I don’t remember everything that happened at the Record Store, I admit, and I remember less and less each passing year. Certain events and characters have slipped my mind. Fortunately we have the written word to remind us. Here is an abridged conversation.
David: “Didn’t there used to be a crazy dude who came to (your old store in) Kitchener in a Helix jacket?
Mike: “I am unfamiliar with that gentleman. We did however receive visits from Snake the Tattoo Man (who was in a Helix video). He threatened Neil.
Matt: “I do remember the Helix jacket guy, and he was a little crazy…I can’t believe you don’t remember that guy Mike…although it wasn’t nearly as good as the jacket “Rokken With Dokken”.
GETTING MORE TALE #792: The Summer of ’93 – Live Album Explosion
Keeping up with new releases is challenging for anyone. Today, every band is releasing a box set, live album, compilation, EP, or even (gasp) new material! This is not a new phenomenon. As a young collector in an earlier time, 1993 was particularly challenging. I was suffering from “live album burnout” due to a number of double lives that year. I dutifully picked up the most important ones to me, as much as I could afford.
I plotted things out. The first batch of live albums on my radar that year were as follows:
Four of my favourite bands in one brief chunk of time, with two of the four being doubles. I had to budget this out somehow.
I’m not sure when I bought Van Halen’s album, but I most likely bought it first. The dual CD set was at Costco for thirty-something bucks so I put it in the cart. I know it was early in the year because I remember listening to it in the car while driving to school for final exams, which occur in April. Specifically I remember listening to the live version of “Cabo Wabo” on my way there.
I found the Van Halen album underwhelming. Too much stuff from For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge and some clattering solos made it a struggle to finish in one sitting. Sammy Hagar would later comment that the album sucked because too much of it was re-recorded in the studio. I just thought it was a drag.
Kiss were (and are) my #1 band, so I dutifully bought it as quickly as I could. I didn’t get it on the day of release (May 18), but I do know the exact date that I purchased it: May 20. I know this because I remember that we had to get home from the mall (Fairway Park Mall’s HMV store) in time to catch the series finale of Cheers. I got the free poster with my cassette copy. I chose cassette for strategic reasons. Double live albums were a bigger investment, so I liked to get those on CD. I was already starting to distrust the cassette tape format. I’d hate to buy a double cassette set and have one of the tapes go bad. Alive III was a single tape, so I went for that and stayed with that until I got a double vinyl reissue a couple years later.
The Ozzy was a limited edition package. I needed that special grille cover with the two “tattoos” inside. I couldn’t afford it so I put it on my birthday list. I accompanied my mom to HMV to make sure she got the right one. Killed the surprise, but also the anxiety of not getting the exact version I “needed” for my collection!
Ozzy Osbourne had already supersaturated the market with live albums, and his was tedious to listen to. I gave it more it than a fair shot, as I wanted to really hear how Zakk approached the live versions differently than Randy or Tony had. It was an exercize that paid minimal dividends, wading through minute after minute of numbing “extra extra crazy” Ozzy monologues.
I decided to hold off on Iron Maiden as long as I could. The idea of a single disc live Maiden album was a little off-kilter for me. An album of tracks from 1986-1992 didn’t sound all that appealing to me. Maybe I should wait until the second disc, due in October, came out so I could listen to both equally. Maybe I should skip A Real Live One entirely. The album seemed a hasty entity, being released so Maiden could tour to support new product. The cover art was also lo-fi sketchy, compared to predecessor Live After Death.
Good or bad, I decided to hold off on Maiden for the time being. I had enough live metal to digest anyway.
Kiss was the only album I was happy with, though it was clearly an inferior offering to Alive I and II. Unlike Osbourne, it wasn’t too long, and kept the filler to a minimum.
When the next batch of live albums rolled out, I was weary.
Testament – Return to the Apocalyptic City EP – summer 1993
The Bon Jovi live disc came with a pricey special reissue of Keep the Faith, a limited edition. I immediately put that one on my Christmas list and did my best to pester my mom into buying it. I had to make a decision about the others. I scratched Satriani and Testament off my list. They weren’t going to be priorities this time.
