Part 8: You Wanted the Best

DISCLAIMER:  To properly get myself in the mood, I have Kiss Alive II on as I type. 

Some of the guilty parties

When Kiss announced their reunion tour in 1996, I knew I’d be going.  Obviously, there would be no question.  I’d never even seen Kiss before!  Original lineup for my first time?  Score! However just to be different from the crowd, I wore my Kiss Revenge shirt that day.

One of  Tom’s buddies that worked at Sunrise scored us the tickets.  The seats were decent, nothing special, we were way up, but it hardly mattered with the giant screens that Kiss had started to use.  Transportation was also included, for a few bucks of gas money, this same buddy of  Tom’s was driving us in his 1988 Shitmobile.

I remember it was a Wednesday night, but I don’t remember the opening act.  We missed them, thanks to Tom.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. I remember in the stop-and-go of the 401, we got rear-ended.  Tom’s bud got out, looked at his car, gave the thumbs up to the other driver, and we were back on our merry way.  The only reason I remember this now is because with hindsight, it was an omen.

We got to Toronto, and we had to check out the record stores before the show as well.  I wish I could remember what I bought that night but I want to say it was the the Japanese import version of Quaternary, by Motley Crue.

The rest of us were done long before Tom (please see back to Part 6, Re: Tom’s record shopping habits) and we were waiting, and waiting…

“I just have to check blues.”

…and waiting and…

“Almost done, just need to see if they have that Louis Armstrong that I need.”

…waiting and waiting…

“They didn’t have Louie.  But they did have a pretty awesome live Coltrane I’ve never seen before!  OK, country…I swear I’ll be quick.”

We entered the venew to the strains of “King of the Night Time World”, which of course meant we had already missed “Detroit Rock City!”  Fucking Tom!

On the bright side, I was being rocked by Kiss, in the flesh!  Four giant inflatable Kiss statues adorned the arena.  The pyro was so hot we culd feel it where we were, in the nosebleeds.

Paul flew to his platform in the middle of the floor for “Love Gun”.  Gene spat blood, breathed fire, and flew during “God of Thunder”.  Peter elevated during his solo spot.  Ace fired fireballs out of his guitar during his.

The setlist was pretty pedestrian, which is pretty much the only negative thing I have to say about the reunion-era Kiss.  They played nothing outside of the first 6  studio albums (Kiss to Love Gun).  They did play two “Kisco” songs overseas, but here we only got the basics.  It was obvious that, as fans, we’d get no rarely heard original lineup tunes such as “Rocket Ride” or “Mainline”.

However, we were rocked deaf.  We exited the venue into the still warm June air.  It was 11:30.

Tom’s buddy parked a fair hike away, so he was going to go get the car while we waited.  Fair enough.  Record stores were still open in downtown Toronto, so we hit  Tower.

I was disappointed in Tower, we were hearing they were the next big store that was going to put us all out of business, but they never did.  Tom bought some obscure country (Jerry Jeff Walker, perhaps?) and we waited for buddy.

And we waited.

And we waited.

Half an hour.  45 minutes.  An hour.  Something’s not right.  Something’s…fucky.   None of us carried cell phones back then.

Suddenly I noticed buddy walking towards us.

Walking. This ain’t good.

“The transmission’s fucked,” he helpfully informed us.

I was opening the store at 10:00 the following morning, by the way.

Now, the rest of the night is a blur of misadventures jumbled in my memory.  What I don’t remember is why we didn’t just call a cab or two so we could all just get home, while buddy called a tow truck?  I guess my buddies were all just broke.  Yet, I had a credit card!

Now, I do remember raising this issue.  I offered to pay for everybody to get home.  I know I raised that .  I can’t explain why we didn’t do that.  I also can’t explain why I didn’t just tell them all to take the first boat to Fuckoffity Land while I called a cab for myself. I remember the following events, although I cannot put them in precise sequential order, it went something like this:

  • Stopping at a Subway because we were starving, but they had no bread!

  • Finding out that a limo to Kitchener would be cheaper than a cab to Kitchener.  Again, I recall mentioning that I have a credit card!

  • Stopping at a sidewalk cafe for drinks and paying something like $20 for a glass of Coke.

  • Some homeless guy helpfully telling us the the solution to the transmission problem is to “pack that sucker full of grease!”  Where to get the grease approaching 1:00 am on a Thursday morning, we never found out.

  • Calling my sister from a pay phone, to tell her not to worry that I wasn’t home yet.  (My parents were on a vacation and it was just us in the house.)

  • Going to buddy’s car, which was parked in a really shitty parking lot on some shitty side street.  Sitting on top of buddy’s car were three dudes eating pizza.

These three dudes were piss-loaded.   It wasn’t that they were up to no good, they were just loaded.  We asked them to please get off the car, they obliged, and they argued amongst themselves.  I do remember one striking detail, which was they all called each other.  It was a racial slur, I won’t repeat it here, but it starts with a “p” and refers to a country in Asia that used to be a part of India.  Anyway, that’s what they kept calling each other as they argued.

“You’re wrong, P****!”

“No, YOU’RE wrong, P****!”

I remember one of the guys trying to tell us he knew a way for us to each make a million dollars a year.  They were annoying as hell, and they tried to get us into their argument, whatever it was.  They fucked off eventually.

The plan now was, buddy had called both a tow truck, and his sister.  He would ride home with the tow truck.  The rest of us would ride home with his sister.

His sister was a saint.  She was at the same Kiss concert as us.  She had just gotten back home to Kitchener when the phone rang.  She came back to Toronto to get us, and back to Kitchener, dropping each of us off at our houses.  A fucking saint.

I think I rolled in at around 4:00 am.  I remember lying in bed, ears still ringing, room getting brighter from the rising sun.

I had to open the store at 10:00.

I never went anywhere with Tom’s buddy ever again.

BRENT DOERNER: Cranking the Decibels (Exclusive interview!)

This is another old one.  I did this interview back in 2006.  Brent Doerner, who had quit Helix in 1990 and again in 1993, was about to dip his toes back into music again with a smoking hot new band called Decibel.  I met Brent at a Helix show at Molly Bloom’s and we kept in touch.  Brent rejoined Helix in 2009 staying until September 29, 2012.

Brent Doerner:  Still Cranking the Decibels

One of the most iconic images in Canadian rock is from the music video Rock You, by Helix.  You know that image.  The guitar solo kicks in, and the guitar player emerges from the water, Gibson in hand.  Anybody who has seen that video should remember that solo.  It’s just one of those things:  an image that’s etched into our rock and roll memories.  It clearly stated who this band was, and what their purpose was.  They were here to rock you.

That guitar player was Brent Doerner, who played on and wrote many Helix classics.  Brent Doerner left the band in 1990, but never quite left the Helix family.  He rejoined the band briefly for their It’s A Business Doing Pleasure album, and has made guest appearances on many of their CDs since leaving the band.  If you picked up a CD like Back For Another Taste, B-Sides, or even the recent Rockin’ In My Outer Space, you’ll hear Brent playing.

Aside from these guest shots, Brent’s been fairly quiet musically until now.  He took up a lucrative career in carpentry, moonlighting as a country guitar player in various bar outfits.  Honing is chops via his newfound love of country, Brent felt the urge to write some songs.  In late 2006, he was ready to make some noise again.  The result is Brent Doerner’s Decibel, which is both the name of his new band and new album.  It’s an album he’s very proud of, and justifiably so.  For him, it’s all about songwriting.

