cassette single

#1151: An Egg of a Deal: End of August Scores

RECORD STORE TALES #1151: An Egg of a Day: End of August Scores

I have a coworker whose parents recently passed.  This is always sad, but the time came for my coworker to purge her mom’s music collection.  Periodically when this happens, people come to me to ask my opinion.  Essentially, she wanted to know:  “is there anything here that I shouldn’t take to the local Beat Goes On because it might be worth more?”  She didn’t think much of her chances, but wanted to be sure.

“Sure, I’ll pop over and have a look,” I said.  “I can’t promise you anything but I can at least have a look.”

That was good enough for her.

“I bet I find a bunch of Lawrence Welk!” I joked to Tim Durling and Jex Russell.  You know the kind of record collection I mean.

Indeed, I did find Lawrence Welk in the very first box of vinyl.  I had a laugh and kept digging.  To everyone’s surprise, I found things that might indeed have been valuable, and they had no idea how it got into that collection.

First of all, she had a really nice stack of 78s.  Big Crosby was the first one I saw.  I have no idea on value of 78s, but this were stored well and all seemed in good condition.  It might have been my first time handling a stack of 78’s like that.  They are thicker than an LP, and much heavier.  They require a special stylus as well as a turntable that can go up to 78.  I used to have that equipment.  She even had a cylinder, whether Edison or a competing brand, that was out for professional appraisal.  So, this collection I was looking at had these formats:

  • LPs
  • 45s
  • 78s
  • Cassettes
  • 8-tracks
  • CDs
  • and one cylinder

Pretty wild scope.  The genres were all over the place, from easy listening and country (the usual suspects) to disco, jazz, oldies, and even progressive rock and heavy metal, as you’ll see.  This, I did not expect.

Then I spied an album called Egg.  Something about it jumped out at me.  I flipped it around and there were black and white photos of long haired guys jamming.  That struck me as out of place in this collection, so I set it aside.  Somebody looked it up, and it can sell for easily over $100.  Everyone seemed really impressed by my ability to sniff this out.  I am no expert, folks.  Not at all.  But it looked out of place, which is why I took a second glance.  It turns out Egg were an English progressive rock band, and the album was released in 1970.  Very surprising, but they felt that this one find justified me coming over and looking at their records, so I was happy.

Original price:  $6.99

I found some things I wanted for myself and made an offer.  I left with the following titles:

  • Guns N’ Roses – “You Could Be Mine” 1991 Geffen cassette single.  I own it on CD, but never on cassette.  Why not?  In this day and age of owning everything on every format, why not?
  • The Best Of ZZ Top 1977 Wea Music cassette.  A staple, but one that I somehow have never owned before on any format.  Stone cold classic compilation.
  • John Williams and the Boston Pops – Pops In Space 1980, Philips, made in Holland.  This contains music from some of Williams science fiction classics:  Superman, The Empire Strikes Back (which was brand new in 1980), Star Wars, and Close Encounters.  I haven’t seen this one before.
  • Oscar Peterson – The Trio – Live from Chicago 1961 Verve/1986 Polygram CD.  My second Oscar Peterson score this summer.  You rarely find Oscar in the wild, and never this one.
  • Johnny Cash – His Greatest Hits, Volume II 1971 Columbia 8-track.   This was the Cash album I grew up with in the car with my dad, albeit on cassette.  This cartridge is in great shape, and resides in a bright red shell.  This is my first red shell 8-track tape.

When I called my dad to tell him of my musical scores, he was surprised at the 8-track.  While he clearly remembers that Cash album, he asked me “Do you have anything that plays an 8-track?”  This is a common question that we collectors get.  No I do not.  I don’t have a way to play a Minidisc, a DAT, or a DCC either but I would love to have some in my collection.  My collecting desires are no longer strictly just to have music to play.  Now I collect music I can’t even play too!  Just to have a piece of history.

