My pal Craig Feehas returned from Jerry’s Records in Pittsburgh with a bag full of goodies for me!
Craig strongly recommended a two to three day stay at Jerry’s Records should I ever find myself in Pittsburgh. That’s how much vinyl they have. He also told me that they had a whack of old Van Halen picture sleeves. I said cool, bring ’em back to me! So he did, every single one that they had. He also picked up a promo Helix 12″ single for “Wild in the Streets” on red vinyl! That and some Triumph 12″ promos, plus a surprise that I think tops them up. I think the real treasure may be David Lee Roth’s “Stand Up”, from Skyscraper — a 12″ remix vinyl single that I was previously unaware of! Pretty exciting huh? Additionally, the Van Halen “Best of Both Worlds” contains the live version from the Live Without A Net video on the B-side.
Total expenditure? $45 bones. Craig is a great shopper. Thanks man!
All of these will come in handy in the future, because they coincide with a couple different series ideas that I was already going to work on. Now, those series will be even cooler. Stay tuned.
I never would have heard the original version of this song (by Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis), if Craig Fee didn’t subject his listeners to it one afternoon. I’d never heard of PelleK before seeing this video of his cover. I know that he’s a Norwegian metal singer with a fantastic Justin-Hawkins-wide range. I’ve seen numerous YouTube videos, of PelleK covering a wide variety of songs. I guess when Ylvis went viral with their irritating but amusing video for “The Fox”, PelleK decided to take a shot at it, too.
Power metal style, of course!
I can’t help it, I’m addicted to PelleK’s take on this annoying novelty track! I don’t think I’d be exaggerating if I said that this has been played on somebody’s phone at least a dozen times during our lunch hour at work since it came out! “The Fox” works as a “power metal” version! Egad! And PelleK’s incredible pipes lend themselves to some hilarious interpretations of what the Fox does indeed say. I’m surprised how much I like the heavy guitars and drums on “The Fox”. I might have to play this in the car, windows down, down on King Street to piss the rapper kids off.
Even if that’s the best thing to come from PelleK’s version of “The Fox”, then it’s still worth:
Making these videos is a lot of work (a lot more than it looks like, thank you Winblows*) but it’s a labor of love.
Aaron and I did very well on Toronto Record Store Excursion 2013. We used modern technology, such as smartphones and GPS, to maximize our time. The weather was gorgeous (absolutely perfect) the whole day, and boy, did we buy a lot of music.
Sausagefest is an annual all-dude, all-meat, countdown of rock. Five of us from the old Record Store attended! This year, there were 110 songs (75 countdowns plus 35 “tributes”). #1 was Max Webster — “Toronto Tontos”. Other artists who made the countdown included Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Kiss, Queens of the Stone Age, Tool, Rush, and Tenacious D among others. For the history of this event, check out Record Store Tales Part 30.
Thanks to Jeff Woods and Craig Fee for your contributions — above and beyond the call of duty!
And of course, thanks to Tom our host, and Uncle Meat, Seb and Dr. Dave for the music.
Uncle Meat will be providing me with the full track list. Stay tuned for that post, too!
While a certain percentage of readers know me as “LeBrain” on 107.5 Dave FM, my first radio appearance was actually a decade ago. Back in the late 90’s/early 2000’s, we used to get interview requests from a lot of students. Some were in business, some were in broadcasting, but they all wanted to talk to someone at the record store, usually the owner since he founded the whole operation on his own.
In this case, I was approached by a broadcasting student. He asked me if I’d like to do a radio interview over the phone regarding Napster, downloading, and how that was affecting the music business. Normally in the past all interview requests were passed on onto the owner. I thought that I could handle this one myself.
Even though I had serious doubts about the health of physical music sales at the time, I put on the brave face. There were still positive things happening.
“We haven’t noticed a decline in sales,” I said. “At least not a major one. The industry is responding to these concerns. I fully agree that $20 or more is too much to pay for a CD. I can tell you that if anybody is getting rich off the price of CDs, it’s not independent chains like ourselves. The markup we make on new CDs covers the shipping of the product to us and our overhead, and that’s about it.