“If you don’t write good songs, it ain’t gonna fly baby,” he says after inviting me in for a beer.  Brent’s passion for songwriting is nothing new.  While Paul Hackman and Brian Vollmer wrote the majority of Helix originals, Brent did write (and sing) some of their classics.  Continuing about the art of songcraft, he stresses if you can’t write, “that’s it, it’s over.  You can be the best players in the world, and it won’t save you.  A lot of guys could play like the wind, or drum like the wind, [but can’t write].”  Focusing his writing, the result was an album of what Doerner calls high-energy rock.

Decibel is a record of unique songs.  The lyrics are fun, out of leftfield, and catchy.  The guitar playing is hard, with the smoothness picked up from his country gigs.  Some of the songs are quirky, bringing to mind vintage Guess Who.  It’s been a true labor of love for Brent Doerner, who’s been working on these songs for the better part of a year.

“I was bound and determined, come hell or high water, to make an album.  I bought a 24 track, one of those digital things, and I said, ‘I’m making an album, I don’t care how I do it.’  I still had all my guitars, or some [at least], and I just started writing.”  He also hooked up with his new band, consisting of Shane Schedler on lead guitar, Chick Schumilas on guitar, and Dan Laurin on drums.  There’s even a smattering of guest appearances on the CD.  Perhaps most exciting is a guest shot by Brent’s twin brother, and ass-kicker on the drums, Brian Doerner.

Interestingly, with Brent playing guitar, the band has three guitar players.   Brent tells the story:  “We kind of like the idea of three guitars in the band, with a bass player and a drummer.  I met these other guys, Shane, Chick and Dan, when I was living alone in my house.  I was writing songs, and going at it with a vengeance, really.  These guys kept coming by to my house and saying, ‘We got all these songs too!’  I got to their hall, with some beer, and I sat down, and they blasted away for a friggin’ hour, just earthquake volume.  When they’re done, they say, ‘Well what did you think of the songs?’  And I said, ‘Well I didn’t hear any songs, just all this music.’”  The band responded with, “Well we did the hard part.  You just have to write the melody and the lyrics!”

Brent continues, “But they were bound and determined in the end that they wanted three guitars.  And what’s happening with me when I lead sing is, I stop playing so I can sing, because some of this stuff I can’t sing and play over it.  I can sing and play over a lot of shit, but it seems that I can’t sing and play over some of the stuff that I wrote!”  Brent points out On Bended Knee (one of the album’s highlights) as one in particular that is hard to sing and play at the same time.

Even though Brent’s been singing since 1978 with Helix (that’s him on Billy Oxygen and Crazy Women, among others), he wasn’t too keen on singing this time out.  “I didn’t really want to be the singer.  We kind of looked around for singers.  That’s how we got Hills (Hilliard Walter) on one song and Shane on the other.  I was trying to sing Dancin Frogs and I knew I was failing.  I’m not that great of a singer, really.  So he came in there, and I was making Hills nervous by standing there, because he’d never even heard the song before.” Deciding to leave Hills alone for a moment, “we went outside for a smoke, came back and he was done.  Three takes, he’d never heard the song before, I thought that was pretty friggin’ good.  And he picked his own melody, he didn’t follow what I tried to teach him.  He roughly, loosely followed.”  The improvised vocal is one of the highlights of the album.  Hills Walter is well known in the Kitchener music scene for his strong soulful voice and versatility.

The aformentioned Dancing Frogs is one of the coolest, most unique moments on the record.  Surprisingly, according to Brent, it almost didn’t make the album.  “I didn’t want to present it to the band, because I didn’t think it fit the rest of the album.  We were short songs, we wanted 12 and we only had 11.  I had this one sitting around for a while, so I sang it, and they said, ‘That’s fuckin’ cool!  Put that on there!’  So we just tried to make it a little heavier, play some double leads…there’s no lead solo in that song. Instead of playing a big fancy lead solo, we threw in a couple ‘oogha’ [car] horns!”

Brent thought that the vibe of the song evoked the classic image of the dancing frog from the Warner Brothers cartoon One Froggy Evening.  “You can just picture the dancing frog with the top hat and the cane!”  The song is subtitled The Zamboni Song because Hills actually drives one!  “We’ve got the best damn Zamboni operator/driver/singer/lead vocalist in the country, man!”

Doerner reveals that he’d like to get Hills into the band, full-time, as a bass player.  “He’s got some screwed up hours on that Zamboni though.  He’s got to go in at like 4am or 5am!”

Songwriting wise, Brent is really turned on by writing lyrics.  He likes to find inspiration in a variety of places, writing down phrases that catch his eye, and figuring out a way to work them together into songs.  On Bended Knee, he says, was inspired by Shakespeare.  The Sum of 2 People was pieced together using math phrases he found on the internet.  “I worked really hard at getting unique titles.  I’ve never heard a title before even close to that, and I want unique titles so I can have unique songs.  When I wrote it, I wrote the chorus first because I liked the title.  When I have my chorus I can go ahead and write my verses because I know what I’m going to be writing about.”

He strove to make the song unique musically as well as lyrically.  “I used 6/8 time, and four unusual chords put together in repetition.”

In general, Doerner likes a little humour in his lyrics.  “There’s no killing, there’s no blood, there’s no death in the lyrics anywhere.  If anything there are tongues in cheeks, all over the place.  I just couldn’t picture myself singing about death and destruction, I’m not that way.  A lot of these songs are love songs in a funny way.  Dancin Frogs is a love song.  That guy frog really likes that chickie frog!”

It’s not all just lyrical fun with the Decibel boys though.  There’s quite a lot of instrumental goodness going on too.  A song that Shane sings called Never Turn Yer Back features a neat bass part actually performed by Brent.  “I play that.  I play the intro and the exit on that.  That’s from me being a guitar player, it sounded cool on bass.  We had a bass player play the rest of the song.  Mikey (Mike Benedictine), we had him come up from Hamilton, for free, drove up here, learned the songs and recorded a couple of them, and drove home, just to say he was going to be on this record.”

On an album of many highlights, A Body For You stands out.  The riff came from Chick.  “When I met Chick, he had that, and the intro too.  A Body For You is the first song I’ve ever written on all my albums that I didn’t write the guitar part to.  I wrote the lyrics and the melody to Chick’s guitar lick, except the chorus.  So I was just going, ‘Wow!  I’ve never tried this before and it’s working!’  He’s just all rock, Chicky.  He only wants to write high-energy guitar rock.  He doesn’t want to get too fancy.  And you’ll notice there are no slow songs on the album.  Let somebody else put slow songs on their albums, thanks!”

For the fans who like to try to figure out the licks, there’s a lot going on with this record.  “The other guys in the band were getting brain cramps figuring [the songs] out.  I was using double-stop country style, double picking, and they had a hard time getting on to that.  It was a new technique to the rockers!  And that’s what got me into the rocking again, was learning something new.  I kind of got tired of the rock for a while because I wasn’t learning anything new.  And then I got into the country, and I got fired back up again.”

Brent’s been listening to a lot more than just country.  He lists some of his favourite newer artists:  Audioslave (he loves the character in Cornell’s voice), Shinedown, and Evanesence among many.  The last three CDs he bought were Nickelback, Cheryl Lescom, and (of course) Helix.  In particular, he’s inspired by Kurt Cobain, although he missed the Nirvana train the first time out.  “I was doing my country thing at the time, so I wasn’t really listening to Nirvana.  And I now know why Nirvana is so popular.  I really like his songwriting style, his lyrics.  Why are they still on the radio?  You hear them every day like you hear Led Zeppelin every day.  And there’s gotta be a reason.”  The conclusion, he reasons, breaks down to the core once again:  good songwriting, unique songwriting.  These are goals to which Doerner aspires.

