Part 30: Sausagefest

I can’t believe we’re already at Part 30.  And we’re just getting started, folks.  Stories have been collected, going back a decade.

For Part 30, something of a milestone I guess, we’ll do something special.

SAUSAGEFEST

Much like a secret society, men today speak of Sausagefest in hushed tones.

Earlier, I mentioned Tom and Eric (“Uncle Meat”) and something called Sausagefest (in a previous chapter).  What happens at Sausagefest, stays at Sausagefest.  Mostly.  But here’s what I can tell you.

The heart and core of Sausagefest is the annual Top 100 list.  The format has varied slightly over the years, but it remains largely unchanged.  They take votes from all attendees, months in advance, of their top 100 song picks that year.  They tabulate them, and over two crazy nights in an undisclosed but vast outdoor location, they count them down one by one.

Beer is consumed.  Sausage is eaten.  There are no vegetarians at Sausagefest.  I have packed Froot Roll Ups in the past but that’s it for me.  The rest is all sausage, and succulent marinated lamb for me.

The top 100 list was started by Eric and his buddy Derek back in 1990.  It was New Year’s Eve, and he collected a top 100 list and put together the tapes (!) himself.  He often had to borrow a CD from somebody to do it, because there was no web.   An evening would typically run from 5pm to 3am, solid with tunes and the odd skit in between.

This went on for three years.  Much later, in 2002, the concept was reinvented as Sausagefest.  The setting was now a pristine scenic valley with a river running through it.  Awesome.  A generator powers the wall of sound, and there are no neighbors to complain about the noise.

The top 100 is usually epic in scale and scope.  You will hear everything from AC/DC to Zappa, as far out as Dixie Dregs, and as local as Helix.  You will hear Lightfoot, Cash, Nelson, and Kristofferson.  Maiden and Priest are regulars, and the thrash gets positively evil.  Mercyful Fate anyone?

The story goes like this:  Tom was frustrated one night and blurted out, “We need just an all-guys’ weekend. We can have it up at the farm.  Summer weekend  No chicks.  And it will be called Sausagefest…’cause if you dont have your own personal sausage…you can’t come!”

The “moment of clarity”, as they say, was instant.   They both knew they had to do this, and that the music would be the core of it.  Only these two guys could have cooked up and executed an idea like this at that moment.   The planets were aligned or something.  I bet if you knew the exact date that they invented Sausagefest, you would be able to find that a supernova happened that day too.

Again they did it on cassette.  Tom’s music collection was massive at that point, about 1500 discs and a growing collection of vinyl.   Only these guys had the resources to do it.  Finding these songs, on download, at the time?  Very difficult.

For the record, the very first #1 at the very first year was “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”!  Epic.

So Sausagefest was born, and the first one was a success.  Unfortunately I did not attend the first four.  In fact I didn’t attend a single one until I had quit the record store.  2006 was my first Sausagefest.  For many of them, I simply could not get the weekend off.  Everybody wants time off in the summer, and the actual date for Sausagefest wasn’t always known with enough notice.

The other factor in me not going was I was really stuck in a rut at the time with the store.   I was paranoid to leave town.  There were fuckups literally all the time that needed to be fixed, fires that needed to be put out, that I never felt comfortable leaving.  The very last vacation I ever took at the store was 2002.  No coincidence.

However once I was free of that fear, I drove up with no tent and just a cooler full of meat, water, and Roll Ups.  Actually no, that’s not true!  I was told there was no need to bring meat, because there was so much there, it wouldn’t be a problem.  So just water and Roll Ups, that first year!  I slept in my car.

At night, the music starts and the air guitars come out.  But the days have their own traditions.

An Iron Maiden loving guy named Zach brings the lamb.  He brings more every year and there is still not enough to satisfy my hunger.  It is incredible.  Zach is the lamb lord.  Some people put it on bread but I just eat it right with the fingers.  It’s an incredible meal, every year.

There is always beer and plenty of it.  A beer wagon was actually rented for two of the years.  Beer is consumed in massive quantities.  There is always one guy passed out before the top 100 really even gets going.  But that’s OK.  Nobody’s driving anywhere.  Sean often picks up coffee for the boys in the mornings but that’s about it.  We’re in it for the long haul.  And I mean long haul.  Music is often still playing at 3am.

My problem is I can’t sleep in at all, so I’m up by 7.  I’ll grab a book, a beer, and a chair and head down to the river.  My first Sausagefest, I was reading Dune.  It was incredible reading it in the river with nobody even awake yet.

