March 27 2020 — Laura Geddes from 105.3 Virgin Radio asked for listeners to submit messages to our friends and family listening. So I submitted a clip — little did I know Laura was going to dedicate a Justin Bieber song to me as well! First time for everything.
Incidentally that’s the first time my voice has been on Virgin, now making it three local stations that have been LeBraaaained!
Thanks Laura!
GETTING MORE TALE #824: “I’m Outta Here!”
A sequel to Part 287: Closing Time
Name one person who doesn’t love closing down for the day. Work completed, clock ticks 9:00 pm, and the doors are locked. Time to go eat some dinner and unwind. At the Record Store, we got paid until 9:15 pm, the approximate amount of time it would take to cash out and close. Sometimes we could do it in 10 minutes, sometimes far longer. It was always considered a victory if you could completely close out in 10 minutes, and get paid for 15. Small triumphs.
My favourite location to close was the original mall store at Stanley Park. It was probably my favourite for closing because I was working alone. Closing a store by yourself gives you a greater sense of responsibility. Plus you could listen to whatever (metal) you wanted.
Listen, I don’t care where you work, everybody wants to go home and get refueled. It’s a basic right. Once you stop getting paid, you’re a free human being again.
There was one occasion at the mall I’ll never forget. I was closing up normally and had just returned from the bank to drop off the night deposit. I shut down the lights, packed up my stuff and locked the door. As I was heading to the parking lot to meet my dad who was picking me up, I spied a group of three or four kids down the hall heading to the store, arms loaded with CDs to sell. Just loaded — the group must have had 100 discs altogether. I stealthily sneaked out of the mall via a seldom-used side entrance, hopefully unseen.
Close call! The last thing I wanted was to have my dinner delayed by a group of kids needing last minute (booze) money after closing time.
This kind of thing still bugs me. When I’m out shopping I’m very conscious of closing time. I’m not going to get some sales rep to perform handstands just before closing, and definitely not after! Some kids don’t know any better, but they should. Didn’t they have their own part time jobs that they didn’t like to stay late for? Did they get paid extra if they had to stay late? We didn’t.
I was glad to say “I’m outta here!” at closing time even if there were still people wanting to come in. Maybe we could have made more money if we did stay open, but none of it would be coming my way.
GETTING MORE TALE #823: A Cure for The Cult
The Cult were big in highschool. “Fire Woman” debuted in the spring of ’89. It was an instant hit. Their momentum continued through the fall with “Edie (Ciao Baby)” and into the following year with “Sweet Soul Sister”. There was no stopping The Cult! With a new unknown drummer named Matt Sorum, The Cult toured the world and cleared up any remaining confusion that this was indeed a rock band.
The only Cult confusion that remained might have been with my friend Danesh.
Ian Astbury
I discovered that we both liked The Cult. I recall his amusement at the lyrics for “New York City” off Sonic Temple. In particular he thought the aggrandizement “Hell’s Kitchen is a DMZ” was pretty funny. It might have had something to do with the annual school trip to New York, that we didn’t attend but a friend of ours did. Their bus was broken into and they had their stuff stolen. Not particularly funny in and of itself, but I think we were amused because of who it happened to: The legendary Brett Bowerman of Brett-Lore fame. Indeed, in our highschool comic strip, the Geography teacher Mr. Robinson went to New York City to find a missing Brett! This was inspired by us assuming Brett would get lost in New York and left behind. In our sketches, Ian Astbury himself made a cameo. This happened in a chapter titled “Brett Lore III: Brett Takes Manhattan”. In one panel, we find the Ayatollah Khomeini, a dead cat, and Skid Row (presumably because I didn’t know the difference between New York and New Jersey). The Cult’s logo was scrawled on a wall, but scratched out. Hell’s Kitchen is a DMZ after all!
Note that Elvis visited New York in 1989, apparently. I also like that you can actually identify each Skid Row member by appearance alone.
Adding to the comedy, I recall that Brett purchased a samurai sword in New York. I don’t remember if it was among the stolen possessions. I think it probably was.