As for the final call on Iron Maiden? The decision was made for me when I found Live at Donington, once again at HMV. What was this? It looked like a bootleg, but wasn’t. It had no liner notes. Absolutely bare minimum packaging. Nary an Eddie in sight. It was a “limited edition“, and a double CD with a complete concert. The easy choice was to buy this instead of the other two albums. For the time being, at least. I finally did get all three albums, when I was working at the Record Store, in 1996. The Boxing Day sale enabled me to get both live Maidens and the recent Tesla greatest hits for a reduced price. It took me three years to get ’em!
That busy 1993 list doesn’t include live home videos released that year (Ozzy, Van Halen, Bon Jovi, Kiss) or the albums that I didn’t even know about (Live Cult). I had to draw the line and audio has always been my priority over video.
Too much is too much, and in 1993 we just had too much.
Do you remember what live albums you bought in 1993? Comment below!
Quick clip from a 1991 interview with Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy. This was recorded off a Cult “Spotlight” on MuchMusic; the interviewer is Michael Williams.
Here, The Cult talk about rediscovering their roots and take a couple shots at U2.
WHITESNAKE – Slip of the Tongue(originally 1989, 2019 (6 CD/1 DVD 30th Anniversary Rhino box set)
There’s a theme you may have noticed every time we review a Whitesnake box set: David does it right.
Here’s another one: Coverdale cares.
Slip of the Tongue gets the super-deluxe treatment this time, the third of the “big three” to go that way. This is the album that divided fans the most. Replacing Vivian Campbell was none other than ex-David Lee Roth stringbender Steve Vai.
“What the hell would that sound like?” we all wondered.
Longtime Whitesnake fans felt it was a step too far into the world nebulously defined as “hair metal”. Others loved the guitar mania inside, with Vai stretching out in ways different from his prior bands. Not the “definitive” Vai record that they still wanted (and would get a year later), but certainly a platter they could sink their teeth into. And it was a weird reason that Steve was playing on Slip of the Tongue at all.
As you’ll see from a feature on the included DVD (“A Look Back: Whitesnake Chronicles with DC and Adrian Vandenberg”), the album was written and thoroughly demoed with Adrian. They wouldn’t need a guitarist until it was time to tour. At this point, Adrian injured his wrist and was unable to finish. Steve Vai and David Coverdale found that they got along famously and the seven-string wizard brought his unique and advanced stylings to the blues-based Whitesnake.
What the hell would it sound like?
It sounds absolutely mental.
With the benefit of now hearing all the demos that Adrian laid down, it’s obvious Steve Vai didn’t just pick up his guitar and play the parts. It’s clear right from opener “Slip of the Tongue”. Compare the album to Adrian’s demos on the other discs. Vai changes one of the chord progressions to high-pitched harmonics, and, let’s face it, improves the song. Elsewhere there are unique trick-filled runs and fills that add another dimension to the music. If Whitesnake was always 3D rock, Vai upped it to 4. The guitar work is blazingly busy, never cliche, and always to the advancement of the song. With all respect to Adrian Vandenberg who wrote these great songs, Steve Vai was more than just icing on a cake. Slip of the Tongue arguably sounds more a Vai album than Whitesnake, even though he didn’t write any of it.
The beauty of this set is that if you’re more into ‘Snake than alien love secrets, you can finally hear the purity of Adrian’s vision in the multitude of early demos included.
Unfortunately, if you’re familiar with the album you’ll hear something’s up by track 2. “Kitten’s Got Claws”? That song used to close side one. What’s up? The album running order has been tampered with, and so has “Kitten’s Got Claws”. It’s now missing the Steve Vai “cat guitar symphony” that used to open it. It could be a different remix altogether. My advice is to hang on to your original Slip of the Tongue CD. You’re probably going to still want to hear the album and song as they were.
