#916: Oh My, I’ve Been Shot! (Again)

A sequel to #894:  Entertainment Needed at the Vaccine Clinic

 

At an age that seems like a another lifetime ago, I refused to get vaccinations.  I wasn’t anti-vax by any means.  I was actually quite pro-vax, but simultaneously, a chickenshit.  As soon as I was old enough to make decisions for myself, I stopped with the needles.  Then about 15 years ago I decided to get the flu shot.  My reaction was so bad that I swore off needles once more.

A global pandemic has a way of forcing you to get over your fears, and so I’ve just had my second shot.  My arm is just starting to get sore as I write.

When we last caught up at the vaccine clinic, they were administering Pfizer.  This time it’s Moderna.  Canada has approved the mixing of these two brands, as they are so similar.  As for the side effects, I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

As before, things were fast and efficient.  We were in and out in 45 minutes, including the 30 minute wait afterwards.  There appeared to be about four times as many people, but the massive facility didn’t feel any more full than last time.  Good to see us getting on top of this.  I like being in the percentage of people who are double vaxxed in Canada.

As before, the volunteers were excellent — the perfect mixture of professional and friendly.

You know what?  None of us here are scientists.  (If you are, raise your hand!)  We’re just music fans trying to make the best of a worldwide crisis.  This the first global pandemic for any of us, unless you’re 103 years old.  We are living through history and we are even making history.

16 months ago, near the start of this pandemic, I predicated and hoped that we’d see creativity blossom in new ways.  I think we have seen that.  Our friends in the band Suicide Star are a great example.  They recorded their new album Isolation during lockdown, learning to work in new ways, and finding a bloom of creative sparks.  Elsewhere, Styx were also working on new music.  Lawrence Gowan was able to use some vintage and not-very-portable keyboards on this album that he never thought he’d play on a Styx record.  How cool is that?  On the other side of the coin, the new Dennis DeYoung album 26 East Vol. 2 has several lyrics directly addressing the pandemic, such as “St. Quarantine” and “Little Did We Know”.

We have suffered, we have lost, and we have sacrificed.  With this second shot in my arm, I hope that I am doing my part to get this behind us.   If that makes me a guinea pig, so be it.  You can thank me later.  I have a birthday coming soon, and my whole family will be double-vaxxed by then.  Does that mean I can actually have a birthday party this year?

I miss walking into record stores and toy stores.  I miss my grandma.  We all hope this is slowly but surely coming to an end.  After so many false hopes, it seems somehow unlikely, but hope I shall.  Wish me luck with the side effects and I’ll be sure to let you know how I’m doing.

Let’s end this — no mercy!

#915: I Was Young Tony Stark

RECORD STORE TALES #915: I Was Young Tony Stark

Bob and I used to fancy ourselves inventors.  We designed our own video game — Vanguard 2 — but we had our sights set much higher than just Atari’s throne.  Unfortunately many of our designs were thrown out over the years, but some fragments survive.  I know I had designs for 10 more video games, though they appear to be lost.  What was preserved indicates something far more ambitious.

According to the evidence at hand, we weren’t trying to be the next Bill Gates.  We were trying to be Tony Stark.  Alongside innocent designs for video game watches, are sketches for weaponized spacecraft, aircraft and submarines.  We were little weapons dealers!

It’s hard to pin an exact date on these designs but they are likely from 1984.  It appears I was working with a couple shell company names:  “Lado Industrial” and “Perseus Industries” are two.  Spelling is inconsistent throughout but you can get the gist of what I was going for.  Let’s have a look at these designs.

The Kid Looking to Weaponize Space:  The Perseus Industries 9000 (“P.I.N.T.”)

This spaceship resembles an oversized engine pod from a Y-Wing starfighter.  It is armed with rockets, lasers and proton torpedoes, apparently.  The landing gear is clearly designed after the F-104 Starfighter’s.

Also note that there were options.  For those with more expensive tastes, add on the detachable laser pod!

The Sea Was Not Safe from this Little Captain Nemo:  Unnamed submarine craft

Missiles, torpedoes, lasers and radar dot the surface of this heavily armed sea-beast.  A work in progress, it remains unnamed and unfinished.  Still deadly.

On the back of this paper, and almost too faint to read, is a note for our school principal:  “Dear Miss Beale, thank you for letting us have an Oktoberfest party, and thank you for inviting Miss Oktoberfest.”  They were Oktoberfest crazy at that school.  They would hammer that Bible into us and give me shit for wearing a Judas Priest shirt…but sure, have Miss Oktoberfest come to the school.