Rock and roll thrives in the live setting.  Brent Doerner is eager to get out there and play some gigs.  He had a blast at the Helix 30th anniversary show, when he joined his old bandmates for some of his classic songs.  However, it didn’t come easy.  “I practiced a lot for that gig because my guitar playing was really rough, I hadn’t been playing enough.  When I knew that I was going to be playing in front of a whole bunch of people…I mean, the songs I wrote on those Helix albums, I don’t run them over every week!  I had to run over them a bunch of times to remember my own songs.  I don’t play my own songs all the time.”

And will we hear any Helix at Decibel shows?  Billy Oxygen, perhaps?

“I wrote that one.  We’re talking about playing it live.  We only have nine songs that we put on the album, and I wrote Billy Oxygen, and I wrote Crazy Women, so we were thinking of adding those two to the set.”

Either way, a Decibel show is sure to be a good time, if the band’s rehearsals are anything to judge by.  “It’s too much fun, I tell you, when our band gets together it’s like the friggin’ Decibel Comedy Hour.  Do you think you can get a word in edgewise?  We get together, it’s just a friggin’ laugh.  I don’t know how it can be so funny, but it is, every time, about anything.”

Be sure to catch Brent and the boys live.   Pick up the CD.  Play some air guitar to it.  You’ll be glad that you did.

Part 7: A Shitty Story

DISCLAIMER:  THIS CHAPTER BEST READ ON AN EMPTY STOMACH.

 

RECORD STORE TALES Part 7: A Shitty Story

August 1995.  Beautiful warm summer day.  The sun was up early and so was I.  It was Sunday, the best day to work the store.  Sunday was just a four hour shift and in the summer, very slow.  It was your basic fun day to be at work, cleaning away and listening to tunes in air conditioning.

I usually walked to work.  I put on some shorts and a big baggy T-shirt and headed out on foot.  The best way cut across this school and park with two baseball diamonds.  While walking I couldn’t help but think of how great life was.  The sun was out, it was summer, I only had to work four hours.  My family was at the cottage that weekend so I had the place to myself when I got home too.

Right in between the first baseball field and the second, I felt my stomach gurgle a little bit.  I’d had the farts a bit that morning but that was nothing unusual.  I continued along my walk.  It sure was a quiet day in town that morning.  I loved the way the sun was shining through the leaves.

As the gurgles continued, I entered the mall.  I strode down the empty hallway to the big glass window of our store and opened the door.

Just when I had closed the door, locked it behind me and was in an enclosed space, I let off another stinker.  It was rotten, like a rotten egg had just been dropped behind me.  It was powerful and sour.  They kept coming too, in little squirts here and there.  I started to feel crampy.

I picked out my music for the day (Joe Satriani), opened the door letting out the smell, and waited for customers.  I was really starting to feel rotten.

I worked the first two hours just farting up a storm.  Unsurprisingly, I didn’t have many customers that day.  They could probably smell me down the hall.  I don’t know what I ate, but I know what my sausage farts smell like, and this was worse.  I wasn’t feeling too mobile anymore, so I pulled up the chair.  Suddenly I really had to shit.  I was still farting too.

2 o’clock rolled around.  I made it halfway through the day.  The rest should be no problem.  Halfway there.  Point of no return!  Hah.  Whatever.  Piece of cake.  Only a few people came in.  The cleaning could wait.  I’d just tell the truth.  I really wasn’t feeling well.  Besides I could really just catch up the next day anyway.

I farted again.  It felt good.  I felt a tremendous amount of relief.

Then, the horror struck.  The feeling that something wasn’t right.  The smell.  I looked down, to see a tiny trickle of liquid shit rolling down my leg….

There was someone in the store!  Holy shit, I couldn’t leave!  Oh fuck.  Oh fuckity-fuck-fuck!

Although I was in complete denial of it at the time, there was no way that guy didn’t smell me.  There was just no fucking way.  It was unavoidable.  It was a wall of stench just hanging there, stale, in the air.  It was incredible.  Still, the man had etiquette.  As he paid for his cassette, he politely asked me, “Are you feeling OK?  You’re turning green.”  I told him I had thrown up earlier.  He wished me well and left.

Completely and totally freaking out, I waddled over to the door and locked the store.  We didn’t have a washroom.  I had no choice, I had to make it to the mall washroom and fast.  I prayed to God that it would be empty.  I improvised a “back in 5 minutes” sign.  I tried to waddle anonymously down the hall.  I hung a right.  Down another hall.  Why the hell were the washrooms so far away?

I entered.  It was empty.  I entered a stall.  Bracing myself for whatever lay ahead, I took a deep breath and prepared to look down below.

It was bad.  A deep puddle of rich brown liquid shit lay in my undies.  Luckily, it had acted as a bowl, to catch most of it.  A few streams went down my legs, but none reached my socks.  Small victory.  I’d take that.

I had no choice, there was only one thing to do.  I removed my shorts, and then carefull removed the underwear while maintaining the bowl shape.  The flushed them down the toilet.  I prayed that it would not plug.  It did not.

Grasping a generous amount of toilet paper, I cleaned myself up the best I could.  The washroom still empty, I wet some paper towels as well.  My shorts had been stained through.  I cleaned them as best I could but they were definitely tainted.  Luckily, my baggy shirt, when untucked, more than covered the stain.

I sat there on the store chair the next two hours, not moving my ass once.  I phoned up Tom who was in Waterloo.  “I just threw up man,” I lied.  “What should I do?  Should I go home?  I have two more hours to go.”

Tom urged me to go home, but some perverse sense of duty prevented it.  I’d hang in there.  That day, our store earned a record low amount. $99 in sales, for the day.  That record stood the whole time I worked there.  Even on the worst snow days we’ve ever had, my record stood.

I closed up shop.  Spraying our vinyl chair with a healthy dose of Lysol, I wiped it down.  It stank.  I cleaned it again until the smell was gone.  The last of the evidence was wiped clean.  I waddled home, the shit now drying in the crack of my ass.

As I walked, the friction turned to heat, the heat turned to burning, and the burning turned to agony.  I walked through the park, now occupied by many people watching a baseball game.  I strode between the crowd and the diamond, the only pathway.  I walked like I had a pickle up my ass.

I got home, tossed out the shorts, ran a shower and cleaned myself thoroughly with generous amounts of soap.  After my shower, I just ran a cold bath and soaked.  Ahhh.

When you have a day like that, you can handle anything, I guarantee it.  I am not ashamed of my incontinence.  Rather, there is a lesson here.  Shitting your pants is definitely a good reason to close the store early!

Part 6: The Record Store, Year 1
Myself on the left, Trev on the right.

We were pretty slow most evenings.  You could study for exams at work most nights. Fridays got busy, but Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights were dead.  That didn’t mean we doing nothing.  Rule #1:  “If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean.”  We had scheduled to do something every night.  Mondays was cleaning the mirrors which lined the store walls.   Tuesday was putting away new stock, which always came Tuesdays.  Wednesday was checking the security tags on every cassette in the store.  Every fucking cassette.

