RSTs Mk II: Getting More Tale

#364: Greatest Hits

RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#364: Greatest Hits

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, greatest hits records have been around for as long as rock and roll has.  Elvis’ Golden Records, one of the most famous early greatest hits albums from 1958, has sold over 6 million copies.  Some believe it to be the  very first greatest hits album, ever.  Elvis only had four albums out at that point, one of them a Christmas record.  It was a selection of Elvis’ single A’s and B’s, and its success meant that it would be followed by many sequels.  (Interestingly, five hits on it were composed by the duo of Lieber and Stoller!)

A couple decades later, the Eagles released their best selling album of all time.  Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) has sold over 42 million copies to date, and is the third highest selling album in history.  Not long after, Aerosmith released their first Greatest Hits, a collection of single edits and radio versions of their best songs, and one non-album track (“Come Together”, from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band soundtrack).  It has sold over 11 million copies.

These releases, and many more, have made greatest hits discs a lucrative cash cow for record labels.  On it on it goes; you’re not a success until you’ve released your first greatest hits disc.  Some bands have always resisted releasing collections of pre-existing music, others have not put such value in their integrity.  Hits albums are usually looked at with disdain by the die-hards and “purists”, but make an easy gateway purchase for people not (yet) interested in the discography.

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Why do die-hard fans look down on hits albums so much?

1. A more recent practice from the 1980’s and 1990’s was to include two or three new songs, forcing fans to buy old songs over again just to get the new ones.  It’s such a common practice now that it’s expected, but we still resent it.

2. Live versions. Even if we choose to buy or listen to a greatest hits album, a lot of the time the familiar original versions are replaced with inferior live ones.  Casual music listeners don’t usually seek live versions, and die hard fans usually already have the live albums.  It just serves to make the listening experience less than it should be.

3. While it is certainly not a rule, for the kind of music we listen to, a studio album is often a self contained work, not just a collection of songs.  There is usually a direction and purpose for the songs.  Listening to songs out of their intended context doesn’t always work, but nine times out of ten, they are best appreciated on the original album.

4. Who else but a die-hard fan would be a better self-proclaimed expert to criticize the song selections on a “greatest hits”?

5. Artistic non-involvement. Few hits albums have any input from the artists themselves.  Without the artist contributing, a greatest hits becomes just another product assembled by record company suits, most of the time.

6. Cash grab. Many greatest hits album stink of the whiff of “record company cash-grab”, usually at opportune times.

7. Snob attitude. “Don’t buy the greatest hits!  Just buy all the albums!”

What do you like about greatest hits albums?

lebrainsgreatest

#363: The Art of the Mix CD

For more reading of this nature, I recommend the 1001 Albums in 10 Years site, by Geoff.  He is always posting interesting musical nerdiness like this so cheers to Geoff and his excellent site.

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RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#363: The Art of the Mix CD

We have come a long way from the mix tape. If you’re of a certain age, you probably made many mix tapes. I know I did. Dozens upon dozens, spending hours doing so. We had to make the tapes in real time. I would meticulously cue up the tapes so there wouldn’t be excessive gaps between songs, or awkward edits. I couldn’t have a song getting clipped at the start or finish. Mix tapes were a matter of pride and I sank a lot of time into making them, from the recording to the J-card. Sometimes the tapes were for me, but most often they were for someone else (usually a girl I was trying to woo).

Making a mix CD is much easier than making a mix tape. Still, for my level of perfectionism, it requires a lot of work and attention to detail. I have certain “rules” that I always adhere to, when making a mix CD. In the past, I have burned and then thrown away many CD copies that did not meet my exacting standards. I would not settle for a mix CD with an annoying flaw in it! My friends deserve better!

Here are my rules:

1. All songs must be more or less equal in volume.

Nothing worse than diving for the volume knob when a song that was mastered waaaay too loudly comes on! Nero has a built-in “normalize” function that analyzes and automatically equalizes the volume on all tracks. However it doesn’t always work well. It can create volume swells within an actual track that weren’t there before. I do not use this feature any longer. Now, I use Audacity to raise or lower a track’s volume manually, before adding it to my mix.  Painstaking, but you get better results.

GOB2. All live songs must have fade-ins and fade-outs.

I cannot stand the sound of crowd noise starting and stopping abrubtly. I add my own fade-ins and fade-outs. Sometimes this is tricky, because certain live albums may have the song breaks in odd locations. There may not be enough room at the start or end of a track. So, sometimes I have to manually add in enough crowd noise to enable a fadeout, a time consuming fix. I also enjoy doing the occasional cross-fade between songs, which used to be very hard on Nero but is easy as pie with Audacity.

