I haven’t been writing much lately, which is a choice I made in order to avoid the burnouts of the past, and to focus on giving 100% to 50 Years of Iron Maiden. Doing this series has been a healthy and rewarding experience.
In the last week, my town has been hit with roughly 70 centimetres of snow. I had not seen snow like this since the 1990s. It’s quite remarkable! On Saturday morning, Jen and I went out on a junk food run to stock up for the holiday weekend. (The junk food lasted about 36 hours.) We noticed that a lot of the snowbanks were taller than the humans on the sidewalks. That was before we got hit with another 40 cm.
But here I am, sitting indoors and just marvelling at the winter wonderland. That is where we break this story down into a mental health detour.
I had to find a new counsellor again, which sucks. I really like my counsellor now, but she has another maternity leave coming, and it is hard finding a good match. I did however find a new counsellor earlier this month that I think is going to work out. I am optimistic.
Perhaps because of that optimism, I had a revelation the other day. It goes back five years, to when Covid began.
We were all forced to adapt. We were all stuck indoors. Some of us had to work from home. Everyone bought webcams. Anyone that could work from home during that time, probably did at least once. Now, working from home policies are pretty standard.
And thus it occurred to me: storms like this don’t have as big an impact on me anymore, because I can just stay home and work. That is a game changer as far as my winter disorder goes. I don’t have to go fight the roads just to get to work alive. I can stay home, and eat pretty much anything I want to. That’s thanks to Covid. So there you go. Perspective. Five years ago I said I’d have loads of perspective. There’s one angle.
Of course, for me, working from home recently meant a drop in creativity. One of the cardinal rules of working from home is: “Thou shalt not use your creative space as your work space.” It’s just not good for mental health to mix the two, but I have no choice. So, as a result, when I’m done sitting in this chair for eight or nine hours of work, I don’t choose to sit in it again for an hour or two more. It’s not healthy.
I will say one thing, which is that I bought a disappointing Rod Stewart CD this past weekend that I should have spent more time reading the sticker. You’re In My Heart: Rod Stewart with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Cool, Rod with a symphony. All my favourite songs like “Reason to Believe” and “You’re In My Heart”. New versions, I assumed. Unfortunately, I discovered it’s just another Drastic Symphony. Except for two new recordings, it’s just old Rod classics with strings dubbed in, just like Def Leppard. Disappointing!
So, writing hasn’t been a priority when I have this stuff going on, but not everybody watches YouTube so it’s nice to touch base like this once in a while. Hope you’re doing well.
I’ve been in isolation nine days. A positive Covid test and some weird symptoms have kept me house-bound, and of course Jen was only a few days behind me. She tested positive with symptoms about four days later. The true test of a marriage is if one can survive Covid isolation together, twice. I am happy to announce we are still married!
On Thursday January 23rd, I started feeling an irritation in my throat. I went home early. I recorded a 50 Years of Iron Maiden episode with Harrison and Melissa Nee, feeling absolutely wiped out by the end of it. I went straight to bed. I woke up the next morning knowing I would not be going into work. I felt stinky rotten, but without a cough or congestion. Just my throat, a lot of body pain, a foggy head and fatigue. I tested myself, and you know how that went down.
While it was longer and harder than my first fight with Covid, it never turned into anything serious. Fighting the fatigue was the hardest part. I started working from home on the Monday, putting in full days, but delaying my recovery by not resting enough.
My experience with Covid was not just different physically this time. Mentally, the toll was different.
During my first round with Covid, I was dreading working from home, but gradually warmed up to it. On my second round, I was looking forward to working from home, but tired of it quickly. My lack of enthusiasm might be due to feeling worse this time, but I spent my time differently. I didn’t listen to any music, at all, while I worked. I didn’t do any easy chores like laundry while I worked. All I did was cook the odd meal. A lot of Spam. I’m into Spam now.
