RSTs Mk II: Getting More Tale

#451: The Summer Sausage Rule

SAUSAGE

GETTING MORE TALE #451: The Summer Sausage Rule

The owner at the old Record Store was a very smart man.  He learned from everybody and absorbed everything.  He was a virtual encyclopedia of retail do’s and don’ts.  I don’t think anybody would be likely to meet someone who knows more about retail and how to thrive in difficult times.

There were many memorable lessons that I learned there, but one of the rules he tried to drill into managers was the “Summer Sausage Rule”.  This was a display tip that he learned from Mac Voisin, founder of M&M Meats.  This company is now one of the largest frozen food retailers in Canada.  They grew from one to 425 franchises.  You can see why the Boss admired their model, especially when we went into our own (less successful) franchising phase.  We couldn’t duplicate their success by selling used CDs, but the Summer Sausage Rule was pretty simple and easy to apply at a store level.

Here’s the rule:

Mac Voisin noticed that if he displayed only a small number of summer sausage (like one or two links) for sale, nobody would buy them.  There’s something psychological about it.  Customers are less likely to buy one, if there are only a couple out to buy.  Maybe they think “this product can’t be very good,” if there are only one or two out.  Or, perhaps it was, “There are only two left, which means all the best sausage is probably gone.” When Mac displayed dozens of pieces of summer sausage as opposed to just one or two, they would fly off the shelves.  Same product, same store; just different quantities on display.

Therefore, the Summer Sausage Rule, as it applied to CDs and CD accessories was “display as many as you can.”  If you’re selling CD wallets, don’t just price one or two and put them out.  Fill the shelves with them.  Same with CD towers.  If you display two dozen, you’ll sell them faster than if you only put out one or two at a time.  Posters, CD cases, CD cleaners – it doesn’t matter.  If you have the stock, then display it en masse.  You will turn them around much more quickly.

The best rules are often the simplest.  This is one rule that actually worked!   Retailers of the world, take note and learn from a once-tiny now-huge frozen food empire!

SAUSAGE

A Word on Summer Sausage

It may surprise longtime readers to know that I am not fond of summer sausage.  Considering I often boast of being a proud annual Sausagefester every summer, you might assume I enjoy all forms of cured spiced meats.  I do not.  Its powerful taste and dense meat* do not appeal to me.  Having said that, I find it fascinating just the same.

The most common summer sausage in this area is made by Schneiders, who make a pork based version.  However this is farm country, and just a few clicks north in St. Jacobs, you can buy it fresh in more varieties.  Keep in mind though, what you are looking at here is basically a fat and salt torpedo.  These things will bomb your guts like no tomorrow, so remember:  moderation!

 

 

*Aaron, your line here ___________________.

#450: Beat Up in a Mascot Suit [VIDEO]

RECORD STORE TALES #450: Beat Up in a Mascot Suit

When I first saw this thing sitting in the Beat Goes On back room, I thought it was one of the most hilarious sights I’d ever be likely to find. For shits and giggles, I offered to wear it one Saturday afternoon, and stand on the sidewalk waving to cars. I quickly changed my mind when one of our staff attempted to dissuade me, by telling her friends to kick my CD-suited-ass. Upper management may have lost respect for me when I backed out, but I didn’t see any of them waving at cars either.

You have no defence inside the suit. Your hands and arms are limited to movement at the wrists, and you lose all peripheral vision. A gang of highschool aged Korn fans would have made short work of me!

One slow evening, I decided to take a break and use the time constructively. I wanted to try on that suit! I went into the back room while leaving Dandy in charge of the register. In the back, working a night shift on our web sales, was Wiseman, who offered to take some pictures and video of the suit.

This is what happened. The events were not staged. I never wore it again!

 

Enjoy.

#449: Paris

PARIS

Paris

The world in general, but Paris specifically, was shaken again by heinous terror on Friday November 13, 2015.  In the misguided name of religion, an apocalyptic cult that we call ISIS or ISIL have attacked the good people of France once more.  But they were surprised by the resilience of the French populace, and by the love of the entire world.

Still shaking, we all still struggle to make sense of these attacks.  The loss of innocent lives, the radical cult with the twisted concept of good and evil and the desire to bring about the “final battle with Rome”, and the fear of what may come next.  We have all spent time thinking about such things.

