gi joe

#1214: The Great Outdoors

RECORD STORE TALES #1214: The Great Outdoors

Minor revelations continue to hit me in my 53rd year around the sun.  As I toil away over a hot keyboard, hammering words into the ether while Dennis DeYoung asks me “What you doin’ tonight?”, I realize something.

One reason I love summer so much is that I love working outdoors.  I always have.

Of course, I use the word “working” in the creative sense.  I don’t mean hard labor outdoors! Come on.

In my current actual job, I would work outdoors if I have the chance.  The one time I did work remotely from the cottage, it was too cold and wet to work outdoors.  Given the chance though, I will.

And given the chance, I write outdoors.  I film outdoors.  I animate outdoors.  This all began when I was a kid.

We had the best front stoop.  Oh, really it was nothing special.  It was just a concrete front stoop surrounded by driveway and grass.  But on that front stoop came the best childhood times.

Board games.  Creating drawings.  Inventing stories.  Playing music.  Eventually, hearing Maiden Japan by Iron Maiden for the first time.  Making videos.  Playing guitar.  So much went down on that front stoop.  Only meters away, on the front lawn, often unfolded great battles with GI Joe vs. Cobra.  Just more stories being invented.  It could have turned into a photostory if we had the digital technology then that we have now.

The backyard featured many more creative inventions.  More drawings, more games being invented and more stories being written.  Sometimes, even homework was completed back there.

During winter, I would go into hibernation and try to have the same adventures in the cramped indoors.  It was never the same.

I just had a memory.  In the summer of 1984, the hot new GI Joe figure to own was Zartan, the master of disguise.  Not only did he come with a slew of accessories and a small vehicle, he also changed colour in the sunlight,  Normally a light Caucasian skin tone, Zartan would turn a deep blue when exposed to sun.  Summer represented a short warm window when you could play with your GI Joe characters, and get full use of your Zartan figure.  This could not be duplicated indoors.  You had to use your Zartans in the summer!  Our front yard featured as Zartan’s home swamps for several consecutive summers.  (Especially a few years later when his brother and sister, Zandar and Zarana, were introduced into the toyline with similar colour changing features.)

Bob Schipper showed me how to make little garages for our Hotwheels cars.  We’d use twigs to build these little structures, and cover them with grass.  This eventually led to hut and trench building for our GI Joe figures.  Any base or headquarters set that Hasbro sold were not as useful to us as a handful of twigs and grass.  (Twigs with a “Y” shaped section were especially useful for building huts.)  We could dig trenches and have our figures man them with their weapons.  Any character with a bipod or tripod, such as Rock and Roll or Roadblock, worked even better in the trenches.

The only real drawback to playing outdoors was losing the small action figure accessories.  Another memory strikes.  Even younger, playing Star Wars in the front yard, probably 1978.  I lost my Sand Person’s gaffi stick somewhere in the dirt near this big birch tree in the center of our yard.  It was gone.  I imagined it would be shredded by my dad’s lawnmower and had to move on.  I utilized a wooden matchstick for the Sandman’s gaffi stick thenceforth.  Winter came.  A thick sheet of snow and ice concealed  the dirt underwhich the gaffi stick had disappeared.  Spring came, and in a funny twist, my mom found Sandman’s gaffi stick in the front flowergarden dirt.  I was ecstatic!  But this only lasted a short time, as I promptly lost it again, this time permanently.

Another summer, I made a fleet of vehicles using virtually every single brick in my Lego collection.  It started with this one cool tank and grew from there.  It is miraculous that no Lego bricks were permanently lost or shredded on the front lawn, as that is where their battles unfurled.

Sure, we played catch, threw a football, kicked a soccerball and thumped on a volleyball too.  Those aren’t the things I’m drawn to remember.  Throwing a baseball seemed more like the same thing every time.  Meanwhile, my creative adventures, either with pen & paper or action figures, were always memorable.

I wasn’t just “playing”.  Stories were being told.  Established characters were used, true to their fictional biographies and specialties.  Tangents were played out that originated in existing media. Original ideas and settings were placed into the mix and a story was enacted, often with a free direction but with certain plot setpieces pre-planned.  Perhaps I would want to incorporate a new toy or character, and so I would gear the story to their introduction or feature role.  There was so much more going on than just playing with toys.

I sit here now, as the Styx album concludes, and typing some final thoughts into my laptop.  I do this as a cool late summer breeze provides a perfect comfort, and the greens and blues that surround me feel soft and calm.  I’m just geared this way.  Put me outdoors and let me create.

It’s what I do.

 

 

 

#1182: The Legendarium of George

RECORD STORE TALES #1182:  The Legendarium of George

Every neighborhood has a legend.  While in my own mind, I’d like to think that Bob Schipper and I were the legends, we were far too normal.  Oh sure, we were quirky, but we were not unique enough to be legends.   In our neighborhood, there was only one kid that was an absolute legend, and of his own making.  He was the obligatory “older kid” that had all the records, all the pornography, and reigned as the ultimate outcast.  That neighbor was George.

We lived in a relatively new subdivision.  When my parents bought their house, it was practically new.  Only one family owned it before.  Next door to us, George’s family had been there the longest.  Though he would only have been four years old, George always said he could remember when I was the new baby next door.

George was a dick from when he was just a kid.  He was also the ultimate neighborhood geek.  He had the big glasses.  He had the center-part.  But he was an enigma.  Even though he was most definitely a geek, he was also a braggart.  This probably came from his age, being the oldest kid on our street.  He was also one of the first kids to acquire a record collection, which meant there was often a reason to have to spend time with him, besides the times he’d just invite himself over.