The Kid Wants to Light Up the Sky:  Perseus Industries King (“P.I.K.”) war jet

I’m not sure how well this this would fly.  Two laser turrets (ventral and dorsal) plus a forward facing laser makes this a heavily armed plane.  It doesn’t look particularly aerodynamic or stealthy.  It’s purpose was to punish!

The Weapons Dealer in Your Home:  Lado Industrial satellite TV system

Deviously, I named my home electronics company Lado Industrial.  Can’t have a weapons dealer selling video games to kids.  I was smarter than I thought I was!  One of the neighbours at the lake had a satellite dish and boasted that he could watch any major league baseball game he wanted.  This was clearly the future, the high-end of the TV experience, and I wanted in.

I created a sketch of the dish, the base mechanism, and the remote.  Note that the remote has a speaker/microphone and calculator functions.  While it may appear advanced, it is still a wired remote.

The Kid Had Ambition:  The Watch that Can Do Anything

I feel like Indiana Jones with only half the map.  This watch was not designed with Bob.  I was over at Allan Runstedtler’s house, and his dad had this crazy computer paper.  Sadly this drawing was torn in half and only the bottom remains.  Many details are lost, such as the name of the watch, and what company name I was planning to sell it under.  However, many details remain, and they are funny as hell.

Ignoring the horrendous spelling, let’s run through the features.

  • Double strap
  • Lifetime guarantee
  • 5 video game cartridges included: Defender, Pong, Pacman, plus exclusives Space Chase and New Slot Racers
  • 4 controllers included:  2 joysticks, 2 paddles
  • Pinball attachment
  • “Super battery” and recharger included
  • Built-in printer (“data readout”)
  • Built-in disc drive
  • TV plug-in cable
  • AM/FM/CB/shortwave radio
  • Earphone
  • 2000k built in, 16k add-on available
  • Detachable keyboard
  • Guaranteed to play “every game exactly the same as the arcade”
  • Blank cartridges available to copy games
  • And a strategy book (for strategies)
  • PLUS BONUS – We’ll give you a Pacman key chain free!

All this for just $299.00!  That is $200.99 off the original retail price!

Even in 1984 dollars, that’s a steal for all that stuff.  The watch would have been huge on your wrist, and the controllers and keyboard tiny by comparison.  There was no way anyone would be able to play a four player video game on a watch.  It’s also comical that with 2000k of storage built in, all you can add is a mere 16k expansion pack.  I guess the real hook was that it played “every game”, and “exactly the same as the arcade”.  With the video game cartridges included, it’s clear that my watch is primarily a gaming system.

“How cool would it be if I could sit there playing a video game on my watch without the teacher noticing,” I might have thought.  With the included ear bud, you could still get sound effects.

One visionary touch is the included pinball attachment.  This meant you could actually play Baby Pac Man — the video game/pinball hybrid that could only be experienced in arcades!  Well, with my watch, you could play it at home.  When I said “every video game” and “just like the arcade”, I was not kidding around.  I took that stuff seriously.

I was an ambitious kid with the streak of a warmonger.  I was a little Tony Stark in the making and the teachers should have been worried about that rather than a Judas Priest T-shirt or an obsession with Kiss.  All the clues were there.  Look at this one final drawing.

This school assignment came with a pre-drawn airplane cockpit.  It is captioned “If you could fly your own airplane, where would you go?”

Where would I go?  To war, apparently!

#914: The Bad Batch

RECORD STORE TALES #914 The Bad Batch

Mrs. Powers used to say to us, “You are the worst class I have ever taught!”  She was good at the guilt thing.  I understand that she continued to tell subsequent generations that they too were the worst class she has ever taught.  With the benefit of hindsight, she was the worst teacher we ever had.

I had her two years in a row.  Grades seven and eight.  We were the worst class she had ever taught both years.  Coincidentally, also the worst two years of grade school.  A couple years later, my sister had her.  She was still guilting and shaming the students when my sister had her.  She was the epitome of old lady Catholic school teacher clichés.