3. CD must have a start, middle and ending.

All tracks are carefully selected for each one of my mix CDs, but usually there are several contenders for opening and closing songs. I try to create a flow, with slow parts and heavy parts, through the disc, with a dramatic climax. I don’t always succeed but my goal is to create a mix CD that works like an album. It has to have a direction.

4. Throw on a rare track.

It doesn’t matter who I’m making a mix CD for, I want an obscure song or two on there. I don’t want to make a mix CD entirely of songs you already know. I want to surprise you with something I know you’ve never heard before, but will probably like.

5. All songs must be properly labelled.

Don’t you hate getting a CD from somebody without having a clue what’s on it? Every CD I make for a friend comes with a computer generated cover, including full and accurate track list, down to every punctuation mark and detail. Sometimes I’ll even throw some pictures or logos on the cover for fun, if there is room. Nero also encodes the song and artist names onto the CD. So I have to make sure the file names are all done correctly too, because when you pop my mix CD into certain players (like my car deck) you’re going to see the titles come up automatically. This must always be done correctly. No spelling mistakes, or I’d junk it, and make a new one.

And finally, there is the optional not-rule:

6. Optional – Include short, funny bits between songs to surprise the listener.  

This only applies in certain circumstances.  The “Integrity Mix” CD shown here, with G.O.B. and Franklin Bluth on the cover, has such bits at strategic points.  One is the song “Big Yellow Joint” from the show Arrested Development, and the other is the appearance of the “Hot Cops” busting George Michael from the same episode.  You can see I wanted to keep those bits a surprise for whoever ends up with a copy, because I didn’t number the tracks and didn’t list the bits.  So in a sense they are “hidden” until the listener stumbles upon them.

Are you as picky as I am, or is your quality control as extreme as mine? What are you own techniques in the art of the mix CD?

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#362: Lávate las manos!

RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#362: Lávate las manos! (Wash your hands!)

What is the prime rule of retail? Some sources say it’s an employee’s presentation, from language to punctuality to appearance. A knowledgeable staff is absolutely important, and even trumps friendliness. Friendliness without knowledge in a retail environment doesn’t help the customer. Customer service is clearly important, as is leading by example, which I tried to do myself. Other sources say convenience is king. An online presence is a must, but in brick and mortar stores, what truly is the one prime, cardinal rule of retail?

I say it’s a simple one. Wash your hands!

Research suggests that in the United States, 22 million days of work are lost per year just by common illnesses spread in the conventional ways. When a sick employee does manage to make it into work, their productivity is reduced due to lack of energy and focus. They risk spreading the illness further, and also disgusting potential customers with their coughing and sneezing.

It’s easy enough to reduce the spread just by making sure your employees are washing their hands. According to the CDC, “Handwashing is like a ‘do-it-yourself’ vaccine—it involves five simple and effective steps (Wet, Lather, Scrub, Rinse, Dry) that you can take to reduce the spread of diarrheal and respiratory illness so you can stay healthy. Regular handwashing, particularly before and after certain activities, is one of the best ways to remove germs, avoid getting sick, and prevent the spread of germs to others.” By “certain activities”, I can tell you that buying used CDs off the public certainly qualified. At the Record Store, we had a bottle of hand sanitizer at the register, so I could quickly scrub up if there was no time to hit the washroom.

I have seen some gross, disgusting substances on CDs that I and my staff have handled. That doesn’t even include the invisible germs that were on a lot of them! Sticky CDs and CD cases were quite common. When I first started out, I caught hell from the boss because I didn’t want to buy a box of CDs from a guy who had very few discs without yucky, sticky CD cases! Most of the time, we couldn’t identify the goo, although we were fairly certain that some had been covered with semen before. (Needless to say, we passed on the semen CD, no complaints from bosses that time.)

The most disturbing health risk that I witnessed was covering the in-demand box set called Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of the Beach Boys. It was covered in blood – still wet, as the guy selling it to us was actually bleeding from his hands at that moment! The staff guy who was handling the set, Jason, quietly announced, “I have to go and wash my hands – they are covered with blood.” The customer then laughed and said, “Yah, that’s me. But don’t worry, I ain’t got AIDS or nothin’.”

With hindsight, I seemed to be sick all the time. Handling all that dirty money and those filthy CDs, it was almost impossible to keep my hands clean. All it takes is one itchy eye to rub without thinking, and BAM! You’ve got a virus! At the Record Store I suffered from all sorts of ailments, as did we all. I also felt a certain amount of pressure to show up for work even when I was under the weather, so I tended to work through it.