His family was what you’d call dysfunctional today.  He never really had a chance, but George couldn’t be trusted.  While he could be sweet, he started young as a bad apple.

In one of my earliest memories, I was in my basement playing with Lego.  I built a colourful airplane.  I brought it outside to show George, and his two friends Todd and Sean.  “Make it bigger!” they egged me on.  I raced back inside and added another layer of bricks and brought it back out to show them.  “Bigger!  Make it even bigger!”  Eager for approval, I ran back inside and added another layer of multicolour bricks.  I leaped up the stairs and out the back door to show them again.  “Add more!  Keep adding!” they advised, and so I went back inside and added more bricks.  This went on approximately five times total.  The final time, I showed them my massive and impractical airplane, and George smashed it.  Laughing, they stole my bricks as I ran inside in tears.

Indeed, George soon earned a reputation as a thief.  In grade school, he was caught stealing Play-doh.  It became a well-known neighbourhood fact.  “George is a stealer!” said Michelle across the street.  It was like this black mark upon his house.  After he was caught, we didn’t see him around for a while.  He laid low.

Eventually the status quo returned, and George resumed joining the rest of the kids on the street in various activities.

We had a school with a baseball diamond and a tennis court nearby.  Two baseball diamonds in fact.  One summer afternoon, we were playing catch, but not on the diamond.  We were just playing in the schoolyard.  Someone threw George the ball; he ducked, and it went through the school window.

“Oooh George that’s your fault!”

“No it isn’t, you threw it too hard!”

“You should have caught it!”

We were all eager to throw George under the bus for that one.  We all felt he had it coming.

George would always bring two cans of pop with him when we went to the baseball diamond.  If you were thirsty, though, you didn’t bother asking George for a sip.

“These are mine for my diabetes,” he would always answer.

One of our weekend activities was playing “Pop 500” on the baseball diamond.  I don’t remember the rules, but the idea was to hit the ball as far as you could.  There was a regular group of us that played.  They included Bob Schipper, his brother John, George and his friends Todd Meyer and Scott Peddle.  It was well established that Bob was the best athlete in that group.  That wasn’t in dispute.  He was the biggest, strongest and fastest.  But George had his own ideas on how we ranked.

“Bob is the best at Pop 500,” he told me one afternoon.  “Then me, John, Todd, and you and Scott are in last place.”

He sure did think a lot of himself.  It seemed like he always had to be the best (or second best) at something.

Back to the Lego, when we were younger, George discovered this cartoon called Force Five.  It was a North American version of a few Japanese anime series.  Bob and I had never seen it or heard of it, but George was raving about this cartoon.  He built a Lego robot based on the show, but it was really shitty.  The arms and legs were just skinny little twigs that didn’t move, and it had a gun where its…well, where its dick would be.  Bob and I critiqued it fairly, but negatively.  However, we did take inspiration from George, and built our own robots.

We re-convened on my back porch with our robots.  Ours were cooler, had some movement and most importantly, didn’t have a gun for a penis.  (Oh, don’t worry, we’ll be talking about a different kind of “Love Gun” soon enough.)

George’s critique back at us was also in the negative, but for unexpected reasons.

“You see, yours are based on the idea of ‘robot’.  Mine is based on Force Five.”

Always had to be the best at something, to the point of basing the contest upon a show that neither Bob or I had heard of.  Sometimes it was hard to like George.

He was not the giving type, though he was always happy to show his younger neighbours his Playboy magazines.  I can distinctly remember one afternoon, we were out on the sidewalk, burning stuff with a magnifying glass.  I had an awesome plastic magnifying glass that could really burn.  For George though, burning holes in leaves and newspapers wasn’t entertaining enough.  He brought out a Playboy and encouraged us to burn the nipples.  That might have been the first pair of boobs I ever saw.

His young obsession with pornography put my parents on alert.  I think they considered George the neighbourhood pervert.  Indeed, he was the one who would introduce, shall we say, new terminology to our vocabularies.  He was the first one who had porno videos.  He would often talk about girls and sex, and at my age, I would have rather talked about Star Wars or comic books.

Because George was older, he was often first on board with many fads.  He had a Commodore computer early on, as well as a great collection of Transformers and GI Joes, including their accompanying comic books.  He had his own VCR, and he would borrow a second one from Todd to record porn videos.  And, he had a pretty killer record collection early on.  His favourite band was Kiss, and there is no question that without George, Kiss would not have been my favourite band.  When I discovered music, I spent a lot of time learning about Kiss, and other bands, from George.  He would bring his VCR over, and let me tape his music videos.

George’s big weakness was money.  He was stupid with money.  He would come into some money, and go to the comic store and buy a whole bunch of comics.  Then, six months later, he would get into something new, and sell off all his old stuff dirt cheap to fund his new obsession.  And so, he sold to me the first 24 or so issues of GI Joe: A Real American Hero for something like 50 cents each (except the early issues, which were a couple bucks).  This included the super rare first printing of issue 2, which I still have.  Unlike George, I kept every single thing I bought from him.  I still have everything.  This included G1 Optimus Prime, and a ton of early GI Joe figures and vehicles.  I have the GI Joe “MANTA” sailboard, which was mail-order only.  These things are priceless today.  He sold them to us for a few bucks.  Every time we came into some money, from allowance or chores, we could go over to his basement and buy a GI Joe toy.  This went on for a few weeks until he eventually sold everything, to buy records.  Because records were his new big thing.  Until CDs.  But let’s not jump ahead.

