This photo gallery (entirely music related I assure you) is by request of Jason, who is interested in getting these toys. Below you can see the the following pieces:
Hasbro Transformers Universe Hound and Ravage set.
Reprolabels sticker set.
Dr. Wu DW-P02 Duel add-on kit (silver gun and missles)
MGS-03 add-on kit (darker guns and missiles)
How are they music related? One of them transforms into a cassette, while the other one plays a wicked guitar solo on the electric axe, as you can see below! Also note Hound’s cool light-piped eyes. Nifty eh?
RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale #353: Hotter Than Hell
Grade 8 was a shitty year. I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of that shitty school. I had it up to here [holds hand right below chin] with the bullies and teachers. I had a fight with a bully at the beginning of the year, which at least kept that one off my case for the rest of it. That was also the year I got mono! The only thing that really helped get me through was rock and roll, and especially Kiss. Way back in Part 3 of Record Store Tales, I acquired Hotter Than Hell on LP, in very bad condition. I almost immediately traded it away for a bunch of other records and swag, but not before dubbing a copy on a terrible Scotch blank tape. As explained in great detail in Part 3, I grew to love Hotter Than Hell despite its flaws. Sonically, it was arguably Kiss’ worst album. I was listening to a scratched LP via a 120 minute Scotch tape that was prone to stretch and warble. I had Kiss’ worst sounding album on the worst sounding format! Yet something about it kept drawing me back.
Sound issues aside, there’s no denying Hotter Than Hell is a powerful record. Perennial Kiss klassics such as “Got to Choose”, “Hotter Than Hell”, “Parasite”, and “Let Me Go, Rock and Roll” can be found right here. It also has one of Peter Criss’ best tunes (albeit written by Paul Stanley) called “Mainline”. I found myself immediately hooked on Peter’s raspy voice. I surmised that “Mainline” wasn’t a hit, since it neither appeared on Alive! nor Double Platinum. I couldn’t figure out why. “If Kiss have songs this good that never became hits,” I reasoned, “the rest of their albums must also be pretty good.”
Right after “Mainline” was another amazing song that I fell for: “Coming Home”. This Stanley ode to the road was chosen many years later as the opening track for Kiss’ MTV Unplugged. Back then, to me it was another classic that should have been a hit. The nucleus of the album became four key songs that I could not get enough of: “Coming Home”, “Mainline”, “Hotter Than Hell” and “Got to Choose”. Later on, “All the Way” expanded that list to five.
Those tunes kept me going. If I was having a rotten day at school, I could hum “Coming Home” to myself and feel better. For a French assignment, we had to record an introductory paragraph about ourselves, approximately 30-60 seconds long. We were allowed to do this with music in the background. I chose the opening riff to “Got to Choose” for mine. First chord — then, “Je m’appelle Michèle…” I talked for the instrumental part, and was finished before the opening line of the song. But I kept the tape running for a moment longer before I did a fade-out: “Baby, you know I heard the neighbors say…” Just so I could work a little bit of Kiss into my French class. I was probably the only one who noticed.
The bullies picked on me pretty hard in grade 8. I was assigned “flag duty”, which meant I was the guy who had to put the flag up every morning. Drawing attention to myself was never a fun thing in grade 8, and I had to do it every morning. Walking down the hall to the coughs of “Fag Boy” — a clever name derived from “Flag Boy” — was a daily torment. They also liked to make fun of my boots, which today would have been cooler than hell, since they were vintage, but then just added to misery. Thursdays were wood shop class, which meant a bus ride to another school downtown. That bus ride was without a doubt the worst part of each week. I was prone to getting sick on Thursdays, for some reason….
When I got mono (for real) I missed most of the end of grade 8, but not before being shamed in front of the entire class by my teacher. “Shame on you!” she said, because I picked the wrong school. We all had to choose which highschool we wanted to go to. We were usually expected to choose the Catholic school, but there was no way in hell I was doing that. You couldn’t have dragged me along with those kids, believe me. There was just no way. I chose Grand River Collegiate, which was closer. Plus my best friend Bob, who was two years older than me, went to that school. It would be cool to see him every day at lunch time. We never had any classes together for obvious reasons, but we conspired to get lockers side by side once. We had a great time in highschool. Those were the golden years!
Certainly better than grade 8. I’ve never told all of these stories publicly before. It is what it is, and all is certainly forgiven now. The interesting thing is how these experiences collided to really galvanize my love of that Hotter Than Hell album. Listening to it today still brings back memories of gym class, waiting for it to finally end, humming “Coming Home” to myself. And that, friends, is why such a terrible sounding record is so important to me!
