One of the guys at work is a real joker. The kind when you’re never quite sure if he’s joking or serious. For the purpose of this story, we’ll call him “Happy”. I went out to grab some lunch at Harvey’s. I came back to the office, and Happy was standing there talking on his cell phone. I nodded hello when I pulled in and he ignored me, seemingly deep in his phone call.
My car has electric locks. I usually hit the button that opens all doors, out of habit. As I got out of the car clutching my hot burger and cold drink, he climbed in the passenger side and closed the door behind him. He continued to talk on his phone ignoring me. I stood there perplexed. Did he just get into my car and close the door? Yes, there he is right now, talking on his phone. I decided not to be baited by his prank and walked into the office.
I looked out the window — he was still there in my car! I went up to my buddy Chris and said, “Dude, Happy is my car right now. I have no idea why. Go look. He’s sitting right there.” And there he was. Chris was just as confused as I was! Happy has a unique sense of humour!
Happy eventually stepped out and I never acknowledged it to him. Just a weird day at the office!
As an addendum to Friday’s installment of Getting More Tale (#546: Worst. McDonalds. EVER.) I thought it would be enlightening to share some statistics. You will recall that installment #546 made mention of an “inside the park home run” — slang for “taking a shit in a urinal”. At a McDonalds out of town, our friend Craiggles encountered such a thing and took a photo for proof of its existence.
Though I entered the photo into the evidence box, I advised you very strongly not to click it.
Here’s how many of you have taken a peek in the last 36 hours since it was published:
73.
That’s right, 73 of you sickos clicked to see what an “inside the park home run” looked like. Shame shame shame on you! :)
I’ve been visiting the “worst McDonalds ever” regularly in the past few weeks. All McDonalds stores have been renovated since the 2006 disaster area we encountered in the last installment. They’ve made a number of changes to their menu and how you order.
Where a typical McDonalds used to have a huge counter full of cash registers to order, now they have just one. This is because they have switched over to an automated ordering/paying system using touch-screen kiosks. You might think that removing the human element is a bad thing. When it was first rolled out, it seemed things got slower. Today is another story.
Using the former “worst McDonalds ever” as an example, service is now much faster and accurate. You don’t have to get in line. Just walk in and stroll up to a kiosk. Follow the instructions on screen and touch what you want to order. You can do it as a combo, and you can change sizes quite easily. Making modifications is easy peasy. The kiosk then reviews your order and asks you to confirm it. Once this is done, you can either pay by debit or credit card right at the kiosk, or go to the cash register to pay.
The kiosk spits out your receipt with a number. That number then appears on a big screen that says “now serving”. Your number climbs to the top when your order is ready. Usually this happens quickly.
It used to be the case that we didn’t like to get McDonalds “to go” because by the time you get back, the fries are cold. Everybody knows McDonalds fries are best when they are piping hot. Cold McDonalds fries just don’t cut it. I am pleased to report that I can go to the former “worst McDonalds ever” and get back to the office in time with hot fries. My turnaround time is usually 15-20 minutes from door to door. Additionally, my order has been right every time. It seems the new kiosk system has cut down on human error.
This is all just personal experience; I have been to a few of the new McDonalds and only had a bad experience once, in Ottawa, when the new system was first introduced. That McDonalds was drowning in confusion and upset customers, including one who claimed this was the “worst McDonalds ever”. That first time aside, food has been fast and accurate since.
What does this mean in terms of general retail? Automated checkout is becoming more and more common. As long as the speed and quality remain in good standing, this trend will continue. It will probably not impact the music business very much. Most people who go shopping in a music store go there partly because there are humans to interact with. As long as music stores exist, so will manual checkouts. Of course, many folks (myself included) buy a huge chunk of their music from online retailers. However when we do visit a music store, we want a flesh and blood human being there.
Good for McDonalds for improving their service. I think the music business will continue on its own path.
I don’t consider myself a snobbish foodie. Yes, I like to go out and have a lovely duck confit, or rosemary lamb chops. However I’m not picky, I’ll eat almost anything, as my gut will attest to. I saw Super Size Me, and I’ve ordered almost everything on the McMenu once. McDonalds are usually pretty clean…but not always. Some in fact were downright gross. The worst one? Even the pissy McD’s we visited near Flint Michigan could not compete with Cambridge Ontario on the gross scale.
I was out with Jen and her friends. It was a late night of card playing, and I wanted to just head home, but I was outvoted by the other three. The only place that was open that late was McDonalds. I could always go for a Big Mac, so why not?
