster (2012 CD, iTunes editions) Reviews by LeBrain and Tommy Morais
KISS – Monster (Japan Tour Edition bonus CD)
KISS – MTV Unplugged (1996)
KISS – Music From The Elder (1981, 1997 remaster)
KISS – The Originals & The Originals II (1976 & 1978)
KISS – Psycho Circus (1998)
KISS – “Psycho Circus” (CD/VHS single, 1998)
KISS – Revenge (1992)
KISS – The Ritz On Fire (2013 Gold Fish, recorded 1988)
KISS – Rock and Roll Over (1976)
KISS vs MOMOIRO CLOVER Z – “Samurai Son” / “Yume no Ukiyo ni Saitemina” (2015 CD singles)
KISS – Smashes, Thrashes & Hits (1988)
KISS – Sonic Boom (2009 Walmart exclusive version)
KISS – Unholy Kisses (1992 bootleg)
KISS – Unmasked (1980)
KISS – The Very Best Of (Universal, 2002)
KISS – Wicked Lester / Eddie Kramer Demos (1972 – 1973, CD bootleg)
KISS – You Wanted the Best, You Got the Best!! (1996, Japanese import, bonus track)
KISS SOLO – Peter Criss (1978)
KISS SOLO – Ace Frehley (1978)
KISS SOLO – Gene Simmons (1978)
KISS SOLO – Paul Stanley (1978)
A KISS Tribute for Cancer Care: A World With Heroes – A 40th Anniversary Celebration (2013)
A KISS Tribute for Cancer Care: A World With Heroes EP (2014)
KISS My Ass: Classic Kiss Regrooved (Official tribute album, 1994)

 

 

 

#550: The Toy

GETTING MORE TALE #550: The Toy

The worst thing about running a “family oriented” used CD store was kids.  Not every kid mind you…just the ones that weren’t attended to by their parents.  Toddlers, seven year olds…whatever. They were hell to deal with, because nine times out of ten, the parents would rather scour our shelves looking for John Mellencamp discs than make sure their kids weren’t destroying the store. T-Rev used to say “People should need a license to have kids,” after witnessing the destruction they can unleash when parents don’t give a shit.

So, some typical store activities for kiddies:

  • Taking discs off the shelves and putting them elsewhere.
  • Running behind the counter and grabbing discs there.  This was especially troublesome.  Discs were in numbered slots.  If Junior takes the disc out and throws it somewhere, you have to look it up in inventory to see what slot it was supposed to be in.  How do you do that with a CD that has no title or artist printed on it?  Happened more frequently than you think.  I called those discs “lost soldiers”.
  • Just running behind the counter because why not.
  • Screaming.
  • Throwing things.
  • Spilling food or drinks.
  • Trying to attach themselves to my legs.

Talking to the parents was useless. They’d usually yell something like, “Stop that!” before turning their backs to look for some Tim McGraw discs.

So we came up with a plan to deal with it. A little toy for the kids to quietly play with in the corner! A little hobby center for the toddlers. A few kids did play quietly with it, while others just fought over it. Battles, screaming, with parents deeply immersed in the Bargain Bin looking for MuchDance ’98.

Within two weeks, the toy had developed a gross, slimy coating that you couldn’t clean off. It was disgusting; it looked like kids had been licking it (they probably were). And wouldn’t you know it? The lovely children that used to throw things around the store found something new to throw: the toy and its parts! It could and did end up anywhere in the store. Including begind the counter.  We bought that toy so kids would be occupied and leave us alone. The damned thing was way more work than it was worth.

What a disaster. I hated that fucking thing.