For the first 2 months or so, it was just me and the owner.  Once September hit, he hired this other guy, Trevor.  I didn’t like him at first, he was the “other guy”.  He was the same age as me, also finishing school at the same time as me.  We shared similar musical interests.  Influences we shared:  Guns N’ Roses, Van Halen, The Four Horsemen, Kim Mitchell, Rush, and any bands with amazing drummers.  Over the course of the years, he introduced me to:  Steve Earle, Oasis, Metallica, Megadeth, Max Webster, anb Buddy Rich.  I give him a lot of credit for expanding my horizons during those days.

A lot of memorable releases came out that first year.  Superunknown and Purple were already out, but I was on board for some major ones.  Nirvana Unplugged was the biggest release of the fall 1994 schedule.  There was an Aerosmith hits disc, a Bon Jovi hits disc, and the Eagles reunion album which was absolutely massive.

The new Tragically Hip, Day For Night, came out on a Saturday.  We sold out by Sunday.  The boss drove down to Scarborough to get more on Monday.  Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy came out on vinyl the week before the CD was released.  We got just five in.  He didn’t expect it to sell, but we sold out before my shift even started.  Interestingly, none of the customers planned on playing it.  They either a) didn’t even have something to play it on, or b) were keeping it sealed as a collector’s item.  It definitely was a cool package.

Some poeople have a “swear jar”.  We had an alarm jar.  If you forgot to de-tag a customer’s purchase and thusly set off the alarm, you had to put a dollar in the jar.  We would use the spoils on our annual Christmas dinner.  It created some friendly competition between us.  That first Christmas is when I started working directly with Trevor, and I started to like him due to his excellent musical taste.  But in the alarm jar game, we were always about equal.  Sometimes you just forgot!

One lady may well have stolen something and set off the alarm, and I’ll never know, because, well….  As she was walking out the alarm went off.  I asked her to come back in the store and check to see if she had something from another store that may had set it off.  She was so upset at the alarm, she really wanted to show me she had nothing on her person.  So, she removed her top.  “See I’m not hiding anything in here!”  Covering my eyes, I told her it was quite alright, I believed her, and she could go.  First time I’d been flashed on the job.  Not the last.

She wasn’t even drunk.  They actually used to serve alcohol at this mall.  There was a licensed restaurant right next door to the store.  The regulars would start in the morning and keep going.  You’d see them in there every day, and they’d wander in completely plastered.

We had a few regular psychos at that mall.  There was Johnny Walker, who would just walk around the mall talking to himself, all day.  Literally, all day.  The story goes that he was quite rich.  He didn’t need to work, wasn’t capable of work, and just came to the mall and walked around all day, talking to himself.  Sometimes he would argue with himself and he had been ejected from the mall a couple times.  He came into the store a couple times but never caused any problems on my shifts.  One time, he even bought a cassette.  It was like the madness turned off.  He spoke to me, bought the tape, and walked out.  Madness set back in, and he’s off arguing with himself.  I wonder what happened to Johnny Walker?  He’d been walking the malls since grade school, sometimes changing malls when he got permanently ejected from one.

Then, there was Sue.  Sue had been in an accident years before, and had a walker.  She moved very  very slow.  She had a bit of a crush on the owner.  She stalked him relentlessly and gave him Christmas gifts.  She’d park her walker right there in front of the counter and talk his ear off for hours.  Hours!

One day, a large Japanese woman was shopping.  The owner said, “Go ask that lady if she needs help.  Then he stood back and waited.  I didn’t know it, but he had just given me my first challenge.

“Hi, can I help you find anything today?”

“No thank you though,” she answered, then almost immediately, “Do you have Soundgarden?”

I showed her what Soundgarden we had both new and used.  We also had the latest copy of M.E.A.T Magazine, and Chris Cornell was on the cover.  I’ll never forget that detail.

“Do you like Chris Cornell?” she asks.

“Yes, he’s actually one of my favourite singers.”

“Oh!  Really!  I love Chris Cornell.  He’s sexy.”

It was too late now.  I had opened Pandora’s box.  She opened the magazine to his picture inside.  She went on:  “I like when he wears his sexy black boots.  Chris Cornell wears black Doc Marten boots.  Do you know the boots?  Chris Cornell wears black Doctor Martens boots.  Do you like Doc Marten boots?”

I was on my own.  The boss just stood back.  I couldn’t even figure out a way to improvise my way out.  I was a rookie  I decided that this woman was most likely a lil’ crazy and I played the polite card.

“Yes, I do…”

“Chris Cornell is sexy.  Did you know that Soundgarden had an original bass player who was Asian?”

I did know that.  “Yes, his name was Hiro Yamamoto…”

“Yes Hiro Yamamoto.  He is Asian.  There are not many Asians in rock bands did you know that?”

This went on for a good 20 minutes.  After she left (not without asking my name, fuck!) my boss came to speak to me.

“That’s your first lesson.  Don’t get into conversations with customers.”

And of course we had the drunks.  I remember one jolly drunk came in that first Christmas Eve.  We all wore ties Christmas Eve, that was the tradition.  It was a tradition I kept every year to my last year at the store, even when I was the only one left who still did it.  This drunk came in, a big Grizzly Adams dude just reeking of alcohol.  He was definitely in great spirits though.  First he asked us why the ties?  The quick-witting Trevor answered, “I’m wearing mine because it makes me feel important.”  We laughed.  I then went over to see if he needed help finding anything.

“Hi there!” I began.

“Not yet, but I will be when I get home.  Hahahaha!” he answered.

Ultimately the jolly drunk guy couldn’t remember what to buy, so he bought $100 in gift certificates for his grand kids.  That was a great sale, and the best part was that it turned out to be $100 of pure profit for the store.  The bearded drunk guy probably lost it, because all my years with the store, they were never redeemed!

After Christmas, the owner confided in Trevor and I that he was going to be opening a second location.  This location would be in Waterloo.  It would be easily accessible by one high school, two universities, and one college.  He would be splitting his time between our store and setting up the new one.  Ultimately this meant he’d be in much less and we’d be getting more hours, and also bhe was bringing a new guy in.

I walked in one Tuesday to see this black-bearded behemoth behind the counter.  It was kind of awkward because the owner didn’t introduce us at first.  I looked around for an hour, stealing glances at this big grizzly bear of a man with the thickest blackest beard you can picture.  Finally he introduced me to Thomas, later to become Tom, the legendary founder of Sausagefest.  Ahh, but that comes much later.

TOM

Tom was a wicked cool guy who expanded my musical tastes even further than Trevor had.  Tom and I had many influences in common.  I had met another kindred spirit.  Influences:  Black Sabbath, Dio, Rainbow, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Van Halan (not Van Hagar!) and Johnny Cash.  Music he would introduce me to:  Miles Davis, Willie Nelson, Fu Manchu, and the whole stoner rock scene in general.  His place was plastered with rare Marillion posters.  Tom was serious about music.

Tom was so serious about music that it was actually hilarious.  Kids, this is the difference between liking music and loving music.  Nobody loves music as much as Tom.  Dare I say it, Tom loves music even more than me.

One night in Toronto, we visited the big HMV on Yonge St.  Tom was methodically working his way through every decent section of the store.  Long after Trevor and I had finished shopping, Tom was just finishing browsing rock.  With a handful of discs by Rainbow and Saga, Tom would then announce, “OK…I just have to check country.”

20 minutes would pass.  “Alright…on to jazz.”

20 more minutes.

“I just have to check blues.”

10 more minutes.

“Oohh…I wonder if they have the soundtrack to the Godfather.”