When George got into music, Kiss were his favourite band followed by Iron Maiden.  He quickly became a know-it-all.  He would play a tape, and try to stump us.  “Who’s this playing?” he asked.  We’d never heard the song before.  “I don’t know, Black Sabbath?”  He’d smirk and go, “NO, it’s Uriah Heep!”  This went on and on, to an annoying degree.  Bob and I decided to get our revenge and stump him instead.  Bob had recently acquired a cassette called Masters of Metal Vol. 2.  This compilation included a cool song called “Balls to the Wall” by a band called Accept.  “Who does this sound like to you?” asked Bob of me when he got it.  “It sounds like AC/DC to me,” I answered, considering the similarity between Brian Johnson’s grit, and Udo’s.

A plan was hatched.  We were going to put George in his place.

And so, in my back yard, gathered around a boom box, Bob challenged George to “name that band.”  Masters of Metal Vol. 2 was cued up to track five on side one:  “Balls to the Wall”.

George was quiet for the first minute of the track.

Then, “Watch the damned!” screamed Udo Dirkschneider from the speakers of that boom box.

Immediately George answered, “AC/DC”.

“No!  It’s Accept!”  exclaimed Bob in victory.

“Sign of victorrrrryyyy!” sang Udo behind us.

Bob and I stood up and high-fived in our own sign of victory.  George immediately tried to justify his mistake, by saying my stereo wasn’t very good quality, and that was the reason he got it wrong.  He certainly knew AC/DC when he heard it, he claimed, but my boom box was too cheap and crappy to tell the difference between AC/DC and Accept.

Sure…

Though George was seriously into music, as were Bob and I, there was one guy on the street that was miles ahead because he was in a band.  Rob Szabo is talented singer/songwriter today, but I remember when his favourite bands were Motley Crue and Stryper.  Rob had started playing with Peter Coulliard down the street.  He had even written and recorded two songs.  The second one was called “The Stroll”, and I can still hum it today.  George desperately wanted to be in that band.  He wanted to be cool.  He wanted to play in front of girls.  And Rob’s band needed a bassist.  George would hang out with Rob, watching him play, and Rob was kind enough to show him a few things on guitar.

George sold more of his stuff, and saved some money.  Soon, he had enough to buy a brand new bass.  He decided to surprise Rob one day by showing him.

“Look what I have!” he grinned.  “Now I’m your bassist!”  Only, George couldn’t play.  Rob was horrified.  He didn’t want this.  He was serious about music.  He also felt terribly guilty, because George bought the bass specifically because Rob needed a bass player!  For two weeks, George was technically “in the band”.   Rob made a copy of his two-song tape for George.  I was there when George played that tape for the girl he liked.  We were outside on the sidewalk, and George had his ghetto blaster in hand.  He played the first tune.

“That’s us!” he said.  “That’s my band.”  He wasn’t on the recording at all.

Like a kid who didn’t know how to break up with his girlfriend, Rob took a while to tell George he was “out” of the band.  He was crushed, but to his credit, he didn’t give up.

George kept practising.  Gene Simmons was his favourite bassist, followed by Steve Harris.  George would often bring his bass and amp outside to play, so he could be seen and heard by the neighbours.  Desperate to look cool, George brought his bass over to my house and plugged in on the back porch.  Then, he’d be back to “Guess this song” again, trying to stump us.  “Guess this song from the bassline!”

Durm durm durm durm.  Durm durm durm durm.

“Uhh, I dunno, ‘Shout It Out Loud’?”

“No, it’s ‘Love Gun!’”

Bob and I hated that game.  We may have schooled him on Accept, but he was relentless with the basslines.

Most of them were Kiss anyway.  He had a growing Kiss collection.  He would frequently come home from Sam the Record Man with new Kiss albums.   There was a point when he only needed two:  Hotter Than Hell, and The Elder.  There are good stories about each, but the main thing is that I actually got Hotter Than Hell before he did.  I had acquired it and Kiss Alive!, my first two Kiss albums, in a trade with Ian Johnson.  I gave him my sister’s Atari 2600 cartridge of Superman and got the two Kiss albums in return.  She was angry with me, but today accepts the importance of that trade to me.  I still have that copy of Kiss Alive!  As for Hotter Than Hell, I immediately phoned George and leveraged it in another trade, for a Walksman, a Black Sabbath cassette of Paranoid, an Abbot & Costello record of Who’s On First, and some Iron Maiden 12″ singles.  I definitely came out the winner.  That copy of Hotter Than Hell was brutally scratched.  But, I was now well on my way to having a rock music collection.

I taped most of my Kiss off George as I began my collection.  The annoying thing there wasn’t so much that I had to hang out with George to tape his records.  The annoying thing was that he would sit there and play bass as we were taping.  So, I had to politely compliment his playing, as he played along to the records I was taping.  The bass would bleed through, and therefore my dubbed cassette of Kiss Unmasked had his bass all over it!  I wasn’t able to get a proper copy of Unmasked for about two years, so for a long time, all I had was the cassette with George’s damn bass on it!  I can still hear it in my head, especially on “Naked City”.

George finished highschool, but I was just beginning.  In grade nine, I saw my first Battle of the Bands.  Rob Szabo was playing the regionals, and it was a big deal.  The grand prize was recording time at an actual studio.   I sat with Bob Schipper and Scott Peddle.  We were there to support Rob Szabo’s band, Over 550, but also to heckle George.  He had joined a band called Zephyr.

George was really rocking out.  He leaned way, way back as he played his bass.

“Don’t fall over George!” I yelled.

“You suck George!” shouted Bob Schipper.  Scott had his own comments that he yelled at the stage.  We thought we were absolutely hilarious.  It was our revenge for all the stupid bass he made us listen to in the back yard.

