#890: Top Ten Most Annoying Things About Listening Stations

A sequel to #444:  “Can I Listen to This?”

RECORD STORE TALES #890: Top Ten Most Annoying Things About Listening Stations

Although it seems like dystopian fiction now, there was once a time when if you wanted to sample an album before you bought it, the best way was going to a store and asking to listen to it.

I imagine even today, people walk up to the counter at Ye Olde Record Store and ask to hear something before they buy it.  I am certain the demand is not like it once was.  We used to have six individual listening stations.  Granted, we were lucky if three or four worked at any given time, but when we first opened, we had six brand new players.  And they were busy.  On a Saturday, all six would be in use at once.  With a couple more people lined up waiting to jump in when one was vacated.

Here’s how it worked.  Pay attention, because some people just didn’t get it.

It’s actually pretty simple.  You just look around the store, grab a few CDs you want to listen to, and bring the cases to me to load them up.  All the discs were kept safely behind the counter.  All I had to do was load them up, and lay them out for you to hear.

All our players were five disc changers.  I would load up the first five of your selections, and lay down the cases on the counter.  “This is the order they are in the player.”  Then I would give them a quick run-through on the remote control.  Play, skip, stop, skip disc…I would ask them to ignore the rest of the buttons.

Annoying Thing #1:  People who don’t listen.

“Sir!  This player isn’t working.”

Because you ignored my instructions and hit the “program” button.  Now you’re in program mode.  Let’s get out of that, and just press play this time.

Annoying Thing #2:  People who help themselves.

There was nothing more startling than finding a customer behind the counter with you!  These people think the listening stations are like self-serve gas stations.  They’d go behind the counter and start looking for the CDs to load up themselves.  I’m really not sure what possesses people to think they can do that.  There’s a counter.  It has a front and a back.  We used to have a divider chain, but it ripped out years before.

Annoying Thing #3:  Using the remote to open the tray. 

You don’t need to open the tray.  You’re not helping by hitting the “open” button.  More than once, I was picking discs that were stored beneath the CD players.  I stood up, and “CRASH!”  Right into the now-open tray of a CD player.  Thanks for that.  I’ve definitely had them open up on me while I was walking past, too.

Annoying Thing #4:  Audiophiles.

Quoting a prior chapter:

“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.

Yes the headphones sucked, mostly from years of use.  Another issue is that all the headphones were run through a little tiny volume box that was custom made for us.  This volume control was the real problem.  Knobs went staticky, came right off… Maybe it wasn’t the audiophiles that were the problem, maybe it was the shitty volume knobs.

Annoying Thing #5:  Gross remote controls.

I think I cleaned those things every day.  I don’t know what people are walking around with on their hands, but those remotes got disgusting.  The listening stations were always solidly disinfected from headphones to remotes, but they somehow felt…gross to the touch.

Annoying Thing #6:  “Is there a way to plug in two headphones?  My friend wants to listen.”

No!  Stop asking!  Yes, it would be “cool” if we could do it.  The single-output volume boxes were bad enough.  Imagine putting two in there.

Annoying Thing #7:  Singers.

Yes, sometimes, people sang along.  It wasn’t frequent.  Other customers would turn and look.  Usually you’d just ignore it.  Only twice did I have to cut someone off for singing too loud.  Once was two girls singing “This shit is bananas!” along with Gwen Stefani.  Another was an angry kid who, quite frankly, was starting to scare me.

Annoying Thing #8:  Kids treated them like toys.  

Young kids get bored in music stores.  Trust me on this.  Some liked to climb on top of the stools, grab the remote control, and…you guessed it…open and close the trays.  They’d just mash their fingers on a remote and yell “HOW DOES THIS WOOOOORK?”

I wish I was making this stuff up, I really was.

Sometimes, mom or dad would ask me to put on a kids’ CD for them to listen to, to keep them occupied.  That I was happy to do.  As long as they didn’t play with the remotes, or God forbid, put them in their mouths.

Annoying Thing #9:  High maintenance listeners.

Sometimes you had to help people skip tracks.  You could even show them on the remote where the button is, and they’d still need help.  “Which disc am I listening to now?”  Well, it says disc 2 on the display, and I put the cases down here in order, so that would be Garth Brooks.  “Well it doesn’t sound like him!”  And that’s because you picked his Chris Gaines album.