For some like myself, this attack has crossed a blurry line.  For the first time ever, our precious music was a target.  Josh Homme’s Eagles of Death Metal were playing to a crowd of 1500 people at the Bataclan concert hall.  Little did Homme, or the gleeful concert goers realize, but ISIS had declared their gathering to be one of “pagans”:

“The targets included the Bataclan theatre for exhibitions, where hundreds of pagans gathered for a concert of prostitution and vice.” – official statement from ISIS.

Then, gunmen broke into the venue and executed 89 music fans, including some in wheelchairs.  In the eyes of the terrorists, rock fans are all evil unbelievers, beyond redemption.  To the rest of the sane world, they were simply 1500 people in the wrong place at the wrong time, punished for nothing, lives ended for nothing.  It makes no sense.

Then, we all woke up the next morning.  Bombs fell on Raqqa in Syria, in the name of Paris.  For some, life goes on.  For others, they must now carry on without their loved ones.

Without taking any focus away from where it should be (the innocent), this terror attack feels different than any other in memory.  Rock music used to be a place we could go to escape.   While gun violence (Dimebag) and mass tragedy (the Station House fire) are sadly nothing new at a rock concert, this is the first time rock fans have been specifically targeted by terrorists for the music we like — apparently “prostitution and vice”.  We were already probably all targets anyway, for being the wrong religion, or sexual orientation, or just for holding the wrong beliefs.  Now, 89 of us have been slaughtered, including Nick Alexander, a well-liked merchandise manager for the Eagles of Death Metal, for being at a rock concert.  My friend Mike, who does the same job with Steve Earle, left Paris only hours before the attacks.

Sure, millionaires like Bono have always been trying to get music involved in world affairs.  Music has raised money for the poor and starving, it has raised awareness for a multitude of issues, but ultimately it was really just an escape from the world.  People do not attend a U2 concert to learn how to change the planet.  You can learn that much more affordably by buying a book.  People go to see U2 to witness the light show, the music, and ultimately escape from the outside world for two or three hours.  That’s all it is in the long run, and now that sanctuary has been shattered for some.

Music will still be an escape for most of us.  Most will not let this one attack change our lives, but it feels like a new battle line has been drawn.  Now even we the rock fans, usually under society’s radar, have been attacked and killed.  Expect this to draw us together, not tear us apart.  Unlike the merciless fiends who did this, those hurt will draw strength from the love of the entire world.

Cut us, do we not bleed?  Yes, we do.  We will not stop resisting evil in this world, but now that rock fans are among the specifically calculated dead, it feels different to me.  This time, it feels personal.  ISIS have killed again, but they have also failed again.  The world is stronger than they are.  Love defeats hate.

#433.999: The Aftermath (of the Top 15 on the 15th)

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GETTING MORE TALE #433.999: The Aftermath (of the Top 15 on the 15th)

That “1537” guy can get to be a bit much sometimes.  “Oh you have to listen to this!” or, “Be sure to read that!”  He’s so demanding of our collective time and attention.  The fact that he writes good shit (jatstorey.com) about music with great visuals to boot, well, that’s just window dressing isn’t it?

Back in September, over 20 writers put down our Top 15 of “all time” lists for posterity.  These lists were mostly albums with a few anomolies…like Mr. 1537’s.  No, he wouldn’t be content to sit with the sheep and do a plain ordinary list.  No, he had to stand out from the crowd (as usual) and do something a little different.

Mr. 1537 (just ’37 to his friends) did the Top 15 music books of all time for his list.  It was a quite excellent list featuring the likes of the Stones, the Beatles, the Crue, Hawkind, Chuck Klosterman, and more.  The one that jumped out at me was Mick Wall’s Sympton of the Universe.  Historically speaking, Black Sabbath are a fascinating band.  How many dozen members have Sabbath had over the decades?  The count varies, depending on criteria, but regardless it’s an extremely interesting history.  For a while it was impossible to find anything decent in print.  Mr. 1537 assures us, Mick Wall did right by Sabbath:

“This is a wonderful rollicking tale of the underdog having its day, being neutered by excessive drug use and some appalling choices, triumphing again and then falling prey to being used as pawns in a father/daughter struggle of mythic proportions.”