I would give the same advice to customers and staff alike: There is only one prime rule of retail. If you want to stop spreading all those filthy germs, lávate las fucking manos!

LAVATE

#361: LeBrain Goes to Toronto (Video)

RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#361: LeBrain Goes to Toronto

Went to Toronto yesterday to visit Mrs. LeBrain at the hospital, and also visited Sonic Boom music at 215 Spadina while I was in town.  I’m tired, so all I had the energy for was this quick & dirty 4 minute video.  Hope you like it.  You know I found music to buy…

Road tunes:

  1. Deep Purple – Slaves and Masters
  2. Ted Nugent – Shutup & Jam!
  3. Whitesnake – Snakebite
  4. Whitesnake – Saints An’ Sinners

#360: CHYM FM – “96 minutes of continuous light rock…for your workday!”

GEORGE AND TARA AND LEBRAIN

RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#360: CHYM FM

In the beginning of my job at United Rentals, they had the radio set to local lite-rock station CHYM FM.  It is a horrible station, unless you enjoy old Daughtry and Taylor Swift ballads coupled with the biggest hits by the dulcet Lady Gaga.  Why, just the other day I was in my dentist’s office.  They have CHYM on the radio, and I was treated to some “Bad Romance” by Miss Gaga.  That’s dreadful enough, but the squeaky, bubbly on-air personalities are way too much for me to handle.  Apparently this was also the case nine years ago when I started at United, according to this 2006 journal entry.  We switched stations to Dave FM shortly thereafter.  Thank fuck!  CHYM TIME journal entry below.

Date: 2006/11/17 17:04

“96 minutes of continuous light rock…for your workday!”

That phrase, friends, is the sound of being welcomed into HELL!

Dear CHYM FM:   This is something that I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long time. Here it is. Sorry if I’m being rather harsh, but you had this coming.

#1. Nobody needs to hear three Kelly Clarkson songs in one day. Nor do we need three of Jann Arden, Chantal Kreviazuk, Celine Dion, or any other of these wonderful light-rock songstresses.

#2. Lionel Richie has a long, illustrious career. I’m pretty sure he has more than one song. Why then, do you insist on playing the same damn song of his every single day?

#3. Same goes with Elton John.

#4. Tara, from the morning George and Tara Show, is too fucking perky. She’s like a fucking toothpaste commercial!  I don’t need that shit at 8:30 am before my coffee.

And finally #5.  Why do you call your station “today’s light rock”?  Are you not aware that Jann Arden hasn’t had a hit in over a decade?

Yours truly, Mike

#359.5: Adrift

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RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#359.5: Adrift

I woke up this morning thinking it was Thursday. I was convinced of it. Wishful thinking only. It’s only Wednesday and Mrs. LeBrain’s still got a long stay in the hospital ahead. Bachelor living isn’t as fun as I remember it from my single days.

I haven’t been able to get motivated to write music reviews. I managed to do an EP review last night, barely. I had disc 2 of  Queen Forever on in the car, still. Disc 2 is almost done but I think I’ll stick with Queen for a while. Freddie really helps brighten the mood.  In particular, 80’s Queen.  Perhaps tomorrow I’ll listen to The Game.

As far as the hospital goes, Jen realized yesterday that she forgot her USB cable for her mp3 player, so she currently has no way to charge it. She can still get her rock on with Youtube on her laptop, or by streaming 107.5 Dave FM with the Corus app on her BlackBerry. Forgetting the cable is just one of those annoying things that serve to make her hospital stay a little more aggravating. It appears likely she’ll be there another week.

I’m heading back to Toronto this weekend, and I’m planning a record store shopping trip to go with it.  If life gives you lemons, make lemonade!  It’s too bad Jen has to stay in, but she’ll be home soon and pestering me to do laundry again before I know it!

*FYI, I did know that The Thing AKA Ben Grimm was Jewish.  I didn’t know any of the others though!

#359: Autodidacticism

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Me after my first week or two at my current job in 2007.  Iron Maiden shirt!

RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#359: Autodidacticism

I was very excited to begin my current job, back in 2007.  I was hired as sales coordinator for the “custom forming” department at a steel company.  I would mostly be dealing in railcar parts (weighing anywhere from 4 lbs to 3000 lbs each) and shipping them all over North America (and once even Dubai).  It wasn’t all new to me, but a lot of it was going to be.  I was replacing someone on a maternity leave, before I was hired on permanent in 2008.  She was absolutely meticulous and had a real talent with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.  I was inheriting all this and I hadn’t much experience with Excel.  I used it at home for budgets and whatnot, but upon seeing my predecessor’s work, I realized I knew relatively very little about it in reality.  I had to self educate very quickly.