Annoying Thing #10:  No limits.

You could come to the counter with 25 discs, and I had no choice but to let you listen to them all if you wanted to.  And you could take as much time doing so as you liked.  Some gentlemen (often fans of jazz or electronica or both, but always men) spent an entire morning glued to a listening station.  They only moved to go and look for more discs to listen to.

I won’t lie to you, listening station service was hard work when you have a guy like that in the store while you’re busy.  It takes time to retrieve all those CDs from behind the counter.  It takes time to file them back when you’re done.  And then I still have to re-file the cases out for display.  For you it’s one easy step — just pick the discs you want to listen to.  For me, it’s three steps.  Get the CD from its specific location, put the CD back when you’re done, and re-file the case.

Some customers thought they were being helpful by re-filing the cases for me.  All that did was create more difficulty, because now I had to look each one up in the computer to see where the CD itself is supposed to go.  And that wasn’t always easy.  You know, sometimes there are CDs out there with nothing to identify the artist or title.  At all.  And after serving the guy 25 discs, you’re not gonna remember what it was.

There are other miscellaneous things that used to bug me.  People who would treat you like a servant.  Working as a listening station jockey for an afternoon was a pretty thankless job.  Of course there are exceptions.  The exceptions aren’t the memories that stick in your head for 25 years!

 

 

 

Lists Bloody Lists: Marco the Contrarian boards the LeBrain Train with some Black Sabbath lists!

Thank you Marco from The Contrarians for your appearance Friday night!  The subject was Black Sabbath songs.  Three Nigel Tufnel Top Ten lists from three die-hard fans.  Do the math — that’s like a million tons of metal right there.

Marco is one of the most knowledgeable guests we’ve had on the show.  We couldn’t let him off without asking him some questions about Marco.  The first part of the show features a new segment that we call “Lightning Round – Getting to Know You”.  We’d like your feedback on this part of the show.  We had a lot of fun with it and so did the live viewers.  What did you think of this new feature?  Let us know in the comments.

Finally, we did a Contrarians style discussion on my favourite Black Sabbath record Born Again.  This was very enjoyable and I hope we did the Contrarians justice with our version of the format.

Finally Finally:  Marco mentioned a film project he is working on about a Canadian metal band called Mystique that is very close to his heart.  Check out their Youtube channel by clicking here.  This subject really grabbed the imagination of the live viewers who started looking up their stuff on Discogs!  ($377!)  You’ll also hear about a band called Slam Glory that I liked a lot back in the 90s.

All this and more on the LeBrain Train.  Thanks for watching!

For the statisticians:  Of the 33 songs on our lists, only five overlapped.  They were:

  • Cornucopia (Meat and Marco)
  • Sign of the Southern Cross (Mike and Meat)
  • Hand of Doom (Meat and Marco)
  • Disturbing The Priest (Marco and Mike)
  • Children Of the Sea (Mike and Meat)

Crossover! Contrarian Marco joins the LeBrain Train for some Black Sabbath shenanigans

The LeBrain Train:  2000 Words or More with Mike Ladano…and Meat!

Episode 56 – Contrarian Marco talks Black Sabbath

In a crossover event sure to melt the structure of reality, we have Marco from The Contrarians here with us tonight!  Their excellent YouTube show, featuring Martin Popoff, is the place you want to be for some real in-depth heavy metal album discussions.  It’s all about people like us who pick odd-duck albums as their favourites.  Which is something I’ll be doing tonight as well!

Without spoiling all the fun, here’s what we have in store.  Uncle Meat and I will be asking Marco some questions so we can get to know him a little better.  Then the three of us will break out the lists!  It’s the Nigel Tufnel Top Ten Black Sabbath songs.  As if that isn’t enough epic-ness, we will also be discussing contrarian-style my favourite Sabbath record:  Born Again.

Additionally:  I will be announcing the winners of our CD draw from last week’s One Year Anniversary show!  This will happen in the pre-show segment before 7:00 PM.

Announcements:  Next week is already Easter.  I’m considering doing two shorter shows that weekend:  One, featuring a Max the Axe live rehearsal with four songs.  These “Straight Outta Lockdown” sessions include a new tune.  The second show I am considering would be Easter memories.  Guests are on a volunteer basis if you’re interested.