That right there is a perfect tagline for a rock book, isn’t it?

As mentioned, Mr. 1537 can get to be a bit much sometimes, always trying to convince us to spend more of our money on music (specifically vinyl).  Like we need encouragement?  Music fans have wishlists as long as the day.  We don’t need more added to them, do we?

In steps Mr. 1537 again.  Look what just arrived in the bloody mail.

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It’s Symptom of the Universe, by Mick Wall!  My very own brand new copy!  Now, I suppose he’ll expect me to read it.  See what I mean?  Just a bit too much sometimes!

All joking aside, I can’t wait to get my face into this book.  There is still a lot of Sabbath history that is foggy, and I’m eager to see what research Mick Wall has to clarify the mudification!  The 1980s in particular are a puzzling period, featuring band members from the Clash, Deep Purple (x2), Lita Ford, and just about everybody else.  Wall covers all of this.

Thank you, 1537.  I suppose I should send that parcel of Lego I’ve been sitting on for like 6 months?

Uncle Meat – Top 15 on the 15th

Iron Tom Sharpe – Top 15 on the 15th

James at the KMA – Top 15 on the 15th

Aaron at the KMA – Top 15 on the 15th

#448: Phat Curtis

KILLERANG 2

GETTING MORE TALE #448: Phat Curtis

I started highschool in 1986, and the best days of the week were Thursdays.  They called it “Game Day”.  Thursdays were shortened, and we all got to go home at 2:45 instead of 4:45.  Not only did that mean I would be able to catch the start of the Pepsi Power Hour, but it also meant extra time to goof around!

My best friend Bob and I were walking home from school one Thursday afternoon.  A few days earlier he found something that we dubbed “the Killerang”.  It was actually just a piece of red plastic from a grocery store’s pop bottle plastic crate.  It was kind of shaped like an elongated “E”.  An inner slat from one of those cases had come out and found its way onto the road by which we were walking.  Bob threw it away assuming it was junk, but when he did, that sucker took off and flew, better than a boomerang!  We saw it land far away in a vacant lot.  We both stared at each other at the unexpected aerodynamics of this plastic fork.  We ran after it knowing we’d found a cool toy to play with!  The Killerang.

KILLERANG

Then one Thursday, Bob brought the Killerang to school so we could mess with it on the way home.  Killerang in hand, Bob and I stopped at a park by a local public school that was still in class.  We were going to use their schoolyard to see how far we could get this thing to fly.  Off in the distance was a class of kids watching a football game.  Way, way off in the distance.  It is on that field that two fates collided.

Bob wound up and threw the boomerang.  He didn’t throw it hard but again it caught air and took off.  We ran to collect it, and it was my turn.

“Don’t throw it too hard,” Bob advised.  “It really flies.”

“OK,” I said as I wound up.

I threw the boomerang a little too hard.  I watched as it flew…and flew…and flew…on its way to the distant football game.

“Oh no,” I muttered as the boomerang continued its flight.  By its trajectory, it was going to hit one of the kids in the crowd.

There was one kid on that field that could not be missed even from that distance.  He was huge.  He was a giant.  I watched as my boomerang felled that giant, striking him directly in the back of the neck.  His arms went wide and he collapsed to the ground.

“Holy shit,” said Bob as I cried “Oh no!”

“You have to go apologize,” said Bob, stating the obvious.  I’d never apologized to a giant before.

Sheepishly, and possibly with a huge and sudden dump in my pants, I went over to the football field to apologize to the giant.

Fortunately the giant, whom I learned one addresses as “Phat Curtis”, was the forgiving type.  He did not kill me (this much is obvious).  He did not stomp me, nor did he piledrive me into the ground.  You don’t get a name like “Phat Curtis” for being small, but thankfully he wasn’t a vengeful giant.  (His real name was Curtis Bernard.)

A year later, Phat Curtis started highschool, and it was there that I learned he was a drummer.   In fact he had a reputation as the most talented drummer in school.  Later on he added five and six string bass to his musical repertoire.   He went on to play with my sister in various ensembles, and became a customer at the Record Store too.  He was always looking for live albums with good bass.  Didn’t buy much stuff, but he sure kept me busy every time he came in.