The toilet is always a highlight.  I’m convinced that the boys rented a Porta-Potty for me specifically my first year, to keep me coming back.  Because there hasn’t been one since.  Why?  I don’t know.  We could easily collect for it, just like we do beer.  But they don’t do it!  I’m convinced it’s because part of the Sausagefest experience is shitting in the woods.

I won’t lie, I love peeing outdoors.  I’m not the only one either.  In a survey done at work, 3 out of 4 men enjoy peeing outdoors.  It’s just a natural expression of the animal side that is a part of nature, or something.  That’s what I tell my wife anyway.  What did our ancestors do?  Pee outside.  It’s social.  I’ll be at Sausagefest peeing, and another guy will pee next to me, and be like, “Hey man, how’s it going?  Good tunes eh?”  Anyway, I’m getting off topic again.

There’s a chair with a hole in the seat that you’re supposed to shit in, and the tree next to it has toilet paper hanging from the branch.  Personally I don’t want to see someone else’s shit.  Just a thing I have, I guess.  So I shit in the river.  Yes, I shit in the river.  The river is fast-flowing, like a toilet, but it’s cold.  You turtle right up stepping in.  But it’s also like a combo toilet/bidet.  You’re clean when you’re all done.  And I’ve seen dogs shit in it, so….

The worst thing about Sausagefest is, in fact, the shits.  You’re eating nothing but greasy (but delicious!) meat (not Meat!).  Every year, it is up early on Sunday morning (always by 6:00 am) on on the road, as fast as possible, to an actual bathroom!

Unfortunately, as stated, what happens at Sausagefest stays at Sausagefest, so I really can’t get too much into the stories.  I will say this.  It’s something that I look forward to every summer.  All of those guys do.  We talk about it when we arrive, how this event can be the best weekend of your entire year.  It’s also strange how time stands still up at the farm.  “Wow, just doing that drive up here, it’s so familiar like I was just here last week.”  It happens every year.  You get there and it feels like you never really left.

The music, combined with the fellowship, and of course the sweet joy of swimming in the river when it gets hot, makes this almost a spiritual place.  A Mecca for those about to rock, so to speak.  It is a secret society that I am proud to be a member of.

Part 29: Klassic Kwotes V!

1.  “LARS!  Stop that!”  Said by a long-haired dad, to his rat-tailed little brat kid. The dad was wearing a Metallica shirt.

2. “Can you fix this CD?”  We were presented a copy of disc 4 of the Led Zeppelin box set, almost snapped completely in half, so massive was the crack.  For the record, if anyone’s curious:  NO!  You can’t fix a CD with a crack in it! 

3. “Do you want to see a picture of me, dressed up as Snake Eyes, from G.I. Joe?”  I really wish I could remember the context of this one!

4. “Do you have any nice music for the kids?  Not that Backstreet Boys shit.  We don’t like that black music.”  Do I really need to comment?

5. I was buying a large quantity of discs from a lady, but she really wasn’t happy with the offer.  The CD that I was paying the highest for happened to be an Elton John disc, Yellow Brick Road.  One of the lady’s kids asked, “Mommy, why is he paying the most for that one?”  The mother points at me and says, “Probably because he’s a fruit.”

6. Little known fact:  4 out of every 5 parents shopping in CD stores don’t watch their kids.  Surprised?  I bet you’re not!  This one bad parent wasn’t watching as his kid systematically pulled every CD down from an entire section and threw them in a big pile on the floor.  I was at the register and the section was not visible to me, and with the kid being so small I didn’t see anybody over there.  When I saw him, I said, “Oh, no!”  The dad looked over and said, “No big deal, it’s only a couple of discs.  You’ll have them back up there in no time.”  Perhaps, but doing it in alphabetical order took 4 hours.

7. “Can I light up in here?”  Again, no comment required.

8. “What the fuck did you do to your head?” Said to me by a guy after I bleached my hair blonde the first time.  (Can’t actually blame him on this one.  It was memorable.)

9. “How much would it cost to buy every CD in here?”  This very odd question was asked numerous times over the years by curious children.  Why?  I’m not really sure.

10. “Do you want to buy a picture of me with Phil Donahue?”  Said to me, once again, by Snake the Tattoo Man.

HELIX VIDEO featuring SNAKE THE TATTOO MAN!

Part 28: The Boy Who Killed Pink Floyd

Hiring a regular customer almost never worked out.  The first time we did it, we hired this kid…we’ll call him Todd.  Yeah.  Todd was just getting into Pink Floyd at the time we hired him.  He was also getting into a couple other things that may have influenced that, but we won’t talk about that.