We were not particularly worse than any other class.  We had our bad apples, that the teachers didn’t seem to know how to contain.  My time with Powers coincided with my discover of heavy metal music:  Kiss, Priest, Maiden.  Wearing my Judas Priest shirt to school was one of the biggest mistakes I made in the 8th grade.  Powers gave me a good scolding in front of everyone else, who found it hilarious.  She must have thought I was going bad too.  I will always resent Powers for teaming me up with my nemesis Steve Hartman in gym class.  The guy had been picking on me since grade two, and she thought we’d get over it by doing gymnastics together?  The fact that I even had to touch the guy was disgusting to me.  Why did she have to do that?  Isn’t that borderline abusive?

In the 8th grade I had enough with Hartman and fought him one night after school.  He brought friends; my only backup was Kevin Kirby.  He was just there to enjoy the show, he didn’t care who won.  But I managed to get Steve Hartman to leave me alone for the year after that night.  That was pretty much it for his career in bullying; he never had a comeback though not without trying.

Kiss really did a lot to get me through the Powers years.  My year of discovery for Kiss was 1985, the Asylum period.  Not the greatest entry point, but I quickly found myself drawn to better albums like Hotter Than Hell and Creatures of the Night.  It was Mrs. Powers who presided over the school retreat to Mount Mary.  Possibly the loneliest week of my entire childhood as I bunked with every kid who ever tormented me.  But we had to go; Powers scared everyone in class by telling us that any student she had that skipped the Mount Mary retreat ended up “dead or on drugs”.   Bringing your own music was forbidden, so I memorized as much Kiss music as I could, to replay in my head when the going got rough.

Sex-ed was a joke of course.  I remember the usual school films with animated cells dividing, and sketches of genitalia.  The more we learned the less we knew.  But at least we got to sit there watching a movie, so the teacher didn’t have to explain anything herself.  Rock Hudson died of AIDS that fall, but none of us knew exactly what AIDS was.  She asked us if we knew.  One kid answered, “It makes you get old and die.”  She responded, “Well, it makes you look old, yes.”  We learned that much, and that you could get it from a blood infection.  That’s what we learned.  Can’t give this bad batch of kids too much graphic information.

Do you want to know the truth?  Maybe Powers was right.  Maybe our year really was the worst batch of kids she’d ever taught.  Some of them, at least.  Our only consolation was that she if she thought we were bad, she was going to find future generations were worse.  If she thought I was heading down the wrong path with Kiss and Judas Priest, I wonder what she thought of Marilyn Manson or rap!  She thought we were bad?  The 90s were still to come!

One thing that struck me from that time that will always remain is this.  Our family did not go to church much, but frequency in church visits didn’t seem to correlate to how good of a person you were.  My sister and I were good kids.  Some of these other kids that went to church every week were real assholes.  Just an observation.

I hope that Powers did end up with worse classes than us.  She deserved it.

Sunday Screening: Polychuck – “Exposure”

Thomas Polychuck is a hot new artist out of Montreal.  He’s a multi-instrumentalist with a “do it yourself” attitude.  He has a new EP out called Exposure, and Deke and I will be speaking to Thomas on the July 31 episode of the LeBrain Train.  Polychuck prides himself in his guitar shredding (since age 13!) and you can hear a bit of that on this track “Exposure”.

Let us know what you think of Polychuck and get your questions locked and loaded for our interview!

 

Storytime With Ryan Williams, Studio Wiz!

Great show today!  John from 2loud2oldmusic brought on engineer/mixer/musician/songwriter Ryan Williams for storytime.  Though his credits range from pop to metal, we tended to focus our discussion on rock and roll.  If you’re a fan of Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, Slayer, Staind, U2, Phil Collen of Def Leppard, Limp Bizkit, Velvet Revolver, Dave Navarro, or Kelly Clarkson then you’ll want to check this show out.

From starting out in Atlanta, to travelling the world recording epic performances, Ryan Williams has seemingly seen it all and done it all.  Recording music on a Tascam 4-track home studio, graduating to two synced 24-tracks machines, to the modern tools of today, Ryan has kept learning.  We talked about his beginnings, and working with Brendan O’Brien, all the way to the present day and the imminent release of a Stone Temple Pilots box set for Tiny Music.  Ryan even had a little bit of show and tell with some hand-written original Eddie Vedder lyrics.

Great show all around and thank you for watching.