Checkout.  Trev, Tom and I usually checked out of that store $200 lighter.  Each.

Then, repeat.  We walked down the street to Sam’s, and finally to Virgin.  Rock, country, jazz, blues.  Every store.  That was Tom, three stores, one night.

Seriously those early days at the store were the best times I ever had working.  Working hard or hardly working?  No, we worked hard.  If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean.  We ran that store with the owner making guest appearances, adding to it with our own creative ideas.

I graduated school in the summer of 1995, and hadn’t decided on my next move.  After that I was putting in increasingly more hours at the store.  It gradually built up from a part time job to full time.  When the new store opened, Tom split hours between the two of them so there were plenty of day and night shifts available, usually alone, which were the best times because you could play whatever you wanted!

I remember Tom walked in one night when I was playing Dio.  Back in 1995 you could not play Dio in a mainstream record store.  That would be like the equivalent of playing Michael Bolton in one today.  He was so far removed from what was selling at the time.  But I was rocking out to Holy Diver and Tom appreciated that I had the balls to do it.

Tom went to a lot of concerts.  After we had bonded over the mutual love of metal, I joined him and many of my future Sausagefest friends at a Black Sabbath concert.  It was Motorhead opening on the Sacrifice tour, and Black Sabbath headining, supporting their final studio album (17 years and counting!) Forbidden.  They played at Lulu’s Roadhouse just down the street.  A few weeks later we saw Queensryche in Toronto on the Promised Land tour.

Trev, Tom and I would have many adventures.  Such as that time seeing Kiss in…ahh, but that’s another story.  Before I talk about Tom and Trev again, I need to tell you a really shitty story.

TBC…

Part 5: The Dream Job

RECORD STORE TALES PART 5:  The Dream Job

Of all my highschool friends, there was only one who had a job that he enjoyed.  Peter worked at Steve’s TV, still pretty much the best video store in town.  All my other friends worked at the typical places.  One guy worked at the closest convenience store every weekend.  Two more worked in the McDonalds kitchen. A few more worked at rival fast food places.  All pretty typical for kids at age 16.

Peter on the other hand (who later became the best man at my wedding) had his wicked job.  Back then there wasn’t much to choose from, the biggest chain store was Jumbo Video.  Everything else was pretty crusty, except for Steve’s TV.  Steve’s started in the late 70’s.  Back then they had one room, one wall of videos (3/4 VHS and ¼ Betamax) and a small bin of video discs, the precursor of laserdisc.  They used to offer package deals:  Rent a VCR and five movies for a weekend for a special price.  Not too many people had VCRs back then.

The store grew and grew and relocated pretty close to home.  That’s where Peter worked during highschool, that and learning an electrical trade with his dad later on.   We used to call him “TV Pete” because TV seemed to be his big love back then, so working at Steve’s TV was totally appropriate.  Peter used to borrow movies from work, tape them, and bring them back the next day.  Peter always had copies of all the new releases, and a library hundred of titles big.

I first became interested in working in a record store in highschool.  There was a small record store in Kincardine, Ontario that sold a mix of CDs, LPs and cassettes.  I bought a couple titles there over the years, including Out of This World by Europe, and Judas Priest’s monstrous Painkiller.

I thought to myself, what a great summer job that would be.

Instead, during the fall of 1989 my dad told me to go into the local Zehrs store, and speak to a man named Don.  I went out and got myself a haircut.  It was the first time I had a hair cut in 5 years where I didn’t ask the barber to “leave the back long.”  I cut ‘er all off.  It was a bit of a blow, as my hair had become…well, not great, but it was long enough that it was my trademark.

Neck still itchy from the clippers, and wearing some ill-fitting dress pants, I walked into the Zehrs store.  The conversation was brief.  My dad must have told the guy that I was getting my hair cut, because he told me my hair was “fine”.  He outlined the requirements of the job, and asked me if I could start the next day.   I accepted.  I was employed!  I began plotting my next order from Columbia House.

During my tenure there I bought my first CD.  (Trash by Alice Cooper.)  Other albuims to follow were Fair Warning  by Van Halen, Damn Yankees, Slip of the Tongue (Whitesnake), the charity CD Stairway to Heaven / Highway to Hell, Black Sabbath’s We Sold Our Souls For Rock And Roll, Ozzy’s Live E.P., and the debut album by Badlands were all bought during the first few months with Zehrs money.

I didn’t like the hours, which interfered with the Thursday edition of the Pepsi Power Hour.  I still caught the Tuesday edition on most weeks, but this meant my metal intake was now cut in half!

It was a job.  That’s all it was.  It was something to keep my dad off my back and make money to spend on albums.  That was pretty much it.  Monthly, the Columbia House catalogue would arrive.  There was never a month when nothing was ordered.  I was trying to explore everything.

But that was nothing, next to the dream job.

1993. Fuck yeah.

In July 1994 my dad once again came to me.  “Go see the guy at the record store in the mall.  He wants to talk to you.”  I put on my cowboy boots (the closest thing I had to dress shoes) and walked over to the mall once again, the same fucking mall where the Zehrs was.  It was awesome.

The store had been open three years.  There had always been a place in the mall to buy music.  This new store was replacing a failed A&A Records, and many predicted the same thing would happen to the new store.  The young guy who started it came to my dad for help setting up an account.  My dad managed the Canada Trust at the mall, and because of that connection, I was the first person thought of when he needed a new part-timer.

The owner worked all day, all night, every day, and rarely even paid himself for three years to keep that place afloat.  He employed his brother and during the busy times hired part-timers.  Then he hit upon the idea of selling his own used CDs at the store.  He brought in a tray, marked it to about half price, and all the discs sold.  He worked up a pricing scheme and was soon buying and selling.  That’s when I came into the picture.

I’d already known about the used discs.  I bought Kiss My Ass for $11.99 there, the previous week.  It had just come out so I was fine with saving $10 on something I only really wanted a couple songs from.  Other than the used stuff though, everything there was overpriced.  It was one of those stores, the ones at the shitty malls with no selection and high prices.  That was all about to change and I got to be in on the ground floor.

I worked there in training for the whole summer, and by fall I was closing all by myself.  Those were the best nights.  Those were the nights when I got to pick the music myself.  We didn’t have many store play discs, and some albums were out of bounds anyway, but I gave a few a shot.  Jar of Flies by Alice In Chains was in the player pretty much every night.  I also found that I really liked David Lee Roth’s “multi-faceted” latest, Your Filthy Little Mouth.  The only problem:  We had a stack of 10 of ’em, and nobody wanted any of them.

The store owner was a shrewd businessman but musically clueless.  While he was playing Anita Baker and Don Henley, kids were coming in asking for Pigface, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails, and Ministry.  He ordered a pile of David Lee Roth discs, in 1994.  What the hell was he thinking?  He did the same thing again with Motley Crue’s latest.  There must have been 20 of them sitting there.

Very quickly in my tenure there, I picked up many treasures.  Rush Chronicles, a King’s X / Faith No More split live bootleg, numerous rare singles, and deleted back catalogue titles like Twisted Sister’s You Can’t Stop Rock and Roll.  We had the catalogues in front of us, so any time something decent was deleted, I made sure I snapped it up.  I already had a lot of this stuff on cassette, but cassettes don’t last and I wanted to replace them all.

During my time at the record store, I pretty much accomplished that.  If you come back, I’ll share some of the cool treasures that you may never see yourselves.