Todd lasted a few months.  During those months, he played Floyd on every single shift.  Every.  Fucking.  Shift.

I didn’t own any Floyd back then, but before Todd, I was enjoying their tunes such as “Learning To Fly” and “Keep Talking”.  I could have become a Floyd fan officially, at any time, if not for Todd.

I burned out on Floyd in a matter of  days.  We worked together every weekday and a couple weekends for a month setting up that store.  The first two weeks were manageable, but after that, I could have strangled lil’ Todd.  I asked him to cut down the Floyd, it didn’t have much effect.  I guess I could have given him a direct order to cut the Floyd, since I was his boss.  However I was a much nicer person back then, and I had been subjecting Todd to Deep Purple something fierce.

The Floyd though, it reached such levels that I could not bear.  I fucking hated Pink Floyd!  I couldn’t listen to Floyd again for seven years!   Girls would come over to the house.  “Don’t you have any Floyd?”  No!  I don’t have any fucking Floyd!

I have quite a bit of Floyd now, the scars from those days have completely healed.  But I will let you in on a little secret.

Todd reinvented himself as a Game of Thrones fan — no Floyd in sight anywhere — and I find that hilarious.

LeBRAIN WEEK! (Day 5)

I want to say a big THANK YOU to Craig at  107.5 Dave FM, for yet another fantastic LeBrain week.  I think this is the third LeBrain week, and of course all of February was LeBrainuary!

To cap it off for me, Craig picked my favourite 4-play.  Would you have solved it?

Today’s 4-play:

  1. Guns N’ Roses – You Could Be Mine
  2. Ozzy Osbourne – Mama I’m Coming Home
  3. Motley Crue – Girls, Girls, Girls
  4. Hanoi Rocks – Boulevard of Broken Dreams

ANSWER: Vince Neil is a Douche!

  1. Guns N’ Roses – You Could Be Mine (Vince and Izzy got into a backstage scuffle with led to a longstanding rivalry with Axl Rose.)
  2. Ozzy Osbourne – Mama I’m Coming Home (Vince started a feud with the “Mama” of this song – Sharon Osbourne which basically makes it a feud with Ozzy too.  He trashed her in his book.  And you know Sharon  doesn’t back down.)
  3. Motley Crue – Girls Girls Girls (What Vince, where?  FIRED that’s where!  And let’s not forget the MTV interview with the Crue where they mocked Vince Neil for hitting a coral reef while surfing.)
  4. Hanoi Rocks – Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Vince killed their friggin’ drummer!)

REVIEW: Alice Cooper – I’ll Bite Your Face Off 7″ single

ALICE COOPER – “I’ll Bite Your Face Off” picture disc 7″ single (2011)

FACEOFFIf you’re a Cooper fan, this is totally worth buying.  It’s a beatiful 7″ with Ross Halfin photo on one side, and tracklist on the other.  “I’ll Bite Your Face Off” is a nice looking disc to start with.

The song itself is an uptempo rocker from the recent Welcome 2 My Nightmare.  It’s a fairly strightforward song, unlike some of the more quirky songs from the album.  As such, it makes good single material, but it’s not among the best tunes on the album.

“I’ll Bite Your Face Off” was co-written by Neal Smith, of the original Alice Cooper band.  It was performed by all the surviving members of that band, too:  Smith (drums), Michael Bruce (guitar) and Dennis Dunaway (bass).  It is their first recording together since 1974.  Wow.

On the flipside is a great live version from the Download festival. This recording is not available anywhere else. It features a great Steve Hunter guitar solo and a truly rocking backing band.  If you want to complete your Welcome 2 My Nightmare collection, I’m afraid you’re going to need this single!

Awesome. 5/5  stars.

LeBRAIN WEEK! (Day 4)

Tune in ALL WEEK to the Craig Fee Show on 107.5 Dave FM, at 4 pm!! It’s LeBRAIN WEEK all week!

Today’s 4-play:

  1. The Beatles – A Day in the Life
  2. Pink Floyd – Comfortably Numb
  3. Kiss – Shout It Out Loud
  4. Kiss – Black Diamond

Answer:  Each song features performances by two lead vocalists singing different parts! 

  1. Lennon sings the start, and Paul sings the finish on A Day in the Life
  2. Roger sings the verses, with David on the choruses
  3. Gene and Paul trade off some lines
  4. Paul sings the intro, Peter sings the body of Black Diamond

Incidentally, Black Diamond is one I have never heard of Dave before.