George eventually got a job at Long John Silver, a nearby seafood restaurant.  He was memorably disciplined for “finding a faster way to cook the fish,” but that was his main gig.  He would leave early in the morning, walking down the street alone.  He was notorious for singing on his way to work, with a Walkman and earphones.  George was not a good singer.  Not in the least.  My sister and I took to watching him from the front window when we saw him leaving for work.  We’d laugh in hysterics at his horrendous, off-key caterwauling.

The best example of this had to be one time we heard him singing Kiss.

He started his walk silently.  He was already halfway down the street when he raised his fist in the air and shouted “Alright! Love Gun!”  Then he proceeded with the off-key chorus.  “Love guuuuuuun…looove guuuuuuuuuuun!” he bellowed.  Somewhere in the distance, a dog answered his howl.

It was absolutely hilarious.  If there was such a thing as cell phone cameras back then, you can be guaranteed that I would have recorded it.  It was a moment, for sure!

When he was old enough to get into bars, he acquired his very own beer belly, which he showed off with his short T-shirts.  He got a perm.  With his big glasses, it looked even more hilarious than it would have on its own.  He wore studded wristbands and assorted metal jewelry.  He looked like an actual parody.  He used to show off this one photo of him with a bunch of strippers at a strip club, as if it were a trophy.

He was always talking dirty.

“Hey guys.  Wanna hear something cool?  I was getting out of the shower the other day, and I had a boner.  I hung a towel on it.  Pretty impressive.”

“What, a tea towel?” chided Bob.

Unfortunately, George’s problem with money was genetic.  After two and a half decades in the same house, they had to sell it and move.  He moved around a lot, and then eventually we lost track of him completely.  There were rumours he was in Orillia, or Windsor.

One day in 1995, I came home from work to find a message on my answering machine.

“Hey Mike, this is George calling.  I just wanted to tell you, I just bought all the new Star Wars Power of the Force action figures.  Call me.”

I could hardly believe it.  We hadn’t seen this guy in years and he was still up to his old habits:  Going all-in on the latest thing.  I’m sure by 1997, he had sold them all at a tremendous loss.

I didn’t call him back, but kind of regretted it.  Over the years, curiosity got to Scott Peddle and I, as we Googled and searched.  There was no sign of George, anywhere.  It was as if he had vanished without a trace.  Scott and I made jokes about how George was probably plotting his revenge against us somewhere, but the truth is, we spent more time telling “George stories” than anything else.  Because he was a legend.  A total legend.

Eventually, Facebook reunited us.  It was as if none of the past ever happened.  Nothing need be said; we were friends.  Perhaps for the first time.  As for George, he was more into Star Wars than ever.  He started a fresh collection of Star Wars Black Series action figures.  He read this blog, and commented on it.  But the sad ending to the story is that George died young, before he could even see The Force Awakens in the theater.

George passed on Boxing Day, 2014.  He was 46 years old.  He went to a party the night before, came home, and never woke up.  It is strange to think that George was always older than us, but now he will always be younger.  He went far too soon.  We reconnected as friends, but we learned that we are only immortal for a limited time.

We may talk shit about him to this day, but Scott and I toasted George when we went to see The Force Awakens together.

“Cheers, George.”  It was a moment.  He would have loved to see Star Wars back on the big screen.

We talk trash about him, and we make fun of him, but I guess he really became our friend.  He did earn every bit of shit that we threw his way.  It was always deserved.  I mean, he stole Bob’s brother’s bike.  (We know, because he put it in his garage, and his garage didn’t have a door, so you could see the bike from the street.)  He stole Lego from me more than once.  (We know, because I had a rare 4×3 clear windshield slope that disappeared one day and re-appeared in his collection.)  He stole Lego from Bob.  But, he let us tape his records and videos.  He taught us about bands, albeit in the most annoying ways.  Maybe when we were kids, the better word would have been that we were “Frenemies”.  That word didn’t exist back then.  When we reunited as adults, we became friends for real, though so briefly.  I’m not sure if George had a happy life.  He always had a smile, but he lost his family fairly young, and never married or had kids.  He was a loner.

But he was a legend.

 

#1121: A Look at the New CD Section at the Old Toys R Us Store [VIDEO]

 A sequel to #1119:  The Olde Toys R Us Store Sure Has Changed…

 

RECORD STORE TALES #1121: A Look at the New CD Section at the Old Toys R Us Store

Lo and behold!  CDs have joined their vinyl brethren at the Toys R Us Store!

They are filed with the same lack of attention and care, but they have arrived.  Deluxe and super deluxe editions?  Yes.  Deleted items?  Also yes.  Value?  Sometimes?  The prices were scattered from deals to ripoffs.

Pricing is a problem across the board, but keep in mind, they did beat the Beat Goes On across the street on some vinyl pricing on last visit.  It’s hard to tell if some prices were real or a mistake.  On vinyl, the new Beatles single, for example, on black 7″, was $32 bucks.  The same price as their cheapest Iron Maiden long-player.  They wanted $130 for their Whitesnake Still Good To Be Bad box set.   Other boxes, like Thick As A Brick by Jethro Tull, were moderately priced in the low $30s.

Joining the CDs were DVDs, Blu-rays, and TV series box sets.  They had picture discs and collector’s editions.  I just hope the section continues to grow, and improves in execution, instead of withering on the vine.

For a detailed look at everything I scored at the Toys R Us music section, enjoy the short video below!

 

 

#1032: 1984

RECORD STORE TALES #1032: 1984

The day before my entire world changed forever was December 25, 1984.  The day before I discovered Iron Maiden for the first time.  December 26 1984 would alter the trajectory of my life forever, but just as memorable was the day before.  The infamous Christmas Day when I received the GI Joe Killer W.H.A.L.E. hovercraft from my parents.

