Helix

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Brian Vollmer of HELIX!
Brian Vollmer and I, back in in 2007 at Planet Helix!

September 7, 2012:  Once again, things are getting exciting on Planet Helix.  If the new single / video “All I Want For Christmas is the Leafs to Win the Cup” wasn’t enough, there’s also the new anthology, Best Of 1983-2012.

Lead vocalist and founding member of Helix, Brian Vollmer talked to us about these releases, some special upcoming dates, and a lot more.

The new single seems to be off to a good start, according to the song’s co-writer, Sean Kelly.  Brian filled us in.

“Sean’s from North Bay [Ontario], and he told me we’re getting airplay up in North Bay on that song.”  The video is also doing well:  “We’re up over 5000 hits now, and we’re hoping that the video goes viral.  It’s early in the season…there might not even be an NHL season this year!”

Oh Brian, don’t get me started on Gary Bettman!

The collector in me was excited about the vinyl release of the single.  It’s also going to be on the anthology CD, but the vinyl is designed for collectors in mind.

“I had initially wanted to do vinyl on the Christmas album [A Heavy Mental Christmas], but when we wrote this song, I thought that we’d do vinyl because it’s a collector’s item.  It’s kind of a novelty type of thing, and I think that it’ll appeal to not only Helix fans but also Toronto Maple Leafs fans.  They might like the vinyl just to have in the rec room up in the bar.  We sell it for $19.99 so it makes a great stocking stuffer for people.

“We did it on green vinyl too, to fit in with the season somewhat, and when we go through that pressing we’ll probably change colours.”  Just FYI Brian:  my wife, Mrs. LeBrain, is really hoping for blue!

“We’ve been trying to write a Leafs song for a couple years,” adds Brian.  “We had the working title of ‘I’m Bleeding Blue & White Tonight’.  And we never quite got the song together.  And then we did a radio session, where we were finishing off [new song]  ‘Axe to Grind’, which is also on the anthology album.”  Brian was then supposed to meet up with Travis Wood, of the band Whosarmy (from the TV show Cover Me Canada, which Brian also guested on incidentally).

“I didn’t want to go too early, and just sit around at the restaraunt.  So we started fooling around and all of a sudden, within a couple of minutes we wrote ‘All I Want For Christmas is the Leafs to Win the Cup’.  The song was recorded within two weeks.”  The hilarious video was done right after that.  I forgot to ask Brian if any Habs fans are offended!


All I Want For Christmas is the Leafs to Win the Cup

You can buy the single on the green vinyl in a bundle with a T-shirt and the new CD, Best Of 1983-2012.  “The Best Of album I just put out has a lot of tracks that you wouldn’t normally hear [on other best of albums] by Helix.  Stuff like ‘Animal Inside’ off the Vagabond Bones  album.  ‘Get Up’ and ‘Fill Your Head With Rock’ from The Power of Rock and Roll album.”

Coinciding with these releases is the forthcoming Heavy Mental Christmas tour.

“Yes, we just added another date in Cornwall.  We have seven dates, mostly through Masonic temples, legions, moose halls, through southern Ontario.  It’s a multi-media show.  We’re taking out screens, so there’s some video segues between songs, other times there’s still pictures with Christmas themes…some of the cameras that are places strategically around stage are broadcasting whatever member might be doing a solo during the song.”

You may want to consider getting your tickets now, as these shows are special indeed, and feature a new lineup.  Not only will you meet the new Helix guitarist, John Claus, but “also Sarah Smith.  Sarah Smith is a great London [Ontario] artist, she’s got two CDs out now under her belt, she’s a great addition to the show.  Just a smiling, very talented person.  She’s on with us instead of Kaleb [“Duckman” Duck, guitars].  Kaleb really didn’t want to do Christmas songs!  Initially, we were going to go with one guitar player, and then I thought of Sarah.”

This turned out to be a good decision, according to Brian:

“I always walk out of our Christmas practices with a big smile on my face.  I love playing the material, and it’s really fun with this group of people, to do these songs.  I wouldn’t want somebody to do any of my projects that wasn’t totally into it.