Part 27: Store Play

Another suggestion from Tommy Morais, my Amazon rock buddy from the east!  He wants to read about glam rock bands, and Canadian bands!  I played a lot of each at the store, especially in the earliest days.  I’m gonna throw some prog and metal in here too.  Here’s some of my fondest memories.

LeBRAIN’S STORE-PLAY CLASSICS!

1996.  We had just opened our flagship store, and I was selected as manager.  This meant I’d be working alone for most of the day, and I could play what I wanted.  In the earliest days there were fewer rules.  The boss might make fun of me for playing Poison, but in the old days, he never told me to take it off as long as it was only once in a while.

I remember playing glam metal stuff like:

Poison – Native Tongue.  I enjoyed trying to turn kids onto music they’d like, but would never touch if they knew who it was.  It sometimes worked!  I think I sold one copy of Native Tongue that way, anyway.

Motley Crue – self titled.  This is in my top three Motley records of all time.  The one without Vince Neil.  A guy from the HMV store in Waterloo gave me props for playing it.  I once sold it to a guy who hated the latest Crue, Generation Swine.  I turned him onto self titled instead.  Instant fan.

David Lee Roth – Your Filthy Little Mouth.  I played this a shit-ton in the spring of 1995 too.  I don’t know why I like it so much, it’s so cheesey.  Dave does country!  Dave does reggae!  Dave does jazzy loungy stuff!  Dave does VH!  But Dave does write hilarious lyrics, and I did like that.

Van Halen – Any time, any where, any how.   But any time we had a copy of 1984?  Hell yeah!  And you couldn’t keep Best Of Volume I in stock for very long.  Certainly not if you played it.  The first year or two it was out, I probably sold it every time I played it!

Def Leppard – Slang.  Again, much like the Poison and Crue, I was trying to turn new kids onto these classic bands that had explored new directions.  Unfortunately, Slang sold like shit.  I think it was too different for the old fans, and too old for the new fans.

And now let’s talk about Prog rock.  Ashleigh used to call prog music “smart-guy rock”.   That’s one reason why I wanted to play it every shift we shared.  I was trying to show her I was a smart guy, see?

Marillion – Misplaced Childhood.  I played Marillion so frequently, that my co-workers Matty K and Ashleigh knew the words to some songs.  Unfortunately, they didn’t consider that a good thing.

Fish – Kettle of Fish.  See above!

Dream Theater – Images and Words.  This came in so rarely, that when it did you had to play it.  It always sold if you played it.  We had so many musicians and wanna be’s (like me) coming into the store, they inevitably would ask what the fuck is this?  This one kid, a drummer named Curtis, loved Dream Theater.  I sold him his first Dream Theater.  Do you know how cool that is, selling somebody their first Dream Theater?  Curtis is a fantastic musician.  He’s jammed with my sister, actually.

Rush – Moving Pictures.  Like nails on a chalkboard to the girls in the Operations staff.  Could not play this if they were in the city, let alone the store.  But my fuck, what an album.  I remember Tom put a sticker on it that said, “Best album of the 80’s!”.  I thought to myself, “Then I need to hear the whole thing!”  I had never heard “Vital Signs” before.  I am sure Matty K remembers to this day, “Everybody got to evelate from the norm”.

And speaking of Rush!  I did a lot of Canadian themes.  We had a 5 disc changer.  A lot of the time, I would specifically pick 5 Canadian artists to take up a shift.  You’d often hear:

Sloan – 4 Nights at the Palais Royale.  In my opinion one of the top five live albums of all time.  It is also my favourite Sloan album.

Stompin’ Tom Connors – Anything we had in the store would work, as he didn’t come in frequently.  Unfortunately, Stompin’ Tom didn’t fare too well for store play in Kitchener.  Nobody seems to like him in this town.

Rush – duh?

Triumph – ditto.

Kim Mitchell / Max Webster – Another artist our Operations people hated.  I did one entire 5 disc shuffle of nothing but Kim and Max.  Kim was playing in town that day so I was hoping to drum up some sales.  I failed to do so, but I did try.  I was told to remove the Kim and Max from the player.

Helix / Brian Vollmer – I’d play Helix when it was in, which was infrequent.  I remember playing the Brian Vollmer solo album for Kevin, one of the guys that ended up in my wedding party.  I played the song “Good Times Don’t Get Better Than This” in the store.  I thought he would enjoy it.  Unfortunately, he did not.  I believe the words he used were, “This is not good.”  Kevin, I kindly submit that I strongly disagree to this day.