In Getting More Tale #347.5: Days of Christmas Past, you may recall our good buddy Aaron sent me another Mystery Aaron Mail (M.A.M.) parcel. It finally arrived, several days behind schedule, but safe and sound which is the main thing. With Aaron’s encouraging “Give’r!” I tore into the packaging, to discover the treasure seen below.
Raise the Dead – Live From Wacken is Alice Cooper’s latest offering, one I had been excited to get! One thing you have to credit Alice Cooper with is changing up his setlist tour after tour. No two tours offer the same highlights, hits and surprises. At a glance, I can see this 2 CD/1 Blu-ray set contains the following interesting choices: “House of Fire” from 1989’s Trash, “Caffeine” from the recent Welcome 2 My Nightmare, the favourite “Department of Youth” from the original 1975 Nightmare, and oldies-but-goodies “Killer”, “Dwight Fry” and “Go To Hell”. This is rounded out by numerous covers, perhaps from Alice’s soon-to-be-unleashed covers album? “Break On Through” outta be good.
Finally this is Alice’s last release with Orianthi on guitar, who has since split to play with Richie Sambora. I’m glad she has been captured live in concert in hi-def on Blu-ray. Thank you, Aaron, for this gift! The 2 CD format means that I can listen to it in the car, and the Blu-ray gives me Orianthi in 1080i hi-def, according to the specs! There’s also a 20 minute interview and 5.1 surround mix. Gonna be a rockin’ Christmas if this is any indication!
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This last set of pictures is a Christmas gift to myself, from myself! I ordered this guy back on November 11, and he only just arrived today. His name is Ratbat, and he is the Decepticon fuel auditor. In the Marvel comics series, Ratbat emerged as a bureaucrat on Cybertron who eventually came to Earth and took leadership of the Decepticons, a title he held for 11 issues of the series. For this reason, and for the reason that he transforms into a cassette, he is always high on my collecting priority list. I have a Masterpiece edition Soundwave figure, and I had five of his cassettes. All but Ratbat. Ratbat was only available with a special black Masterpiece Soundwave figure called Soundblaster. Although I would love to, I can’t afford to buy the same toy over again in a different colour just to get Ratbat. So I figured I’d never get one.
My buddy Jason then suggested I check out some the sellers on eBay, selling KO (knock-off) Ratbat figures. Knock-off figures are exactly what the sound like. Somebody copied the mold and made their own figures. Some are shit quality. Some are much better. Ratbat is one of the figures. There are two flaws in the paint of the cassette, but I’ve bought official Hasbro and Takara items new out of the package with similar flaws, so I can’t that’s particularly troublesome. There was also a teeny tiny extra bit of plastic in the jetpack assembly that I had to lightly shave down in order to transform nice and straight. Again, this can happen with a KO toy, but it can also happen with official Hasbro toys too. Ratbat (KO) came with no box, but did come with a microcassette case, and only cost me $20 plus shipping from China. MP13B Masterpiece Soundblaster, the official Takara release including Ratbat, is “on sale” right now at Big Bad Toy Store for $129.99, plus shipping. I think I made a good choice. Here’s Ratbat with Soundwave and all his cassette buddies!
RECORD STORE TALES Mk II: Getting More Tale #344: Childhood Recording Sessions
When we were kids in the 1980’s, pre-internet, pre-downloading, the only avenue we had to share music with each other was taping. If a friend had an album you wanted, you could try to record it. For example my next door neighbor George had all the Kiss albums, on LP. All he was missing was The Elder. What Kiss albums I didn’t own myself (which was most of them) I gradually taped one by one from George. I’d write down the song titles and make a cassette cover. When George wrote down the songs, I couldn’t always read them. When he did get The Elder in ’86, he made a copy for me. For a little while, I thought Kiss had a song on it called “Escape from the Ish”.
One Sunday afternoon in ’85 I went over to his place with a 60 minute tape, intending to record Unmasked. George dusted off the LP, dropped the needle and hit “record”. At the same time, he also decided to play bass along to the whole album. Somehow, his bass bled through to the tape recorder.
I didn’t find an original copy of Unmasked for two more years. Until that time, all I had to listen to was my taped copy, complete with George’s bass “overdubbed” on top of Gene’s! If I think back and remember really hard, I can still hear in my mind how George kept playing through the song fade outs!