This running order puts “Cheap An’ Nasty” third, a song that structurally resembles the ol’ Slide It In Whitesnake vibe. Of course Vai’s space age squeals and solos modernized it. Listen to that whammy bar insanity at the 2:00 mark! Up next is “Now You’re Gone”, a classy rocker/ballad hybrid that has always been an album highlight. The demos on the other discs allow us to hear how much this song was improved in the final touches. That cool answering vocal in the chorus, and the hooks that Vai added, came much later. Strangely, this box set puts the other ballad, “The Deeper the Love”, up next. Keyboard overdubs made it a little too smooth around the edges, but a good song it remains.
The Zeppelinesque “Judgement Day” is a track that used to piss off some fans, who felt it was an abject rip off from “Kashmir”. The Vai touch of sitar (replacing guitar in the early demos) probably aided and abetted this. Regardless it succeeds in being the big rock epic of the album, and a favourite today. Another strange choice in running order follows: “Sailing Ships”, formerly the album closer. It’s quite shocking to hear it in this slot. Again, Vai replaced guitar with sitar, and David goes contemplative. Then suddenly, it gets heavy and Steve takes it to the stratosphere.
“Wings of the Storm” used to open side two; now it’s after “Sailing Ships”. Some tasty Tommy Aldridge double bass drums kick off this tornado of a tune. Vai’s multitracks of madness and pick-scrapes of doom are something to behold. Then it’s “Slow Poke Music”, a sleazy rocker like old ‘Snake.
The new version of Slip of the Tongue closes on “Fool for Your Loving”, a re-recording of an old classic from Ready An’ Willing. The new version is an accelerated Vai vehicle, lightyears away from its origins. Coverdale initially wrote it to give to B.B. King. Vai is as far removed from B.B. King as you can imagine. The original has the right vibe, laid back and urgent. This one is just caffeinated.
The only album B-side “Sweet Lady Luck” is the first bonus track on Disc 1. By now it is the least-rare B-side in the universe, having been reissued on a multitude of Whitesnake and Vai collections. Valuable to have to complete the album, but easy to acquire. It’s basically a second-tiered speed rocker with the guitar as the focus. Other B-sides from this era were remixes, and they are included here as well. The Chris Lord-Alge mix of “Now Your Gone” is the kind that most people won’t know the difference. Vai said that Lord-Alge could make the cymbals sound “like they have air in them.” Then there’s the “Vai Voltage Mix” of “Fool for Your Loving”, which has completely different guitar tracks building an arrangement with way, way, way more emphasis on the instrument. The rest of the disc is packed with four more alternate remixes: “Slip of the Tongue”, “Cheap An’ Nasty”, “Judgement Day” and “Fool for Your Loving”. These mixes have some bits and pieces different from the album cuts. Vai fans will want the alternate solo to “Cheap An’ Nasty”, though it’s less whammy mad.
Of course, “Sweet Lady Luck” wasn’t the only song that didn’t make the album. In old vintage interviews, Coverdale teased the names of additional tracks we didn’t get to hear: “Parking Ticket”, “Kill for the Cut”, and “Burning Heart”. They’ve been safely buried in Coverdale’s vault, until now. Additionally, it turns out that Whitesnake also re-recorded a couple more of their old songs: “Ain’t Gonna Cry No More” and “We Wish You Well”. They’re all here in different forms on the demo discs.
Perhaps “Kill for the Cut” would have been one dirty song too many for the album. It ain’t half bad, and has a unique little bumpin’ riff. “Parking Ticket” had potential too. Rudy Sarzo gave it a pulse that might have taken it on the radio. The 1989 monitor mix would have been perfect for B-side release. Why did Cov have to hold out on us all these years? “Burning Heart” was a special song, a re-recording of an old Vandenberg track that David really loved. Unfortunately the monitor mix is is only a skeleton of what could have been a sensational Whitesnake ballad. “Ain’t Gonna Cry No More” is heavily modernized, with keyboards sounding like they were trying to recapture “Here I Go Again” (which they were). “We Wish You Well” is more contemplative, with piano as the focus.