Even more rarely though came the opportunity to play the early stuff, the stuff with Brent Doerner singing lead.  Once — just once — Breaking Loose and White Lace & Black Leather came in.  I’m kicking myself for not buying them.  But when they were in store, I played “Billy Oxygen” on repeat for about 20 minutes.

Oscar Peterson – I only had the opportunity to do that once though.

Voivod – self titled.  The first one with Newsted.  Metallica had come out with St. Anger and a lot of fans didn’t like it.  I tried to sell this, which was more traditionally prog metal like old Metallica.

Incidentally, at the same time,  I was training a new franchisee around that time.  He was amused by how excited I was that the album Angel Rat, by Voivod, had come in, with 3D glasses intact.  I explained that usually these would be missing, but the CD was mint!  And “Clouds In My House” sounded great in-store!

Voivod crosses the boundary from prog into metal (or is it vice versa?), but I certainly did play a lot of metal in the store.

Bruce Dickinson – Balls To Picasso.  I played this virtually every shift during the fall of 1994.  At the time, I thought “Tears of the Dragon” and “Change of Heart” were among the deepest songs I’d ever heard.  Yeah, well.

Iron Maiden – Brave New World.  I love this album.  Matty K knows every word of “Blood Brothers”.

G//Z/R – Plastic Planet.  Easily the heavist thing I have ever played in store.  Even I was uncomfortable!

sHeavy – The Electric Sleep.  Incidentally, the greatest Black Sabbath album that was not made by Black Sabbath.  Every time, people would ask, “Is this the new Ozzy?”  Every time.  You could put money on it.

Judas Priest – Turbo.  It was the only one I could get away with!

Man, those were good times!   I am sure I could write another dozen of these.  I mean, we played a lot of music.  From Esquivel to Brushy One-String to Pansy Division to Jaymz Bee & the Royal Jelly Orchestra, we tried and sampled everything.

LeBRAIN WEEK (day 3)

Tune in ALL WEEK to the Craig Fee Show on 107.5 Dave FM, at 4 pm!! It’s LeBRAIN WEEK all week!

Today’s 4-play:

  1. Bon Jovi – Runaway
  2. The Rolling Stones – Emotional Rescue
  3. Kiss – Magic Touch
  4. The Darkness – I Believe In A Thing Called Love

ANSWER:  All songs featuring falsetto vocals!

Notes:  I have never heard Magic Touch on the radio before today!

REVIEW: Led Zeppelin – self-titled box set (1990)

LED ZEPPELIN – self-titled box set (1990, retail price approx $60 CAD at press time)

It was the fall of 1990, and I was on the verge of graduating highschool and entering the “real” world. However, my musical development was way far behind — everybody’s was, in 1990. Poison, Whitesnake and Motley Crue ruled the charts: All bands, one way or another, influenced by Zeppelin, by the way. Yet, I had avoided actually hearing a Zeppelin studio recording. MuchMusic’s endless showing of The Song Remains The Same had cooled any interest I might have had in this great band. I really didn’t like that concert, and I still don’t listen to it.

In 1990, pop rock was showing its first signs of death and I was becoming interested in bluesier, more authetic sounds. I was beginning to listen to FM radio and I heard a song called “Travelling Riverside Blues”. The slide guitar was eloquent and infectious. Immediately, I wondered what I was missing.

A friend, Danesh, who also had never owned a Zeppelin album in his life, picked up the box set released that fall. I asked him how it was. Cryptically, he responded, “It’s good.” It went on my Christmas list and I anxiously opened it on December 25, 1990.

I didn’t get to start plowing through the thing until the next day, after the turkey and Christmas guests were gone.  On the 26th, I woke up early.  I read the liner notes and I listened to the whole thing in one marathon almost-5-hour-session. Today, this is the running order that I associate these Zeppelin songs in, not the original studio album order.  I listened to the box set in these marathon sessions 3 times during the Christmas break!

This was actually the first box set I ever owned.  Not too many bands I liked had one, back then.  In fact I think the only other box on the market at the time that even slightly interested was The Ultimate by Tommy Bolin.

I loved the cover art.  I was obsessed with the crop circle phenomenon.  I bought a T-shirt with this design on it a few weeks later.  upon seeing the cover, my friend and fellow Zeppelin fan Andreas said “Figures, Zeppelin created everything else in rock, why not crop circles too?”

