Wednesday night – March 17 2021 – I will be guesting on Start To Continue with their regulars including Kevin (Buried On Mars)! Tune it at the link below, 8:00 PM E.S.T. It’s their Vinyl Collection Live Chat 44, but I’ll be showing off CDs. New arrivals here at LeBrain HQ including discs from Japan, Germany, and just around the corner.
Tune in Wednesday at 8:00 PM for some musical treasure.
RECORD STORE TALES #886: Hand Me Downs
It’s funny. Though my music playback setup today is completely different from my first, even today there’s still one thing they have in common: both setups featured hand-me-down audio components from my parents. And I hope one of those components continues working forever.
In Getting More Tale #796: Improvisation, I explained that we kids of the 80s didn’t have the luxury to buy whatever stereo equipment we wanted. We had to make due with what we had, and improvise. And that’s exactly what we did. When I first started collecting music, I owned it on two formats only: LP and cassette. The classic duo. Compact discs existed only in Japan. We hadn’t even heard of them. All that existed in our world were the vinyl record and the compact cassette. That’s all I needed to be able to play.
Around 1985, my parents realized they weren’t going to be listening to records or 8-track tapes anymore. The living room needed to be renovated and there was no more room for that giant Lloyd’s stereo system. The 8-track player didn’t work anymore, but it was a single unit combined with a radio receiver and amplifier, which still worked fine. The Lloyd’s record player could still plug into it and play normally. I snapped them up. Only George Balasz and myself were lucky enough to have record players in our bedrooms. Everybody else on the street had to use their parents’ systems.
Don’t get me wrong: it didn’t sound great. I took my parents’ hand-me-downs and plugged them into my Panasonic ghetto blaster, which essentially was both my tape deck and speakers. Not ideal, but good enough for a 13 year old. I recall the sound was rather tinny. But it worked after a spell. If my mom wanted me to tape her old Roy Orbison LPs, I could do that. (Spoiler: my mom really abused her LPs.)
I used that setup for many years. The Lloyd’s receiver lasted seven more. It finally blew a circuit in early ’92. A few weeks later, I replaced it with a small, affordable preamp. It didn’t have a lot of power, but it enabled me to continue listening to records. Of course, that old Lloyd’s turntable wasn’t in the best shape anymore. The needle had never been changed, and I had really abused that thing, playing records backwards and trying to make funky sounds. It was cool though, because it had four speeds: 16, 33, 45, and 78. I didn’t own any 16’s or 78’s. But I could play them. And I kept it for well over a decade. I only replaced it when I did a complete stereo system overhaul in the late 90s. T-Rev and I went to Steve’s TV, and I picked out new everything. Canadian made PSB speakers, a new Technics dual tape component, a Technics receiver to go with it, and a brand new Technics turntable. Good enough for me, who had been living with a Frankenstein system his whole life.
The only thing I didn’t need to buy was a CD player. And this is the last piece of hand-me-down tech incorporated into my still-current system. (I actually have two systems today: my 7.1 setup in the main room with blu-ray, and my stereo “man cave” with all my analog stuff.)
I call this CD player “the Tank”. It is a 30 year old Sony five-disc changer and I more or less confiscated it from them when I moved out. Once they had a DVD player, I didn’t think they needed a CD player anymore, so I made the executive decision to liberate it. It wasn’t exactly a covert operation. The Sony had been in my bedroom setup for a while. I liked a numbers of its features. It had a fader! I could fade tracks in and fade out, which was perfect for recording live albums. The timer was also a nice extra — you could use it to monitor the time remaining on a track, or even album. This was great for tape-making. It was also painlessly easy to program. So I stole the Sony! When I moved out, I just said “I’m taking this CD player.” Mom grumbled a bit, but…here it is. I successfully abducted my parents’ CD player with no casualties.
I’m glad I did. Though the five-disc gimmick doesn’t work so smoothly anymore, the Tank can play any CD I throw at it. That might not sound like a big deal, but it is. You’d be surprised how many CDs you’ll have problems playing in your computer today. Some players, and many computers, still won’t play weird stuff like DualDiscs. I have an old DualDisc by The Cult that will not play properly in any computer ever invented by mankind. Even regular CDs can be weird. I have a Cinderella disc (multiple copies even) that no computer from PC to Apple will play correctly.
So I need the Tank. Just recently, I was listening to a fantastic live album by King’s X given to me by Superdekes. The last song (an acoustic version of “Over My Head”) refused to rip to my PC. I booted up the laptop and ran into the same problem, same spot. I didn’t need to try a third computer to know that this would be futile. Only the Tank could play my King’s X. I examined the CD up close for damage and saw nothing. (Good thing too as copies today run just shy of $100!) Deke sent me a good disc (and thank you once more for that!), but CDs can be fickle.