My parents kept up the “Santa” charade for a few years longer because my sister was still young.  Our Christmas tradition was that after we went to bed, mom and dad would get our “fun” gifts (the toys and games) out of the attic and leave them around the tree from “Santa”.  They were unwrapped and ready for us when we woke up in the mornings.  Truly, the happiest mornings of my life were waking up (always early) and turning on the lights to see what treasures awaited us.  Atari games, GI Joes, Transformers, and more.  Christmas of ’84 was the year I knew I was getting the GI Joe hovercraft from “Santa”.

I could not sleep, a problem I still suffer from today.  On that Christmas Eve, I decided it wasn’t worth trying to fall asleep.  So I laid there in bed, waiting for the parents to go to sleep and turn off the lights.  Eventually they did.  I’m not sure how long I waited after that.  Ten minutes?  Fifteen?  An hour?  At some point in the wee hours of the morning I got out of bed, went downstairs, and turned on the lights.

There it was – the Killer W.H.A.L.E., the big item up for sale that year and the star of two issues of the Marvel comic.  It came with a pilot figure named Cutter, an essential member of the Joe nautical forces.  I ripped open the box and began assembling. What a beast of a vehicle it was! It had two elevating side cannons, two missile boxes with four missiles in each, two manned machine gun turrets, a rack of depth charges, an escape motorcycle, and a launchable water sled for covert operations.  On the pilot’s upper deck there was room for two Joes including Cutter.  Below the opening top hatch was room for several more passengers.  Fully loaded with the two gunners, you could carry 10-12 Joes into battle.  At the back, triggered by a hidden button, you could spin the massive fans.  In the front, a ramp opened up so your Joes could take the beach and save the day.  It was a complex build with lots of parts and stickers and windows.

There arose such a clatter that my dad came downstairs to see what the hell was up.  He was shocked to see me there with my hovercraft at about 1:00 in the morning.

“Santa came,” I said stupidly with no better excuse.

He left me to assemble my new hovercraft and I tried to keep it as quiet as possible.

What a Christmas.  Could that have been peak Christmas for me?  The next year I got a dual tape deck, but I didn’t wake up at 1 AM to open it.  Considering the extreme early morning, the epic gift, and the transformative Boxing Day, that could indeed have been peak Christmas.  Music would slowly begin to dominate, changing things forever, but leaving memories just as sweet.

#889: The Dreadnoks

RECORD STORE TALES #889: The Dreadnoks

I’ve always had trouble letting go.  Even though rock music was my true obsession, there was some overlap.  Even  into grade nine, I still bought GI Joe comics and figures.  It was always hard letting go of an obsession.  My “favourite things”, in order of discovery were:

  1. Star Wars until its natural end in 1983-84.
  2. GI Joe/Transformers from 1984 to 1986-87.
  3. Rock music from 1984 to present.
  4. WWF Wrestling from 1985 to 1990.

You can see how the evolution of this worked.  A GI Joe figure was in the same scale as Star Wars, but with far more articulation well suited to an older kid.  The first wave of figures even featured real-world accurate weapons.  They were a natural step for a kid still wanting that action figure experience, but geared for someone older.  Transformers went hand in hand, since Marvel were producing a comic line to go for each.  Transformers resembled the die-cast cars that older kids (and adults) collected and displayed.

I discovered heavy metal music on December 26, 1984.  A  few months later, wrestling appeared on my radar with the very first Wrestlemania.  A lot of those guys looked like rock stars, with crazy costumes, long hair and male bravado.

As my interests shifted and evolved, so did my collections.  The Star Wars toys were put into storage in the crawl space.  I was given tape boxes, Christmas after Christmas, to store my growing music collection.  A typical Christmas would see me receiving some new tapes and action figures.  I’d sit in my bedroom reading GI Joe comics while rocking out to Long Way to Heaven by Helix.  I was a weird kid but I liked what I liked and didn’t much care.

The Joe characters diversified along with me.  In 1984 they got a little more outlandish with the introduction of Zartan and the Dreadnoks.  Zartan, the master of disguise, was a deluxe action figure whose skin colour turned blue in direct sunlight.  This gimmick only worked outdoors, which meant we played with Zartan outside in the summer while giving him a rest in the winter.  His backup didn’t arrive on toy shelves until 1985.  They were three bikers named the Dreadnoks:  Buzzer, the Brit with a ponytail and a chainsaw, the mohawked Ripper, and the flamethrower Torch who had a bit of a Lemmy beard going on.  Their Mad Max inspired outfits would have allowed them to fit into a rock band quite easily, if only they came with musical instruments instead of weapons.  They’d make a cool punk trio.

The Dreadnoks expanded their lineup the following year.  On explosives came Monkeywrench, bearded and obsessed with Guy Fawkes.  Then in a deluxe set came the vehicle driver Thrasher, and his definitely Mad Max inspired Thunder Machine car.  Made of bits and pieces of scrap, it hit the same post-apocalyptic notes as the other Dreadnoks, as well as rock bands like Motley Crue, Kiss, and Armored Saint.  Thrasher had a punk rock streak of green in his hair.  And now they were a quintet.  They were literally begging for me to make them custom musical instruments.

There were always wooden match sticks in the house, so I used them for guitar necks, drum stands, drumsticks, and a microphone.  Cardboard boxes were cut up to make the bodies of guitars and a few drums and cymbals.  Black electrical tape held them all together.  And so the Dreadnoks became a five piece band, and I put them on display in my bedroom on a shelf with my Kiss cassettes.