What does this have to do with rock and roll? asks the bored reader.  I’m getting there!

I learn by doing, so I sat down with Excel for a few nights to get myself up to speed.  I began making some spreadsheets and familiarizing myself with the software…I just couldn’t figure out what I wanted to make a spreadsheet of!  Then it hit me: let’s make it fun.  Let’s chart all the different official Kiss albums!

It actually ended up being a lot more fun than you might think!  I added an on-the-fly (but somewhat arbitrary) album rating system and then calculated the mean and median ratings.  I added up studio vs. live. vs compilation albums and made a pie chart of them.  I made it look as visually appealing as I could.  In my job I would be creating spreadsheets that went to VP’s and the president of the company, so I wanted everything to look perfect.   And it was fun to do.  This is obvious, because looking at it today, I even kept updating it into 2008, a full year after I made it!

My final observation is that when I abandoned this spreadsheet in 2008, I apparently hadn’t yet learned that the Kiss Alive! 1975-2000 box set had an iTunes bonus track, because that information is omitted here.

Yeah, I’m a nerd!  Always have been, and hopefully always will be!

KISS SHEETKISS SHEET 2

#358.5: On the Road Again

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RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#358.5: On the Road Again

Today was another day on the highway, on the road to another hospital!  We’re making progress on Jen’s epilepsy and she is currently staying at a hospital in Toronto for a few days as they try to figure out just what’s causing these seizures.  It will be the longest we’ve been apart since we’ve been married, six years ago.

You don’t come here to read mushy stuff, you come for funny stories and to read about the rock!  The drive itself was uneventful.  The eastbound lanes are clear, but a jackknifed tractor trailer on the westbound side left just one lane open to traffic.  It was backed up as far as the eye could see, and I was grateful I was not one of the commuters stuck in it.

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We had Zeppelin on the ride into Toronto.  With your morning traffic jams that just happen, we listened to all of Led Zeppelin I, the deluxe edition with bonus concert CD, Live at the Olympia in Paris.  As good as this set is — and it is good — it didn’t suit the mood this morning.  I should have started with Queen instead.  I drove home to disc one of the new Queen Forever, and the pop sound and bright melodies of Queen were  better suited to lift the mood.  On the way there, Plant’s anguished screams only heightened my own tension.  On the way back, Freddie’s smooth crooning was just what the doctor ordered.  It was a bright sunny afternoon drive home.

As is par for the course this time of year, my car came home covered in a thick gray coating of sludge and salt.  I almost went through almost half a tank of windshield washer fluid today!

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If she’s there a while and I have to hang around there, I will definitely be checking out some record stores.  When we passed the Honest Ed’s building, I realized that we were right in the vicinity of Mike and Aaron’s Annual Taranna Record Store Excursion!  It would be weird to be so close and not check out Sonic Boom.

I’m looking forward to video chatting with Jen tonight on our laptops.  She’s got a few days ahead that will be a mixture of boredom, homesickness, and tedious testing.  Me, I’m back to bachelor living for the week.  I’m already bored.

Today’s musical lesson: Queen lifts the mood!

#358: The Personal Impact of Led Zeppelin

ZEPPERS

RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#358: The Personal Impact of Led Zeppelin

Christmas 1990 was another major turning point in my musical life. I know others who can say the same thing for the same reason. Led Zeppelin had released their first box set, a 4 CD collection of 54 essential tracks, remastered by Jimmy Page himself. This was the impetus I needed to finally take the Zeppelin plunge.

Prior to this, I had stayed away from Zeppelin.  I only knew a couple live videos from MuchMusic, which didn’t appeal to me at all.  A rock band wearing sandals?  The fuck was this?  I couldn’t wrap my head around the violin bow solo, nor the band.  I remember watching the old live “Dazed and Confused” video with my friend Bob.  “You can tell that guy’s on drugs,” he said of Jimmy Page.

That was in the 1980’s.  By the turn of the decade, I was starting to tire of plastic sounding pop rock bands. I was craving authenticity, and I know I wasn’t the only one. Bands like Warrant were wracked by controversy, when it was revealed that they employed two guitar teachers to write their guitar solos and teach the members how to play them. Too much fakery for me — at that point I decided to stop listening to them.  I sold my Warrant tapes.  Warrant in turn accused Poison, the band they were opening for, of using backing tapes live. All kinds of bands were accused of using backing tapes. Sebastian Bach was quoted as saying, “The only band out there that doesn’t use backing tapes live today is Metallica, and that’s a fact.”  (I am fairly certain Iron Maiden are above such tom foolery as well.)