REVIEW: Styx – The Grand Illusion / Pieces of Eight Live (2011)

STYX – The Grand Illusion / Pieces of Eight Live (2011 Eagle Records)

Although legacy bands like Styx may not write and record new music as often as they used to, there have been a couple interesting effects from this.  Legendary discographies have been mined by a handful of classic bands, playing rare tracks live that haven’t been played on a stage in decades, if ever.  Sometimes, bands play full albums.  A few even play two!  Styx chose The Grand Illusion and Pieces of Eight for live resurrection.

Dipping back to 1977 and 1978, Styx picked two of their best records to perform.  Kind of the “sweet spot” between Tommy Shaw joining the band on Crystal Ball, and the drama with Dennis DeYoung on Cornerstone.  There are numerous of songs they never played live with Lawrence Gowan on vocals before, if at all!  They had to re-learn their own songs to put on this concert.  You can’t accuse them of taking the easy way out!

Tommy even tells you where the side breaks come!

With Todd Sucherman on drums, the songs are naturally heavier here.  Gowan’s voice lends a different sound to them too.  Bassist Ricky Phillips is rock solid as always, but original bassist Chuck Panozzo still comes out to play bass on the odd track live.  His rumble on “Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)” is nice and prominent in the mix.

The songs have other notable differences, like more guitar solos.  James Young does Dennis’ old spoken word part on “Superstars”.  Some might wonder, “Why listen to this, when you can play the original albums with the original members any time you want?”  It would be unwise to compare the talents of Gowan and Dennis, but why can’t you just be a fan of both?  Some people want to hear Gowan singing “Come Sail Away”, and especially “Castle Walls” which was only played once before in 1978 and a handful of times in 1997.  There are many such songs on this recording.  “I’m OK” (which Gowan sings) was dropped after 1979, until this tour.  “Lords of the Rings” (James Young on vocals) was only played once in 1978.

There are stories, and songs for the diehards.  This isn’t a package for someone looking for greatest hits.  It’s also not the same as listening to an old album.  This is for the Styx fan who loves the past and present equally.

3.5/5 stars

Engineer and Mixer Ryan Williams on the Saturday LeBrain Train

The LeBrain Train: 2000 Words or More with Mike and John Snow

Saturday July 3 – Episode 74 – Ryan Williams

Have you ever had anything with your name on it nominated for a Grammy award?  Ryan Williams has — for his work on Train’s Drops of Jupiter, Velvet Revolver’s Contraband, and Kelly Clarkson’s Stronger.  And we’ll be talking to him about it on Saturday’s LeBrain Train.

Join John Snow and I for this special Saturday episode with a very in-demand engineer.  How much demand?  Well, besides Stone Temple Pilots, he’s either engineered or mixed for Matt Nathanson, 3 Doors Down, Lifehouse, Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Pearl Jam, Outkast, Staind, Michelle Branch, The Panic Channel, Phil Collen’s Delta Deep, Korn, Static-X, Thirty Seconds to Mars, Biffy Clyro, 10 Years, Atreyu, Mastodon, Billy Idol, P!nk, Sugar Ray, Deftones, Adam Lambert, Coheed & Cambria, The Black Dahlia Murder, Bush, Neon Trees, and Beck.  He even has a co-write on a Kelly Clarkson song.  Is that enough demand for ya?

This is going to be a great chance for us to pick the brain of a guy who has literally worked with the biggest names in modern music.  You do not want to miss this one — catch it live so we can ask Ryan your questions!

Saturday July 3, 1:00 PM E.S.T. on Facebook:  MikeLeBrain and YouTube:  Mike LeBrain.

BOOK REVIEW: Gord Downie & Jeff Lemire – Secret Path (2016)

GORD DOWNIE & LEFF LEMIRE – Secret Path (2016 Simon and Schuster)

Residential schools are Canada’s shame.

History cannot be buried forever.  Eventually, atrocities are brought to light.  This terrible secret is no longer hiding in the dark.  It has shown the world that even the great nation of Canada has skeletons.  Tens of thousands of them.  Children, taken away from their families, and forced to assimilate.  Forced to lose their language, culture, and way of life.  All in the misguided and shameful effort to “civilize the savage” and “bring the heathens to God”.  Thus, “saving” them.

Thousands of these children never came home from the residential school system.  How many?  With bodies being unearthed daily, we may never know the true tally.  If Gord Downie were alive today, what would he have to say about these discoveries?