After we completely examined the collection and left some advice, I departed with my treasures.  Since we were in the neighbourhood, I decided to visit the old Toys R Us/HMV store.  There, I finally decided to pick up Iron Maiden’s Powerslave on vinyl, edging me closer to completing the 1980s collection.  Now, all I should need are the first two Di’Anno albums (I think).  Powerslave was $36 and hard to pull the trigger on, since I can distinctly remember a time when Sam the Record Man was swinning in new copies for $6.99 each, and that sticks with you.  I finally have it now.

A successful Saturday.  Time to listen to some music!

Retro is the word! 80s and 90s cassettes, cassingles and beyond with Dr. Kathryn, Jex and John!

Happy 50th episode to us!  This was a special episode to me.  Watching it back now, what made last night’s show really special wasn’t so much the cassettes.  Rather, it was the stories!  The memories came flooding back as we looked at piles of cassettes from ages past.  With Dr. Kathryn’s recently exhumed cassingle collection on hand, we were joined by Jex Russell and John T. Snow for a nostalgic evening.

  • Playing “Bad Boys” by Inner Circle at a fancy wedding.
  • Buying cassingles by Van Halen in Frankenmuth, Michigan.
  • The value of Bryan Adams’ live B-sides.
  • Collecting a rare Cult cassette box set with all the extras.
  • Bands that Kathryn has seen live and owns on cassette, such as Roxette and Rod Stewart.
  • A US version of a Def Leppard single vs. the Canadian.
  • Songs/version that are still exclusive to the cassette format.
  • Whitesnake every Christmas.
  • Collecting bonus tracks on cassette and throwing temper tantrums when the CD didn’t have the bonus track.
  • Summery memories of Bon Jovi, ZZ Top, Cheap Trick, Britny Fox and Poison.
  • Ratt, Dangerous Toys, “Digalog”, “Q-Sound” and more.

We also took a peak at Tri-Con in Kitchener, where Dr. Kathryn met members of the Degrassi cast, Rob Daniels, and some Mandalorians.  She had much praise for the Degrassi folks, and you’ll have to make sure you don’t miss this segment at the end.

Congratulations to Marco D’Auria, last week’s special guest, for the nomination of his film Mystique:  Standing on the Firing Line at the Canadian Independent Film Festival!  The DVD is on sale all February.

Stay tuned for John Snow’s “The Collection” starting February 20.

Bonus:  We unboxed the recent reissue of the rare Starchild album Children of the Stars (featuring Greg “Fritz” Hinz of Helix), and a recent Rock Candy reissue of Europe’s The Final Countdown with more bonus tracks than before.

Apologies to Facebook; the Streamyard streams have not been working on Facebook at all and their team is still looking into it.

See you again next week for Too Much Music Part 2!

Upcoming Schedule:

 

REVIEW: The London Quireboys – “Hey You” (1990 cassette single)

THE LONDON QUIREBOYS – “Hey You” (1990 Capitol cassette single)

A curiosity unique to cassette.  The UK 12″ single for “Hey You” included a live “Hoochie Coochie Man” on the B-side.  It and the 7″ single also contained the album track “Sex Party”.  You could get these same tracks on the CD single, but the cassette went with a different route.

The A-side common to all is of course “Hey You” from the hit debut album A Bit Of What You Fancy. It sounds classic from first crash of guitar. The Stones-y Faces vibe is immediately apparent, and fondly recalls the summer of 1990 when the need for such a sound heralded in the Quireboys and Black Crowes.  It was completely unlike everything out by Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, and Warrant.  Its refreshing reliance on slide guitar still sounds great in the speakers, but the rasp of singer Spike is its most defining trait.

The first B-side is the roudy “Sex Party” from the album.  The boogie piano keeps it kickin’ hard.  But then the cassette goes its own way with two additional tracks.  They are severely edited versions of hit singles “I Don’t Love You Anymore” and “7 O’Clock”.  Both fade out prematurely just as the songs are getting awesome!