Following that:

April 9:  Please welcome the legendary Andy Curran of Coney Hatch to the show!  With co-host Superdekes.

May 7:  It’s Paul Laine, Canadians singer extraordinaire, formerly of Danger Danger and currently with The Defiants!  With co-host John T. Snow!

Are you excited?  Because I sure am!  Thanks to Deke and John for booking these awesome guests.

REVIEW: The London Quireboys – “Hey You” (1990 cassette single)

THE LONDON QUIREBOYS – “Hey You” (1990 Capitol cassette single)

A curiosity unique to cassette.  The UK 12″ single for “Hey You” included a live “Hoochie Coochie Man” on the B-side.  It and the 7″ single also contained the album track “Sex Party”.  You could get these same tracks on the CD single, but the cassette went with a different route.

The A-side common to all is of course “Hey You” from the hit debut album A Bit Of What You Fancy. It sounds classic from first crash of guitar. The Stones-y Faces vibe is immediately apparent, and fondly recalls the summer of 1990 when the need for such a sound heralded in the Quireboys and Black Crowes.  It was completely unlike everything out by Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, and Warrant.  Its refreshing reliance on slide guitar still sounds great in the speakers, but the rasp of singer Spike is its most defining trait.

The first B-side is the roudy “Sex Party” from the album.  The boogie piano keeps it kickin’ hard.  But then the cassette goes its own way with two additional tracks.  They are severely edited versions of hit singles “I Don’t Love You Anymore” and “7 O’Clock”.  Both fade out prematurely just as the songs are getting awesome!

The whole thing repeats on both sides.  The idea is to give the kids incentive to go out and buy the album next time.  Save your allowances and buy the album to get the full songs.  Such teases!  Just as Spike is telling us what time it is, adding that it’s also “time for the party”, the song fades and the side ends!

Can’t realistically rate something like this very high.  While the two full tracks are both awesome, it’s hard to justify buying this tape today as anything other than a curiosity.  The cassette still sounds good after 31 years though!

2/5 stars

#889: The Dreadnoks

RECORD STORE TALES #889: The Dreadnoks

I’ve always had trouble letting go.  Even though rock music was my true obsession, there was some overlap.  Even  into grade nine, I still bought GI Joe comics and figures.  It was always hard letting go of an obsession.  My “favourite things”, in order of discovery were:

  1. Star Wars until its natural end in 1983-84.
  2. GI Joe/Transformers from 1984 to 1986-87.
  3. Rock music from 1984 to present.
  4. WWF Wrestling from 1985 to 1990.

You can see how the evolution of this worked.  A GI Joe figure was in the same scale as Star Wars, but with far more articulation well suited to an older kid.  The first wave of figures even featured real-world accurate weapons.  They were a natural step for a kid still wanting that action figure experience, but geared for someone older.  Transformers went hand in hand, since Marvel were producing a comic line to go for each.  Transformers resembled the die-cast cars that older kids (and adults) collected and displayed.

I discovered heavy metal music on December 26, 1984.  A  few months later, wrestling appeared on my radar with the very first Wrestlemania.  A lot of those guys looked like rock stars, with crazy costumes, long hair and male bravado.

As my interests shifted and evolved, so did my collections.  The Star Wars toys were put into storage in the crawl space.  I was given tape boxes, Christmas after Christmas, to store my growing music collection.  A typical Christmas would see me receiving some new tapes and action figures.  I’d sit in my bedroom reading GI Joe comics while rocking out to Long Way to Heaven by Helix.  I was a weird kid but I liked what I liked and didn’t much care.

The Joe characters diversified along with me.  In 1984 they got a little more outlandish with the introduction of Zartan and the Dreadnoks.  Zartan, the master of disguise, was a deluxe action figure whose skin colour turned blue in direct sunlight.  This gimmick only worked outdoors, which meant we played with Zartan outside in the summer while giving him a rest in the winter.  His backup didn’t arrive on toy shelves until 1985.  They were three bikers named the Dreadnoks:  Buzzer, the Brit with a ponytail and a chainsaw, the mohawked Ripper, and the flamethrower Torch who had a bit of a Lemmy beard going on.  Their Mad Max inspired outfits would have allowed them to fit into a rock band quite easily, if only they came with musical instruments instead of weapons.  They’d make a cool punk trio.