Downie and Jeff Lemire tried to tell us.  In 2016 they released Secret Path, a gorgeous and painful graphic novel to accompany the Downie album of the same name.  The book comes with a download code so you can listen along, and read the full lyrics.  It is the story of Chanie Wenjack, Anishinaabe by birth, raised in northern Ontario.  The residential school forced him to change his name to “Charlie”.  This is not ancient history.  This only happened in 1966.  The Beatles were the biggest band in the world.  Our parents were living normal lives.  Meanwhile, Wenjack and thousands like him were abused and tormented at residential schools all over the country, not even afforded the dignity of their own names.

At age 12, Wenjack ran away.  Home was 370 miles.  He never made it.  Secret Path is his story.

The book has no text other than the album’s lyrics.  Listening along is the best way to appreciate the rich images.  You must take time to study the lines and shading, for each page is rich with beauty and detail.

It was October of ’66 and the story begins with Chanie already on his way home.  Alone, following the train tracks, Wenjack is illustrated in stark black, blue and white.  The trees are bare, and ravens circle free overhead.  Chanie’s story is told in the form of flashbacks.   His thoughts go back to happier times, fishing with his father.  These memories are in full, beautiful watercolour.  Lemire captures the love in his drawings.

“My dad is not a wild man.  He doesn’t even drink.”

Chanie’s memories then go back to his first day at school.  Like a prisoner, he was issued a new haircut and new clothes.  His sorrow leaks through the pages.  He then thinks back to the morning of October 16.  Unable to tolerate any more abuse, Wenjack and two friends made a run for it.

“Now?”  “Not yet.”

“Now?”  “Now yes.”

They stayed briefly with the family of the other two boys, but Chanie wanted to return to his own home.  On his own, and only with a railway map, a windbreaker, and a jar with seven matches inside, Chanie followed the rail.  Only seven matches.

“And I kept them dry.  And as long as there were six, I’d be fine.”

“As long as there were five.”

“As long as there were four…”

His thoughts return once again to the school.  Sexual abuse is alluded to.  Chanie continues to run on his secret path, but he also tries to escape from his memories.  They are never far behind.  Only happy dreams of his father bring warmth, and they are gloriously painted in fall colours.  As he weakens, hallucinations manifest, both good and bad.  He wishes for revenge, and to see his father one more time.  The raven circles overhead.

“I’ll just close my eyes.  I’ll just catch my breath.”

While there is no way to really know the thoughts and feelings of Chanie Wenjack during his final walk, Secret Path is not a work of fiction.  It happened.  And now we know that Chanie is one of thousands.  Chanie Wenjack did not die on that train track from exposure to the elements.  He died of genocide.

If this book does not make you feel, then consult a doctor because something is wrong with your heart.

5/5 stars

#913: A Walk to the Mall 1988

RECORD STORE TALES #913: A Walk to the Mall 1988

Bob and I went to the mall a lot.  Stanley Park Mall was kind of epicenter of the neighborhood.  Though it didn’t have a record store of the caliber of Sam the Record Man downtown, it had an A&A and a Zellers where you could find all the big releases and a few singles.  It had a grocery store, which meant just about every neighbour bought their supplies at the same place.  The Zellers store stocked anything else you needed.  There was a liquor store.  Two banks.  We didn’t need to go elsewhere very often.

It was a nice short walk.  We used to take a short cut through the apartments at the very end of Secord Ave.  But they fenced up the shortcuts.  Sometimes Bob and I would go that way and jump the fences just out of spite.

“They can’t stop us from going this way,” we said.

We were little assholes sometimes, but we had a good time doing it.

The Little Short Stop was an important store.  That’s where I would buy my rock magazines.  Hit Parader, every single month.  I never missed an issue from some time in 1987 through 1990.  One thing we loved doing was leafing through seeing ads for all the rock albums that were due to come out.  “New Ace Frehley!” I exclaimed upon seeing an ad for Second Sighting.  The ads would often tell you names of the forthcoming singles.  The ad for Open Up and Say…Ahh! by Poison highlighted the track “Good Love” as a song to watch for.  Maybe the marketing for that album changed midway?

I eventually stopped buying Hit Parader, and switched to other mags like Metal Edge.  The reason?  I always suspected there was something up with their interviews.  There was a sameness to them, no matter who was answering.  Then, Sebastian Bach from Skid Row got in some serious trouble when an audience member at a concert threw a bottle at him.  Injured and enraged, he made the incredibly stupid mistake of throwing the bottle back, and hitting an innocent girl instead.  Hit Parader fabricated an interview with Bach where he was quoted as saying “That’s why rock stars have lawyers, man” or something to that effect.  The quote was used against him in court.