“It’s a labour of love.  We’ve been working on this show over a year now.”

Really?

“Setting up the website, and the tickets, and the halls, and putting together the show, learning the show, and getting the multi-media involved.”  But it is truly a labour of love, and you can tell by the amount of work that Brian and the band has put in so far.

I mentioned new guitar player John Claus.  As previously reported, longtime axeman Brent Doerner will be leaving Helix at the end of September 2012.  Brian helps shed some light on this lineup change, and what bringing in a new member does for the band.

“We have two more dates with Brent at the end of this month.  One’s at the Rockpile in Toronto, the other’s at the Masonic Temple in Stratford.  That’s a multi-media show as well.  Tickets are going fast for that one, I think a lot of people want to come and see Brent before he goes.

“Brent’s been in the band since about 1975.  No hard feelings with him leaving at all.  He just wants to pursue video production, and in fact, Brent will still be involved on a creative level  with the band, helping us do our videos.

“I tell everyone that Brent, when he initially came back to the fold, he was only going to be here for six months, and he ended up staying three and a half years!  He definitely was better than his word, and stayed for a long time.  So I’m really grateful to him for that.”

On John Claus, who will replace Brent:

“He plays piano and guitar.  He sings, so he’s a great addition to the band.  Nice guy, great personlity.  Whenever we hire new people in the band, we don’t want any ego trips.  So, to get someone who has a nice personality and just a good human being is a nice thing to have.”  John will join the band completed by longtime members Daryl Gray and Greg “Fritz” Hinz, on bass and drums respectively.

The piano aspect will come into play for future shows.  Brian reveals that he and John will probably perform “Dream On”, the Nazareth cover, from Helix’s Wild in the Streets album, as a duo during upcoming Helix concerts.  “And the Christmas shows, we’re doing ‘Hallelujah'” says Brian of another piano-based cover to look forward to!

It’s great to see Helix continue forward through the years.  Brian has worked hard, starting in the 1970’s as an indi artist, and now today continuing down that path.  Once again the band is behind their own music releases, selling it themselves.  Brian has nothing but praise for the team he’s surrounded himself with in recent years.

“I write with Sean [Kelly] nowadays, he’s a great writer, nice person to work with.  Aaron Murray is my producer, he studied from Danny Broadback, who won a Juno for Engineering.  And Danny studied with Jack Richardson, who as you know produced Alice Cooper and the Guess Who, and all sorts of people.”  Brian adds, “Moe Berg [The Pursuit of Happiness] sometimes comes in to write with us, Sean and I.”

Thanks to Brian Vollmer for updating us on all the new happenings on Planet Helix!  Try to get out to see the Heavy Mental Christmas tour, and get tickets while you can!

Upcoming dates:

http://www.planethelix.com/Schedule.htm

Buy the new Helix single, album, and other stuff:

http://www.planethelix.com/Store/StoreMain.htm

Audio of our chat below!

 SOUNDCLOUD

Part 65: Vinyl

RECORD STORE TALES Part 65: Vinyl

We’d always dabbled in vinyl.  We didn’t do a lot of vinyl, it was the 90’s after all, and vinyl was dead.  We didn’t buy it used, but sometimes something big came out on vinyl that we had to carry.  For example:

In 1994, Pearl Jam released Vitalogy on LP a week earlier than the CD.  We stocked five and they sold out on day one.

In 1996, Soundgarden came out with Down On The Upside LP a week earlier than the CD, so we stocked that.  I can’t remember how many we stocked, but I do remember it took years to sell them!

My copy, still sealed...that's my handwriting too.

My copy, still sealed…that’s my handwriting too.

A bit later on, my buddy Tom opened his own branch and decided to stock used vinyl.  He was the only one to try it, he had a vinyl room in the back.  They phased the vinyl out rapidly after Tom moved on, as he was the chief expert buyer.  However during the period that Tom carried vinyl, I filled so many gaps in my collection.

Here’s some examples.  You have to remember that at the time, these might not have been out on any digital format at all, and downloading hadn’t hit us yet.