No issue with the Tank. I powered up the Sony, inserted the King’s X and played the song through. No issues! I got a good recording of it in Audacity and exported the audio into the King’s X album folder. Seamless!
Thanks mom and dad for giving me, and in some cases, allowing me to steal your stuff. I kept it all working — I even still have the remote!
You only had a few choices of rock magazines at the convenience stores near us. Most prominent were Hit Parader, Rip, and Metal Edge. Over the years, I bought plenty of Metal Edge. Black and white pages thick with interviews and lists, punctuated by locker-ready full colour photos. Metal Edge were cool because they gave the time of day to all varieties of bands. They focused primarily on whatever-you-wanna-call-it: “hard rock”, or “glam” or “hair metal”. If you needed a fix of Sebastian Bach, Metal Edge delivered. But they covered just about everybody, into the grunge and alterna-metal years. At the center of it all was editor Gerri Miller.
Everybody who bought heavy metal magazines knew a few key names. Gerri Miller was the only female among them. We knew her face and jet black hair from the photos.
What little I knew about Gerri Miller came from her magazine. The product that she made, that we consumed every page of. She put out a good magazine. I enjoyed the Metal Edge “specials”. They’d collect all their best Bon Jovi, Kiss or Poison content and put out a dedicated magazine, usually to celebrate a new album. It was not much better than going to the cottage for a week-long vacation with a fresh Metal Edge magazine under my arm.
According to the (unrelated) Metal Sludge website, Miller had been battling Lupus for several years, and was recently diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.
Rest in peace Gerri…and fuck cancer.
ZZ Top – The ZZ Top Six Pack (1987 Warner)
What a strange time the dawn of the compact disc was. Even at the end of the 1980s, vast catalogues of music had yet to be released on CD. It was a hit and miss affair, with some early discs sounding wonderful and others sounding like a thin, tinny facsimile of the original vinyl. The longer running time of CD was a bonus that many bands took advantage of, while other heritage groups were considering the ways they could re-release their music on this new format.
Before Jimmy Page took his first crack at remastering the Led Zeppelin catalogue for CD, ZZ Top took a different route.
Now, granted, ZZ Top’s music spans a longer time period than that of many of their rivals. They’re also notable for starting the 1970s as a dirty raw blues and ending the 80s as clean space-age rock. While this took them from one success to an even more massive one, it unfortunately meant that the ZZ Top camp felt it necessary to “update” their music for the CD age. Make the catalogue sound more on an even keel with Eliminator and Afterburner.
And so the six ZZ Top albums that were so-far unreleased on CD were remixed: First Album, Rio Grande Mud, Tres Hombres, Fandango!, Tejas, and El Loco. Only Degüello was spared, having been released on CD earlier.
Apparently, updating the ZZ Top catalogue for CD was of “overriding concern” for all parties involved. ZZ Top were aware that there were complaints about early CD transfers for classic albums. The goal was “return to the original analog tapes and consider what steps were needed to render the music appropriate to contemporary digital playback equipment without compromising integrity.”
The answer was none. No steps were necessary. The remixes were not what the old fans wanted to hear on their brand new CD players. Rhythm tracks were updated with sequencers, drums treated digitally, and the whole thing came out sterile and flat. Adding echo didn’t add depth. Doing an A/B test with a remix vs. an original track makes you wonder why you even own the ZZ Top Six Pack.* It just…doesn’t sound right. Like a disorienting time displacement.
As of 2013, you can get all the original ZZ Top albums on remastered CD as they should have always sounded.
While it is nice to have six ZZ Top albums on just three CDs, and there is no denying the booklet is hot, you do not need the ZZ Top Six Pack anymore. The charm of the originals is that they are a document of those hot Memphis studios where ZZ Top laid down the original tracks fast and dirty. The remixes sound like a digital mixing board trying to tame a wild animal. Wrong, and unnecessary. “Francine” is actually awful.
The booklet is truly valuable (nonsense justifying the remix aside) and worth a point on its own. The ZZ Top songs in and of themselves are always incredible, so they too are worth a point.
2/5 stars
* It was a gift from Kevin. He also rates it 2/5 stars. I asked him for a quote for this review. All he had to say about the ZZ Top Six Pack was: “I’m glad Mike took this crap off my hands.”
I had a really good funny, hard rockin’ Sunday Screening for you lined up. Then Youtube took down the video Saturday morning. I hate when that happens!
So: Plan B! I’ve been listening to the new album Pray For It by July Talk lately. Their latest video “The News” dropped a couple months ago, and it’s fantastic enough to deserve your Sunday Screening time of 3 minutes and 47 seconds.