The Dreadnoks expanded their lineup the following year.  On explosives came Monkeywrench, bearded and obsessed with Guy Fawkes.  Then in a deluxe set came the vehicle driver Thrasher, and his definitely Mad Max inspired Thunder Machine car.  Made of bits and pieces of scrap, it hit the same post-apocalyptic notes as the other Dreadnoks, as well as rock bands like Motley Crue, Kiss, and Armored Saint.  Thrasher had a punk rock streak of green in his hair.  And now they were a quintet.  They were literally begging for me to make them custom musical instruments.

There were always wooden match sticks in the house, so I used them for guitar necks, drum stands, drumsticks, and a microphone.  Cardboard boxes were cut up to make the bodies of guitars and a few drums and cymbals.  Black electrical tape held them all together.  And so the Dreadnoks became a five piece band, and I put them on display in my bedroom on a shelf with my Kiss cassettes.

If only I had a picture of my Dreadnok band.  Not everybody had a camera back then.  Even if you did, it seemed film was always out!  You can imagine what they looked like!

 

REVIEW: Accept – Too Mean to Die (2021)

ACCEPT – Too Mean to Die (2021 Nuclear Blast)

Tornillo-era Accept has been a pretty even field; a level grid of Sneap-sharp production and Hoffmann’s razor-riffs.  If you expected change just because there’s a new bass player for the first time ever, you’d be wrong.  Accept may be down to just one original member (Wolf Hoffmann himself) but it doesn’t matter much.  What Accept deliver on Too Mean to Die is the same as they have done for every album since 2010’s Blood of the Nations.  Reliable, like AC/DC…or a comfortable leather jacket.

Nothing wrong with this.  Accept found a formula that works in their post-Udo world and it works well.  It’s difficult to remember what songs are from what albums, but Accept haven’t stopped putting out solid quality metal.

There’s the song about zombies (“Zombie Apocalypse”), one about never giving up (“Too Mean To Die”), the mid-tempo one (“Overnight Sensation”), the one about the media (“No Ones Master”), the single* (“The Undertaker”), the one with the funny title (“Sucks to be You”), the classical influence (“Symphony of Pain”), the ballad (“The Best is Yet to Come”), the one about the state of the world (“How Do We Sleep”), the angry one (“Not My Problem”), and the instrumental (“Samsom and Delilah”).

The riffs keep hammering in the capable hands of Wolf, and Mr. Tornillo on lead vocals never stops givin’ ‘er.  Hooks on every track.  The energy is no less than their first together.  Wolf’s guitar tone remains as tasty as it has been for over four decades.  One more album to add to your collection, as the Tornillo era blends together like a monolithic five-CD box set.  Too Mean To Die could have been titled Disc Five, so if you need to complete your set, do it now.

4/5 stars

* The single for “The Undertaker” features a non-album live track on its B-side, of a non-album single called “Life’s a Bitch”!

 

REVIEW: Bonham – Mad Hatter (1992 Japanese import)

BONHAM – Mad Hatter (1992 Sony Japan)

The first Bonham album in 1989 was a critic’s darling.  Produced by Bob Ezrin, it sold well enough and made plenty of year-end lists.  For the year 1989, it was a breath of fresh air compared to the Motley Crue, Bon Jovi and Def Leppard tracks dominating the airwaves.  Those who thirsted for the rarified air of Led Zeppelin got some of that with Jason on drums and the incredible Canadian Daniel MacMaster on lead vocals.  It was easy to imagine that “Wait For You” was a new Zeppelin single built for that year.  But every band has to grow, and where would Bonham take it?  Further down the Zeppelin road, or try and find their own identity?

Bob Ezrin did not return, and most of the followup album Mad Hatter was produced by Tony Platt, with the rest produced by Ron Saint Germain.  The band grew from the debut, establishing more of their own groove.  It was a more diverse and challenging platter.  Unfortunately, the album arrived in 1992, amidst the Pearl Jams, Soundgardens, Nirvanas and the rising tide of grunge.  Despite the strong single “Change of a Season”, the album tanked.

What an opener “Bing” is, a word that doesn’t seem to be in any of the lyrics.  At first, it has a very old school Zeppelin groove, akin to “Candy Store Rock” meets “Black Dog”.  But then it goes to a completely different place on the chorus.  The sonics are clearer and sharper than the debut.  Jason’s drums are huge as the should be.