“As I said though, the industry is responding. They’re putting bonuses inside the CD that you can’t get by downloading it off Napster,” I continued. “You’ll notice lots of bands, System of a Down for example, putting bonus DVDs or CD-ROMs in the package for virtually the same price.” Metallica too. Lars has obviously learned something from all this: Inside the then-new Metallica CD you got a free full length DVD plus a free concert to download on mp3.
I wasn’t optimistic about the future of physical CD sales, but I didn’t let on. I’d heard the buzz from customers and even staff members, downloading more and more, where they used to hunt for songs in brick-and-mortar stores. Some staff members of a certain generation refused to download on principle, but we were a shrinking group.
“Since I sell used discs,” I continued, spinning it positive, “a lot of the downloaders are selling off their collections to me. For us it’s turning into a winning situation since I have more, and better, stock than 5 years ago.”
The interview aired a day or two later. As it happens my boss happened to hear the interview and liked it. Although it might not seem like a big deal to all readers, I was just proud of myself for taking the initiative and doing it myself. He was surprised to hear the interview, since I hadn’t told him about it. I was confident in my experience and communication abilities, and I wanted the opportunity.
It wasn’t the last. The next one was a TV interview, for the local cable access channel. I don’t know if my boss ever saw that one, but he wouldn’t have liked it as much – all my facial piercings were visible! The idea of a dude with a labret stud and nose ring representing his store on TV might have been too much for him to handle!
TOM GREEN – Inside & Outside the Box – The Tom Green Show: The Complete Series (2005 VSC)
As longtime LeBrain readers know, I was named King of the 4-O’clock 4-Play by Craig Fee on Dave FM. I won a lot of stuff on that show. One of the best things I won was a pair of tickets to see Tom Green at Crysalids Theatre, 9/22/11 with my best buddy Peter. Tom was great, it was a celebration of the true spirit of stand-up comedy and he stuck around to take photos and sign stuff with everybody afterward. I don’t think Tom Green gets enough respect for being an innovator as a comedian. That’s why I felt inspired enough to write this review.
The most important thing to know about Tom Green: MTV ruined Tom Green! The MTV years, although peppered with some genius sketches such as “Undercutter’s Pizza”, was not at all what the original Tom Green Show was about.
This 3 disc set comprises Tom Green’s entire Comedy Network shows. In other words, the good stuff. The weird stuff. The offensive stuff. The stuff that Jackass ended up ripping off (particularly Bam Margera). Best of all though, this is the pre-fame stuff. Tom Green could still run around downtown Ottawa without people knowing it was for a TV show.
You will see herein:
* Tom throwing all of Glenn Humplik’s clothes out of a plane in an evil double-cross.
* Tom burning Glenn’s shirt.
* Will Ferrell proclaiming that he hates Glenn and wants to punch him.
* Tom turning grape juice into pee (for science)!
* The dead raccoon.
* Tom demonstrating how a bus cannot move if you place your face on the bus.
* Repainting his dad’s car with a huge portrait of two naked women (the “slutmobile”).
* “Scuba Hood”. He robs from the poor (fountains in malls, apparently) and gives to the rich (banks).
* Hanging his painting, “Tiger Zebra”, in the Ottawa Art Gallery, and then defacing it.
* and much, much more….
What you won’t see:
* You won’t see any bums on Swedishes. That’s MTV stuff and not even half as good as this earlier stuff.
What I still like about the Tom Green show is that it is seldom mean spirited. He picks on his friend Glenn a lot, which I can’t help but think that Kenny Hotz ripped off later on. Everything else was done in this pseudo-naive childish fashion, and that is why I can watch The Tom Green Show over a decade later and laugh like the first time I saw it. This DVD for me has rendered obselete all of his old VHS tapes that I collected religiously. That stuff is on here, and it’s as fresh as ever.