Upon entering, we debated leaving immediately, but there was nowhere to go. If only I had a cell phone camera back then…the scene we witnessed was an apocalypse for the record books. In the main eating area of the restaurant, food was all over the floor and tables. Bits of burgers smooshed onto the floor. Fries everywhere. Ketchup, salt, containers…the entire area was a complete disaster. It looked as if a bunch of highschool kids had just had a food fight and left (which is probably close to the truth).
One of the staff emerged from the back room with cleaning supplies. He took one look at the main eating area and paused.
“Woah,” he said, and returned to the back room with his cleaning supplies, not to be seen again.
I guess the place wasn’t going to get cleaned up that night! It sure didn’t look like a manager was working.
My buddy Craig, from 107.5 Dave Rocks, raises the “worst McDonalds ever” stakes with a tale of his own. Unlike me, he has photographic proof. It was in Milton, on highway 25. He entered the restroom to find that a patron before him left an “inside the park home run”. If you’re not familiar with the terminology, an “inside the park home run” in this case refers to someone taking a shit in a urinal. There was no conceivable reason for anyone to leave a shit in the urinal. Baffled, disgusted and nauseous, Craig snapped a photo and handed it over to the manager. The manager responded by offering him his drink cup.
Pictures or it didn’t happen? Do not, under any circumstances, click the link to the evidence.
This is your final warning. Do. not. click. the link.
Musical episodes and American Dad go together like blue suits and Stars n’ Stripes lapel pins. Cee-Lo Green wasn’t the first musician to appear on the show, but he was the first to appear both animated, and live action!* Cee-Lo hosted the opening episode for Season 8, “Hot Water”. “My name? Not important,” he begins. What matters is this “cautionary tale” that “may affect your next hot tub purchase.”
Hot tubs? Indeed, Cee-Lo also voices an evil, murderous hot tub. It sings songs of temptation to Stan Smith, who is becoming obsessed with “soaking” in it. The tub lulls Stan in with “Dip A Toe”, a light sexy Cee-Lo song urging him in. A talking hot tub? “Ain’t nobody got to know…just dip a toe!” Echoes of the classic Stephen King stories Christine and The Shining are obvious, as the hot tub wants more and more time with Stan. Even if it means Stan’s family has got to go. Cee-Lo continues to woo Stan on “Hot Tub of Love” and “Do Whatever You Like”. Stan begins skipping work, neglecting his family, and throwing hot tub stripper parties. He sings, “I feel so conflicted, but this is up to me. On one hand there’s the hot tub, the other’s family.” Guess what he chooses?
Scott Grimes, who voices the character of Steve Smith, is quite a talented singer himself. Steve has songs in countless episodes. In “Hot Water” he duets with Roger the alien in a Boyz II Men-esque song called “Daddy’s Gone”. Francine is forced to leave Stan and the family is broken! The man who sold Stan the hot tub, Marguerite, becomes suspicious and begins doing research on the tub, to the tune of a song called (obviously) “Hot Tub Research”. Marguerite discovers the truth: The tub’s original owner put a stripper pole in there that got hit by lightning. The tub came alive! It killed its owners when they stopped using it. It then escaped from a mental institution and was forgotten until Stan bought it. Can Marguerite stop the hot tub before it kills Stan’s entire family? The answer may surprise you.
“Hot Water” was only an average American Dad episode for laughs-per-minute. It is top notch when it comes to music and unorthodox storytelling. As a premier episode for the 8th season, it had star cameo power and was completely different from any other episode. That’s a win/win. Except I don’t feel like hot tubbing any time soon.
3.5/5 stars
*Actress Gabourey Sidibe also appeared live action as herself in the episode “Stanny Tendergrass”. In this episode, she voices one of the hot tub girls. And Patrick Stewart, who voices CIA director Avery Bullock, appeared live action as himself in season 9’s “Blood Crieth Unto Heaven”.
Back in the Record Store Days, 5:00 pm was when the “day” shift ended and the “night” shift began. It was typical that the boss would call every day just before five to get the “five o’clock read”. He wanted to see what the stores’ sales were each day at 5:00. That tended to indicate if it would be a “good day” by the end of it or a “bad day”.
I discovered there was more to the daily 5:00 call than just sales.
The sly dual purpose was to make sure employees didn’t take off early. The bosses could have asked anybody to do a “five o’clock read” but they usually asked for the managers (except when they were mad at/not speaking to the managers). The cover was blown when the boss called Jonathan the accountant at five one day.
“I’m just calling to see how it is over there,” said the boss.