All of this previously unheard material is scattered over several discs. “Evolutions” (Disc 3) is a familiar concept to fans of these box sets. Demos from various stages of completion are spliced together into one cohesive track. You will be able to hear the songs “evolve” as the band worked on them. Every track from the album plus “Sweet Lady Luck”, “Parking Ticket” and “Kill for the Cut” can be heard this way. Disc 4 is a collection of monitor mixes with all the album songs and all the unreleased ones too. These discs are the ones that allow us to really hear the album the way it would have been if Adrian didn’t hurt his wrist. We would have got an album that sounded a lot more like Whitesnake. It was audibly different even if familiar.
Perhaps the best disc in the entire set is “A Trip to Granny’s House: Session Tapes, Wheezy Interludes & Jams”. It’s just as loose as it sounds. Enjoy the funk of “Death Disco”, the funkiest David’s been since Come Taste the Band. If you’ve always wanted to hear David sing “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree”, now you finally can! There’s a lot of goofing off in some of these tracks, but also a lot of rock. It’s live off the floor as they rehearse the songs, as a four piece band with Adrian. Not all the final lyrics or solos are set, but the songs are so raw and fresh. Some of the jams show a side of Whitesnake we rarely got to see. Kind of Purple-y in the way they just could take off and rip some blues.
Given all the rich audio extras, it’s OK if one of the CDs is a little impoverished. That would be disc 2, “The Wagging Tongue Edition”. This is a reproduction of an old promo CD, featuring the album Slip of the Tongue with a Dirty David interview interspersed. This was meant for radio premieres. It has the entire album in the correct order, but because it’s faded in and out of interviews, it’s really not a substitute for a proper copy of the original album. At least the vintage 1989 interviews are interesting. It saves collectors from buying a copy on Discogs. (Coverdale claims “Judgement Day” was originally titled “Up Yours Robert”. Ooft.)
There’s another disappointment here and it’s difficult to forgive. In 2011, Whitesnake released the long awaited Live at Donington as a 2 CD/1 DVD package. This brilliant performance finally gave us a permanent record of Whitesnake live with Vai. In our previous dedicated review, we had this to say:
Musically, it’s a wild ride. It’s not the Steve Vai show. Adrian gets just as many solos, and his are still spine-tingling if more conventional. It is loaded with ‘Snake hits, leaning heavily on the three Geffen albums. In fact there is only one pre-Slide It In song included: The Bobby “Blue” Bland cover “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City”. And, since it is also the pre-grunge era, there are plenty of solos, which today seems excessive. Aldridge does his drum solo at the end of “Still Of The Night”. Vandenberg gets his “Adagio for Strato”/”Flying Dutchman Boogie”. Most excitingly, Steve Vai performs two songs from his then-brand new (and top 40!) album Passion And Warfare: “For The Love Of God” and “The Audience Is Listening”, with Aldridge on drums. Coverdale even introduces him as “Mr. Passion and Warfare!” so I imagine there was no sour grapes that Vai’s album was doing so well. And lemme tell ya folks — the audience WAS listening, and going nuts too!
Unfortunately, to save a little bit of plastic, this set was reduced to a single CD for its inclusion here. The Vai and Adrian solos were cut, though Tommy’s drum solo in “Still of the Night” is retained. To cut the guitar solos in such a guitar focused boxed set is not only unwise but unforgivable. Fans who don’t have Live at Donington are going to want to shell out again just to get the solos. Fortunately, the whole show is uncut on the included DVD.
The DVD has plenty of added value; it’s not just a reissue of Live at Donington. You’ll get the three music videos from the album (“Now You’re Gone”, “The Deeper the Love” and “Fool for Your Loving”). There’s even a brand new clip for “Sweet Lady Luck” cobbled together from existing video. Then, you can go deeper into the album. The aforementioned sitdown with David and Adrian is really enlightening. Another behind the scenes feature narrated by David is fantastic for those who love to watch a band create in the studio. Coverdale’s not a bad guitarist himself.
These Whitesnake box sets also include ample extras on paper. There’s quite a nice miniature reformatted tour program with the majority of cool photos. A large Slip of the Tongue poster can adorn your wall, or remain safely folded up in this box. Finally, there is a 60 page hardcover booklet. This is a treasure trove of press clippings, magazine covers, single artwork, and more. Lyrics and credits wrap it all up in a nice little package.