Maybe that was his revenge?  To haunt the Record Store of the guy who boomeranged him in the back of the neck?  To make that Record Store guy run around the store looking for live albums with good bass, but not make a sale?  Could that be it?  If so, I cannot say that Phat Curtis put me in as much pain as I put him in.  However at least I can boast that single-handedly took down a giant!

#447: Fist Fudge

GETTING MORE TALE #447: Fist Fudge

What’s the biggest musical rip off you’ve ever seen?

The Nine Inch Nails unofficial Fisted box set comes to mind.

This set, supposedly limited to just 1000 pieces, retailed for about $200 in the mid-90’s. It included five CDs:

  • Fixed (EP)
  • March of the Pigs parts I and II
  • Closer to God parts I and II

Those singles are available on their own, for much less. The box also included an unauthorized T-shirt that said “FIST” on the front, and “F%@#” on the back. No Nine Inch Nails logos anywhere to be found on that. It came in a cheap black plastic box with the Nine Inch Nails “n” logo and the word “Fisted” on top…except it’s not really the Nine Inch Nails “n” logo.  The official one is backwards.  This is just a normal “n”.  They were hoping you wouldn’t notice that.  This package was assembled by Phantom Imports, who must have been laughing their asses off at the ridiculous amount of markup.

This is a great example of a collectible that is not. The artist labels had no involvement and certainly did not set the pricing. The shirt and box have no logos on them. Anybody can go and print a T-shirt that says “FIST” and “FUCK” on it. All this for $200. Even if you were missing those five singles (which any real Nails fan was not) there is no reason to buy this.

We had an incomplete copy of this come into one of our stores, but it was missing the shirt and the other goodies. Looking to make a few extra bucks, we stuffed the box full of other albums and singles and jacked the price up. That was a decision made by a franchise owner. I don’t think he had an easy time selling this box, which was really just a plastic box with a random selection of CDs in it by the time we put it up for sale. A rip off box set made even more so.

FISTED

I’ve seen others just as irritating as this. One was a “deluxe” version of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. This was the 2 CD set, packed into a wooden carving of a wall. It looked cool, but it also looked like something a skilled woodworker could make in his or her shop at home. It was painted white with the Wall logo scrawled across it. Around $200 for that too, somewhere at a store in Hamilton ironically called Cheapies.

Probably made by the same company was a commemorative Beatles single for “Real Love”. It came in a red box with a heart on it, with a button “Real Love” inside that looked like a cross between a heart and an apple. We ordered this one in, new, and our cost was about $40. It sat and sat and sat there for months. It wasn’t authorized any more than the Nine Inch Nails box was.  We didn’t realize we’d brought in a lemon until it was too late.  We had to be told by a customer who was a Beatles collector.  “These things aren’t worth anything,” he said.  “They’re not issued by the Beatles.  It’s a made-up collectible.”  We should have known, but it’s hard when you’re ordering this shit from a distributor’s catalogue.

Have you ever run across a rip off like these in your travels?  Or worse, have you ever bought one?

REAL LOVE

#446: SLOW DOWN! (An announcement)

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GETTING MORE TALE #446: SLOW DOWN!

Since March 2012, LeBrain has been bringing you the rock on a daily basis.

I’ve been writing about music for a long time.  Over the years, I accumulated an immense catalogue of music reviews.  I saved them up, and gradually expanded and polished them up for publishing here at mikeladano.com.  On top of that, I also had an incredible stock of Record Store Tales to post.  Some of these had been gathering dust for well over a decade.  Including new content I’ve stirred into the mix, it took over three years to burn through all the old reviews and stories.  I am now dry.  I had a few movie reviews left in the hopper, but these are abandoned now, because this is (mostly) about the rock.

It’s much easier for me to revise and expand an old review, than it is to write a new one.  It’s actually an enjoyable process for me to revisit and fix up an old writing.  You’d be hard-pressed to tell an old polished up review from a brand-new one unless I pointed it out.  The huge amount of stuff that I had built up to publish enabled me to post content every day.  In fact, in my old “theme song” video I boasted that mikeladano.com was “updated daily!”