Back to the Cult. Danesh was getting into rock music and wasn’t as well educated in the fine art of electric guitar as I was. I think it’s very possible that he accidentally bought Disintegration by The Cure, confusing them with The Cult. I do know that Danesh was terribly embarrassed about owning that Cure CD. Compact discs were a new thing, and he owned up to having The Cure when we were listing some of the CDs that were in our collections. I asked if he owned any discs that had “bonus tracks”. The Cure did — two in fact. That’s when he told me about it. But he refused to tell me how he got it. I had the Cure/Cult mixup theory, but he never confirmed nor denied. To this day, 30 years later, I still don’t know!
Danesh really hated that Cure album. When my family had a garage sale in 1991, he handed me the Cure CD to get rid of. The garage sale was his only hope. I put a sticker on there that said “BONUS TRACKS” and priced it at $12. That was about half as much as you’d pay new. But too much for garage salers. I dropped it to $10 but no go.
Danesh was heartbroken when I returned the disc to him the following Monday.
“I would have been fine with a lower price if you called to tell me it wasn’t selling.”
Well, shit. Sorry man.
I did feel bad. I would have preferred selling it for him too. But he still wouldn’t tell me why he owned it! Was it a gift? Did he like one song and then hate the rest? Did he freak out when he saw what they looked like? I remember his reaction the first time he saw a photo of Night Songs-era Cinderella. It wasn’t positive! The only album he owned was Heartbreak Station. He didn’t know about Cinderella’s glam past and he wouldn’t let it go!
But these are just guesses. For whatever reasons, Danesh would never tell me why he owned Disintegration by The Cure, nor would he tell me why he was ashamed of it.
As a final explanation, I’m going to go with the Cure/Cult mixup and consider this case closed. An understandable mistake like that can be easily forgiven.
As time goes on, old photos are more and more fun to dig up.
This batch dates back to 2004-2005.
First up, I have a feeling a marillion.com order came in! I was one of thousands who pre-ordered the double Marbles album and got my name in the credits. In the following picture it’s the singles for “You’re Gone”! Two CDs and a (UK) DVD. I had to have them all even though I couldn’t play the DVD back in 2004.
Ahh, this is a good one. Sarge from Metal Fatigue in Bournemouth, England was visiting his friends The Legendary Klopeks in Canada. That’s Josh “Sweet Pepper” Klopek holding my hand. Hey man, I’ll take any support I can get when a bald British dude is shoving a needle through my flesh. Sarge did the piercing in my home, the first and only time I have had such a comfortable piercing experience! Josh has a black eye because of the onstage punishment he took nightly.
These two photos were taken with cardboard standees with webcams, but for the time, they looked pretty good.
Just some goofing around. I was doing some live streaming, it looks like. And the Wheaties box may have been done by Sarge!
Finally, these last two pictures are really special. They were taken the day before I met Jen. It’s strange that they are the only ones timestamped. But I would have known the date regardless. The Bob Marley and Slash shirts are obviously new (you can see the tag) and I bought those shirts the day before I met my wife. I bought them at St. Jacob’s farmer’s market, on a date with another girl. It was memorable because it didn’t go well. She was really hurrying me along when I was looking at shirts. I knew it wasn’t going to work out. The next day I met Jen. She wrote about her side of it in Getting More Tale #434: The Man in the Bob Marley Shirt. If I had chosen the other shirt to wear that day, maybe the story would have been called The Man in the Slash Shirt!
RECORD STORE TALES Part 171: Record Store Gallery
RECORD STORE TALES Part 279: Record Store Gallery Deux
RECORD STORE TALES Part 280: Record Store Gallery III – Furry Friends
RECORD STORE TALES Part 311: Record Store Gallery IV (Shite Photies)
GETTING MORE TALE #607: Every Picture Tells a Story
“Look outside. Is the world more peaceful since the revolution? I see nothing but death and chaos.” — The Client
THE MANDALORIAN (2019 Disney+ series)
2019 might have been the biggest year ever in the history of the Star Wars franchise. Not only did the original Saga finally come to an end after 42 years of wondering if it would ever happen, but even the very first Star Wars live action TV series came to be. This comes a full 15 years after its aborted predecessor, Star Wars Underworld was announced. Headed up by Jon Favreau, The Mandalorian Season One was a commercial and critical success.