Jonathan was an accountant. It’s always the same over there.
He came out to tell me. “Man! Can you believe they were checking to make sure I was still here? They asked me ‘how it was going’ in the accounting office. The accounting office! You think it’s a coincidence he called right before five? He was checking on me.” He was pissed!
No early home time if you’re an accountant, or a store manager either! I was busted leaving a few minutes early one Friday. It didn’t matter that I showed up for work an hour and a half early. That five minutes at the end was all they wanted to talk about. I was given “the talk” and never once mentioned how the person giving me the talk was usually out well before five on a Friday.
Of Extreme’s five studio albums, there can be little doubt that Extreme III is the most ambitious. It is a sprawling set over 80 minutes in length; too long for a single CD. So long that only the cassette version has all 15 tracks in one place. In contains three distinct sides, each different from the other, countless styles, and an orchestra. Extreme took what made them popular on the last album, and what was currently going on with grunge rock, and tossed it all out the window. They followed their own direction and were not rewarded with sales, but something more important: a masterpiece.
The first “side” (keep in mind this is a CD) is subtitled “Yours” and consists of rockers both hard and funky. After a comedic intro, “Warheads” annihilates the speakers. A short choppy riff blows in, tempo opened up wide. Gary Cherone tries to keep his messages entertaining, and this anti-war anthem has a pretty obvious message. Nuno Bettencourt joins him for the choruses and breaks for a cool neo-classical solo. The same message carries over into the first single “Rest in Peace”, introduced by a string quartet playing the song’s melody before Nuno kicks it with a funky riff. During the solo, Nuno even quotes Jim Hendrix. “Rest in Peace” was not an immediate single, it takes some growing. This is true of the whole album. There is a lot going on. Even that little Hendrix lick — blink and you’ll miss it, but it’s there making the solo that much cooler. It is worth mentioning that Extreme did a fantastic video for “Rest in Peace” based on a 1952 National Film Board of Canada short called “Neighbours”. This wordless film served as the blueprint, but as a result they got sued and had to change it.
Gary Cherone loves creating his own portmanteaus (“Americocaine”, “Pornograffitti”), so “Politicalamity” is the title of the third track. It’s a wah-wah soaked funky rocker with fully-loaded horns making their first album appearance, in the tradition of “Get the Funk Out”. Lyrically it continues the anti-war theme dominating the first side, and also social injustice, but in a fun catchy style. “Rich and poor, salute your country’s colours. Less is more, When one oppresses the other.” That was 1992; I wonder what Gary would have to say about today? Racial equality dominates “Color Me Blind”, one of the hardest rockers on the side. “I had a dream last night, I was blind, and I couldn’t see colour of any kind.” It is possible that the lyrical tone of the album turned off some old fans, though Gary keeps things from getting preachy.
“Cupid’s Dead” is the only song on the first side without a serious message. This rap-rock hybrid features a guest rapper (John Preziosa Jr.) and a chugging, funky riff. Hard rock bands who incorporated rapping were seldom successful, but Extreme dodged this bullet. “Cupid’s Dead” is good enough that is was recently dusted off for the Pornograffitti Live 25 tour. Drummer Paul Geary and bassist Pat Badger keep the funk rolling in heavy fashion. The side-ending “Peacemaker Die” features Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, surely some of the most powerful words in American history. It is difficult to not get the chills when Dr. King speaks, framed in this excellent funk rock lament.
Take a moment’s break here and pretend you’re flipping a record. Side two is subtitled “Mine” as a contrast to “Yours” for side one. “Mine” consists of six ballads, but only five are on the CD due to the 80 minute time restriction. Nuno expressed regret that the sixth track didn’t fit and hoped one day a 2 CD edition would be released. Still hoping!
“Seven Sundays” is a romantic song, a piano ballad with Gary in falsetto mode. Nuno adds synth strings for textures. “If I had one wish, it wouldn’t be hard to choose. Seven Sundays in a row, because that’s the day that I spend with you.” Quite a turn from “Cupid’s Dead”, but that’s why it’s on another side. “Tragic Comic” was the natural successor to the hits on Extreme II, a fun acoustic track with a “Hole Hearted” beat. The lyrics are clever comedy and the track was selected as a single. Many will identify with the hapless romantic, the titular stut-tut-tuttering p-poet. “And when we dine, I forget to push in your seat. I wear the wine, spillin’ it all over my sleeves.” Been there done that Gary! The lighthearted song is a delightful contrast to the darker material on side one.