If only I had a picture of my Dreadnok band.  Not everybody had a camera back then.  Even if you did, it seemed film was always out!  You can imagine what they looked like!

 

Boxing Day Live Stream featuring LeBrain’s Mom – “Christmas Memories”

We’re locked down, but not knocked down as this week’s live show proved!  From 1977 to 1991, stories of Christmases past were unfurled for fun discussion.  From the Star Wars years, through GI Joe, Transformers, and Atari, to cassettes, CDs and VHS, the greatest years of our lives were presented.  Then, special guest LeBrain’s Mom joined the latter half of this episode for her first on-screen appearance…bearing wine!

I had a great night and I hope you did too.  Lots of visual aids this time.  Thanks for watching!

#819: Early to Rise

GETTING MORE TALE #819: Early to Rise

I’ve been an early riser since my youngest memories.  It probably has to do with an anxiety disorder that was undiagnosed until my 40s.  It happened mostly on weekends.  I’d be so excited for the weekend to begin, that I would be up at 5 or 6 AM.

My earliest memory of waking up early was Boxing Day, the year I received my Lego 371 seaplane.  The set came out in 1977, and that could have been the Christmas I received it.  It was a fantastic set with plenty of slopes, opening doors and two figures.  I got up at 2 AM to take it apart and put it back together again.  I woke up my dad who came down to see what all the noise was.  He wasn’t happy!

My parents didn’t have much choice.  They had to get used to it because I kept waking up early.  Quite often, I suddenly woke up after a cool dream of making something interesting out of Lego.  I would run downstairs and try to make it in real life.  Sometimes I would try to draw pictures of things I dreamed.  Other mornings I was just excited that it was Saturday, or Sunday, with no school.

There was usually not much to do on those early mornings.   In the 70s and 80s, television stations went dark overnight, usually starting the broadcasting day at 6 AM.  Nothing on TV but test patterns or static.  If you waited long enough, eventually the national anthem would begin, to start the broadcast day.  Then came the religious programming.  You had to sit through an hour of TV preachers to get to the cartoons.  I was well familiar with Jimmy Swaggart and many more whose names times has forgotten.

On one occasion, I woke my parents up in glee.

“Mom!  Dad!  Did you know there was a THIRD testament of the Bible?  I wonder when we’re going to learn about that one in school!”

Never, that’s when!  Nobody told me the difference between a Catholic and a Mormon.

Another morning I raced upstairs to tell them more good news I saw on TV.  One of the religious shows was discussing the creation of the solar system, which I sketched out.  But the big part was that Jesus was coming back in the year 2000.  That’s what the show said, and I couldn’t wait to tell my parents.  I was so excited that I actually took notes.

The most irritating of the morning TV preachers was Henry Feyerabend, a Seventh Day Adventist.  He had this condescending smile.  Feyerabend was probably the one who got me all excited about Jesus coming back.  I really grew to hate his face after awhile.  He’d talk about things such creationism, and sing hymns with these other dudes.  I was into science at a young age so the creationism always bugged me.  But there was nothing else on TV.  Not until Bugs Bunny at 7:00.

My early morning TV adventures were not all uplifting ones.  I woke up really early one Saturday, and a channel was in the middle of late horror movie night.  I don’t know the name of the film that I saw, and I’ve never been able to find out.  All I can remember is that there was a mad scientist or doctor of some kind.  He had little voodoo robots that looked like people.  In one scene, one of the little voodoo dolls stabbed and killed a woman with a pair of scissors.

I didn’t even know you could stab a person with scissors.  I wasn’t getting any more sleep that night!  But it would be amazing to find out what the name of the movie was, and see it again.  See how closely it matches my memories.

The last straw for my dad was Christmas Day 1984.  It was the year I got my GI Joe Killer W.H.A.L.E. hovercraft.  One of the best toys in the entire line, incidentally.  I couldn’t sleep.  I went to bed, tossed and turned, and waited.  The adults were all downstairs laughing and drinking.  I waited for that to die down.  Then I could hear the shuffling about as presents were laid around the tree for us.  The parents went to bed, and I decided I had waited long enough.  Sleep was cancelled.  Assembling of the GI Joe hovercraft commenced henceforth.  Once again, my dad trudged down the stairs to see what the noise was.  There I was, ankle deep in GI Joe parts and stickers, so happy to have my hovercraft.

Nobody else was happy, but that hovercraft was the centerpiece of my GI Joe forces for years to come.  It was and is totally badass.

Time went on, I grew up, but early morning rising never really ended.  There were a couple semesters in University when I only had afternoon classes, and my sleep patterns shifted to later in the day, which was really weird for me.  By and large I have remained early to bed, early to rise.

I didn’t think it was much of a problem.  It was “just the way I am”.  When I told a doctor about it in 2012, they didn’t brush it off as I did.  I was having trouble waking up in the mornings on weekdays, but still getting up at 2 AM on Saturdays.  During the week, there was depression.  “I have to go to work.  I’ll just hit the snooze button for 15 more minutes.”  Then I’d hit snooze again until I absolutely had to get up.  On weekends it was the opposite.  The doctors diagnosed me with a bunch of fun things, including obsessive-compulsive disorder.

As shitty as that is, it’s always why I have such a kickass music collection.

I’ve been trying to maintain more regular sleep hours, though I still wake up earlier on the weekends.  I don’t like to wake up before 5 AM on a Saturday anymore.  If I can’t sleep, I’ll get up for a short while, watch some YouTube until I’m tired, and go back to bed.  Sometimes it takes a while to unwind but it’s been working.