REVIEW: Metallica & Lou Reed – Lulu (2011)

 

METALLICA & LOU REED – Lulu (2011 Warner Bros.)

I was as surprised as anyone upon hearing “The View”. Lou Reed’s toneless vocal jarring up against Hetfield’s “YEAAH-HAH!” style of singing?…weird stuff. But compelling. Something about Lou’s tone-deaf delivery and the weird lyrics. Something about Hetfield’s always addictive yowls.

Tellingly, the Metallica logo is nowhere to be found. Buyers should probably consider this a Lou Reed album featuring Metallica, than a Metallica album featuring Lou Reed.

Lulu is definitely not for 99% of Metallica fans. It may also not be for a good deal of Lou Reed fans, although they are more likely to embrace Lulu for what it is. What it is, I’m not too sure, but I do know that I can’t stop listening to it.

I’m not even going to try to figure out what the lyrics are about (based on a German play of which I have no knowledge). I dig portions of the lyrics, every once in a while Lou Reed will come up with a cool set of words that just sound right, independently of the context. I mean, it’s Lou Reed, right?

I do find it weird when in the middle of “Pumping Blood” Lou proclaims “Come on, James!”

As for Metallica? There are bits and pieces of this album that shred. The odd riff just jumps out every once in a while, and kind of make you wish for a complete Metallica song to surround it. Some guitar bits will take you back to Justice-style melody, some riffs sound like Death Magnetic.

Yet, I keep coming back to the weird soundscapes. The stuff that sounds more like Metal Machine Music than Metal Militia. If you like a healthy dose of the abstract in your music, you may like a fair deal of Lulu, particularly the long songs.  Personally I think Metallica deserve a hell of a lot of credit for stretching out.  This kind of music is something I’m used to anyway, and consider to be highly accomplished.

Highlights: The speed metal shred of “Mistress Dread”. The strangely melodic “Cheat On Me”.

There’s an argument to be made that Metallica are not the kind of band that should be experimenting with the avante-garde, but those kind of arguments veer a little too close to “stay in your lane”.  Lulu is definitely not for everybody. Don’t buy based on my review alone, if you’re in any way unsure, listen first.

3.3/5 stars

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Queenryche – Evolution of a band

I conducted this interview with Eddie Jackson of Queensryche in October of 2001.  My first interview ever.  Eddie gave me over an hour of his time, and told me afterwards it was a lot of fun.  This interview was first published on Global Bass.

rycheProgressive metal fans have had much to celebrate recently. With a slew of new releases both on CD and DVD from many high profile bands, there is plenty to be excited about. One of the most exciting of these new releases is ‘Live Evolution’, the very first career-spanning live album from Seattle’s Queensryche. It was recorded over two nights this year, with the band playing some songs unheard in fifteen years. Queensryche has been a leader in its field since its debut EP in 1983, and was well overdue for a definitive live album.

Since the beginning, bassist Eddie Jackson has been there providing the solid grooves and very melodic runs. We recently had an opportunity to speak with Eddie about his band’s extensive back catalogue of songs, and being a musician in general. Picking songs for this double disc was a natural process, as Eddie explains:

“The set list was pretty much just a group effort there. Individually we all came up with certain songs that we thought we would like to perform that night. But you know, at the end of the day, it was putting out something that was gonna be something different from what we usually do, and that [something different] was to go back several albums and perform some of these songs from ‘The Warning’, [and] from ‘Rage For Order’. Because a lot of the time these past few tours we’ve been focusing  from ‘Operation:Mindcrime’ forward. With the exception of maybe “The Lady Wore Black” or “Take Hold Of The Flame” from the earlier albums. But this time around we just wanted to give them something…you know, you figure it’s a live album, a live DVD, let’s give ‘em something refreshing like some of the older stuff.”

Interestingly, the band decided to arrange the shows on those nights, and the album, into suites. Each suite contains songs from a pair of albums, and are played roughly chronologically, a very different approach for a live album. Eddie comments:

“We just figured, OK, we’re going to put together a set list and then we came up with the idea, ‘hey, why don’t we put this together in suites?’ Starting from the beginning to the present. The first suite was the songs from the first couple of albums, the second suite from the next following set of albums, and so on. It was just an idea that we put together, and we thought it would be kinda fun to do. It definitely makes sense when you look at it and then when you hear it.”

When they hear the new CD and see the new DVD, fans will be able to relive the evolution of the band’s sound in the space of a couple of hours. No album is ignored, and such rare classics as “NM156”, “Screaming In Digital”, and “Walk In The Shadows” are rolled out on stage. Even so, Eddie explains that some songs just didn’t make the cut. “One of them was “Enforcer” [sic, “En Force”] and “No Sanctuary”. And I can’t remember the other songs, there was just a handful, not many. The thing is, it’s really tough to sit down and try to perform everything that we have on paper. Because first off, we’re limited for time, and second of all, we’re limited on disc.”

“It’s a long set, it was just [an effort] to put together a good variety of songs that will not only please ourselves but also the fans. And again, if we were to play all the songs that we had written down on paper, heck, we’d be up there like three or four hours!” Not that many fans would complain if they did indeed see a four-hour show!

As many fans are aware, Queensryche’s last studio album, Q2K, represented their first and only lineup change. Guitarist Chris DeGarmo left the band and was replaced by fellow Seattle native, and friend of the band, Kelly Gray. Before joining Queensryche, Kelly was known primarily as a producer. “He’s done producing work with a few bands, Candlebox, Dokken, Sven Gali, just to name a couple of them. What’s the other one, Second Coming. He’s a very talented individual. Not only is he very talented when it comes to playing a producer role, but also as a musician. He’s a good songwriter, a good guitar player.”

Is having a producer in the band a relief?

“That guy, he wears many hats. It’s kind of a blessing in a way to work with someone like that because you’re killing two birds with one stone. Being a guitar player, a writer, but also coming in and helping us produce as well as mix.”

As one can hear on the new live album, Kelly Gray’s addition has not changed the band’s onstage sound. The fit was very natural according to Eddie. “We just kind of let it happen. We really didn’t sit down and try to educate him into, “This is what Queensryche sounds like. This is what we want you to play like.” We just let him have free reign over it and not really…if you think about it, he’s not coming in to replace Chris. He’s coming in to replace a guitar player. By coming in to replace Chris, that can be a little tough on someone.”

Eddie also explained that because of this natural approach, he did not have to make any adjustments as a bass player, although the band’s sound did change on record regardless. “Kelly has a little more of a bluesier background as opposed to Chris’ style. But I think you can tell, Q2K without Chris, stylistically it’s a little different than the songs Chris has worked on. I think he compliments Michael [Wilton, guitar] quite well stylistically and again he’s a very talented guy.”

Various members of the band are taking advantage of their position at the moment and are slowly putting together solo projects. Eddie has not yet done so, but he explains, “I’ve always wanted to do something like that, kind of like step away from Queensryche for the day and then do something on my own. I’m always coming up with ideas and I eventually would like to put something together like that.”

Eddie describes some possible sounds:

“My listening taste of music is so eclectic. It’s like from Abba to Zappa. I love pop rock, I love hard rock, I love jazz. I think one of the last albums that I actually bought was the Rob Zombie Hellbilly Deluxe. I mean it grew on me like fungus! It’s just got some angst and attitude. Stylistically that would be a fun little approach.” Eddie explained that he also loves funk music, and that could be a possible direction for his solo project, should the mood take him.

