Special Edition Episode: Tim Durling’s Guide to Kansas Compilations
Folks, we have a great live episode of Grab A Stack of Rock coming up this Friday. Yes, today’s mini-episode is essentially a teaser to another episode, but it’s is also a great standalone in its own right. Thank you Tim Durling for sharing some of your collection with us today.
For this instalment, Tim Durling, author of the new book Let It Be Your Guide – The Kansas Album Review (buy in the link), guides us through the essential Kansas compilations if you are new to the band. Starting with the original 1984 best-of and its variants, we go through the decades to the present day. Compilations vary in size and scope. From single discs, to doubles and even a triple, Tim has a Kansas recommendation for every appetite. Perhaps you’re just looking for the classic era up to 1984. Or, maybe you need representation for the Steve Morse years of the late 1980s for your Kansas listening. If you’re really going for it, you may as well pick one that covers the whole career.
Check out what Tim has on offer to get your Kansas collection started. And, of course, check out Friday’s show when we go into the book in detail!
Jen and I were B-Side Ourselves to find that James Kalyn had sent me some surprise vinyl when I was feeling down and low. It so happened James was available on Friday night for an unboxing. So that’s what we did! What did he send? Here are some clues:
I’ve been out of action since Sunday, for reasons that will be shared soon. (The WordPress “community” didn’t even notice that I haven’t posted in four days for the first time since 2018, thanks guys, “community” is dead!) Disasters and existential crises aside, the morning of Friday June 21 was perfect for flying a drone. The drone was almost taken out by a seagull (1:20 of the video), all to the space-exploring soundtrack of “Billy Oxygen” by Helix.
While I try to get things back to “normal” here, enjoy the video. I’ll be working on video editing all weekend. The cottage video from last weekend will explain what happened.
This is a show I was made for! Spoiler alert: Regular readers already know my favourite Steve Morse era Deep Purple album. I was already trying to kickstart a Purple collection when he joined the band in 1995. His addition made me a completist – had to get every album. And, within a few years of his joining, I achieved and maintained that. Morse’s additional made me a superfan. I just love when a band has a significant lineup change that actually works. Deep Purple was transformed into something a little different, but just as good. Just new flavours in the soup. A new freedom to experiment and stretch out. It wouldn’t have worked if the band couldn’t write new songs with the new axeman, but their chemistry flourished over seven studio original studio albums.
Now that Steve is gone from the band, and they are carrying on with another new ingredient in Simon McBride, it is a perfect time to look back upon the Morse era. Joining myself and Peter Kerr on Rock Daydream Nation is “Music Swami” Pete Jones. Together, we passionately discuss three favourite albums, and the key tracks that you need to check out for yourself. We don’t just shower praise, but we break down and analyze.
Here’s what Mr. Kerr has to say:
Rock Daydream Nation is joined by Peter Jones (The Contrarians) and Mike Ladano (Grab a Stack of Rock) to choose their desert island Deep Purple album featuring Steve Morse….Are any of these albums better than Deep Purple Ritchie Blackmore? Check out the show!
Mama, just killed a man! Learn all about musicians who killed, artists with mob connections, murders and money laundering, oh my! Angie Moon has written the book: Crime of the Century – Classic Rock and True Crime. In this one-hour interview, Angie informed Jex Russell and I on so many topics!
Jack Ruby & the Band
DEVO’s connection with true crime
Dennis Wilson & Charles Manson
The excellent cover art of her book
Publishing a book from scratch
Social media and promotion
The diversity of classic rock
The Kinks
The White Album
And so much more!
Thank you Angie and thank you Jex for the education on Grab A Stack of Rock!
Your dad was once a police officer, and later on in life you realized there were no books about true crime and classic rock. Does that about sum up what started you on this journey?
I like the way the book is formatted. You have a chapter about a band/crime, and you introduce both the band and the criminal in a way that you don’t need any background knowledge at all.