Other recording sessions were far more elaborate. When George acquired Kiss’ Animalize Live Uncensored on VHS tape, he brought it over along with his own VCR, so we could dub a copy, VCR to VCR. On other occasions I would bring our VCR over to my best friend Bob’s place, and record there. My parents hated it when I disconnected the VCR! My dad always seemed to fear we’d never get it hooked up properly again! Or that we’d lose the controller, or worse, break it. But then, if we were recording at my house, my dad would always walk in and mock the bands. “What’s wrong with that man?” my dad said of Bruce Dickinson. “He keeps on screaming as if he’s in terrible pain!”
Copying music improved greatly in the 1990’s. The durability of the blank tapes improved, and dubbing from CD was infinitely better than recording tape to tape. Because of the improvements in quality, the cassettes we dubbed in the 90’s are still playable. Still, there is no comparison in sound to a CD. Finally in 2001, I purchased my first CD burner, enabling me to create the best possible sounding copies of music.
None of those improvements in technology, nor the advent of the CD-R, swayed me from owning an original CD or LP. I may have had a burned copy of the Sultans of Ping F.C., but there’s nothing better than an original. Somebody could send me a CD rip of some amazing rare bonus tracks by bands I like, which is great…but not as great as owning the original.
Why?
I don’t really know. Certainly I have plenty of friends from every age group who are content not to own any CDs. They don’t need to own it in order to listen on an iPod. That’s not good enough for me. I want the whole experience. I want the cover art (on paper, not a computer screen), I want the liner notes. I want to file the new CD on my shelves in the right order, and then gaze upon my collection of a given artist. I like to handle the artwork, the CD, and take a hard squint at the pictures. It’s hard to explain. I can justify it by saying CD just sounds better than an mp3. And as good as CD gets, sometimes vinyl can sound even better.
Even though I don’t need them anymore, I miss the old days of the Sunday recording sessions. I miss the social aspects of friends gathering in somebody’s basement or living room to share and discuss and enjoy music (all of which I later bought, anyway). I miss that feeling of heading home with some new music to listen to, right out of a friend’s collection. But I don’t miss having only enough money to buy blank tapes, instead of originals. I’m much happier now with my collection of well loved physical, original music.
RECORD STORE TALES Mk II: Getting More Tale #335: Musical Archaeological Discovery!
A couple weekends ago, I had a chance to dig through some old boxes looking for musical memories. I found that, and a lot more.
I discovered a complete inventory of my entire music collection, that I had made as a kid. Most of it was on cassette. There’s no date on it, but thanks to my photographic memory of musical life events, I can easily date this to within +/- a couple months. Let’s have a look and figure out when I made this inventory.
The first thing I noticed was there are 24 CD titles on this list. I received my first CD player for Christmas of 1989. That would place this list a fair bit after Christmas of ’89.
In the section for “Videos”, I only had four VHS titles at the time: Kiss, Def Leppard, Judas Priest, and Warrant. I know I received a Faith No More (You Fat Bastards) video for Christmas of ’92. So we’re well before December 1992.
Back to the CD section. The presence of the Led Zeppelin box set helps me narrow it down further. I know I received that box set for Christmas of 1990. I also remember getting Slaughter’s Stick It Live tape on December 28th of that year, and that cassette is on this list.
I distinctly recall my birthday in July 1991. I received Alice Cooper’s Hey Stoopid on cassette (thanks sis), and Van Halen’s For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge on CD (thanks Bob). Neither are on this list. Therefore, this was made sometime between Christmas of 1990, and July of ’91. Just over six months. To narrow it down as tightly as possible, I need to look for purchases that I know I made in early 1991.
In April or May of ’91, I can remember getting the new Mr. Big (Lean Into It) on cassette, and the first Raw M.E.A.T CD. Neither are on here. Most definitively however, missing on this list is David Lee Roth’s newest, A Lil’ Ain’t Enough. I know I got that for Easter of 1991. Now we’re really close. Somewhere between January to March of ’91!
I know I bought the uber-rare cassette single for Helix’s “Good to the Last Drop” really early in 1991. Snow was still on the ground, and that cassette single is not listed here. Therefore: I conclude that I created this list after Christmas 1990 or early in 1991, but probably during Christmas break 1990! I would have had the spare time to work on it during break.
Some additional observations:
1. Apparently I hadn’t yet discovered alphabetizing.
2. The dollar values printed represent approximate guesses as to retail value. I later made a revised list that replaced this with 5 star ratings, but I have not as yet found that version.