I didn’t do anything creative for that whole time. Physically, I didn’t want to continue sitting in that chair (as comfy as it is) any longer once my work day was done. I did do a quick video with Dan Chartrand on both our YouTube channels – check it out.
It was just a bummer of a time otherwise, as Jen and I learned how to navigate her personal space clashing with mine! The monotony of the food too; that was starting to wear. We ordered in a lot. I had a McBreakfast one day (I ordered so much that it did last the full day). We tried ramen for the first time. We got a pizza. The days blur together. After I wound up each work day at 4:30 PM, I hung out on the couch for a while, but was starting to feel tired by 5:30. It was a struggle to stay awake, and I didn’t want to go straight from work to bed. It is hard balancing what one wants to do, with what one needs to do.
Because I wasn’t able to do much creatively (and also because our next guest also has Covid), Harrison and I paused 50 Years of Maiden. I think I’m ready to jump back in, but already the show schedule is daunting.
Today I’ve sat down and listened to music properly for the first time in nine days. I chose the debut by Rose Tattoo, a band we’ll be talking about very soon on Grab A Stack of Rock. But I’m nervous; nervous that I won’t be able to keep up or maintain my motivation. I have the Contrarians, Grant’s Rock Warehaus, and Grab A Stack all in the coming week.
Feels good to be negative though. I plan on going music and Lego shopping today. Otherwise taking it easy. Writing this is my creative endeavour for today. Let’s enjoy the rest of it. Allons-y!
Yes it is true. Mike is down with his 2nd round with Covid. He is now in week two, still positive.
For this reason (and we’ve been planning for it), tomorrow’s episode of Grab A Stack of Rock will not be Maiden Japan as promised. We just need some extra time to build up a few more episodes in the bag before we play that one. Stay tuned…tomorrow will be fun anyway.
RECORD STORE TALES #1144: “In The Summertime” (2020 Hindsight)
Remember the summer of 2020? It seems so far away now. It was the “summer that wasn’t” for a lot of people who were quarantined at home during the first major pandemic in 100 years. I knew I would have a lot more perspective on it eventually. Hindsight is, as they say…20/20.
After that harsh winter (got severely sick twice, and don’t know if it was Covid at any time because tests didn’t exist yet), I needed a break. Then Premiere Doug Ford closed the beaches.
It wasn’t just the big city Toronto beaches that closed, but even our little private beach. It made little sense to us. Weren’t we safer outside? Even travel to the cottage was prohibited in 2020. Only “essential travel” was permitted. The idea was not to stress out-of-the-way hospitals, and prevent the spread of the disease. We all know how well that worked! At least I didn’t get Covid for three years (that I know of). This was the reason beaches were closed: to discourage travel.
Since we own property in cottage country, my parents used that as a reason to travel. Property must be inspected and cared for, especially after a winter like that. I used mental health as my reason. My wife and I needed the cottage or we’d have snapped here in our tiny little apartment. By the end of May, we finally made our first trip back up to Lake Huron. Nobody reported us, nobody judged.
We own a piece of property that is beachfront. There was no way we weren’t going down there. It was a cold May. There was nobody around.
We cherished every second we had at that cottage, even though we were alone and social distancing from any neighbour we ran into. That actually suited me fine. As a classic introvert, I really thrived during social distancing. Not shaking hands, not seeing people in person…sometimes, it felt like my own personal utopia!
Beaches started to open up in the spring, and with this came the onslaught of “Sooners“.
People weren’t going on holidays. Most of them were stuck at home. Instead of going away on a holiday, they instead made day trips to beaches like ours. My dad called them “Sooners”. Sooner: “a person settling on land in the early West before its official opening to settlement in order to gain the prior claim allowed by law to the first settler after official opening.” That’s what my dad dubbed the annoying beach-goers that crowded our little area in 2020 and 2021. There was “Man-Bun” and his two girlfriends, and a family of umpteen kids whose mom let them run around naked. Those were the memorable ones.