Jack Ruby and the Hawks (the Band) – sounds like Jack had a reputation and an aura to him? No surprise the shows they played at his club were poorly attended?
What is it about the Kinks that you love so much? Can you sum it up? What do you imagine that party at John Wayne Gacy’s place was like?
I enjoyed your overview of the White Album. I realize this might be the most difficult question of the interview, but where do you rank that Beatles album in their catalogue?
I didn’t know about Charles Manson’s childhood, and that his alcoholic mother was destitute and spent time in prison. That had to have an impact on the person he became. I also had no idea he was studying Scientology.
Reading about how Manson and his girls duped Dennis into staying at his rented mansion, fleecing him for $100,000 worth of generosity, just made me feel sad for Dennis. He was not a man without his demons.
Are there any classic rock crimes or bands that you just decided to steer clear of for this book?
I did not know that Paul McCartney bought the rights to Buddy Holly’s back catalogue!
GRAB A STACK OF ROCK With Mike and the Mad Metal Man Episode 63: Crime of the Century with Angie Moon
Please welcome Angie Moon to the show! Angie has long been a member of the WordPress community, and is now out with her first book: Crime of the Century! It’s all about the connections between classic rock and true crime, and could be the first book of its kind.
This afternoon, co-host Jex Russell and I will talk with Angie about the book, and these fascinating cases of crime intertwined with figures from classic rock history. The Kinks, the Beach Boys, Debbie Harry, Jimmy Page, Frank Zappa and DEVO are all covered in the book, with an additional section on “musicians who killed”! It’s a fascinating read. You’re bound to learn something you didn’t know before on today’s show.
As you listen to the song, you’ll witness a test flight of my new Potensic Atom SE drone. I took it 118.8 feet in the air on this test run, with a great view of Highway 8, from Hofstetter Park. I even landed it on home plate of the baseball diamond! This drone will get me some awesome cottage footage this summer.
Please enjoy! “Like” and subscribe to my YouTube to see more, and to support the site.
Aaron and his dad picked me up in Kitchener around 10:00 AM. Of course, I made them pose for a drone photo before we left! BMV in Toronto opened at noon, so we had plenty of time, and conversation was good. The weather was cool, breezy and sunny. It was the perfect day. In fact it may have been the most perfect weather we ever had for a Toronto excursion.
I gifted Aaron a copy of Tim Durling’s Y&T book, Down For the Count, and Aaron gifted me two T-shirts, two CDs, and one Hot Wheels. You will see these in the video that I spent the day filming.
“I’ve never seen somebody so excited for video editing!” remarked Aaron. Of course! When you had a day like we had, you can’t help but be eager to show it to the world! I spent 2.5 editing it on Monday night. The video tells the whole story. We strolled the streets of Kensington Market, and we sifted through the aisles and aisles of CDs. We only planned on hitting two stores: our regulars, BMV and Sonic Boom. We had a bonus stop at Paradisc Bound (first visit since 2012). We scored at every single store!
“We’re going to do best at BMV,” predicted Aaron, who was correct, but we didn’t do poorly anywhere. BMV won for prices and used CD selection. Sonic Boom, unfortunately, has started pricing certain discs according to Discogs highs. An old copy of Iron Maiden’s No Prayer for the Dying was jacked up because the cover art changed on the remastered editions. An out of print Helix Get Up! EP was going for a ridiculous $40 on CD, even though all the songs are duplicated on the Power of Rock and Rollalbum. Used cassettes, the kind that people used to dump in Thunder Bay landfills, were sometimes $10 each — same as they sold for when they were brand new. A Razor album was $200 on used CD. These are things they never jacked up back in 2018 when I was last there. Something has changed, and it wasn’t cool. Ultimately I did pay a lot of money for two used CDs at Sonic Boom. Ultimately I decided I wanted them, even though I was paying way too much.