A few things you are virtually be certain to hear out of Eddie in the future are sonic experimentation on the bass, and his singing voice. With regard to the latter, Eddie’s interest in singing “rivals” that of playing the bass:

“Yeah, I love singing! And I’ve noticed since Chris has left, I’ve had to cover a lot of his parts, and I’m telling you they’re up there sometimes. But still, it’s something that you don’t really think about. Through all these tours that we’ve been performing on, I’ve never realized how much he actually sang.”

As far as sonic experimentation goes, Eddie gave us several examples from the past:

“We actually created some of those sounds ourselves! Yeah, you know at the very end of ‘Walk In The Shadows’? That big ambient reverberated sound? At the very end, ‘Walk in the shadows…walk with me! POW!’ That’s a door slamming in a parking garage!” This continued onto later albums like Promised Land, where soundscapes were created by “banging on top of these big garbage cans.”

As far as bass goes, Eddie finds himself inspired by other bass players’ sounds more than their playing: “There’s a lot of bands out there with a lot of talented bass players, . . . and I go, ‘How the hell did he get that sound? That is so cool! What is he running? Some sort of an effect? I wonder what he’s using!’ You’re just reaching and guessing.” This sonic experimentation can be best heard on such Queensryche albums as ‘Promised Land’ and ‘Rage For Order’, although on ‘Operation:Mindcrime’, Eddie’s been asked by many fans about his bass sound: “I’ve had guys come up to me, and they go, “Hey, how did you get your bass to sound like a truck?” I go, “What? Where’d that come from,” you know? So obviously there’s a little bit of fretless in “Promised Land”. And “Real World”, there’s some fretless on there. So heck, you know, some 5 string here. I’ll experiment with anything. I think I really love approaching the sonic end of it, trying to come up with a really cool sound, something that’s very distinctive.”

One additional thing Queensryche fans can look for is a reissued ‘Operation:LIVEcrime’ on  CD and DVD. Out of print until recently, this album has been reissued with two bonus tracks. “Those are with the original lineup. Those two songs, “Road To Madness” and “Lady Wore Black”, those were recorded at the time LIVEcrime was recorded.”

Finally, fans of Eddie Jackson and Queensryche know that he enjoys placing jokes and riddles inside their releases. From the backwards text he put in as his album credits on the new disc, to some visual pranks he planted on the band’s Promised Land CD-ROM game a few years ago, Eddie likes to have fun. He uses words like “goofy” and “silly” to describe his attitude from time to time. Pay attention to Eddie Jackson at all times. You never know when he’s testing you to see if you’re watching. Pay attention to Queensryche as well. It is a very exciting time to be a fan of the band, as they celebrate their past on ‘Live Evolution’, and look to their future.

Part 4: A Word About B-Sides

Hysteria singles collection

RECORD STORE TALES Part 4:  A Word About B-Sides

My definition of a B-side:

A song that is found on the B-side of a vinyl or cassette single, but not on the album; or a song on a CD or digital single other than the main track, not found on the album.

A well known example:  “Hey Hey What Can I Do” by Led Zeppelin.  Up until the release of the Led Zeppelin box set in 1990, this great song was only available on the 7″ single for “The Immigrant Song”.

I’d known about B-sides for a while thanks to George, the neighbor next door with the Kiss albums.  He had a couple Iron Maiden 12″ singles such as “Aces High” with unreleased studio tracks on the B-side, usually two per 12″.  I’d also been aware of Maiden tunes like “Women In Uniform” (technically an A-side) that weren’t on any albums that we’d ever seen.

Right from an early age I’d always been a collector.  I had a massive collection of Lego.  Then later on I had a collection of Star Wars figures that put all others in the neighborhood to shame.  Then it was GI Joe and Transformers.  I didn’t do anything small.  When music came along, it inevitably became the next thing in this obsession.  Quiet Riot was the first band I pledged to complete (still incomplete 27 years later).  As I expanded out to more bands, I pledged to complete a lot of collections….

When Def Leppard came out with Hysteria I went wild for that album.  Definitely still to this day my #1 album of 1987; and that was a year that included new records by Kiss, Aerosmith, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and a band I hadn’t quite discovered yet at the time called Guns N’ Roses.  Yes folks, I rank Hysteria higher than Appetite.  But listen, I’m not going to get into that debate right this second.  I’ll save it for another day.  I’m just giving you the setting.

I was really passionate about the Hysteria album and early in 1988 I acquired the Animal EP on cassette.  That 4-song EP contained three tracks not on the album:  “I Wanna Be Your Hero”, “Tear It Down”, and an extended mix of the title song.  I really got into “I Wanna Be Your Hero”, hard.  It’s still a great track.  That really set off a fire for me to collect these rare songs.  This was the first really awesome B-side track that I’d found so far.  If it was this good, there must be more coming…

I was in highschool, and on a weekly basis, I trekked into my local Zellers store to peruse the 7″ singles.  Some you could get as cheap as 99 cents.  Any time Def Leppard came out with a new video, I knew there was a new 7″ single to be had.  Up next came “Hysteria” itself, and I rapidly found a copy at Zellers.  On the flip side was a song called “Ride Into The Sun” (a re-recording of an early Def Leppard track) and it blew me away.  It was fast and heavy, there was nothing else like it on Hysteria.

In the summer came “Pour Some Sugar On Me” which appeared at my Zellers soon after the video started running.  The B-side was “Ring of Fire”, not a standout track, so I figured by now, Def Leppard were running out of good unreleased songs.

Me at the time, awesome hair

That fall, “Love Bites” started airing on Much, so I knew there would be another single to be had.  This one proved to be more elusive.  I finally tracked it down, not at my local Zellers, but at a Radio Shack store in Port Elgin, Ontario.  They rarely had any, but they did have this.  This time, the B-side was a live track.  “Billy’s Got A Gun” was definitely my least favourite B-side so far.  It wasn’t my favourite song on Pyromania, and it wasn’t a good live rendition either.

Hysteria continued to spawn singles.  “Armageddon It” was yet another game-changer for me.  Walking into Zellers I could barely believe my eyes:  A picture disc 7″ single!  I’d seen 12″ picture discs before, but I didn’t even know they made them in 7″.  And best of all it was only $1 more than a regular single.  I ran home with my prize, but puzzled over the B-side.  It didn’t appear to be even by Def Leppard.  The song was called “Release Me” and it was performed by Stumpus Maximus and the Good Ol’ Boys.

The notes on the flip side of the disc indicated that never in their travels had Def Leppard come across a talent as great as Stumpus Maximus.  And there was a picture of him.  A bald bearded man balancing a hat on his nose, with a backing band sillouetted behind him.

I cautiously played the single.  The strains of the Engleburt Humperdinck cover poured out of my tinny, shitty equipment.  It wasn’t even good!  This sucked!  Then it got weird.  Stumpus started screaming the lyrics in the most gutteral scream I’ve ever heard.  I’m telling you people he made Mike Patton sound sane.  Stopping, burping, and picking it up again, Stumpus screamed all the way to the end.

I got the joke.  But who was Stumpus?  I noticed right away that the sillouette of Stumpus’ backing band matched a photo of Def Leppard on the previous single.  A reading of the very long and small liner notes on the Hysteria album revealed that Stumpus Maximus was their roadie – real name Malvin Mortimer.