The old “Dazed and Confused” video that Much used to play

I didn’t want backing tapes, I wanted authentic pure rock music. There was a bustle in my hedgerow. I wasn’t satisfied with the new releases coming out either. A lot of groups that I really liked released disappointing albums in 1990.  From Dio to Iron Maiden to Winger, there were too many bands that failed to impress that year.   A band like Zeppelin seemed to have not only authenticity, but solid consistently.  They were hailed as the greatest rock band of all time by just about every rock group I heard of!

I received the box set from my parents on Christmas day 1990. The following day, Boxing day, I had set aside to listen to the entire box set from start to finish – about five and a half hours of listening. I took a brief lunch break between discs 2 and 3. I emerged from my room that afternoon, dazed, but not confused at all. There were some songs that I didn’t care too much for – “Poor Tom”, “Wearing and Tearing”, “Ozone Baby” – mostly songs from Coda. They were vastly outnumbered by the songs that absolutely blew me away, even though I had never heard of them before: “Your Time Is Gonna Come”, “Immigrant Song”, “Ramble On”, “The Ocean”, “All My Love”…I could not believe the sheer quality of the music.

Sure, Led Zeppelin’s songs weren’t produced as slick as I was used to. They were a far cry from Whitesnake. Jimmy Page wasn’t a shredder like Steve Vai, but I felt a personal shift. I thought bands like Whitesnake and Cinderella had been exhibiting the epitome of integrity, with the ace players and incredible musicianship. Like athletes, musicians only seemed to achieve loftier heights over the decades with their playing. This was exemplified by a guy like Steve Vai who pushed guitar into entirely new frontiers. Cinderella, on the other hand, had even worked with Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, who provided strings to their bluesy Heartbreak Station LP. I thought Cinderella were the blues! But now, my eyes were really opening.  It was like Obi-Wan Kenobi had prophesized:  “You’ve just taken your first step, in a larger world.”

IMG_20150114_182807Led Zeppelin (and also ZZ Top) were talking about blues artists I never heard of. Muddy Waters? Lightning Hopkins? Robert Johnson? Who were these people that were so influential that Zeppelin were known to lift entire songs from them?

I had a thought: “From this moment on, I will never be able to listen to rock bands the same way again. I used to think Cinderella were authentic blues. How can I ever go back to listening to Cinderella with the same feeling of passion? How can I play bands like Slaughter and Judas Priest, and think for a second that these guys are any better than the old guys like Zep?”

Fortunately I found that eventually Cinderella, Whitesnake and Led Zeppelin could co-exist in my collection. Liking one does not mean you can’t like the others. Even though Led Zeppelin raised the bar to extraordinary heights, I found it wasn’t too hard to “lower my standards” sometimes and enjoy a little “Slow An’ Easy” with David Coverdale. Zeppelin simply opened my eyes: that there was an entire history of blues that I hadn’t really been aware of before. My musical life journey was about to expand exponentially.

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#357: “Dream Bands” (1990 version)

ROB

RECORD STORE TALES Mk II: Getting More Tale
#357: “Dream Bands” (1990 version)

I’m sure you and your friends have made these lists many times: put together a lineup of your dream band! Any living players can qualify.

I had deep, long conversations about this with my friends in highschool. One of them simply listed the four members of Led Zeppelin (Jason subbing in for John) as his dream band. You could certainly make an argument for that. My highschool dream band (1990-91 year) was instead made up of the players that I thought were the absolute best in their fields.  Can you guess who I was listening to that year? Lineup:

  1. Lead vocals – Rob Halford
  2. Lead guitar – Steve Vai
  3. Rhythm guitar – Malcolm Young
  4. Bass – Billy Sheehan
  5. Drums – Scott Travis
  6. Keyboards – Jon Lord

As a joke, I also added a seventh bonus member, Walter Ostanek on accordion!  That was for my buddy Andy, who also played accordion.  Upon submitting my official list for consideration, I removed Ostanek.  But I figured that Walter could show up for a guest appearance on a track or two, because everyone loves accordion.

An interesting band lineup to be sure, but as my highschool friends pointed out, they would probably implode after only one rehearsal. Steve Vai and Malcolm Young in the same band? I can’t see how that would work. Sorry, LeBrain circa 1990. Fail!  I’m glad I kept this stuff though, because it’s so funny to look back on it now.  25 freakin’ years ago!

Who would you place in your “dream band” lineup today? One stipulation: the artist must be alive and able to play. For example I couldn’t put Malcolm on my list today, nor could I put Phil Collins on drums, since he can no longer play them due to injury.

Have at it! Let’s see your lists!

metal smurf