BMV was just awesome. I scored eleven CDs and four records there, for a total of $107. Some were things I was trying for the first time, others were albums I needed to help complete some collections of certain bands. (One record was a gift that shall not be appearing here, for obvious reasons.) We lost track of time easily. I have no idea how long we were in BMV, but long enough to find what we wanted and then some. Of note: Their old 3-for$10 bin has changed. It is now simple $2.99 each. Perfect!
Aaron’s dad was exploring Toronto on his own, but was waiting for us when we met up for lunch at Pauper’s Pub. There are so many great places to eat in our little area of Toronto, but we hit the Pauper’s Pub every single year. That’s an endorsement. Service was great and so was the food. I had some blackened salmon, and unlike many places, it wasn’t dry and tasteless. It was tender and loaded with flavourful roasted veggies.
We made our way through the sights and smells of Kensington on our way to Sonic Boom. There, a giant Arkells display took up the front window. The band played there two weeks prior, selling copies of their new 7″ single “Big Feelings”, which was sold out in one day and not in stock. In fact they only had one Arkells left in stock, period.
We did well enough at Sonic Boom, though the store is becoming more…corporate? “Like a bigger Sunrise Records,” said Aaron. Lots of Reaction figures, Funko Pops, socks, and other assorted accessories. We were not there for those things. Reaction figures are $30 a pop now and prohibitively expensive, even though they had Phil Lynott, Cliff Burton, Lemmy, the Beastie Boys and more. When we come to Toronto, we focus on the real deal: the music. I bought two “holy grail” items albeit overpriced, that I was hoping to find in Toronto but didn’t expect to.
I grabbed a Mango Pepsi to wet the whistle as we walked back to the car, meeting up with Aaron’s dad along the way. He was a little bit behind so we had to kill 15 minutes. Paradisc Bound was right there, and they had a record that I had been wanting since I first started in music retail back in 1994. It was right there in front of me. It was meant to be! For $15, I added one final score to my tally. The funny thing was, I had just been talking about this record with Jex Russell last week…and there it was. Elvis truly is everywhere. (That’s a clue, though you will see the record in the video.)
The drive home was a little stoppy-starty, as Toronto traffic is. It took us one hour to get back up to Highway 401, and another hour back to Kitchener. Aaron and his dad drove two more hours back to Owen Sound…and they wouldn’t let me pay for lunch! Nice guys, those two. Aaron had to work Monday morning, too!
If you want to see every single thing we scored, check out the video. Can’t wait to return!
January, 1991. Faith No More were huge. MuchMusic’s Kim Clarke Champniss asks the question: How do you feel about being classified as a metal band? Does Faith No More even care? “Epic” was a huge hit. Would it have been even without the record company phone calls made to MTV? Check out Roddy Bottum’s answers.
Meanwhile, Mike Patton grins and Mike Bordin plays hide & seek.
This is a monumental interview from my VHS collection. I wore this tape out, as you can tell! Judas Priest’s Rob Halford provides a lot of detail on the goings-on in 1988, that you don’t often hear. That was the year of Ram It Down, Stock Aitken & Waterman, “Johnny B. Goode” and much more! Hear about all that, English tax collectors, Lita Ford and more. Watch as Michael Williams presents Rob with a gold record for Ram It Down, and Priest…Live!
Topics discussed:
Why did Priest choose Canada to open the Ram It Down tour?
Priest’s longevity and why they have lasted so long.
The rotating drum seat: Spinal Tap? Why so many drummers?
Why did the guy’s pants fall down in the video for “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming”? (“The day’s not complete without an exploding head!”)
Why did Priest work with Stock, Aitken & Waterman in January of 1988, and what did they record? (Hear an excerpt from “You Are Everything”.)
“Johnny B. Goode” and how it came about.
How do they keep going day after day on a year-long tour? Are they still hungry for it?
What happens next with Judas Priest?
Violence in heavy metal.
Please enjoy this classic Rob Halford interview that I almost wore right out as a kid. Lots of info here that is interesting to this day!
mikeladano.com 