I can no longer keep going at that pace.  It’s just not possible; not if I want to maintain a level of quality.  Listening to music takes time, articulating thoughts into words takes more time, and adding the photos, videos and anecdotes takes even more time.  I love writing about music and sharing my music collection with you.  I can’t deny that this hobby is hard work, albeit a labour of love.

So, without any shame, I am now announcing that the pace of new content here is slowing down.  I don’t plan on using a schedule, but you can count on new reviews and stories here about one every other day.  I hope you continue to read and enjoy.  This will hopefully enable me to spend more time posting and responding to comments.

Music is an important part of my life, and yours too, I’ll wager, or you wouldn’t be reading this.  Coming home from work every day and sitting down to review music because I “have to”, to keep up the pace, isn’t what I wanted to do.  I don’t want to work on reviews because I “have to” maintain an inhuman pace.  You might not have noticed but I feel the more recent reviews I’ve written have been rushed.  I think the quality may have suffered in favour of quantity.

No longer.  You can count on the same brand of music reviews, the same kind of stories, and the odd “WTF” here and there…just not on a daily basis.  I’m taking tomorrow off!

Shit.  I guess this means I need a new theme song video.

See??  The work never ends!

#445: An Orgasm For the Brain

GETTING MORE TALE #445: An Orgasm For the Brain

The Boss at the Record Store used to have a little office in the back of one of our stores.  The walls seemed paper-thin.  You could figure out what he was doing back there from the sounds, especially when he had a cold.  His sneezes were epic.   They were monolithic in scale, and sounded like they were a tremendous relief each time.

“AHHHHHHHHH-HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  Woo!”  Something like that.

One afternoon, he was having a particularly active bout of the sneezes, and the frequency and strength of them combined were impossible to ignore.  One of my customers noticed and chuckled.

“Sounds like that guy is having a good time back there,” said the man.

I know the feeling a good, refreshing sneeze too.  “Yeah,” I replied.  “He’s had a cold all week but he’s really good at sneezing.”

“No, seriously,” the man persisted.  “A sneeze is like an orgasm for your brain.  That guy back there is basically having a whole bunch of brain orgasms right now.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I answered, “Wow.  I did not know that!”

“You learn something every day!” said the man, who went on to do his music shopping.

Is there any truth to this?  Or is this just one of those wild tales that customers used to tell me?

The folks over at livescience have the answer.  “This myth isn’t worth the price of a tissue,” they say, but also add, “Connections do exist, however.”

For one, a sneeze may release endorphins. However, “Although supporting literature remains sparse, cases have been reported of men and women who sneeze when sexually aroused. Doctors suspect that the phenomenon might arise from a case of crossed wires in the autonomic nervous system, which regulates a number of automatic functions in the body, including “waking up” the genitals during arousal. The nose, like the genitals, contains erectile tissue.”

I was not aware of that. As my old customer said, you learn something new every day!

#444: “Can I Listen to This?”

GETTING MORE TALE #444: “Can I Listen to This?”

In the early 1990’s, the CD store in which I worked was just an ordinary music store that sold new product in a mall.  Later on, we did the switch to used discs which was the smartest move the owner could have done.  He was able to control his own cost of goods sold.

Switching to 99% used stock attracted customers to the better prices.  Before too long, the used selection was better too, because we would see many deleted and rare titles that you couldn’t buy new anymore.  Ebay didn’t exist yet.  It was hard to find those titles on CD.  Another benefit to the switch was the ability for customers to sample music before they bought it.  It was harder before.

In the earliest days, if a customer wanted to hear something, we had to crack open the disc and play it on the store player.  We didn’t even have a re-sealing device.  The way around this was to carefully (carefully!) cut the cellophane off the CD case, along the spine of the disc.  Carefully (carefully!) slide the disc out of the cellophane.  When done, you can carefully (carefully!) slide the disc back into the cellophane, and “seal” it up with a piece of strategically placed Scotch tape.  This did the trick well enough for us.  We made due.

The annoying thing wasn’t the fact that we had to crack open a disc for people to listen to.  The real irritant was that we didn’t have anything for them to listen to it on, except the store CD player.  If a customer came up and said, “Can I listen to this?” it meant stopping whatever you were playing, and putting in their disc.