Yet it’s the title track that really shocks the system.  Opening with a blast of horns, “Mad Hatter” goes one of the few places Zeppelin never went:  full-on funk with horns.  This would be the Tower of Power horn section.  It would be lazy to compare “Mad Hatter” to “Get the Funk Out” from a couple years past, as it has its own vibe.  Ian Hatton on guitar proves himself to be diverse talent with licks-o-plenty.

Another direction is explored on “Change of a Season”, the shoulda-woulda-coulda single that would have been huge a year or two prior.  The melancholy ballad was simply the wrong temperature for 1992. The gothic tone of the video was cool, but the video got zip for airplay.  It’s the backing strings (synth) and epic chorus that make this song.  It sounds less like Zeppelin and perhaps more like something from David Coverdale’s Reptile Emporium.

Another cool direction is explored on “Hold On”, a unique song with elements from multiple genres.  Funk, soul, progressive, blues, and even bluegrass.  This is followed by another song with epic overtones, “The Storm”, a six minute track that takes the Zeppelin influences to the craggy progressive peaks of another land.

Although there’s no side break on a CD, there are a natural place for it as you can pause for a breath before plunging into “Ride on a Dream”.  A breaknace pace and metallic riff make it unlike anything else on the album.  Perhaps a band like the Scorpions could do “Ride on a Dream”, but even Klaus would be challenged by the outstanding MacMaster lead vocal.  This plutonium-fuelled track would give anyone a run for their money.

But after all that drama, you need something a little more laid back.  That would be “Good With the Bad”, a jazzy piano ballad and the longest song on the album.   It doesn’t remain in ballad territory forever, going to the swamps of Florida where Savatage reside halfway through.  The comparisons are easy to hear.  Next, we go to a bluesy, funky blast of Zeppelin-flavoured ale on “Backdoor”.  Another cool tune with a different vibe from the others.  Things drag a bit on “Secrets”, which tries to marry the funky side with a “Kashmir”-scale chorus but doesn’t really follow through.

Moving on to the end, it’s “Los Locos” in second to last position.  This is a tender blues guitar/violin instrumental with dark piano accents.  That would be bassist John Smithson handling those wicked violin licks and a lot of the keyboards.  Perfect track for this spot, setting up for the closer.  It’s up to “Chimera” to take you out, and it does with a shiny upbeat vibe.  Although it’s probably sheer coincidence, it sounds a bit like Marillion circa the same period.

Lo and behold, that is not all!  The Japanese fans got a little bonus on their CDs called “Waste No Time”.  It’s definitely not an also-ran.  It has a heavy bass groove that isn’t like the other tracks on the album.  MacMaster really lets it blast on the chorus too.  Definitely Zeppelin vibes come solo time.

This album was available with two covers.  The majority of copies have the surreal Dali-esque landscape that you see here.  The alternate cover was plain white with just the new Bonham logo.  Which looks rather silly without the proper cover art for context.  That’s the cover that retailers such as Columbia House sold in the 1990s.

In 1994, Jason Bonham reconvened with Ian Hatton and John Smithson, but not Daniel MacMaster.  The new singer was Marti Frederiksen — yes, that Marti Frederiksen, the one that writes massive hits for everyone today.  The band took on a new modern grunge sound, and renamed themselves Motherland.  ☮︎ For Me was the pretentious name of that album.  As a sad final coda, Daniel MacMaster died too young at age 39 from a strep infection that he thought was a cold.

At least we can say that Bonham with MacMaster really did outgrow the Zeppelin tag by the second album.  Still a part of the DNA, but expressing itself more rarely.  It’s a shame about the timing of the album, because had it sold like the first one did, maybe we wouldn’t have had the Motherland debocle.  Mad Hatter is a pretty fine second album that does all the things that second albums should do.  Shame it was the last.

3.75/5 stars

Brent Jensen and the Raiders of the Lost Mahogany Tape Case

Thank you Brent Jensen for appearing on the show a second time!  Although the conversation veered wildly from Cinderella to Raven and back again, we orbited around Brent’s mahogany box of cassettes.  Maybe you had one like it.  But was your stuffed alphabetically from Accept to W.A.S.P.?  Take a look inside Brent’s tape collection and listen to the amazing stories that unfold.