I’m going to take you on a slight detour here. Another thing that happened in 2020 was the temporary halting of many of our favourite TV shows and movies. YouTube began to seriously thrive. This is when my friend Uncle Meat introduced me to many new channels I had never heard of before. I began consuming the work of Todd in the Shadows by binge. One of his main features is a series called “One Hit Wonderland”. One of the tracks he covered in that series was “In The Summertime” by Mungo Jerry. It was a deep dive on what made the song a hit, and why Mungo Jerry never followed it with anything as iconic. I became obsessed with the song that summer.
My dad believes in asserting your territory, especially where Sooners are concerned. For him that meant sitting down on our beach chairs, ensuring nobody used them. For me, that meant singing out loud like we owned the place. There was more to it than just that though. I was genuinely just happy to have a beach to go to, and my childhood beach at that! So I sang, and I felt every single note in my heart as I reached up to touch the sun.
In the summertime, when the weather is high, You can stretch right up and touch the sky!
Jen joined in.
When the weather’s fine, You got women, you got women on your mind, Have a drink, have a drive, Go out and see what you can find.
Wait a minute…did he just sing “have a drink, have a drive?” 1970 was a different time for sure. Still, it sang well as we raised our voices in song. Nobody turned to stare. Everyone (and there were a lot of people!) stuck to their own groups.
Ahh, social distancing. Gotta love it.
The one and only flaw with our perfect afternoons of singing? I only had one verse of “In the Summertime” memorized. It got repeated over and over. Nobody noticed.
Now that things have returned to something resembling normal, the Sooners have gone. Social distancing is no longer necessary. I don’t mind. I still sing “In The Summertime” when I hit that water. I still stretch right up so I can touch the sky. I still think Mungo Jerry wrote a great song. Its corniness is its charm, but unless you’ve sung that song at the top of your lungs while enjoying a brief respite during a global pandemic, you haven’t experienced “In The Summertime”.
March, 2020: the world came to a sudden halt as the Covid-19 pandemic spread from city to city, nation to nation. We isolated in our homes and offices to keep our loved ones safe, and we waited it out. For bands, everything stopped. Gigs were cancelled, and recordings had to be done remotely from home. On the bright side, this resulted in some brilliant music from legacy bands. For the Arkells, it meant stopping all work on the next studio album (Blink Once) and separating for four months. At the encouragement of bassist Nick Dika, the band got down to their singer-songwriter basics with a series of stripped-down versions of the “greatest hits” (so to speak). Keyboardist Anthony Carone assembled the individual pieces into something cohesive, and Campfire Chords was born! The title refers to the “campfire test”: if a song sounds good done acoustically around a campfire, then it’s a good song. Bon Jovi have a similar philosophy.
Campfire Chords opens with a surprisingly somber “Knockin’ At Your Door”, which was more of an anthem in its single release. Souful backing vocals and pedal steel guitar gives it an entirely new feel. Although everything about the melody is the same, it feels like a new song.
Following this is a brand new song: “Quitting You”. This lovely acoustic country ballad is just a beautiful love song. Fiddles and acoustic guitars ring clean, while tambourines jangle in the background. “I thought of maybe quittin’…but there’s no quittin’ you.” Because it’s the Arkells, there are some cool “woah-oh-oh” singalongs too, because what’s a campfire without a singalong? An Arkells classic.
A second new song, “Years in the Making” opens with harmonica and a strong Max Kerman melody. This track later appeared on Blink Once in a vastly different arrangement. A true Arkells anthem, you can hear it on this stripped down version. It’s all about the melody, and then the hit of the chorus. The piano break in the middle is really nice.