The whole thing repeats on both sides.  The idea is to give the kids incentive to go out and buy the album next time.  Save your allowances and buy the album to get the full songs.  Such teases!  Just as Spike is telling us what time it is, adding that it’s also “time for the party”, the song fades and the side ends!

Can’t realistically rate something like this very high.  While the two full tracks are both awesome, it’s hard to justify buying this tape today as anything other than a curiosity.  The cassette still sounds good after 31 years though!

2/5 stars

Saturday Live Stream: 6:00 PM E.S.T – No Theme, Just Stream!

No theme, just stream!  Stuff planned for this week:

  • Oddball releases
  • New arrivals
  • Cassette singles
  • Coffee
  • Special guests
  • Pants optional

Weather and technology permitting, I may do this live stream outdoors.  Change of scenery!

6:00 PM Eastern Standard Time.  Facebook:  Michael Ladano

 

REVIEW: Mötley Crüe – “Dr. Feelgood” (1989 cassette single)

MOTLEY CRUE – “Dr. Feelgood” (1989 Elektra cassette single)

I have a long history with collecting singles.  Record Store Tales Part 4: A Word About B-Sides was all about the discovery of exclusive songs, at the Zellers store in Stanley Park Mall.  The whole point in buying singles, to me, has always been acquiring rare tracks or rare versions of tracks.  Still, if you bought a single and the B-side ended up being on the album anyway, as long as it’s a good song, I don’t complain too much.

Back in 1989 we were all eagerly awaiting the release of Motley Crue’s forthcoming opus, Dr. Feelgood, their first “sober” album and first under the guidance of Bob Rock.  The first single was the title track, and on the little speakers of my radio, it crushed.  In Getting More Tale #656: The One They Call Dr. Feelgood, I had this to say:

“I tried to catch ‘Feelgood’ on the radio and record it, but failed. Instead I bought the cassette single at the local Zellers store. Considering how many tracks the band worked up for Dr. Feelgood, I hoped they would be releasing non-album B-sides. They did not. Instead, ‘Feelgood’ was backed by “Sticky Sweet”, probably the weakest album track.”

This single, bought at the very same Zellers store in the very same mall, is still fun to hit ‘play’ on.  The old familiar cassette test tone precedes the song, a fun nostalgic reminder of the old days.  Then the riff caves in your skull, with no “Terror ‘n Tinseltown” intro.  I suppose if you were a stickler, you could say this version of “Feelgood” without “T.n.T.” was exclusive to the single.  It was pretty easy to separate the two on CD though.

Although certainly overplayed today, I can remember what we all liked about “Feelgood”.  The heavy groove was refreshing and quite unlike other bands getting airplay that summer:  Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, and Aerosmith.  Then there’s Mick Mars’ solo and talkbox bit, still enjoyable.  I’ve probably heard it 1000 times, but “Dr. Feelgood” still plays good on air guitar.

Flipping the tape, the B-side “Sticky Sweet” perpetually sucks.  Motley Crue had a couple unreleased tracks to choose from that would have been better than “Sticky Sweet”, such as “Rodeo”.  But as revealed in an old issue of Hit Parader, some of those tracks were initially earmarked for a followup album called Motley Crue: The Ballads.  Regardless of the rationale, “Sticky Sweet” stinks like a poo stuck to the bottom of your shoe after you’ve already tracked it into the house.  In its favour, it does have a neat funky instrumental section in the middle, but that can’t save a shitty song.  And the thing is, even if an unreleased B-side was never in consideration, why couldn’t they have just picked a better album track, like “Slice of Your Pie” or “She Goes Down”?  Maybe they knew they were sitting on an album with five singles so they started by rolling out the shittiest B-sides?

Whatever!  The A-side may be timeless but the score must account for the atrocious B-side.

3/5 stars

 

#356: Cassingles

Aaron at the KMA and I have coordinated posts today about cassette singles!  If you can’t get enough, click here for his!  Geoff at the 1001 has also thrown his hat into the ring, and you can see his cassettes here!

RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale #356: Cassingles

Cassingle (noun): “cassette single”, a musical single release, usually consisting of two songs, on the cassette format.

A couple years ago, my parents found in their basement something I had lost and presumed would never see again: an old shoebox full of my old cassette singles!  This was especially valuable to me, because a couple of those cassettes have exclusive tracks on them that have never been released on any other format.  Helix’s “Good to the Last Drop” is one such single.  Van Halen’s “Right Now” is another.

The shoebox also contained my prized cassette copy of the Sonic Temple Collection by The Cult.  Buy cassette one (“Fire Woman”) and you can send away for the box.  Buy cassette two (“Edie”) and you get three Cult cards.  Buy cassette three (“Sweet Soul Sister”), and you can send away for a Sonic Temple pin.  (Which I still have, just not handy for a picture.)

There are some tapes that I know I’m missing.  They include three by Warrant:  “Cherry Pie”, “I Saw Red”, and the horrid “We Will Rock You”, which I probably sold at garage sales when I temporarily disowned Warrant in the 1990’s!  I could also swear that I owned Extreme’s “More Than Words”, but I don’t know what happened to that one.  I’m not worried about it since the B-side remix track is being reissued on the deluxe edition of the Pornograffitti album.  Maybe I gave it to Crazy Thunder Bay Girl!

Check out what remains of my cassingle collection below.

REVIEW: Poison – Flesh & Blood (remastered)

FLESH AND BLOOD_0001POISON – Flesh & Blood (1990, 2006 Capitol remaster)

Ah, Poison!  The band everybody loved to hate!  In spite of that, Poison made a couple pretty good albums.  Flesh & Blood is the best of the original C.C. DeVille era, and probably their most successful.  It spawned a huge headlining tour that also produced a double live album.  Flesh & Blood was also their “get serious” album, although in that regard it was only a partial success.  The idea was to write and record more mature music and lyrics, something that C.C. was opposed to.  He saw nothing wrong with the glam-slam-king-of-noize direction that they started on, and maintained that Look What the Cat Dragged In was their high point.  He saw the introduction of blues influences as diluting the Poison sound he liked.

That’s all bullshingles.  Flesh & Blood is the best thing C.C. has done, and is second only to Poison’s Native Tongue album with Richie Kotzen.  C.C. was still far from a great guitar player, but on most tracks it’s his most accessible and least annoying playing.  (On others…well, we’ll get there.)  Take the opening track “Valley of Lost Souls” for example (preceded by a jokey answering machine tape called “Strange Days of Uncle Jack”). “Valley” rocks heavy with integrity and an edge that Poison hadn’t displayed before, and C.C. throws in a lot of tasty, toffee-like strings.  His soloing will never be considered virtuoso, and his tone has always been thin and annoying, but never has C.C. generated such guitar thrills as he does on this album.  (Most of it.)

FLESH AND BLOOD_0002

I’m sure that producer Bruce Fairbairn steered this ship with a firm hand.  His stamp is all over Flesh & Blood:  from weird segues to rich backing vocals, this is a Fairbairn production through and through.  Fairbairn was known to be a taskmaster, and I’m sure he worked C.C. (and the whole band) to the bone.  The title track, “(Flesh & Blood) Sacrifice” has his patented, perfectly arranged vocal stamp.  The vocals are layered and almost Leppard-lush.  When we’re talking about a singer like Bret Michaels, you know it’s not going to be Pavarotti.  The credits don’t list additional singers, but there are some names in the tail end of the thank-yous:  Paul Laine, for example.  Laine was a Vancouver local, where Poison recorded the album.  Why is he being thanked?  I think it’s safe to assume that Laine and others helped out in the backing vocals department.  Anyway, “Sacrifice” is the second excellent song in a row.  Say what you like about Poison as performers, they wrote some fucking good songs too.