This happened one Saturday afternoon, sometime in the spring of ’95.  Radiohead had just released The Bends, and we only carried three copies to start.  A guy came in curious what it was like.  The Bends may be critically acclaimed by fans worldwide, but that spring afternoon in 1995, it did absolutely nothing for me*.  Skipping from one track to the next, then back, at the customer’s command, I hated what I heard.  To my ears it sounded too mellow and I was ready for a nap.  It was definitely not what I wanted to hear while I was trying to work.  To date I still don’t own The Bends.  This guy stood there listening for half an hour before declining to buy it.  It was annoying for both myself, and the other customers, to have to listen to this disc skipping from track to track at the guy’s hand signals or nods.

But we didn’t have anything else, and we were customer service oriented, so what are you to do?  You listen to (rather, skip back and forth through) The Bends.

A year later I was managing a bigger store, with the 99% used format.  We had a store player, plus several other units hooked up to headphones.  With an entire store of used stuff to listen to, and a pair of headphones to do it with, it was a vast improvement over the old way.  Once again the owner had a great idea.  Even though there is no question they were a huge popular feature for our stores, the “listening stations” as we called them were still ripe for abuse.  Customers would make you run around retrieving 20 (or 30 or 40) discs to listen to, only to buy none.  They’d complain about the sound quality.  The headphones were constantly busting due to overuse and abuse.

“These headphones suck.  I can’t hear the nuances in the music.”  That was a real complaint.  Since there wasn’t much I could do about it, I explained that the listening stations were there just so you could hear a song and decide if you liked it or not.  Not much thought was given to hearing the nuances.  But this guy insisted he couldn’t tell if he liked a song without the “nuances”, so no sale was made.

Other folks would want to listen to an entire CD – the whole thing! – to make sure it didn’t skip before they bought it.  Even though we offered a guarantee.

Even though we had gone through the effort and expense of providing these listening stations, there are some people you can never please.  More than one fellow (yes, it was only guys) asked to listen to something, only to complain, “No, I don’t want to hear it on those headphones.  I want to hear it on the big speakers!”  Yeah, but nobody else in the store wants to.

Music fans:  Although you can now listen to almost anything you want in the comfort of your own home, please, if you want to use the listening stations at a CD store, don’t be a douche!

 

*I do have Kid A in my collection.  I love Kid A.  

#443: Touched by the Music

TOUCHED BY THE MUSIC

GETTING MORE TALE #443: Touched by the Music

I recently attended a memorial service for a friend of my wife’s, who was a local musician.  His chosen genre was considered “dark synthpop”, something I don’t have a lot of in my collection.  In the 80’s, he released a few records with his brother – actual vinyl records!  I first met him through the Record Store, as he was a customer.  I didn’t know the man very well.  I knew him to see him and say hello, but it was my wife who really befriended him.  They had become close, playing cards weekly with other mutual friends.  She had come to really love his understated but sharp wit.

A few months ago, when she was told that he had passed away peacefully, she was absolutely gutted.  Neither of us can really understand how a kind gentle soul can be taken too soon, but it happens every day in this world.

The memorial service was very emotional, and for me, I felt like I was getting to know him for the first time.  His family made it a musical service.  His younger brother, who described him as a genius, sang a modified version of Eddie Money’s “Baby Hold On” for him, one of his favourites.  We also heard a lot of his own compositions.  Even though synthpop isn’t a genre that struck a chord with me before, I found myself entranced by his music.  It was remarkable in ambient depth, melodic composition, and feeling.  His best friend spoke at the service, and described him as a science fiction and horror movie buff, as well as a music nerd extraordinaire.  In his music, I could hear that.  I picked out influences from Dr. Who, Friday the 13th, and other cinematic sources.  In short I loved what I heard.

But there was more to it than just enjoying his music.  At the service, his family said that he expressed himself mostly through music rather than words, and I could hear that.  I felt like I was getting to know him a little bit better through his melodies, rhythms and arrangements.  It is arduous, trying to explain just how I felt like I was really recognizing him for the first time.  All I know is, I could hear him there.  It was as if he was in the room, but unable to speak beyond the notes he had recorded.  The music was enough and I think everyone in that room felt it.

He was gifted; a musical genius in fact.

I wish I had that gift, of being able to musically represent myself and my feelings the way he could.  I’m glad that, for a moment, my soul was touched by his through music.