blue-eyed-soul

Part 246: Dancing Steve


RANGERS

RECORD STORE TALES Part 246:  Dancing Steve

One of our best customers at the original store was Dancing Steve.  I’ll get to why he’s named Dancing Steve in a minute, but I first met Steve when I started at the store.  Steve would come in or call looking for various cassettes (never CDs), and put them on hold until he had $150 or $200 worth, and buy them all in one shot.  That’s just how Steve rolled.  Normally we would never stockpile so much inventory for a customer for so long, but Steve spent so much money and was so pleasant that it was a special arrangement just for him.

Steve would call looking for songs.  I can remember putting a Gina Vannelli tape on hold for Steve, and I also remember him looking for Rod Stewart’s then-recent song “This”.  I found that song on Rod’s latest, the excellent A Spanner in the Works.  It was always so nice dealing with him, he was so friendly, and even if we didn’t see him for two months at a time, he was uber-reliable.

I knew Steve was a hockey fan as he would often wear a Kitchener Rangers hat or jacket.  What I did not know was that Steve was legendary among Rangers fans!  Steve often wrote (and I think he occasionally still does) long letters to the editor of the local newspaper, cheering on our Rangers and offering his strategic advice.

T-Rev and I found ourselves at a Rangers game one weekend.  I don’t remember the circumstances.  We may have got the tickets for free, but neither of us were particularly fans of the game back then.   The Rangers scored, the crowd cheered!  Then, T-Rev noticed some commotion in the seats of one corner of the auditorium.  To our left and down was a man in a Rangers jacket and hat, dancing.  It wasn’t a sophisticated dance, it was a bit of an awkward shuffle, in that big warm Rangers jacket.  The crowd loved it, cheering him on!   It was none other than Steve, our Steve.  I found out his actual nickname in town was Dancing Steve, because he had seasons tickets and rarely missed a game.  Steve would get up and dance any time something good happened: a goal, a power play, whatever!

To this day, I feel cool that a local legend like Dancing Steve was one of our earliest, most loyal customers.  In fact we didn’t lose Steve until 1997, when we discontinued carrying cassettes.  Steve didn’t make the transition over to CD.  He was crushed when T-Rev had to tell him we weren’t going to be selling tapes anymore.

I have been to a couple Rangers game since, but not seen Steve.  I know he still goes though, as I’ve heard tell that Dancing Steve dances on at the Aud.  I would like to dedicate this chapter to Steve, an example of a jolly good fellow if there ever was one!

TOMORROW:  Something exciting.

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REVIEW: Mr. Big – Lean Into It (1991)

Today, the album.  Tomorrow, the singles!  Yes it’s a two-part Mr. Big feature!  Happy long weekend, hope you’re partying safely!  

MR. BIG – Lean Into It (1991 Atlantic)

Yeah yeah yeah…”To Be With You”!   As Mr. Big said themselves on a later album, “Get over it”!

I’ve always considered Mr. Big to be more shred-lite than glam metal or pop metal. After all, with credentials like these…Talas…Racer X…Impelliteri…these guys know how to play. Eric Martin is a unique blue-eyed-soul singer, one of a kind, absolutely brilliant.  Martin and the band also know how to write catchy hard rock tunes. Combine that with their playing pedigree and adventurous arrangements, and I’ll call ’em shred-lite if you let me. And this is a pretty damn good album for rockers who want just a touch of integrity in their pop.

The opener kicks you right in the nuts with one of the best Big tunes ever, “Daddy, Brother, Lover, Little Boy (The Electric Drill Song)” (whew).  The album starts with an adrenaline rush straight to the head.  Why the “Electric Drill Song”?  Because it opens with the sound of Paul Gilbert and Billy Sheehan playing their instruments with electric drills with guitar picks glued to the bit!  In unison?  Basically spoofing the whole “How fast can you play?” question, Big’s creativity make this speed rocker a standout.

“Alive and Kickin'” is nothing more than a hard rocker with soulful vocal and killer chorus, but “Green-Tinted Sixties Mind” is classy and cool. Pure pop with an incredible retro melody and adventurous guitar arrangement, this first single went tragically ignored.  I don’t remember it getting much airplay though it deserved it.  I’m not sure if the world of 1991 would have accepted a song like this from a hard rock band.

“CDFF – Lucky This Time” is another weird title. See, “CDFF” stands for CD Fast Forward which is the sound you’re hearing at the opening of this rather ordinary ballad. The only thing really oustanding about this song is Billy’s rumbling bass groove.  The guy doesn’t sound like anybody else, and he raises the song to another level.  “CDFF”  is followed by the cool and swampy “Voodoo Kiss”, which ended side 1 of the original album.

Side 2 kicked off with another pop rocker, “Never Say Never”, co-written by Canada’s own Jim Vallance. Catchy but non-descript. “Just Take My Heart” is the second ballad, and a forgettable song to me. “My Kinda Woman” kicks the adrenaline back in. Yet it is Paul Gilbert’s “A Little Too Loose” that rekindles the creative fires on this album. Bluesy and fun, this was one of the high points of this record. “Road To Ruin” shows off the vocal harmonies of the guys, all good singers in their own right. It’s another creative arrangement. Then, of course, the album ends with “To Be With You” which, hard to believe, was actually a really creative song too!  Before it got played to death. Now, it’s the typical rock ballad, but at the time of release, it was very different from the kind of ballads that other bands were putting out, except possibly Extreme.  It has a sparse, vocal-oriented arrangement, an acoustic guitar solo, and no drums to speak of.

Tomorrow we’ll be talking about two singles from this album “Green-Tinted  Sixties Mind”, and “To Be With You” itself, both of which have worthwhile rare songs!

4/5 stars