Van Halen-style volume swells make up the intro guitar melody of “Our Father”, an electric power ballad with some stunning six-string mastery. “Stop the World” was chosen as a single, a light melancholy ballad reminding us that if we forget history we are bound to repeat it. These serious songs were not destined to repeat the big singles of albums past. When you play these songs, you feel things and you think things, and not everybody wants music to do that to them. Nuno’s solo on “Stop the World” is warm, immaculate perfection. “Stop the World” merges directly into “God Isn’t Dead?” (except in single form of course). “God Isn’t Dead?” is the darkest spot yet, quiet and painfully plaintive. Piano and orchestra paint a stark picture.
The final song on the side, and a hint of the daybreak ahead, is “Don’t Leave Me Alone”, which is only on the cassette version. Fear not however; it can be found in CD form on CD singles. Just rip everything to your computer and slide “Don’t Leave Me Alone” into the correction position in the running order. It belongs here at the end of the “Mine” side. It deliberately ends it on a brighter note than “God Isn’t Dead?” though it is still far from a good-time ballad. It is dusky lament, but with hints of light in the tunnel. Nuno’s moog solo is a treat.
At 12 songs, the “Yours” and “Mine” sides would make a complete album on their own, and it would still be an ambitious project at that. Regardless, the third side titled “& the Truth” is the most industrious of them all, an eager fulfillment of talents bursting at the seams. III Sides to Every Story…”Yours”, “Mine”, “& the Truth”. This time, the side is made up of one massive 22 minute song called “Everything Under the Sun”. It in turn is subdivided into three parts. This is where the orchestra really comes into play.
Part I, “Rise ‘n Shine” is the sunrise after the blackness of the second side. Gentle acoustics rouse you from your slumber, and Nuno takes the first verse of this duet. Gary follows on the second as the orchestra swells. “Rise ‘n Shine” is the most hopeful sounding music on the album, a bright and steady composition brilliantly structured. Daniel and his dreams may be a Biblical reference but they don’t have to be. A brief interlude foreshadows the melody of Part III, but first is Part II, “Am I Ever Gonna Change”. This section was chopped out and used as an individual song live and on compilations. You can hear why, since it has that echoey Van Halen guitar lick and a powerful nut-kicking chorus. The orchestra returns and it’s Extreme at full power. This eventually fades into the quiet start of Part III, “Who Cares?”. Inaudible voices whisper during a piano passage, and then the orchestra returns at maximum. Biblical overtones: “Tell me Jesus, are you angry? One more sheep has just gone astray.” Nuno’s singing is run through a vocoder giving him a computerized voice. Some might think it sounds like The Elder gone wrong, but that would be selling “Who Cares?” short. Finally Nuno breaks out of the circuit boards and come in at full voice for the final choruses. The melodies from “Rise n’ Shine” and “Am I Ever Gonna Change” are reprised as the epic piece finally comes to a close.
There is little debate that “Everything Under the Sun” is the grandest thing Extreme have attempted in the studio. It was a successful experiment, as it remains interesting and engaging through its entire 22 minute length. You cannot say that for every Rush song of that nature.
Unfortunately for Extreme, the timing was all wrong, and this album soon found its way in bargain bins at cut rate prices. The good news is that means you can get a copy yourself for next to nothing. Try also to track down copies of the “Stop the World” or “Tragic Comic” singles, in order to get the full package. They are plentiful on sites such as Discogs, and it’s important to hear the album at its full complete length. III Sides to Every Story is an unsung hard rock masterwork, and if you want some softer rock songs with lots of brains and a huge heart, give it a shot.
This is one of the weirdest CDs I have ever run across. Remember in 1990, when Elektra did that anniversary CD called Rubáiyát that featured Elektra’s new bands covering Elektra’s old bands? It was the first release of Metallica’s “Stone Cold Crazy” and the first time anyone heard a hint of what Metallica were up to in the studio after Justice. This promotional EP is a companion piece to Rubáiyát.
So what’s this EP? A “plunderphonic” is like a remix. The big difference is, they use only finished recordings, no multi-track master tapes. No going back to strip a vocal out of a song, no fiddling. Only actual snips of complete songs are used. A “new” piece is creating by chopping up and rearranging bits from other previously recorded pieces. Therefore, anybody can make their own plunderphonic using readily available songs. The man who invented the term, John Oswald, did the “plunderphonics” for this very rare promotional EP. His lightning-fast edits keeps things surprising.