The chat with Brent commences at 0:23:00 of the stream.

As my One Year Anniversary Show, we are doing a CD giveaway too.  Next week we’ll draw a winner from a hat.  See bottom for the trivia question and submission form!

The trivia question was: What is the tagline on Brent’s No Sleep ‘Til Sudbury podcast? Watch the episode for some pretty obvious clues and submit your answer in the form below.  Really, really, really obvious clues.  Really obvious.

 

A winner will be drawn next week!

NEXT WEEK

Marco the Contrarian joins Uncle Meat and I for the Blackest of Sabbaths, only on a Friday!

Brent’s Back! Leftover People Brent Jensen

The LeBrain Train:  2000 Words or More with Mike Ladano

Episode 55 – The Return of Brent Jensen

** One Year Anniversary Episode **

 

Brent Jensen is one of my favourite people.  His No Sleep ‘Til Sudbury podcast is essential listening.  I’m currently working my way through the book No Sleep’Til Sudbury, a story I really identify with.  Though Brent is a couple years ahead of me, I really see myself in his story of discovering hard rock and heavy metal in the early 80s.  Seeing bands for the first time, the contrived origins and evolution of Motley Crue, cassettes, video tapes…it is a great read.  One that has me stroking my beard in deep thought, as I am forced to consider heavy metal history from a different angle.

Derek Williamson will be back as your co-host for what we hope will be another excellent free-form conversation about the subject we all love:  music that makes our skin vibrate.

In addition:  this will be my one year anniversary show!  Ontario went into a state of emergency on March 17, 2020.  I went live that Friday.  And here we are a year later!  To celebrate, I’ll be doing a CD giveaway (details at bottom), and showing clips from the very first show a year ago.

Not only that:  Brent is celebrating four years and 200 episodes of No Sleep ‘Til Sudbury, the podcast!  He just opened a new Patreon membership too, so we will be talking about that and plenty more.  This is an episode you don’t want to miss.  You want to catch it live!

7:00 PM E.S.T.
Facebook:  MikeLeBrain  YouTube:  Mike LeBrain

 

CD GIVEAWAY CONTEST 

We will be asking a skill-testing question about Brent Jensen on the show.  Submit your answers in the form below.  We will be giving away two sealed CDs:  The Cars’ debut (remastered), and a signed copy of Jim Crean’s excellent Insatiable.  I will be doing a random draw from a hat next week!

#888: The Limewire Days

RECORD STORE TALES #888: The Limewire Days

I got into the downloading business later than everyone else. As a Record Store manager, I had zero interest in downloads. I’ve never used Napster and I sided with Lars Ulrich when it came down to it.  You might not have cared about Lars’ bottom line, but I cared about mine.  Downloading hurt us.  And we weren’t a corporate entity, we were just a small indy chain.  Eventually in the year 2001, I relented and began using WinMX and Limewire to download rare tracks. I bought so many CDs annually, I figured “why not”? I quickly discovered all the new Guns N’ Roses songs that they played in Rio.

I still remember the first time using WinMX. It was at an old girlfriend’s house and she was showing me how she downloaded music. Hey neighbour was using WinMX too, and gave her a mix CD of all the tracks she had downloaded. I’ll never forget putting on this mix CD, and suddenly from the speakers it’s “Who Let the Dogs Out”!   As the song went on, I remarked “I don’t think I’ve ever heard the verses to this song before. Just the chorus.” Do you know how the verses go?

I copied what the girlfriend showed me, downloaded WinMX, and before you know it, I was listening to “The Blues” by Guns N’ Roses.

After everything dried up on WinMX, we both switched to Limewire where I continued downloading the odd rarity. I accumulated a large music folder, and began burning all my new tracks to mix CDs. I have several volumes of mixes all with tracks downloaded during this period. But there were always odds and ends that I never fit onto a mix CD. I thought all those tracks had been lost, but I just dug up an old CD labelled “MP3 downloads”. It is here that I burned the stragglers, and then stuffed the CD in with some photo discs and forgot all about it.

The title “MP3 downloads” is misleading as there are video files here too (none of which work anymore). The downloads are also not exclusively from Limewire, as we’ll get to. Let’s have a look track by track at what mp3 files I still had in my music folder back in 2004.