Because we know that David puts so much into these box sets, it’s that much more heartbreaking that this one is so slightly imperfect. The shuffled running order and lack of guitar kittens on “Kitten’s Got Claws” is a problem. The truncated live album is another. It means I have to hang onto old CDs that I was hoping to phase out of my collection in favour of this sleek set. Alas, I’ll keep them as they are my preferred listening experience.
Otherwise, in every other way, this box set delivers. It makes a lovely display next to its brethren and it justifies its cost.
Dave (he wouldn’t let me call him “Mr. Rutter”) was a unique human being. He’s the only person I’ve ever met that nobody ever said a bad word about. People talk of his generosity, his love of sports, friends, and family. If he had any flaws, they were a secret he took with him. He was very special. And he was Jen’s dad.
We didn’t see it coming. He just went in his sleep. It was peaceful, but not for us. To say we are still feeling the effects of his loss would be an understatement. Jen was a daddy’s girl, a precious princess with a dad who was always willing to go easy when she was bad. They spoke their own language. To see the two of them with a plate of chicken wings, talking about sports…I couldn’t even follow what they were on about. They were best friends. The phrase “two peas in a pod” was never more applicable. The hole he left in her life is immeasurable.
But here we are 10 years later. I don’t know how we made it, especially given the losses that followed. The family that Jen grew up with is gone. Fortunately my family have taken her in as if she was blood. We couldn’t have survived this without the support of them, and Jen’s Ottawa family. In a way, it feels unfair and cruel that Dave had to go so soon. I barely got to know him. On the other hand, it’s a blessing that we had Dave at all. Not many people can say they have a Dave in their life.
He loved his sports (any sport you can name, he knew something about), he loved classic music, driving, antique books, and coffee. He loved “Mum” and she’s with him now. They were always meant to be together forever and now they are. We miss them both. He was a really special guy and I wish you had a chance to meet him.
Dave drove a delivery van for a living, and the last van he drove only had a tape deck. So, I gave him a bunch of my old cassettes to listen to. One was a collection of Beatles EPs that I copied from the Compact Disc EP Collection box set. From that set, and for Dave, here is “Drive My Car”.
The brightest always burn out the quickest. Audioslave lasted a mere five years but unleashed three albums in the same time most bands can only crank out one or two. It was a collaboration that bore sweet fruit. Ronnie James Dio used to say that when it came to collaborations, the first album was usually the best. That’s true of Audioslave.
Their first, self-titled album checks all the boxes: monster grooves, soaring vocals and wonky solos. Since it’s produced by Rick Rubin you know it’s gonna be loud. You can also count on a clear, big drum sound which Rubin achieves. At 14 tracks, the album is swollen, but despite its long runtime there is nary a dud.
There are some who, at the time at least, felt that Rage Against The Machine’s style of abnormally funky rap-metal could not be adapted to hard rock. They felt the fit between Chris Cornell and the Rage guys was forced and resulted in something that would only appeal to Soundgarden’s fans while alienating those of Rage. While there is a smidgen of truth to that assertion, Rage have proven time and again that they can pretty much do anything. No boundaries.
No tracks to skip, either, but some you may want to focus extra attention on. “Cochise” about the revered Indian warrior, has a groove that can crack concrete. Same with “Show Me How to Live” and “Gasoline”, heavier than the proverbial lead balloon, but infested with melodic vocals. Audioslave could even pull off slower material, though you’d be hesitant to call them “ballads”. “Like A Stone” is essential: precision, smoky rock crooning. The spare arrangement allows Chris’ vocals to make the impact, though the bass is certainly earth-moving. As if that wasn’t enough, Tom Morello’s solo combines his trademark noisy note-work with epic composition.
Despite the quality tracks before and after, the best may be the angry “Set It Off”. It slams. It’s closest to Rage’s anarchist tendencies. It’s just pissed off.
He was standing at the rock, Gathering the flock, And getting there with no directions, And underneath the arch, It turned into a march, And there he found the spark to set this fucker off.