Otherwise, on a “normal” Saturday morning you’ll usually find me at 5:30 or 6:00 AM with a coffee in one hand, music in my ears, and pounding out words on a keyboard.  Sometimes Tim Durling is up and at ’em on the east coast, and we’ll chat music while consuming coffee.

Mornings are magical to me, much more so than late nights.   Especially Sunday mornings.  There is nobody up.  I can go for my morning walk down the middle of King Street if I want to.  I love going to get a coffee when the drive-thru is empty at 6 AM.  I prefer getting things done in the morning before people are awake.  I’ll do laundry or I’ll review a box set.  It’s just somehow better before the city wakes.

Early mornings aren’t necessarily the best way, but with moderation it works for me.  I’m most creative in the mornings, and I love the solitude.  And my parents can sleep soundly in their house while I putter around mine!

#623: Rocking Around the Christmas Tree

GETTING MORE TALE #623: Rocking Around the Christmas Tree

Traditions change and evolve over the years as families do.  I have always been excited about Christmas, going back my youngest days.  I would be so excited I couldn’t sleep.  Killing the days before Christmas was agonizing.  I guess as kids we were a little spoiled.

Spoiled kids became spoiled teens.  As I got older, I stopped asking for toys for Christmas.  Music replaced them.  Most of the time, I would circle titles that I saw in print ads.  Stores like A&A Records and even the local Zellers had flyers with new releases and sale items.  I remember the winter of 1986, circling two:  Helix’s Long Way to Heaven, and Yngwie J. Malmsteen’s Trilogy.  I didn’t know much about Yngwie other than a few videos on TV.  I circled both and I received both, on cassette.  I recall listening to them on a pair of earphones at Grandma’s after Christmas dinner that year.

The following year, 1987, was the year of a couple pretty important albums.  That Christmas I received Def Leppard’s Hysteria, and Whitesnake’s 1987.  Hysteria quickly became the favourite.  Its impact was immediate and that cassette kept me entertained for years.  Whitesnake took more time to get into.  It didn’t help that the cassette had speed issues.  Similarly, the Helix and Yngwie tapes from the year before had the same drag problems that made them hard to listen to.  Because of this, many albums that originally had quality problems on tape releases, I didn’t warm up to for many many years.  It was hard to enjoy Whitesnake tunes like “Don’t Turn Away” when they were slow and warbly.

When I first began receiving tapes for Christmas, the mid-80s, we had a pretty routine Christmas schedule.  There was no variation from year to year.  We have a small family compared to others.  Our celebrations always began on the 24th.  My mom and dad would spend the morning preparing food and cleaning.  My sister and I would be pains in the asses.  Then my aunt and uncle from Stratford would come over around 2:00 and we’d exchange first gifts.  My aunt and uncle always brought fun gifts.  They would never, ever buy clothes for Christmas unless it was something we asked for.  No socks, no undies, no shirts, no pants.  Fun gifts only!  Sometimes guitar strings, games, and sheet music.  There would always be at least one tape for each of us.

After gifts were opened, my sister and I would go upstairs and play our new tapes.  Sometimes, we’d have something a little bigger:  a video tape.  In 1991, my aunt and uncle gave me Faith No More’s You Fat Bastards.  They had access to a cool store in Stratford that would special order anything.  As my needs evolved, my aunt and uncle would typically buy me hard-to-find items.  The Faith No More video was one such special order.  That year, I ran downstairs to the spare VCR and fired up the live video.  My other uncle came down to watch with me, but didn’t care too much for their cover of “War Pigs”.  Admittedly, it’s pretty different.

The traditions didn’t change much as we got older.  In the 90s, my buddy Peter would come over for Christmas Eve.  And, my sister discovered wine.  One of her rituals now is drinking her wine out of her special cup which we have dubbed the “Holy Grail”, due to its perceived similarity to the one that appeared in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  Usually, before she takes a sip, I make her say the line, “It certainly is the cup of the King of Kings…”

Our Christmas Eve dinner, which is my favourite, has remained unchanged in over 30 years.  We do a beef, chicken and veggie fondue.  We’ve only had a couple of injuries over the years, but table cloths were frequently destroyed.  Today, my sister does the Christmas Eve entertaining, as my parents have retired from this duty.  She’ll always have some Christmas music playing, though not the kind I like.  We don’t run to listen to our gifts on headphones anymore.  We had to grow up, a little bit.

Christmas Day was also special for us.  When we were kids, I’d wake up my sister early in the morning to open presents.  Now, we put on our winter boats, coats and hats and drive over, and usually quite late in the morning.  More gifts are exchanged, and always more music.  It’s interesting to look at the kinds of albums I received then compared to now.   Back then, a multi-disc set was a big big deal.  Now, a three disc set can be as little as $30, the same price as a double live CD then.  I seem to get a lot of deluxe editions and box sets for Christmas now as if it’s no big deal!

My sister and I would exchange gifts, and we always got music for each other.  She was really good at filling in gaps of my collections.  Artists like Alice Cooper and Whitesnake had large discographies and I had very little.  She would look at my tape collection, go to the mall and pick up one of the many I was missing.  Whitesnake was an annual gift for several years in a row.  This was cool because it was always going to be something I didn’t expect, because my sister didn’t buy this off of some list I made.  It always came 100% from her own intuition.

After the parents’ house, we’re still not done.  Time to see Grandma!  She always makes me laugh.  One year she wrote inside a card, “You can use your Christmas money to buy a CD record.”  Aww!