Not to deflect blame for the incident away from Bach, but I couldn’t support Hit Parader any more after that.  Not to mention, I was disappointed to realize that many of the rest of their interviews also had to be fake.  I gave away my collection many years ago.

In 1988, however, Hit Parader was my Bible.  That, and WWF Magazine, which was equally fake.  I always left that store with both magazines if I could.  If I couldn’t, the Zehrs store often had the WWF Magazine issues that I needed.  Some pop and chips, and we were all set for Short Stop.

WWF Magazine was devious.  They had the monthly publication, but also many periodical specials, and I had to collect them all.  There was the official Wrestlemania book.  Another one for Summer Slam.  Royal Rumble.  Survivor Series.  My mom used to say that the World Wrestling Federation got a lot of money out of us!  I would also buy the Toronto Sun the day after a major wrestling event.  They had the most complete coverage, often with full colour photos.  I may still have an old Toronto Sun from that time.

Then we were off to browse the music at A&A.  We’d look at the charts and see if any bands we liked were up there.  Maiden’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son was for about a week.  I was pleased when I saw Priest’s Ram It Down on the chart later that year.  We’d shop around, but I rarely had enough money for a new tape.  Bob did — he had a job.

But browse we did, usually looking for Kiss tapes that we had never seen in stock before.  Or Europe.  Or Ozzy.  Whitesnake, Cinderella, AC/DC, Def Leppard, all of our favourites.  Cassettes were like crack to us.  We were always searching.  Something “rare” would be a must-buy.

Bob would often save his money and buy five tapes at a time.  He took chances on stuff I never heard of, like Fifth Angel.  He would caution me and make sure I was making the right purchase.  He was somewhat surprised when I got into Bon Jovi and decided I wanted to buy Slippery When Wet.  He wasn’t really into them that much.  “Are you sure that’s what you want?” he asked me one night at the Zellers store.  I was sure.

“Have you ever seen this one before?” we would ask each other.  The Bon Jovi cassette single “Wanted: Dead or Alive” was one I had my eyes on for several months at that A&A store.  You just did not see it very often, so when I had the money, I grabbed it.  It was worth it for the incredible acoustic version of the song.  Bob didn’t buy singles as often.  He valued a full length for his money, but he made exceptions for bands like Iron Maiden.  You couldn’t find Maiden singles at A&A though.  You had to go to Sam’s for those.  Bob wold trek there on his bike.  Fortunately he sold his Maiden singles collection to me when he did finally let them go.

One of the most distinctive features of the old Stanley Park Mall that people remember is that it was shaped like a big “O”; like an oval.  We would walk around and around.  Just talking, looking at the magazines I had purchased.  Or the tapes he just bought.  Discussing everything going on in music, in the neighbourhood and at school.  Because the mall was such a central location for so many people, we’d always run into schoolmates or neighbours.  Sometimes a girl that I liked, but I never had the courage to talk to any.

The mall has changed so much and the “O” is gone.  All the good stuff is gone.  A harsh reminder of the passage of time.  But I can still retrace my steps.

Bob was a fast walker but I could keep up.  You didn’t waste a lot of time on your way home from the mall.  You wanted to get down to business of listening to the new music, or reading the new magazines.  That was a special kind of Saturday in old ’88.

 

#912: My First Guitar

RECORD STORE TALES #912: My First Guitar

Bob had a blue and yellow BMX bike, so I had to have a blue and yellow BMX bike.

Bob had a leather jacket, and so I had to have a leather jacket.

Bob had an electric guitar…so I had to have an electric guitar.

Early in 1988, Bob bought his first and only guitar.  It was a jagged, black Stinger with a whammy bar.   It had two double coil pickups.  He had strap locks so he could twirl his guitar over his shoulder if he wanted.  And I had to have all these things too.

Bob bought his guitar second-hand from a guy who said “it used to belong to the guy from Helix”.  Of course there was no way to verify this so we never treated it as fact.   The first weekend he had it, he invited me over to check it out.  How hard could a guitar be to play?  They used to teach sheet music in grade school, so I thought “piece of cake, I can play guitar”.