One of their earliest hits, “Whistleblower”, is slowed down and intensified with soulful backing vocals and steel guitars. This one simmers, compared to the manic original. It has a different kind of intensity, but the tension is there. Another early hit, “Michigan Left” from the same album comes across really well acoustically. The “woah-oh!” chorus is intact, and though it’s slower, it’s just as uplifting. An even earlier song, from their debut album Jackson Square, called “I’m Not the Sun” comes next. It’s gentle and floaty, though the lyrics are dark. “So don’t let me be your guiding light, ’cause I’ll get you lost in the dark, I’m not the sun, there’s no guarantee, ’cause I burn out hard like a spark.” Returning to the present day, “Don’t Be A Stranger” from the Rally Cry album is a song that might be an improvement. Taking off the layers of polish, but leaving the string section in, it just breathes really smoothly now. It’s the same song, but it hits differently.
An absolute highlight of this album is the new version of “Comes to Light” from their best album High Noon. There’s a Bruce Cockburn feel to the guitars; quintessentially Canadian. This one just cuts clean through. The steel guitar is featured again, and the melodies shine. “And with my headphones on, as I fall asleep, you’re my barricade from intruding dreams.” While the original is hard to top, this one has magic to it that can’t be defined. A masterclass in re-imagining.
Another Arkells classic, “A Little Rain (A Song For Pete)” takes us to church! The Arkells go gospel, and do it like it’s second nature! The rich choir-like backing vocals lend it an undeniable authenticity, but Max Kerman absolutely nails it too. Not bad for a guy who, by the lyrics, “never tried religion”. A little rain ain’t bringing him down goes the chorus, and that feeling is washed upon the listener like a baptism. Pay attention to Nick Dika’s expressive and lyrical bass work.
Back to Rally Cry, the anthem “Eyes on the Prize” is stripped down to just acoustic and voice. Though it was written pre-pandemic, one lyric rings way more true from the perspective of 2020: “I think I’m done with the motherfuckin’ hiatus”! The choir returns with Max on the chorus, and a harmony chimes in, but the music remains mostly simple acoustic guitars and soulful singing.
Revisiting the early years again, the light and airy “Book Club” is a delight. The backing vocalists enhance its soulful feel, which was always there on the album version. Following this is the slow and moving “And Then Some” from Morning Report. One of the Arkells most beautiful love songs, it falls in the category of “personal favourite”. The original has a real pulse to it, and this one is quite different in that way, but there’s also a newly acquired softness to it. “Kiss Cam” from Michigan Left works well, given the lyrics. “This campfire won’t last forever, the Hip have only wrote so many songs.” Sadly true. “We can’t stay up north for the summer, head back to the city, find a job.” Can relate! Speaking of personal favourites, Jen loves “My Heart’s Always Yours” in particular. This acoustic version is transformed into much softer fare, like a dreamy morning anthem.
A steel guitar-laden version of the anthem “Hand Me Downs” is a back-end highlight. Then “11:11”, already a brilliant single in its own right, is enhanced by the acoustic treatment. This is another one that may in fact surpass the original. At the end of the day, it all comes down to personal taste. If you have more attachment to one version of another, that’ll colour what you prefer.
Finishing out the CD are the anthem “Relentless”, which always had a soul/R&B flavour. Here it simmers intensely like hot pavement. The closing track is the immortal “Leather Jacket” from High Noon, known to laymen as the “pay phone song”. Steel guitars take us out to the country and that’s where the album goes as it rides off in the sunset like some kind of Canadian cowboy driving a dusty pickup truck through the gravel. This is tagged by a lovely singalong (with horns) of the main hook, “You call me up from a pay phone, and I said who the fuck uses a pay phone! There’s a crazy New Orleans outro like you’ve never heard, and that’s it!
These kind of “re-imagining” albums (if you will) can be so hit and miss. I mentioned Bon Jovi earlier. Remember that atrocity they did, This Left Feels Right? It was so, so wrong. The Arkells made no such mis-step here. They key is…they didn’t have to take a left turn. They just needed to turn to a different side of their sound, and focus in like that for a whole album. The result is an acoustic album that has depth, variety, and in some cases, some versions that could top the originals.