“Swampjuice (Soul-O)” is some surprisingly good C.C. acoustic blues.  Actually not bad at all — but just instrumental filler.  As is the next song, a massive huge hit single: “Unskinny Bop”.  The song is awful, the lyrics worse, and C.C.’s solo is like razor blades.  I mean that in a bad way.  Total shit.  Garbage.  “Let It Play” verges on filler, but it’s good enough.  It’s simple but memorably melodic.  Better is the timeless sounding single “Life Goes On”.  I liked this bombastic electric ballad then, and I still do now.  Michaels is a limited singer, but this is a damn good ballad.  I give Fairbairn credit for the backing vocal hooks.  The first side of the album closes on the forgettable but adequate hard rocker “Come Hell or High Water”.

Kicking off side two with the single “Ride the Wind” is a no-brainer.  This song sounds like its title.  It sounds like a car song, a rock and roll ode to the thrills of the road.   I’d rank this easily among Poison’s best hits — top five.  “Don’t Give Up an Inch” is filler, but “Something to Believe In” was another huge single.  Hearing it again today, I find it hard to dislike.  I wanted to, but I can’t.  I think Bret wrote some pretty good lyrics here.  The part about his best friend who died “in some Palm Springs hotel room” is about his bodyguard, a guy he was really close to.  It’s pretty heartfelt, and the piano ballad still stands up as well as any by Aerosmith from the same era.

Some boring C.C. pedal steel guitar leads into “Ball and Chain”.  It’s a pretty good rock boogie, but the second-to-last song “Life Loves a Tragedy” is the best track on the album.  Even better than “Ride the Wind” but similar in vibe, this song shoulda woulda coulda been a hit.  The soft intro fools you into thinking it’s a ballad.  It’s not.  It’s a ballsy rocker with another Bret Michaels lyric that you’d call more mature.  “My vices have turned to habits, and my habits have turned to stone,” sings Bret.  “I gotta stop living at a pace that kills, ‘fore I wake up dead.”  Not poetry really, but a hell of a lot better than “Unskinny bop bop, blow me away.”  The chorus kills, as does the whole song.  Another top five Poison track in my book.

The album ends on a pile of shit called “Poor Boy Blues”.  This may well be the worst Poison song of all time.   Of all time!  C.C.’s playing is so pointless, so brutal, so annoying, that I don’t know why somebody didn’t pull the guitar out of his hands.  Wah-wah alone does not a solo make!   This song stinks so bad.  Dammit, Poison, you’re not a blues band fer fuck’s sakes!  This song should have been axed, there is no reason for it to still exist.


POISONThe 2006 remastered edition has two bonus tracks.  The first is a disappointing acoustic version of “Something to Believe In” from the “Life Goes On” single B-side.  It has new lyrics (erasing one of the things I liked about the song) and absolutely pointless guitar playing by C.C.  His solos and melodies go nowhere.  It’s just a guy playing all kinds of notes on an acoustic guitar that don’t have any direction:  There’s no tension, no release, no hooks.  This version sucks.  Lastly there’s “God Save the Queen”, an instrumental demo version.  This too sucks.  More directionless soloing from C.C. over the Pistols riff.  That’s all it is.

Interestingly the remastered edition has two changes that I’ve noticed.  The cover is the “censored” version without the extra blood on the arm.  This is a US import, and I think in Canada we had the other cover originally.  Second, the reprise of “Strange Days of Uncle Jack” that closes the album is missing.  Normally this would fade in from the end of “Poor Boy Blues”.  Now, “Poor Boy Blues” ends with a few seconds of silence where that reprise used to be.  I don’t know why they did that.  I’m assuming somebody mistakenly used a version of the song from a compilation album.

I know I’ve been hard on Poison in this review, but this is actually a great album.  Take away “Unskinny Bop” and “Poor Boy Blues” and I would call it pretty damn solid.  As for the remaster?  Disappointing.

4/5 stars (for the album)