For the record, this is still no substitute for owning all the Zeppelin studio albums. They have a life all their own. However, Jimmy Page carefully assembled this running order to breathe new life into these tracks, and breathe they do.

I can’t imagine a better opener than “Whole Lotta Love”. It is a one-two punch followed by “Heartbreaker”, and then “Communication Breakdown” takes things to an out-of-control pace. Geniously, Page followed this with “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”.  Total switch of pace, and another brilliant side to the band.  But yet even on this, Plant refused to tame down his vocals, straining at the leash to let hell loose.  I was hooked. I couldn’t even fathom a set of songs better than these. Better late than never, right?

I was entranced by the swirling “Kashmir”, a song I will never tire from.  I could not believe the power of “What Is and What Should Never Be”.  The Rush-like complexity of “Achilles Last Stand”.  The tender acoustics of “Going to California”.  The muddy, churning synth of “In The Evening”.  The dark, foreboding blues of “When the Levee Breaks”.  The fun, upbeat reggae of “D’Yer Mak’er” (still don’t really know what that means).  The tropical heat of “Fool In the Rain”.  The ominous “No Quarter”.  Song after song, hour after hour, Led Zeppelin continued to reveal new layers of this band to me.

The only songs that I didn’t care much for, and still consider also-rans, are a lot of the tracks from Coda, their posthumous outtakes release.  I felt stuff like the punk rock of “Wearing and Tearing” and the folky “Poor Tom” were not as great as the A-listers.  While they are not without their merits, I don’t believe that today they can stand up against “The Immigrant Song” or “Tangerine”.

We kids didn’t really get the lyrics, or why Robert was singing about wearing flowers in your hair.  We found the lyrics amusing, quaint.

Today I own all the individual Zeppelin albums in box set form (The Complete Studio Recordings), but I still listen to this box and its sequel, 1993’s Box Set 2. When I have 5 hours at home, this is the way I prefer to go. This box set creates a journey. Each disc is a journey with a distinct opening and a distinct end, but the entire running order is like that as well.   There are distinct sections, moods, and movements in the box set.  Witness “All My Love” as the final track. I couldn’t imagine a better way to end a five hour journey than that hopeful fade out.

Then Bonzo died and the hope was gone.

Interestingly, even though the unreleased/rare tracks here were later reissued on the Complete Studio Recordings (they were “Traveling Riverside Blues”, “White Summer/Black Mountainside”, and “Hey Hey What Can I Do”), one slipped through the cracks and to the best of my knowledge is only available on this set:  Moby Dick/Bonzo’s Montreaux”, an interesting remix (today we would call this a “mash-up”) of Bonzo’s two drum solos intertwined.  It is not on the Complete Studio box. It’s not because it’s inferior or redundant, in my opinion. Jimmy lovingly put this track together as a tribute to his friend 10 years after his death, and it works brilliantly.  It neither replaces the originals, nor gets in their way, because it’s more a cool showcase of Pagey’s mixing skill, if you asked me.

10 years gone? It was hard for me to believe that Zeppelin had been gone for only 10 years at that time. It seemed to me like they were part of pre-history, something that predated everything I’d known. Yet all the bands I knew cited Zeppelin as an influence, from Kiss on down to the newest groups, like Cinderella (who worked with John Paul Jones). They were a part of my rock and roll soul without me even knowing it. Hearing this box for the first time was like discovering a part of myself!

Liner notes are excellent, and until reading The Hammer of the Gods, was pretty much my sole source of Led Zeppelin information and photographs.   They are ample, and include an essay by Cameron Crowe.

Interestingly, even though this set has theoretically been supplanted by newer, superior sounding collections, it remains in print and reasonably priced.  There must be something to it, I guess!

5/5 stars

LeBRAIN WEEK (Day 2)

Tune in ALL WEEK to the Craig Fee Show on 107.5 Dave FM, at 4 pm!!   It’s LeBRAIN WEEK all week!

Today’s 4-play:

  1. Deep Purple – Smoke on the Water
  2. Rainbow – Stone Cold
  3. Bon Jovi – Livin’ on a Prayer
  4. Journey – Separate Ways

Answer: All five piece bands (on these recordings, anyway) of the v/g/b/d/k configuration! 

Incidentally, two of those bands spent some time as four pieces. 

 Bon Jovi has been a four piece since 1994 when original bassist Alec John Such left.  He was unofficially replaced by Hugh McDonald, but McDonald remains a side musician even after 18 years with the band!  Journey was a four piece for a short while, on the second and third albums.  CAN YOU OUT-BRAIN LeBRAIN?