The main attraction here, and the reason I own the CD, is a piece called “2 Net” by Metallica. I bet you never heard of that one, let alone heard the piece! It is a 1:21 mash-up of “Stone Cold Crazy” with a bunch of bits and bobs from …And Justice For All, and it’s as weird as that sounds. It’s a blur, almost incomprehensible. Fitting the thrash giants’ riffs into 1:21 will tend to have that effect. Building a composition out of Hetfield barks and Ulrich snares is fun as it sounds, even though it’s over before you can figure out what’s going on. Oswald mixed in some of Queen’s “Stone Cold Crazy” vocal for some melody. Crazy!
The most interesting track is the most unlikely: A cross between Carly Simon’s and Faster Pussycat’s “You’re So Vain”. The end result, “Vane” makes the two into one. If you have ever wanted to hear Taime Downe and Carly Simon perform the song together, this is your chance. It’s incredible how well the two versions contrast, since Faster Pussycat is about as different from Carly Simon as anyone can imagine. It zips from Taime to Carly and back again, as they trade words almost seamlessly! Another successful track is The Doors’ “O’Hell”. This is (obviously) based on “Hello, I Love You”. Bits of other Doors songs provide more instrumentation and effects. Fans of Morrison will absolutely adore it and imagine their own plunderphonics to invent. The MC5 arrive with “Mother”, based off the Kick Out the Jams album. It’s a lot of shouting and screaming and it’s all good. For something soft, check out “Anon” by Tim Buckley. This is taken from Buckley’s “Anonymous Proposition”, made shorter and psychedelic.
It is very hard to describe the complexity of these tracks. There could be hundreds of individual edits per song, because there is so much going on. The Simon/Pussycat song is a great example of how this is more than just a gimmick. It’s art, and anybody can try to do one themselves. In fact, without knowing the name for it, I have heard many plunderphonics before, at our annual Sausagefest countdown. Tom and Uncle Meat are skilled at making them, but I have never heard anything like these five tracks before — ever. These are above and beyond anything I’ve heard in the field.
The liner notes indicate that five more plunderphonics were planned for this CD, but not included. “Recipes” for making your own are inside. It’s almost like five bonus tracks, but you have to make them yourself!
Rating this CD is difficult, and since it was never meant to be sold, almost pointless. However you can find reasonably priced copies on Discogs, so a rating is necessary. This CD is interesting. It’s good, but it’s not meant for listening for pleasure. It almost acts like caffeine to the brain. Every song has so much going on that you are constantly listening and trying to catch it all. It’s also short, so buy wisely.
With a name like White Wolf you’d almost expect this band to come from the forests of Northern Ontario or Quebec. No so; they hail from provincial capital of Edmonton Alberta (pop: 800,000). So we’ll forgive that the music video for “Shadows in the Night” (from 1984’s Standing Alone) made them looks like outdoors winter survivalists. Long-haired sidekicks of Les Stroud? No; they look much more indoors-y on Endangered Species, their second album before disbanding. The album cover is notable for being a Hugh Syme work, though obviously a lesser one.
They earned some minor video play with “She”, indicating a more keyboardy direction than album #1. Mushy sounding drums distract from the killer Don Wolf (Don Wilk) chorus. Akin to Dokken’s “Breaking the Chains”, “She” will appeal to hard rockers who like melody with their guitars. It’s all about that chorus though, the kind that makes you hit “repeat” and go right back to the start.
White Wolf has a weird 80s metal thud and that combined with harsh production values make Endangered Species sound terribly dated. Techy keyboard flairs sound lifted from David Bryan’s Slippery When Wet sound library. Anyone craving mid-tempo 80s hard rock will find enjoyable music on Endangered Species, but few songs have the same impact as “She”. Dull verses, bland choruses and generic song titles keep things from sticking. Sub-Jovi with none of Jon’s then-irresistible innocence is a narrow niche.
“Just Like an Arrow” comes close, but the keyboards weigh it down when it should be flying. Too many bands (Quiet Riot, Stryper, etc.) really let the keys have too much space around this time. “Cryin to the Wind” has an excellent acoustic intro but not enough of a song to go with it. The drum samples are obtrusive because they don’t sound natural. It sounds like a lot of time was taken in the studio but the technology wasn’t up to the task, and everything came out tinny and powerless. “Holding Back” doesn’t have enough hooks. “Snake Charmer” steals a title and a hook from Ritchie Blackmore, and appeals as a Rainbow-like understudy. The only other track besides “She” and “Snake Charmer” that hits the spot is “One More Time”.
Not a terrible album, not a flaming turd…but not a winner either.
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