July Talk are very hands-on with their videos. Singers Pete Dreimanis and Leah Fay have director credits while Dreimanis is listed as a producer. “The News” is one of their most striking and entertaining clips yet, topical and catchy. Check it out!
if only everything that happened in our dreams were true and nothing bad could ever happen to you when we feel too much we’d just wake up
and all the longing to belong would always be enough
gimme context, without context everything is true
only nothing that happens only happens to you
if the news should ever break our way
will we still hear the truth of someone that’s been left behind
and if truth should ever be unkind
will we still know that everything that’s true is by design
and that everything that’s true is ours to find
i woke up i was the same but all my dreams had died
what fucking happened?
guess everyone who spoke in tongues had lied
in the lobby watched the dawning of a different side
gimme context, without context everything is true
besides nothing that happens only happens to you
if the news should ever break our way
would we still hear the truth of someone that’s been left behind
and if truth should ever be unclear
will we still know that everything that’s fair is hard to hear
and that everything breaks down in love and fear
everything that happens
everything that happens
everything that happens
if the news should ever break our way
will we still hear the truth of someone that’s been left behind
and if truth should ever be unkind
will we still know that everything that’s true is by design
and that everything that’s true’s hard to define
and that everything that’s true is ours to find
what fucking happened?
Great show tonight with your co-hosts Harrison the Mad Metal Man, Aaron from KeepsMeAlive, and Superdekes! We talked the Nigel Tufnel Top Ten Iron Maiden Covers/Artwork (that’s a mouthful) and it was awesome. We took a close look at: albums, singles, T-shirts, Reaction figures, MacFarlane figures, and the Neca Powerslave Eddie. If you like Iron Maiden, you automatically love their artwork. Ergo, you need to watch this show!
First we unboxed some brand new Reaction Eddie figures. Go to 0:16:50 of the stream.
Then we wished Steve Harris a Happy Birthday, and commenced with the lists! Go to 0:24:00 of the stream.
After the conclusion of the Maiden lists, we had a freeform chat covering Queensryche’s Operation: Mindcrime, and a newly unearthed Black Sabbath track called “Slapback”. Go to 2:22:45 of the stream to check that out.
Thanks for watching, and if you just want to know what Maiden art we picked, check out Aaron’s hand-written list below! See ya next week!
The LeBrain Train: 2000 Words or More with Mike Ladano
Episode 54 – Best Iron Maiden Cover Art
Time to chill out with a more laid-back show this Friday! We’ve had some serious lists, and serious guests in recent weeks. This week is almost like a vacation. Join Harrison the Mad Metal Man, Aaron from KeepsMeAlive, and Superdekes with myself here tonight as we share our favourite Iron Maiden artwork.
The art of Derek Riggs, Melvyn Grant, and many talented coversmiths including Hugh Syme will be up for examination tonight. No disqualifications: albums, singles, whatever! As long as one of us likes it, we can list it. Each of us will have our own rules and criteria.
BONUS: Iron Maiden ReAction figure unboxing! While it would be nice to have a complete set, I could only order four. These Eddies, based on Iron Maiden cover art, will definitely be on topic for this show!
7:00 PM E.S.T.
Facebook: MikeLeBrain YouTube: Mike LeBrain
Next week: The 1 Year Anniversary Show with giveaways and special guest Brent Jensen!
19 August, 1991. Operation Rock and Roll, featuring Alice Cooper, Judas Priest, Motorhead, Metal Church and Dangerous Toys rolled into Toronto. The last show of the tour. Unfortunately the day lives on in infamy. It was the day Rob Halford hit his head (right on the bridge of the nose) on the drum riser, knocking him out cold! Priest performed “Hell Bent for Leather” as an instrumental while Rob lay unseen in a cloud of artificial fog! On top of that, and unbeknownst at the time, it was Priest’s very last gig with the Metal God for a decade.
This pre-accident Pepsi Power Hour interview by Michael Williams is interesting because Rob discusses their forthcoming compilation Metal Works a full two years before it was out. At that point the plan was to try and write a couple new songs for the compilation, and then go back into the studio to record a brand new Priest album some time in 1992. Needless to say, that did not work out! As the last show of the Painkiller tour, this day was actually the last time Rob even saw his bandmates until they reconciled!
WordPress is changing and so I too must change. Nine years, I’ve been flying with WordPress. They are now foisting this new editor upon us. And so, I thought I should try to write with it.
Today I listened to Deep Purple’s The Battle Rages On in the car. Hey, I can still do colour.
The new editor isn’t great but so far so good. My problem is that when I get into a creative groove, I want to be able to go on autopilot. I don’t want to be pecking and searching and figuring out how I used to do something when the words should be flowing freely. But here we are; change is inevitable. Therefore, this brief test post.
Test photo gallery: A tease of upcoming reviews. Can you guess what they are?