There is one Christmas tradition that I don’t particularly enjoy, and it’s a more recent one.  We call it the $10 Gift Game.  Lots of families do the same thing.  Everybody buys a generic gift worth about $10, wraps it, and puts it on a table.  Then, everybody draws a number out of a hat.  #1 goes first by picking a gift off the table.  They then open that gift for everyone to get a look at.  #2 goes next.  #2 either picks a wrapped gift off the table, or steals the gift opened by #1.  If #2 chooses to steal, then #1 must open a new gift.  But #2 must remember, their gift can be stolen by #3, #4, #5, and so on.

Each round consists of the next number in line picking a gift from the table or stealing.  It gets quite tedious in our family, because my mother really likes to drag things out.  She will encourage people to steal, so that the victim must replace their gift by picking or stealing from someone else, and then the next victim must also replace their gift, and on and on each round goes.  At the end of the game people usually just end up swapping to get the gift most suited to their needs.  For example, my mother or sister always end up with the booze.  It’s harder to settle on who gets the chocolates.

One year, in protest of the game, my gift was a bag of unwrapped nickles and pennies adding up to exactly $10.*

Yes, I can be a Christmas grump sometimes.  As a non-drinking participant, sometimes things can get a little goofy for me.  Also, my dad’s level of interest in the game is so minimal that someone basically has to play for him while he does something else!  The game definitely has a short shelf-life for me.

We are a bit older today but still try to have fun with Christmas.  My sister and I will be giving music to each other, I’m sure, as we have done just about every single year for 30 years.  Usually, we will just sit around saying, “Remember that one Christmas when…?”

I sure do.  Here is a list of my Top Ten Most Fun Christmas Gifts of All Time.

1978 – Star Wars X-Wing Fighter

1979 – Star Wars Millenium Falcon

1983 – Star Wars Jabba the Hutt playset

1984 – GI Joe Killer W.H.A.L.E. Hovercraft

1985 – My first dual tape deck

1986 – GI Joe Cobra Terrordrome

1987 – The latest by Def Leppard, Whitesnake, Kiss and also Kim Mitchell’s Akimbo Alogo

1989 – My first CD player and my first CDs:  Motley Crue – Dr. Feelgood, Whitesnake – Snakebite and Alice Cooper – Trash.

1990 – Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin boxed set.

1993 – Led Zeppelin – Boxed Set 2

 

 

Merry Christmas one and all!

* I am told that due to inflation, the game is now the $15 Gift Game.

#349: Christmas Eve

Every year at this time I take a break from posting to spend a little more time relaxing with my family.  Enjoy this final post before Christmas, and I’ll see you all again soon in a couple of days!  Feliz Navidad!

JABBA

RECORD STORE TALES Mk II: Getting More Tale
#349: Christmas Eve

So here we are once again, Christmas Eve.  When I was a kid, you were my favourite day of the entire year.   It’s hard not to get excited about you, today in 2014.  Christmas Eve, you were the center of everything, 30 years ago!   Such a short but exciting day.  Inevitably, relatives would start handing us colourfully wrapped boxes, the best ones saved for last.  Then the ritual of steps:  Shake the box.  Give the card a cursory read and give it a toss.  Rip the paper.  Peer inside.  30 years ago, there would have been Star Wars figures inside.  Perhaps my Jabba the Hutt gift set.  An Atari game, possibly.  I wasn’t into music that much until about 1985, when Kiss really opened my eyes.

Around that time, Christmas Eve changed a little bit, but only in a subtle way.  Instead of racing downstairs to play our new Atari games, we would race upstairs to play our new cassette tapes!  Some Helix, Kiss, or Twisted Sister would have been among the music received back then.  We also would have received our fair share of GI Joe and Transformers toys.  I remember the year I got the GI Joe Hovercraft from “Santa”!  Oh boy.  My dad won’t let me forget that one.  I woke up at 1 in the morning to play with it.  Yeah, the parents weren’t overly thrilled to be woken up by the noise at that hour.  I just couldn’t stay asleep!  Having a younger sister meant the whole Santa thing went on longer than its normal sell-by date, but I wasn’t complaining.  It was a lot of fun.

I’m sure tonight won’t be that different.  If I’m lucky, I will receive a CD or two from somebody who loves me.  I won’t race anywhere to go and listen to it right away, but it will be just as appreciated.  After I got older, got a job, and started buying people gifts with my own money, I’ve realized that it’s the giving that is so much more fun.  I cannot wait to see the look on people’s faces, especially when forced to open my elaborately disguised surprises.  That’s what I get a kick out of the most now.

This year, I wish each one of you all the best, and indeed a Merry, Merry Christmas.  Whether you celebrate it or not, have a good day, eh?  Be safe.  Please drink responsibly, and please call a cab if you have been drinking.  But that’s enough serious talk.  I’ll leave you with one of my favourite Christmas videos (still unreleased on CD to this day), and some links to past Christmas posts.  Enjoy!  Ho ho ho!


Winger’s cool traditional / funky version of “Silent Night”!

RECORD STORE TALES:

WHALE

PREVIEW: The Next LeBrain

Dear readers,

As you are aware, the original Record Store Tales are almost done.   There are only a few sub-chapters left in Part 320: End of the Line.  I believe that, taken as a body of work and not cherry-picking bits and pieces, that it is a story of human frailty but also human strength and survival.  There are laughs, and there are tunes.  Lots and lots of good tunes.

Even though the entire story is almost told, I will continue telling tales of life’s absurdities.  These Post-Record Store Tales (if you will) are already being written and are ready to be rolled out!  The title, as suggested by you, will be revealed soon.

I just needed a new mascot.  I felt that the old GI Joe LeBrain had run his course.  Finding a new mascot, a new LeBrain, was a bit of a quest but I’ve finally settled on one.  May I present to you:

THE NEXT LEBRAIN!

IMG_20140913_105632

Yes, it’s Simon Pegg.