A 14 track album this good could earn a 2000 word analysis, but we’ll save that for an inevitable deluxe edition. There are lots of B-sides and bonus tracks from this album that need to be properly collected into a set, like the download-only “Give”, a rhythmic little extra. Suffice to say, Audioslave is an essential album for anybody who ever liked rock music. There is a purity to it. As the liner notes say, “all sounds made by guitar, bass, drums, and vocals.” Even the weird squonky shit, so be ready for your mind and soul to be blown. Sit back and absorb it a while, because there’s a lot here to assimilate into your blood.
I get a lot of hits from people hoping to buy my stuff. This one popped up recently in my search terms:
“vince neil dragon guitar for sale”
Several years ago, the Vince Neil “dragon guitar” by Washburn was on sale so I picked one up. So did my buddy Thuss — except he did sell his. This is his story of how it (eventually) went down.
GETTING MORE TALE #791: The True Story of Thuss’s Vince Neil “Dragon Guitar”
BY THUSS
Lebrain and I had matching guitars for a while, that we both bought at the now defunct Future Shop. They were on clearance and we got them for a really good price ($70 plus tax, originally $300 each, limited to 2500 pieces). They were Washburn dragon guitars which were “autographed” by Vince Neil. The only real autograph in the package was Vince Neil’s actual signature on the certificate of authenticity. After a couple years I decided to sell mine as I never really played it anymore and had moved onto different hobbies.
So I did what everyone else did, and put it up on Kijiji. I wasn’t in a hurry to sell it so I put it up for more than double what I paid for it. I had a few bites, but nothing serious until one guy from Toronto wanted it. He was desperate for it! But there was only one problem: he didn’t drive. First he came to me with an offer of triple what I paid for it if I delivered it to his house. As I said I wasn’t in a hurry to sell it, so I answered no.
I didn’t hear from him for a week or so. Then he emailed back, and asked if I would meet him at the bus station downtown for what I was asking for it. Again I said no, because I hate driving downtown and I didn’t want to pay for parking just to make a sale.
Again a week passed, and he emailed me back. He said “OK”. He’d take about six buses and meet me at my house and he will give me what I’m asking for it. I said sure, and not surprisingly he never showed up.
At this point I had another offer from a dad wanting to buy it for his son. His offer was below what I was asking, but still well above what I paid for it. I accepted, and when they came to pick it up, the son was so happy to have a guitar. He was really excited to start playing, so I’m glad I sold it to someone who would appreciate it.
I thought this was the end of the story but come a month later, the original guy emailed me and said one of his friends was going to drive out to my house so he could pick it up. “Sorry,” I told him, “but I sold it to someone else.”
Guitar-guy immediately emailed me back, and he was pissed! He told me he said he wanted it, and was going to pick it up, so why did I sell it to someone else? I said it was almost two months since he first contacted me and I moved on and sold it to someone else. Finally that got rid of him and I never heard from him again. You meet some “interesting” people on Kijiji. At least I didn’t tell him LeBrain had one too!
Everybody eventually hits that age, when they are “too old” to go trick-or-treating for candy. Highschool seemed like a good age to draw the line. Time to start handing out the candy instead of collecting it. We all have to grow up eventually.
Do we?
Naw, screw that!
In the 10th grade, a new Halloween tradition was inaugurated. As told in Getting More Tale #548:
We started preparing for Halloween in late August. We began by making heads out of papier-mâché. Ours were crude, but when dressed up with sunglasses, hats or wigs, did the trick. Then we would begin working on an audio tape. This was a 60-minute long compilation of scary bits from Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden albums. We hid some speakers outside and would play the tape on a loop for background scary sounds. Kids loved it. Really small ones were scared, so we had to stop the tape and turn on the lights for them, but 95% thought it was awesome (including parents). We’d see kids across the street, and they’d make a beeline for our house as soon as they saw it. My favourite costume was the one I made in grade 10: Alice Cooper.
Oh, that Alice Cooper costume! I painted flames on an old black jacket so it would look something like Alice’s. I wore his makeup. I had fake tattoos (not knowing that Alice didn’t have any). I had a pair of handcuffs on my belt. Best of all though, was the sword I wore on my hip. It was actually a fireplace poker, but you couldn’t tell in the dark.