Sadly, I only have four reviews currently lined up. I have felt a disturbance in the Force. The Friday night show, it takes up so much time and energy I simply have not been able to write and review as much as I used to. But I can’t give up the Friday night show. It is too important to me. And to my friends. I will continue to post daily, but I’m sure you’ve noticed review content has been less frequent.
I feel like I need to review something really quick in order to compensate for my lack of reviews. Plus it gives me an excuse to try embedding a video.
JULY TALK – “Laid” (2020 music video)
July Talk are a fantastically quirky quintet from Toronto, fronted by Leah Fay and Peter Dreimanis. His gravelly Tom-Waits-ish gutterals are a delightful contrast to Leah’s melodic whimsy. Their 2020 live video cover version of James’ hit “Laid” is simply great. You could argue that anybody can cover “Laid” based on every bad bar band that you saw do it. What I like here is that July Talk make it sound like a July Talk song.
One camera, no edits. Pete’s mask dangles from his ear while Leah hangs on out barefoot on the couch. Josh Warburton, Ian Docherty, Danny Miles, rocking it in the back. The masked drummer, wailing away on that signature drum riff. This non-album track adds to the band’s excellent canon of video material. If you like this one, check out their latest single “The News”.
4.5/5 stars
I think I’ve accomplished what I set out to do, which is familiarize myself with the new editor so I can continue to produce content for you! Blame Kevin.
A sequel to Record Store Tales Part 215: Mono
RECORD STORE TALES #885: Mono (II)
I don’t know how I got mono, but it happened it the 8th grade. Everybody was getting ready to graduate and move on to highschool, which was something I could not wait for. I also can’t remember how long I was sick for. I was home from school for a long time. Weeks? Felt like months. I almost missed graduation. I made it back to school for the last few days of the year. I remember everybody was nice to me when I came back. That was a first. I only managed half a day upon my return, but felt well enough to do a full day the next time. Then it was all over.
I didn’t mind having to stay home from school. It kept me away from the bullies. There wasn’t much to do except watch music videos on the Pepsi Power Hour. That’s how my “music collection” grew, song by song. One of the defining songs from that period in my life is “Rough Boy” by ZZ Top. MuchMusic played that video a lot, and I captured a really good recording of it that I played incessantly. I didn’t own any albums by the artists I was recording. Anvil, Dio, Hear N’ Aid, Loudness — but I added the songs to my life. “Metal On Metal” was what I craved.
The limitation here was that I could, in theory, only listen to these songs on the TV in the basement. Like most people, we had an ordinary mono VCR and a TV with only one speaker. It was a strange JVC machine, with a dockable remote. I can’t find any pictures online of the exact model. It looked cool but it had a potentially fatal flaw. It was that dockable remote. It was the only set of controls. If you lost the remote, you were in trouble!
Like all kids, I wasn’t allowed to spend all day in front of the TV, even when I was sick. But I wanted my tunes. Songs like “Let It Go” by Loudness. “Shake It Up” by Lee Aaron. “Lay It On the Line” by Triumph. I was just a kid; I didn’t have money to buy all the records. I had enough to start collecting the core bands I loved, like Maiden and Kiss. Not outliers like Loudness or Dio.
My buddy Bob taught me how to improvise. I had a box of primitive wires and connectors. At a very early stage, I realized I could connect the single “audio out” port on the VCR to one of the two “stereo in” jacks on my Panasonic dual tape deck. This meant that the mono signal from the VCR was really going to be in mono on my tape deck. One speaker only. Left or right, it was my choice. Neither was ideal. But I could put my music from the Pepsi Power Hour onto a cassette, which could then be enjoyed in my bedroom.
I saved my allowance and my parents took me to Steve’s TV so I could buy a Y-connector. It was a cheap, grey cable with one RCA connector on one end, and two on the other. It split a mono signal into a fake stereo, which is exactly what I needed.
I recorded all my MuchMusic videos (the ones I didn’t own on album) to cassette in this way. When I got around to buying an album, I wouldn’t need the recorded songs anymore. I didn’t like to waste valuable cassette space, so I would record over any redundant songs. I still have all these tapes, but the tracks today are a mish-mash of different years of recording and re-recording. When we got a stereo VCR in early 1991, I was able to put the Y-connector back in the box for good. No more need for fake stereo. Now I had the real thing for every music video I recorded going forward.
Having so many great songs recorded in mono (often with truncated beginnings and endings) gave me a real appreciation for buying the albums later on. Listening to my tapes made me want the really good songs that much more. When I finally got them, in full stereo cassette glory, and I heard the songs come to life, it was like going from black and white to full colour. Or 2D to 3D. Albums versions were often longer than the edited video versions as well. Buying the album was always rewarding. But there were so many songs, and only so many dollars. I had to pick and choose what to buy. Sometimes I wouldn’t get around to them for years. Or decades.
You just read a story about a kid with mono, listening to music in mono. You can say you’ve done that now.
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