But was it as good as its hype?
Pedro Pascal headlines as the mysterious Mandalorian, a bounty hunter trying to make ends meet about five years after the battle of Endor. The New Republic rules the roost and times are lean, but the Empire is not gone. Not yet. The Imperial Client (Werner Herzog) needs a very important asset. The Client leads a run down, rag-tag Imperial force in hiding on a backwater world. Via Greef Karga (Carl Weathers), the Client acquires Mando’s services. Deliver the package alive, but dead will suffice if necessary. Bounty hunting, after all, is a complicated profession.
Today in 2020, the entire world knows what came as a tremendous surprise back when the pilot episode first aired. There are no spoilers. The asset, though claimed to be 50 years old, is just a child. An alien child with a familiar green hue and large, pointed ears. The internet quickly dubbed it “Baby Yoda”.
Through the course of eight episodes, we learn that Mandalorians are almost extinct, “purged” by the Empire like the Jedi were. Those remaining live in secret. We also discover that the Child the Empire wants so badly can use the Force; powerfully so. Instinctively with no training. The implication here is that Yoda’s species are uniquely strong in the Force. The only other members of the species that we have seen were on the Jedi council. The Child can do things that only one Jedi in the entire history of the Saga (Rey) has been shown to do. What isn’t clear is what the Empire wants with the Child. The Client is just as happy if it ends up dead. Dr. Pershing, a scientist under his protection with cloning insignia on his uniform, clearly wants it alive.
The Mandalorian is not the average bounty hunter. Though hard on the outside, he has a soft spot for “foundlings” (orphans), since he was orphaned by a droid army during the Clone Wars. This also left him with a strong distrust for droids.
Mando’s quest takes him, in his gleaming pre-Empire ship the Razor Crest, all the way to planet Nostalgia in the Fan Service sector. Every alien species and reference from Saga and spin-off films will await you. The animated series are likewise plundered for references and threads to pull. Don’t ask yourself how the scavenging Jawas managed to spread through the galaxy, ask how they brought a sandcrawler with them. Also ask how the Mandalorian, who lived through both the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War, has never heard of anything resembling the Force in his life. Not impossible, true, not impossible. But certainly unlikely?
To the show’s strength, Mando surrounds himself with allies including the wise Ugnaught Kuill (Nick Nolte) and the former Rebel shock trooper Cara Dune (Gina Carano). He even reluctantly forms an alliance with bounty hunter droid IG-11 (Taika Waititi). Each one of these bring out another aspect of Mando’s disguised personality.
Unfortunately, the show’s weaknesses are apparent by the second episode. It lacks a consistent tone and even the soundtrack is all over the board. Mando’s path is too twisted by side missions and quests, like a video game biding its time before you’re back to your main story. A few episodes play out like actual video games, particularly the sixth. Some such as the fourth suffer from substandard acting and poor direction (which came as a surprise, being directed by Bryce Dallas Howard). While there is nothing low-budget about the Mandalorian, some of the performances are pretty cut-rate.
The meandering season finally returns to form when Mando and the Child encounter the Imperials once again. And guess what — they’re not as poorly equipped as we were led to believe. Giancarlo Esposito, who was unforgettable on Breaking Bad as drug kingpin Gus Fring, menaces our heroes one more time as Moff Gideon. With a squadron of crack Imperial Death Troopers and a custom TIE Fighter, Moff Gideon is willing to sacrifice his own men to get the Child back.
The show is a hit. “This is the way” is a phrase that has entered our modern lexicon, along with “I have spoken” and “I can bring you in warm or I can bring you in cold.” To say that season one was successful is an understatement. Season two is already locked and loaded, bringing in Rosario Dawson to the fold playing former Jedi Ahsoka Tano. She will likely be the first protagonist on the show to understand who the Child is and what Moff Gideon wants it for.