Here it is, now preserved digitally forever! And look — I only owned one CD single!* Final interesting note: Most of the items on this list are long gone. I’ve upgraded to CD on all the cassettes and only kept a handful. I have most of the vinyl, but I gave away my ’45 of the Wrestlers. I have some of the CDs, but others (Kiss, Bon Jovi, AC/DC, Van Halen, Slaughter, Maiden, Motley Crue) have long been replaced by remasters.
* Iron Maiden’s “Holy Smoke”, bought at Dr. Disc in the autumn of 1990.
RECORD STORE TALES Part 264: Garbage Removal Machine
The year was 2004. I had always been an active on various “social media” but back then the place to be was called IAM. Iam.bmezine was the full name, but it was where I spent most of my time, and where some of the journals that appear here today originated.
I had joined an IAM book exchange group and specified that I was interested in collecting Stephen King. Someone sent me The Stand and I was hooked, so I wanted to get more into the mythos. This girl from Thunder Bay, Ontario sent me a few more as well. A little bit later, she moved to Waterloo for school. We met at William’s coffee pub to exchange some more stuff. She was wearing a Motley Crue – Girls, Girls, Girls T-shirt.
One thing led to another and we ended up going out. She came over to my place and we watched a couple rock movies. She was into all things “retro”, so I decided to give her all my old cassettes. Everything that was duplicated on CD, I gave to her. All my Iron Maiden, all my Judas Priest, Motley Crue, Van Halen…everything that I had on disc. She gladly took them, and I gladly took back my storage closet.
In return, she gave me her copy of Motley Crue’s DVD Lewd, Crued & Tattooed – Live. “It sucks,” she said. “Vince Neil sucks now. I was so disappointed.” I didn’t have the DVD, and it wasn’t especially high on my radar because yes, the Crue had been sucking as of late. However the presence of Samantha Maloney on drums (filling in for the terminally ill Randy Castillo) meant that it was the kind of one-off that I enjoy owning.
One of the better performances
A couple of weeks went by with Thunder Bay Girl, but my guard was up; my spider senses were tingling. I felt like she was obsessing a bit. A bit later she told me that the reason she sent me the Stephen King books in the first place was just to contact me; she went out to a used bookstore, bought a couple Kings and sent them to me. I know, not exactly So I Married An Axe Murderer behaviour, but there were other factors that made me start to feel uncomfortable. When she asked me what I wanted for my birthday that year, I decided to pull the plug before it got too far.
I did the manly thing, and dumped her by email. I know, I know. All I can say in my defense is that I was right. My spider senses detected something alright. Although it didn’t happen immediately, she eventually exploded like a powder keg. We chose to “remain friends” (not a good idea) but friendship soon turned to a hateful obsession. She exploded on me one day — something about a ferret? Eventually she moved back to Thunder Bay, and I never heard from her again. I like to think that she took my tapes with her, and dumped them in a Thunder Bay landfill out of pure spite. Although I wish I had kept some of those cassettes, I’ve decided to maintain a safe distance from Thunder Bay at all times. It’s the only way to be sure.
Here’s Uncle LeBrain with a dose of reality: This DVD sucks. Truly. It sucks. The New Tattoo album wasn’t great to start with, but this is awful. The awfulness can be boiled down to one factor: Vince Neil, the laziest singer in rock. Here, a breathless Neil does his thing: lets the crowd sing half the song, skips every other word, and weasels his way out of the tough notes. Set-list wise, this relies heavily on the Motley hits with very little deviation. Which is good, can Vince even remember the lyrics to obscure tunes?
So embarrassing is Vince Neil’s performance on this DVD that I have only managed to watch the whole thing twice. The main reason to own it is Samantha Maloney. Diehard Crue-heads will remember that drummer Randy Castillo had replaced Tommy Lee, but himself had to sit out the tour due to the cancer that eventually killed him. Ex-Hole drummer Samantha Maloney, the first and only girl to be in The Crue, took his place and did admirably well. It all came to an end when she hooked up with Nikki Sixx. You knew these guys just could not be in a band with a girl.
A second reason for me to keep this in my collection is “Nobody Knows What It’s Like To Be Lonely”. This is an audio-only track, and also the first-ever official release of one of the earliest Motley songs. To date, the only official release. It was recorded in May 1981 at the same session that yielded Motley’s first single “Toast of the Town” / “Stick To Your Guns”. I believe the song used to be known as “I Got the Power” and was written by Nikki Sixx for his old band, London. It does piss me off that this audio track is only on a DVD, not a CD, but I’m sure those more tech-savvy than me can rip it to an mp3 file.