Hysteria was not dead yet.  There was one more single to be had, and once again I picked it up in a 4 song cassette format.  This single was “Rocket” which was presented in both remixed and extended remixed forms.  The other two songs were live versions of “Women” (taken from the Def Leppard home video) and “Rock of Ages”.  These versions were better than “Billy’s Got A Gun”, but I had a pretty clear idea that Def Leppard were not a great live band.

“Rock of Ages” however contained a little surprise.  This extended live take included a medley of rock and roll classics right in the middle of the song!  Def Leppard performed the most memorable moments of “Not Fade Away”, “Radar Love”, “Whole Lotta Love”, “My Generation”, and “Come Together”, changing the melodies and riffs slightly to meld seamlessly into “Rock of Ages”.  I gotta tell you people, it’s a fucking brilliant version.  Hunt it down.  Do what you have to do.  You’re listening to the tune thinking, “I know this part, what the fuck is it?”  And then you realize it’s “Come Together”.  It’s really cool.

That was the last of the singles off Hysteria.  It would be years before my Def Leppard collection would pick up again.  Sadly Steve Clarke died in January of 1991 — the first of my heroes to go.

So I’ll dedicate the blog to Steve, whose band Def Leppard is really responsible for why I have more CDs in my house than dollars in my bank account.

REVIEW: Dio – At Donington UK: Live 1983 & 1987

DIO – At Donington UK: Live 1983 & 1987  (2010)

Ronnie James Dio’s death was an incredibly sad day in rock.  For our little corner of the rock world, that genre known as Heavy Metal, it was an absolute tragedy. Very rarely have ever lost someone with so much talent, and so much history.  I mean, we lost Randy Rhoads, but he never got a chance to grow and spread his wings.  Dio did.  Unfortunately Dio’s long and powerful career has not been well documented in live album format.  There are gaping holes in his live catalogue, with very little (just B-sides) being available with Vivian Campbell on guitar.

Finally some of that history has seen the light. Doninngton UK collects two concerts. From 1983, we get a show with Vivian Campbell. From 1987, a show with his replacement Craig Goldy from the very underrated Dream Evil tour. Both shows are excellent, with nary a complaint between the two of them. Both shows contain ample Dio tunes with a smattering or Rainbow and Sabbath.

For me, my personal highlights were not any specific song, but more the tireless performances by Ronnie James Dio. If any man ever made it all sound easy, it was Dio. Plenty of power to spare, Ronnie James is the ringleader and he never faulters. He’s perfect. A second highlight for me was the guitar work of Campbell and Goldy.  It was great to finally hear the first two Dio dudes rip and shred live.

You get “Holy Diver”, “Heaven and Hell”, “Stargazer”, “The Last In Line”, “Rock and Roll Children”, and pretty much any favourite Dio song you’ve ever had from that era.  Yes, you’re going to hear several songs twice.  “Children of the Sea” (a Sabbath classic), “Rainbow in the Dark”, “Holy Diver”, “Heaven and Hell” (another mighty Sab classic), and “Silver Mountain” all appear on both discs.  When you think about it though, that’s a lot less overlap than you’d expect.

The recording and mix are good enough (by the BBC), and the packaging is very nice as expected.  I love the cover.

5/5 stars. As if there was any doubt.

ADDED BONUS: Two plastic backstage pass replicas included!

Part 3: My First KISS

It went a little like this.  The year was 1985.  I was familiar with “new” Kiss (aka, non-makeup Kiss) thanks to Much Music who played “Heaven’s On Fire” in regular rotation.  Old (aka, makeup) Kiss was a bit more of a mystery but I knew songs like “Rock And Roll All Nite”.

My first awareness of Kiss came from comic books.  Buried in the ads within my Incredible Hulk comic were ads for posters of all the hot stars at the time.  David Cassidy, Brooke Shields, and Kiss.  Seeing their faces and hair, I actually assumed that Kiss were women.  I thought so for months.

When I got into music and Kiss took off the makeup, I really liked their songs.  The music was catchy, it rocked, and it had power.  George the next door neighbor had a near-complete Kiss collection on vinyl.  He was a bit of an outcast, but he was a good way to learn about rock music because he was four years older and loved an audience.  So we’d go over there to listen to Kiss records and learn about the band.  Later on I’d go over there to tape his Kiss albums too.  The only drawback was that George would attempt to play bass to every Kiss song as you taped, and the bass would bleed-through onto the tape.  For a long time, I had a permanent record of George playing bass on Unmasked, until it was finally reissued on cassette in 1988.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Like I said, his collection was near-complete.  I knew the two albums he was missing:  The Elder, and Hotter Than Hell.  I got the call one day from Ian Johnson.  He wanted to arrange a trade for my Atari cartridge, Superman.  It was a pretty weak game, and my sister didn’t want me to trade it away, but it turns out that was the best trade I ever made.  From Ian I acquired my first two Kiss records:  Kiss Alive, which I still have that copy of, and Hotter Than Hell.

I played Hotter Than Hell, liked it, but decided that I needed to up the ante and call George.  He picked up the phone.

“George, do you still need the Kiss album Hotter Than Hell?”

A pause.  “Yes, why?”

“I have a copy here,” I said, knowing he was going to lose his mind.

“I’ll be right over.”

The negotiations were intense.  I knew I had Balasz by the ol’ ball sack.  I also legitimately liked the album and wasn’t too keen on parting with it without getting something worthwhile in return.  The album was scratched to the point that it was worthless to a serious collector but we were just kids and he’d never seen Hotter Than Hell before.

In the end, I walked away with a Sony Walkman, my first Black Sabbath cassette (Paranoid), and an Iron Maiden 12” single for “Running Free” (and I think “Flight of Icarus” too but I don’t have it anymore).  The singles were in excellent condition.  I also wound up with a mint condition Abbott and Costello LP for Who’s On First which I gave to my dad for Christmas that year.  All in all, a pretty good haul.

As an added bonus, George taped Hotter Than Hell for me.  No bass on that one thankfully.  It quickly became my favourite Kiss album.  It still is my favourite today.  I guess that’s what happens with your first Kiss.

Unfortunately the tape I used was a 120 minute Scotch.  Little did I know then about the issues with 120 minute tape.  It stretched.  The sound quality decreased.  And we didn’t have the greatest equipment at the time as it was.  It sucked to have my favourite Kiss album in such low quality for such a long time.  At some point in the 80’s, probably around 1987, it was reissued on cassette and I got a proper copy.    Then, at another point in the 90’s, I began replacing a lot of my cassettes with CDs.  I don’t remember when I first got Hotter Than Hell on CD but it was probably in my University days.  Unfortunately that CD had a manufacturer’s defect, the whole damn bunch of them.  Somebody at quality control was asleep at the wheel and there was this horrid scratchy sound on every copy of that CD.  Same issue with Alive II.  On Alive II, I can remember the sound issue happened during “Love Gun”.

During my third year at the record store, I happened upon a German copy of Hotter Than Hell.  You can tell the German ones, because Kiss were forced to change their logo in Germany.  The SS’s looked too much like another pair of SS’s that you may recall from your history books.  Kiss replaced them with backwards ZZ’s, and it still looks pretty cool.  A lot of people try to collect German copies of every album just for the altered logos.  Anyway, the German CD had no sound defect, and that was my default copy for a couple more years.  Finally in 1998, Kiss officially issued their remastered discs, and it took a while, but I finally found Hotter Than Hell and bought it.  Again.

When you love an album that much, you’ll go to any extent to have the best possible version available to you.  And when they inevitably remix and remaster that baby again, you can bet I’ll be the first sucker in line to get it.