Hopefully season two will cut down on the obvious fan service. (Did Bill Burr really have to do a Gungan impression in episode six?) With one season down, we look forward to a tighter story with fewer episodes where nothing really happens. And we certainly anticipate what Pedro Pascal will bring to the role next time. His performance, limited to voice and body language, was without flaw. The set must have been electric any time he was together with Werner Herzog.
Episode highlights of the season: four out of of eight great episodes.
The rest don’t bring much to the story and can be skipped with little lost except most of the fan service.
3/5 stars
Sorry folks! We live in extraordinary times, and I have not had any Sunday Chuckles to share with you this week. Instead, to create a virtual social gathering spot, I have been live streaming on Facebook. On Friday night I went an hour and 20 minutes, and it was a blast! I was taking questions and they were coming fast and furious. Participants included your Heavy Metal Overlord, radio host Robert Daniels, and Blaze Bayley expert, Mr. Harrison Kopp.
As this current crisis continues, I will be doing more live streaming. Feel free to join me.
When I was really young, my mom bought my grandpa a copy of Kenny Rogers’ Greatest Hits for Christmas. He ended up getting two copies. I liked the song “The Gambler”, so I asked my mom if I could have the extra copy. Surprised, she gave it to me, and so in my earliest record collection, I had the Flintstones, Star Wars, and Kenny Rogers.
Several years later, after joining Columbia House music club, my mom purchased a new Kenny Rogers hits cassette for the car. That’s when I discovered “Just Dropped In to See What Condition My Condition Was In”, a song that we first found hilarious and then realized was funky and cool. Lebowski just made it cooler.
Kenny Rogers passed away at age 81 peacefully at home. Known for his many hits like “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town”, “Lucille”, and his duets with Dolly Parton, country music will always remember Kenny Rogers.
Rest in Peace.
OZZY OSBOURNE – Ordinary Man (2020 Epic Japanese import)
Expectations were low at LeBrain HQ for a new album by Ozzy Osbourne. In that regard, Ozzy delivered. Ordinary Man is an ordinary album. It is Hard Rock 2020 distilled down to 50 minutes. Nothing on this album comes close to challenging anything from the first six Ozzy albums. It’s most comparable to 2001’s Down to Earth, an overly-modern affair put together by suits.
This time out, the suits assembled a band consisting of Duff McKagan (GN’R) on bass, Chad Smith (RHCP) on drums, and Andrew Watt (California Breed) on guitar. These guys, plus a smattering of strangers, are responsible for the songwriting. The melodies are very deliberate and calculated rather than natural sounding. While things with Zakk Wylde were getting stale, at least Zakk tried to keep Ozzy on track. I’m not sure Ozzy is on track here. “I’ll make you scream, I’ll make you defecate.” Who wrote that?
The glossy production covers up some pretty stellar playing. Watt is fantastic when soloing, but sounds a bit like he’s trying to ape the Zakk vibe. In the vocals department, you can hear some telltale signs of autotune, which I guess is OK now in 2020. If Paul Stanley can lipsynch live and get away with it, then Ozzy can autotune his albums. I suppose.
Some of the better tracks include the ballads, and the surprising “Scary Little Green Men”. This one features some awesome lickity-licks from Tom Morello. Slash appears elsewhere, not sounding at all like Slash. The single “Under the Graveyard” is not bad. The worst track has to be “It’s a Raid”, possibly an outtake from Blink 182’s Neighborhoods CD.
Elton John sings on one track, and it’s not bad at all, sounding like a classic Ozzy ballad from the 1990s. I didn’t recognise Reginald Dwight’s voice at first. It’s deeper these days. Regarding Post Malone, he’s fine, has a decent voice albeit also autotuned. I don’t know what the guy sounds like without enhancement, but he sounds like he’s probably a better singer than Ozzy recently. I could do without his song “Take What You Want”, but at least the Japanese edition of the album ends on a better note. A blues track called “Darkside Blues” is brief, but actually sounds like something more real, more genuine.
Think about your favourite Ozzy albums. How often to do you spin Blizzard, Diary, or Tears? Now think about how often you play Down to Earth, Black Rain, and Scream. In two years’ time, you’ll be spinning Ordinary Man about as often as Black Rain, but you won’t be getting Wylde.
2/5 stars
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