Turn Up The Music! is a compilation by EMI Special Markets. Translation: You know those cheap CDs that they sell at gas stations? That’s what this is. It has no booklet or liner notes, it runs at a brief 35 minutes and the tracks are not remastered. However I really enjoy this CD and here’s why.
Back in ’89, I got this album on cassette. I remember going to a pharmacy store to get acne medicine with my parents and this tape was sitting in their cheapie bin. Yep, I was so cool there at the pharmacy store with my folks buying zit cream. I remember seeing a girl there from my highschool on this particular trip. I was so embarassed. I always remember that detail when I listen to Turn Up The Music!
This was my first exposure to pre-“I Can’t Drive 55” Hagar. To this day I don’t know a lot about this stage of his career but mostly because those albums are hard to find on CD, not because I don’t dig the music. I lost this tape a while ago (probably in a Thunder Bay landfill), but it’s pretty easy to find the CD version online.
I know “Trans Am” and “Plain Jane” come from the Street Machine album (one that I do have). I love these two songs. I wish Van Halen covered “Trans Am” live, that would have been something. Eddie would have gone bananas on those cool guitar slides. “Plain Jane” is just a really cool Seger-esque song, based on piano and acoustic guitar on the verses. The bass line bops along and Sammy sings awesome.
“Iceman” is kind of an odd duck. It tries to be atmospheric and bluesy but it really only sizzles during the chorus. “Run For Your Life” was my second favourite song after “Plain Jane” and I am really glad to finally have this song back in my collection again. It’s really 70’s in this cheesy/cool Journey way. In fact Steve Perry sings on it.
“I’ve Done Everything For You” is also from the Street Machine remastered CD. This song, I am 110% certain, was not on my cassette original. It could be this is an extra track. Anyway, this pop rocker was a major hit for Rick Springfield later on, apparently.
Side two of the original cassette began with “Rock N’ Roll Weekend”. This is a cool fast rocker, another one that Van Halen would have sounded awesome covering. The lyrics are your typical “Been working hard all week, now the weekend’s here and it’s time to party lyrics.” And that’s fine, there’s always time to party. If I feel like listening to something more serious I already have all the Dream Theater albums….
“Turn Up The Music” is a fun rocker with a nice tuneful riff. There’s some nice Seger-ish piano backing this one too. “Urban Guerilla” is one I never liked much for its awkward riff. As far as hard rock goes, this is as heavy as Sammy’s ever been. This one is pure heavy metal, fast and brutalizing. If only it had decent production. Unfortunately the song is tinny and the hi-hat is maddeningly annoying.
“Love Or Money” is a fast over the top rocker, catchy and memorable as hell. The final track is also quite metallic in delivery, “Reckless”. Aside from the overused title, this one is loaded with charisma. It works great as a compilation closer. An organ riff keeps it grounded inside a solid pocket.
So there you go, 10 songs, a full 7 of them being worth owning to me. Maybe there is a better compilation of this material elsewhere, I really don’t know. I do own the really cool Essential Red Collection but most of these songs are not on there. There is a CD called The Best of Sammy Hagar that has 7 of these songs, but my second favourite song “Run For Your Life” isn’t on it.
Proceed with that in mind, and purchase accordingly. The original cover of the cassette, by the way, was the same picture as the Danger Zone album cover. Weird!
Welcome back to WTF Search Terms. Below you will find 10 phrases that people typed into a search engine like Google, which somehow took them to mikeladano.com. The 10 terms below have one thing in common: I have no idea what the answers would be. If you can help out these people, post your knowledge in the comment section, or these may forever remain unsolved mysteries! Enjoy.
ritchie blackmore private life
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michael jones’ ebay wealth
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make a wooden cassette box
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what id the dimond sign minr when jazz and lebrain put it up in the
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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!
Last year for Record Store Tales Part 145, I dug up some of T-Rev’s old mix tapes, complete with custom artwork. T-Rev always put such work into his tapes (sequencing and art included, he even numbered them as a series!), so it is a pleasure to give you this gallery of three more of T-Rev’s Tapes!
Rockers love to discuss “mix tapes”, so I invite you to comment on your own personal picks. Led Zeppelin? Metal Tunage? What would you do?
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