You can’t get “Quitting You” anywhere else; to date this is its only release.
I stated in previous chapters, my battle was nothing. I never got sick beyond a sore throat, and feeling really, really tired. I do still have a recurring headache. For those curious, this is my vaccination history:
Pfizer
Moderna
Pfizer
Jen had the exact same combo as me, but she suffered a lot harder. She’s on the upswing now, but her symptoms included sore throat, mild cough, lots of body pain, congestion and fatigue. I believe I brought it into the house from work.
I wanted to write this Covid journal to keep people informed, let them know what Covid is like. Fortunately this journal was a bit of a bust! No complaints from me.
RECORD STORE TALES #1052: The Covid Chronicles Continue
I’ve stopped testing. Jen is still suffering pretty hard.
I worked from home for most of this week, which both sucked, and didn’t. Because I didn’t have to do the usual stuff – shower, pack a lunch, drive, wait – I had a lot more free time at home and got some extra creative projects done in the mornings which I like to do.
I also explored un-ripped parts of my music collection, as seen below. The “G” section was easy to access, and so I grabbed a stack of discs that I had not played in over 10 years. Much much longer in some cases:
Peter Gabriel – Shaking the Tree – Sixteen Golden Greats
Marvin Gaye – The Very Best Of
Girl – Pure Greed
Giuffria – Silk & Steel
Roger Glover – Butterfly Ball
Glenn Gould – Goldberg Variations – 1955 version
Glenn Gould – Goldberg Variations – 1981 version
Glenn Gould – Beethoven/Liszt Symphony #6
Green Bullfrog Sessions
Rediscovering Glenn Gould was a delight; I especially like when you can hear him humming or singing along to his playing. Green Bullfrog was funky and cool! Blackmore really wailed and I could absolutely hear that it was Ian Paice on drums. Butterfly Ball was surprising fun. Giuffria was way, way, way more Journey-like than I remembered. Sounds like they were really going for a Journey vibe, especially with David Glenn Eisley’s vocals. Peter Gabriel and Marvin Gaye were fun re-visits with a lot of great songs. But the real surprise was Girl, featuring Phil Lewis and Phil Collen. I loved hearing Collen’s trademark shred, but Lewis is an underrated singer. Girl was the favourite of this batch. Sorry Beethoven.
Back to Covid. Jen is suffering, not gonna lie. I have zero symptoms, but this morning I did cough up some phlegm. Kinda like you often do several days after a bad cold. Except I never had the bad cold.
Jen’s experienced dizzy spells and general, all around malaise. She wishes her nose would stop running.
I experienced a troll on the “Let’s Get Physical” Facebook group who commented that Covid wasn’t real, when I posted my Covid listening list. I told him to “eat shit” and blocked him.
Back to work, and I am tired. A couple hours of work are enough to make me feel it. Legs are tired too. Maybe because I’ve been on my back all week. I have no cough, nothing wrong with my lungs…I got lucky.
Jen is less lucky. She has the symptoms. A bottle of Sprite tasted like fish to her. And I feel bad because it was clearly me that brought it into the house.
I only go one place. Work and back. I’ve been nowhere else.
RECORD STORE TALES #1048: Covid Chronicles 3 – Sharing is Caring
Day Three
Fatigued and restful, I did need more sleep. What I did not need was to pass this Covid on to Jen. Our pharmacist advised it was inevitable that I would, given our small living space.
She has a scratchy throat, a cough, and now her sense of taste has gone completely out of whack. Sprite tastes like fish.
I am grateful that I have not gotten worse, but I feel terrible about this latest turn of events.
I slept for hours! Lost track of how many hours. In the morning I was still testing positive. Jen is still negative. In the afternoon, my sore throat went away, leaving me only tired and achey.
Monday will be a sick day from work. I am hoping to go back on Tuesday. Only the test will tell.
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