Making the annual audio tape was a long, arduous process. We’d fast-forward through our tape collections to record tiny bits of songs, and loop them. The ending to “Children of the Grave” and the intro to “Powerslave” were perfect. Occasionally we’d throw in the middle of “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” with the narration and creepy violin. Black Sabbath’s “The Dark” was almost custom made for our needs. As time went on and our collections grew, we had more music to choose from. Any time one of us would buy an album with music perfect for Halloween, one of us would excitedly phone the other. In later years I was fond of the middle section from “Nightcrawler” by Judas Priest. But it was tedious work. You couldn’t just play the same sections over and over again, you had to space them out so kids wouldn’t get the same bits repeated while you stood there handing out candy. We spent hours upon hours making this tape that would only be used for one night. Blank tapes were a commodity. We were always using them up, and looking for something to erase. Halloween tapes were first to go. Besides, we wanted to do it again the following year, but better!
Our scary tapes would be augmented by flashing lights courtesy of…a flashlight. Eventually, Bob figured out how to hook up a microphone to our primitive audio setup. We could then speak directly to the kids!
“You…across the street…come here for a treat! Muahahahah!”
Mom & dad didn’t approve. To them we just made a big mess and a lot of noise. Indeed, I can remember trying to wash off that Alice Cooper makeup at the end of the night. I left a black ring around the tub. But my dad hated handing out candy, so I hope he appreciated that he was relieved of that duty. Considering how long we prepared, it was actually a long ongoing mess. Ever made papier-mâché? No neat and tidy way to do it. Those heads were the most work, and we left a trail of destruction in the basement, forming and painting them. But once they were out on the front porch (either decapitated or as part of a fully clothed “body”) they sure were effective.
Bob eventually went to college, and the traditional Halloween House was discontinued. I did it a few times without him but all the fun was gone. The idea was briefly resurrected in the late 1990s, at T-Rev’s place. As told in Record Store Tales Part 148:
T-Rev had this cool “alien head” — he got it back in ’97 or ’98 from a convenience store. It had alien head suckers inside. He asked the guy at the store, “how much for the alien head?” The guy answered, “If you buy all the suckers in it, you can have it.” So he did. (The candy was awful by the way. I did my share, trying to help him consume it all.) But he got this alien head out of it, and with it, made a cool alien costume. And for the Halloween party that year, I wore the costume.
I would sit in a chair on T-Rev’s front porch, still as could be. When a child would approach the door, I would suddenly move and say “Na-nu, na-nu”! The reactions were priceless. Some were scared, so I had to unmask and show I was just a regular guy.
“Give some candy to the Jedi over here!” I said, gesturing to the kid dressed as Darth Maul.
“I’m no Jedi!” he protested. I should have got my terminology right. I apologized to the Sith lord.
Even the Sith story is from 20 years ago. Not having kids, today Halloween has fizzled out. There are no trick-or-treaters in our building. Most people today doing a “haunted house” experience at home buy expensive decorations at chain stores. They get featured the in newspaper for having done an awesome job. That’s terrific. But we did everything ourselves. Everything. Nothing was “store bought”. We improvised everything with what we had, spending weeks putting it all together. Too bad the newspapers don’t cover kids who do everything themselves! We would have been featured every year.
Have a happy Halloween and don’t forget to brush those teeth!
“That was even more unsettling than I remember,” said Holen after viewing Eraserhead for the first time in many moons. You see, I hadn’t planned to review this surrealist masterpiece for my Halloween reviews, but then a funny thing happened. Criterion Collection had a 50% off sale, so I decided to order the Blu-ray of Eraserhead, finally adding one of the few missing pieces to my David Lynch collection, and securing one of my favorite films of all time in the process. I’m in pretty good company calling it a favorite, as it’s beloved by talents as diverse as Mel Brooks, Crispin Glover, and Stanley Kubrick. As a matter of fact, Kubrick screened this film on the set of The Shining in an attempt to express the mood he was trying to capture with his own film.