This CD is only 303 mb (of 656).

First, the video files are a weird variety of stuff I downloaded and intended to keep.  I didn’t have cable back then, so “Gene Simmons on MTV Cribs” is one I wanted.  Then there’s a file called “Gene’s hair on fire”.  Then there’s a file called “some jackass tells a cop to fuck off”.  I remember that one.  I think I had been searching for Jackass videos, and came across this idiot getting beat by a cop after walking up and giving him the finger.  Some Star Wars videos include the Star Wars Kid vs Yoda, a deleted scene from A New Hope, and something called “Episode 3 Leaked Marketing Video”.  All the video files appear to be corrupt and won’t play on anything.

Onto the music.  I can see there are some tracks here from albums I didn’t own then, but do now.  From the compilation CD Spaced by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, it’s “Mr. Tambourine Man”, “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins”, “I Walk the Line” and “When I Was Seventeen”.  These are strictly novelty covers, although Nimoy does give it a good effort.  All of these songs were originally released on separate Nimoy and Shatner albums in the late 1960s.  Related to these, I also have “Shaft” by Sammy Davis Jr.  I have long loved Sammy’s glittery version of the Shaft theme.  Who’s the black private dick who’s a sex machine with all the chicks?  Sammy Davis Jr. was!  The guitar work on this is great slippery fun.  I’ll have to get a copy for real.

A fun treat next:  A full hour Peter Criss interview show by Eddie Trunk.  This is with all the songs and music.  Peter was out of Kiss once again, and he spilled the full beans on his whole perspective.  Doing the Symphony show with Tommy Thayer, Peter complains “without Ace, it’s not Kiss”.  This interview is definitely a keeper.  According to the file name, this interview is from May 4, 2004.

Several of the files are really, really low quality Dokken.  These are tiny files, they are so poor.  Demos of “Back for the Attack”, “We’re Illegal”, “It’s Not Love”, “Unchain the Night”, “Upon Your Lips”, and “Sign of the Times”.  A live version of “Paris is Burning”.  Remixes of “Nothing Left to Say” and “I Feel”.  I could have burned all these to a Dokken rarities CD, but the sound quality is poor, I knew I’d never want to listen to it.

There is also a smattering of rare Leatherwolf, including some live stuff.  Some were downloads from their social media pages at the time.  “Tension” is definitely one such official track, an instrumental solo that isn’t on any albums.  (You can tell by the file size it’s official, compared to the low quality Limewire downloads.)  I also have “Black Knight” live with original singer Michael Olivieri, and a partial instrumental called “The Triple Axe Attack”.  I’m not 100% certain what these are, but they don’t seem to have originated on the rare Leatherwolf live album called Wide Open.  Best of all the finds are the three official demos they did with singer Jeff Martin:  “Burned”, Disconnect” and “Behind the Gun”.  Martin did not last, and was replaced by Wade Black of Crimson Glory on the album World Asylum.  Fortunately I had already burned these tracks (and “Tension”) to a bonus CD.

There is a smattering of Gene Simmons demos, varying in quality.  “Heart Throb” is almost unlistenable.  “Howling for Your Love” is OK but I can’t identify if it was later rewritten into something more recognizable.  “It’s Gonna Be Alright” is bright and poppy with a drum machine backing Gene.  Then there is “Jelly Roll”, a heavier track with a riff like “Tie Your Mother Down”.  “Rock and Rolls Royce” is the track that was rewritten into “Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em” from Rock and Roll Over.  “Rotten to the Core” was recycled way later on 2009’s Sonic Boom as “Hot and Cold”.  Like the Dokken tracks, I never burned these to CD because of the poor audio that I knew I wouldn’t want to listen to.

Other miscellaneous rarities here include Faith No More, Motley Crue and Van Halen.  Faith No More were known to mess around with covers live, and here I have “Wicked Game” (Chris Isaak) and “We Will Rock You”.  Sound quality is awful and neither are full songs, just them messing around on stage.  The two unreleased Motley Tracks are “Black Widow” and something just labelled “unreleased track” which is actually “I Will Survive”.  Both of these are officially released now so I have no reason to keep them.  Onto Van Halen, not everything sounds shite, but “On Fire” is just a few seconds of a demo.  “Let’s Get Rockin'” is complete.  A good sounding track that later was reworked as “Outta Space” on A Different Kind of Truth.  Then I have 90 seconds of the sneak preview single for “It’s About Time” (2004).  And then just two seconds of shred on a track labelled “VANHwhee”.  So strange!