I told my parents that I was getting a guitar, and to them it was just another thing that Bob had, that I had to have too.  And since Bob was two years older and had a part-time job, they’d be paying for this guitar that I insisted I was getting.  Bob and I went out on our own one afternoon, to East End Music in downtown Kitchener.  We browsed, got the help of the man working (probably the owner) and I picked out a generic white guitar.  It had what I needed — the humbucking pickups and whammy bar like Bob had.

“The black and white guitars will be a cool contrast,” we both thought.

I really wanted that guitar.  I thought it was just meant to be.  Bob and I were going to form a band.  This was the first step.  We already had a few band names picked out.

“We’ll be back,” I told the guy as we left.  I was really excited.  Upon arriving at home, I proceeded with begging my parents for the guitar.  My dad wasn’t happy, especially when I explained to him that we already told the guy that I was coming back for it.

“Oh no,” he moaned.  But they agreed, as long as I took music lessons.  That seemed like a pretty sweet deal!  My dad got out his cheque book, asked the man, “What can you do for me here?” and bought me the white generic instrument that I couldn’t live without, at a slightly reduced price!  I was the only one who was happy with the outcome.

It was at this point that I discovered that guitar was really hard.

Look closely in this picture and you can see the black cardboard “air guitar” that I made, and our old Atari 2600 console.  

Sure, I could pick out the first six or seven notes of the “Detroit Rock City” solo, but not in time.  Bob and I figured out how to do a simple version of the “Wasted Years” intro, but couldn’t play the song any further than that.  I saw a kid at school playing acoustic guitar, and he did something with his fingers that I couldn’t.  He laid his index finger on the fretboard, and played multiple strings at once — the skill of chording that I had yet to learn.

My mom found a teacher that did housecalls.  It was perfect — my sister was learning keyboards from him.  Gary Mertz was his name, a keyboard player by nature but also able to teach guitar.  Bob would come over on Saturday mornings, and take his lesson after Kathryn and I had finished.  Gary could teach three lessons in one stop, and I believe there was a fourth kid in the neighborhood that he taught as well.  After lessons, sometimes Bob and I would hang out and listen to music, or go to the mall.

The first lesson I really learned about guitar is why you don’t want a whammy bar.  I spent most of my time tuning that thing, and replacing a set of strings was a nightmare.  “I’ll never buy another guitar with a whammy bar,” I said after buying a second guitar with a whammy bar.

The reason I bought that second guitar was due to an accident with the first.  I left it lying upright, leaning on a bench.  It got tangled in a cable, and when my sister got her keyboard out to practice, the cable yanked on the whammy bar.  The guitar hit the bench and the headstock broke in two.  It was made clear to me by both Gary and my parents that this accident was my fault.  But Gary found a guy who would fix it.

A broken guitar is never as good as it was brand new.  A couple years later I bought my Kramer flying V, which became my preferred instrument.  It too was a white guitar, and so I said to Bob:  “My gimmick is that every guitar I own will be a white guitar.”  He thought that was cool, because two of my favourite players, Adrian Smith and Phil Collen, frequently played white guitars.

The fact of the matter is, some people can play instruments, and some people can’t.  I went the full distance before admitting that I can’t.   I modified my first axe with some cool stickers. Bob and I both bought “super slinky” guitar strings thinking it would help us play fast.   For my guitar strap, I chose a cool faux-snakeskin thing.  (I didn’t want animal print — too 1984.)  I had an electronic tuner, a suitably heavy ancient tube amp with a reverb pedal, and a collection of different picks.  Gary tried to make my mom feel better about my difficulty.  “It’s not as easy as the keyboard,” he explained.  “If I dropped an ashtray on this key, it’s still going to make the right note.  A guitar won’t.”  But eventually, I called it quits.  It turns out that my sister got all the talent.

Bob didn’t think he was learning anything from Gary, and he quit several months before I did.  He had a new interest now:  sailboarding.

“Oh I suppose you’re going to want a sailboard now!” said my mom with a warning tone in her voice.

But I didn’t follow Bob this time.  Sailboarding was the first thing Bob was into, that I had no interest in.  I toiled away at guitar a little longer, thinking now I could be a solo artist.  I wrote some lyrics and recorded some ideas on cassette.  Half of my ideas were played on the keyboard using the “guitar” voice, because I just couldn’t play guitar.

My first guitar, the one bought in February 1988 at East End Music in downtown Kitchener, with the repaired headstock, was sold to an older lady that Gary was teaching.  I’m sure she was able to get more music out of it than I did.