If you’ve never seen it and you believe that the following tidbit is giving you a solid idea of what to expect, you’d be pretty wrong. Eraserhead and The Shining may share similar abilities to cause tension, but that’s about it. Eraserhead honestly has more in common with 2001. It’s an overwhelming barrage of images and ideas, rather than concrete dialogue or relatable characters. Filmed in hazy black and white, the movie can best be summed up as a dream. Not dreamlike, but a dream. There’s very little in this film that we can connect back to our own world, and even the things that we recognize act in ways that we’ve never seen before. That process of making the common seem alien births fear. Like the chickens that come alive on their plates as you try to cut them.
But this fear is anchored in a sense of wide-eyed wonder. We’re unable to turn away, and much like a dream, we’re helpless to resist the unsettling events we’re seeing on the screen. The plot is simple. A man on vacation from his printing job in an industrial town learns he’s impregnated his girlfriend. She gives birth to a premature baby that doesn’t look humanoid at all. She doesn’t have the endurance to take care of the child, so he’s left to deal with it on his own. We see our “hero” Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) struggle with the realities of being a new father, and all the fear and repressed emotions that accompany this time. The film takes an unflinching look at the ID surrounding fatherhood. Henry fears being usurped by his own son, and worries that his status as a father will make women turn away from him in fear. He struggles with whether he should kill his “child”, being egged on by a woman that lives in his radiator with swollen cheeks
None of this is dealt with in a traditional way, and none of it is expressed through dialogue. It’s a visual film that manages to deal with the harsh realities of these subliminal primal feelings by masking their brutal nature in the ambiguous whimsical wrap of dream logic. It would be impossible to feel any empathy towards Henry in a traditional film, but this movie gives us a disturbing look into the inner psyche of a man pushed far outside of his comfort zone, outside of his sanity. None of Henry’s actions until the end of the film could be considered sinister at all, as his worries are almost entirely projected out through the world around him.
At first, Henry seems to be quite caring to his child in every way. He’s there when the mother is not, is concerned when the baby is sick, and generally seems to be a polite mild-mannered man. Like many David Lynch films, Eraserhead searches past the shiny surface into the dark underbelly of reality, however unpleasant it may be. He did the same thing with small town American suburbs in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, and Hollywood in Mulholland Dr.
For my money though, he never created another picture as personal and as inimitable as Eraserhead. It achieves what it sets out to do with no fat, no moment wasted in its brief 89 minute run-time. I don’t understand everything in Eraserhead, but to me that’s part of the charm. It’s a riveting picture more disturbing than most horror, it forces you to be an active viewer by constantly engaging your brain, and it explores aspects of fatherhood most of us would rather deny existed. The 4K restoration done by Criterion looks and sounds wonderful, as the soundtrack is as much a part of this movie as the visuals are. I didn’t know that industrial noise could be so involving and manipulative, but the oppressive sounds reinforce the images on screen with masterful synchronization. The minutes on end of heavy bass make your entire body clench up until it suddenly ceases and you sit wondering what the hell just happened to you. It’s truly a masterpiece of cinema, and an extraordinary debut film. If you can stomach the supreme tension, seek one out today!
“New The Mandalorian trailer looks like the Star Wars we’re used to,” says the media.
“What the fuck are you on?” says I.
The Mandalorian is Jon Favreau’s new Star Wars bounty hunter series starring Pedro Pascal, Carl Weathers and Werner Herzog. And it looks nothing — nothing at all — like “the Star Wars we’re used to”, so ignore the hype.
No Jedi. No Skywalkers. An unexplored timeline (just after Endor). No, this looks like something entirely new. Which is good. Don’t believe the hype. Tell the hype to fuck off.
“Is the world more peaceful since the revolution?” asks Herzog.
One thing that is exactly the same as old Star Wars: Nobody knows what a parsec is.
As for the final call on Iron Maiden? The decision was made for me when I found Live at Donington, once again at HMV. What was this? It looked like a bootleg, but wasn’t. It had no liner notes. Absolutely bare minimum packaging. Nary an Eddie in sight. It was a “
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