Other rarities include one Def Leppard treasure called “Burnout”, which was an official download from their site.  It was also available on the CD single for “Goodbye” and a Def Leppard boxed set.  I also have an audio rip of “Lick My Love Pump” from the movie This Is Spinal Tap.  I should really take this and add it to the soundtrack as a bonus track!

I downloaded some miscellaneous songs that I didn’t own the albums for, but intended to get later:

  • Blue Oyster Cult – “Don’t Fear the Reaper” (I was watching Stephen King’s The Stand that year!)
  • Budgie – “Breadfan”
  • Buckethead – “Nottingham Lace” (might be an official download)
  • Cat Stevens – “The Wind”
  • Creedence Clearwater Revival – “Down on the Corner” (mislabelled as “Willy and the Poor Boys”)
  • Fleetwood Mac – “Go Your Own Way”
  • Iced Earth – “Dracula”
  • Iced Earth – “Jack”
  • Kenny Rogers – “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)”
  • Marty Robbins – “El Paso”
  • Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper – “Elvis is Everywhere”
  • The Pursuit of Happiness – “I’m An Adult Now”
  • The Pursuit of Happiness – “Hard to Laugh”

Of these, there are some I still have not bought and some I have no intention of getting anymore.  I do own the B.O.C., Budgie, Cat Stevens, CCR, Kenny Rogers, Marty Robbins, and Fleetwood Mac.  I’d still like to get Mojo Nixon to be honest with you!

Finally, there are bits of pieces of funny things that I liked to have hanging around for making mix CDs.  Many are from a website that used to have mp3 files of movie quotes, and the rest are from Homestar Runner.  Does that take you back to the 2000s?  From Homestar, I have “Alright 4 2Night”, “Strongbadia National Anthem”, “Everybody Knows It”, “Ballad of the Sneak”, “Cheat Commandos”, “CGNU Fight Song”, and a computer voice saying “back off baby”!  I might have been using that as an MSN Messenger alert sound.  Any time someone messaged me, the computer would say “back off baby”!  If I didn’t, I should have.  From the movie Sexy Beast I grabbed a bunch of Ben Kingsley’s best lines.  Saying he’s going to put his cigarette out in somebody’s eye, calling someone “porky pig”, yelling “no!” repeatedly, and announcing he had to take a piss.  Because of course.

The last files I found on this CD are strange, but for the sake of a complete and thorough inventory, they are:

  • no_respect:  24 seconds of the pretty terrible “Rappin'” Rodney Dangerfield song from the 80s.
  • 50_10sec:  Actually 11 seconds of the “Smoke on the Water” riff.  I can tell it’s Blackmore.  Why did I keep this?
  • MM Jukebox Plus Upgrade:  18 second software ad that obviously got left there by something I downloaded.  This is probably the first time in my life that I actually played this track!
  • cant_holdon:  36 seconds long.  This took forever to identify.  Lyric searches told me nothing.  Then I figured it out by uploading to YouTube and waiting for the copyright block to tell me what it was!  “Can’t Hold On / Can’t Let Go” by a band called Thunder, but not the band Thunder that you know today.  Probably downloaded by mistake is my guess.  Sounds like something you’d hear in an 80s Bruce Willis flick.

I don’t know how interesting this will be for you to read, but I found it entertaining enough to do this complete inventory.  I had clearly not tried to listen to all the files before, or I would have weeded at least a few out.  It is likely that in 2004 I was getting a new hard drive put in my computer and hastily burned my mp3 files to CD, intending to eventually put them on mix discs like I did with the rest of my mp3 collection.

After a little further digging, I did find that I had burned some of these songs to a mix CD.  Not all, but some.  You can get an idea here of how I’d make use of weird stuff like this.  The rest of the tracks never made it to the mix CD stage, so finding the original mp3 disc is a fun reminder for me of just what I was doing in 2004.  And I’m going to keep that Peter Criss interview, and a few other worthwhile things too.! Productive morning spent, and I hope you enjoyed this look at the way we did things a decade and a half ago.