Trevor’s in the habit of texting me whenever he sees something that I may want. Which is more often than I can afford, as it happens, so I have to pick and choose! I just received another box of goodies from T-Rev last week. Inside I found the contents below:
Gotta love picture discs eh? I’ll never play that Ozzy EP (all songs are also on his Prince of Darkness box set) but it sure looks cool. (Look at Jake E. Lee! Oh, Jake.) Didn’t even know it existed. That Grim Reaper one, I’d never seen the album cover before. Never even knew what it looked like! Sure love that title track though. And I’m well on record for loving the Rage For Order LP by Queensryche!
Also in the box was a rare 12″ single by Kim Mitchell. You know, the guy who teased your brains with Max Webster, and then your taste buds with “Go For Soda”.
Trev and I are both Kim and Max fans, but undoubtedly he’s the bigger fan than I am. So it was with utmost gratitude that I accept this record: “Go For Soda (Syphon Remix)” / “Love Ties”. This was from his own personal collection. As far as I know, neither of us have seen another copy. I spoke to my buddy, that guy Craig Fee who works at that radio station Dave FM, and he’d never heard of it, let alone encountered it in his vast travels.
Anyway, Trev found this one, back in the record store days! I don’t know when or where but maybe he’ll pop in with his remembrances! But this is the kind of thing we lived for. Finding something rare, cool, and previously unknown.
There’s no credit for who did the remix, essentially an extended version. The song has a different intro and is beefed up from 3:26 to 4:59. It’s a UK import, from Bronze records. Mitchell’s stuff is released by Anthem over here in North America. Bronze released Motorhead and Girlschool records in the 1970’s, I wonder if they commissioned this remix themselves.
So thanks Trev for another treasure. This is the kind of thing that Trev was prone to finding. I recall he had an etched Megadeth picture disc, and he also somehow scored me a double Bon Jovi 12″ single with 3 rare live tracks.
Must be the keen eye of a skilled Record Store Guy! I salute you sir.
Even though half a decade has passed, sometimes I still get recognized from the CD store today. Just two weeks ago, I was at a lunch with some friends of my wife. One guy recognized me. “Do you still work at the CD store?” he asked as I said hello to everyone. He was an old regular. Not all regulars still recognize me. An older gentleman, Charles, my best classical customer, didn’t recognize me when he bought classical discs from my garage sale last summer.
Today, I tend to get recognized not for my face but for my name. Rather, my nickname: LeBrain.
I never mentioned how that handle came to be. After winning my umpteenth 4 O’clock 4-play on 107.5 Dave FM, Craig Fee dubbed me with that name. “Mike Ladano and his massive brain…his massive LeBrain!” The nickname stuck, and that is how I became LeBrain. Next thing you know it, we had an entire “Stump LeBrain” week where I guested at the station for a week, and a full month (“LeBrainuary”) of my own 4-play quizzes.
I was first recognized in person by the owner of the local UPS store, while picking up a parcel. “Are you that guy from the radio?” he asked me. Turns out he was a fan. He’d listened to all of LeBrainuary in his store.
I was also recognized by some of the younger chaps at Sausagefest, who thought my voice was familiar. “I know that voice…is that LeBrain?” they said.
I buy a lot of stuff off eBay (you’ve seen much of it here on the blog!), and the girl at my local post office now knows me as LeBrain. She is always excited when my parcels come in. “What’s in this one?” she’ll ask.
“Oh, that one is a rare Maiden 12” single,” I’d say.
“Cool! That’s awesome!” One time, she knew one of my parcels had arrived immediately, because the seller had put a Kiss sticker on the box. I walked into the post office, and she said, “I know which parcel is yours!” with an excited tone in her voice. She explained that she heard me on radio earlier as LeBrain.
So, to Post Office Girl: Sorry, I don’t even know your name. I would like to dedicate this blog to you, and my 15 minutes of fame!
mikeladano.com 