  • Ozzy’s Live EP, still unreleased on any digital format today.
  • Helix’s first two, Breaking Loose and White Lace & Black Leather albums, autographed by the late Paul Hackman.  I think these were in Tom’s 25 cent bin.
  • Hear N’ Aid, Ronnie James Dio’s 1986 charity LP featuring exclusive tracks from Kiss and others.
  • Guns N’ Roses 12″ single for “Patience” with an exclusive interview with Axl on the B-side
  • Kim Mitchell, the legendary Max Webster frontman’s first solo foray from 1982.  Easily my favourite record of his entire storied career, and impossible to find on CD under $100.
  • Max Webster’s Live Magnetic Air from 1979, a hard find on CD for sure.

That’s just a sampling, there were many more.  And that’s just that stuff that I bought.  I’m sure Tom saw many a rare disc float his way.

There was one record I’ll never forget.  This sucker was worth $100 right there.  It was by a band from Oshawa Ontario, called Christmas.  It had a tank on the cover.  I guess they had this cult following and only a small quantity of records were made, let alone survived.  And musically, it wasn’t bad.

I’m glad that vinyl is back in a fairly significant way again.  I enjoy buying it, and I enjoy playing it.

I want a USB turntable for my birthday.  I accept gifts.

Part 30: Sausagefest

I can’t believe we’re already at Part 30.  And we’re just getting started, folks.  Stories have been collected, going back a decade.

For Part 30, something of a milestone I guess, we’ll do something special.

SAUSAGEFEST

Much like a secret society, men today speak of Sausagefest in hushed tones.

Earlier, I mentioned Tom and Eric (“Uncle Meat”) and something called Sausagefest (in a previous chapter).  What happens at Sausagefest, stays at Sausagefest.  Mostly.  But here’s what I can tell you.

The heart and core of Sausagefest is the annual Top 100 list.  The format has varied slightly over the years, but it remains largely unchanged.  They take votes from all attendees, months in advance, of their top 100 song picks that year.  They tabulate them, and over two crazy nights in an undisclosed but vast outdoor location, they count them down one by one.

Beer is consumed.  Sausage is eaten.  There are no vegetarians at Sausagefest.  I have packed Froot Roll Ups in the past but that’s it for me.  The rest is all sausage, and succulent marinated lamb for me.

The top 100 list was started by Eric and his buddy Derek back in 1990.  It was New Year’s Eve, and he collected a top 100 list and put together the tapes (!) himself.  He often had to borrow a CD from somebody to do it, because there was no web.   An evening would typically run from 5pm to 3am, solid with tunes and the odd skit in between.

This went on for three years.  Much later, in 2002, the concept was reinvented as Sausagefest.  The setting was now a pristine scenic valley with a river running through it.  Awesome.  A generator powers the wall of sound, and there are no neighbors to complain about the noise.

The top 100 is usually epic in scale and scope.  You will hear everything from AC/DC to Zappa, as far out as Dixie Dregs, and as local as Helix.  You will hear Lightfoot, Cash, Nelson, and Kristofferson.  Maiden and Priest are regulars, and the thrash gets positively evil.  Mercyful Fate anyone?

The story goes like this:  Tom was frustrated one night and blurted out, “We need just an all-guys’ weekend. We can have it up at the farm.  Summer weekend  No chicks.  And it will be called Sausagefest…’cause if you dont have your own personal sausage…you can’t come!”

The “moment of clarity”, as they say, was instant.   They both knew they had to do this, and that the music would be the core of it.  Only these two guys could have cooked up and executed an idea like this at that moment.   The planets were aligned or something.  I bet if you knew the exact date that they invented Sausagefest, you would be able to find that a supernova happened that day too.

Again they did it on cassette.  Tom’s music collection was massive at that point, about 1500 discs and a growing collection of vinyl.   Only these guys had the resources to do it.  Finding these songs, on download, at the time?  Very difficult.

For the record, the very first #1 at the very first year was “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”!  Epic.

So Sausagefest was born, and the first one was a success.  Unfortunately I did not attend the first four.  In fact I didn’t attend a single one until I had quit the record store.  2006 was my first Sausagefest.  For many of them, I simply could not get the weekend off.  Everybody wants time off in the summer, and the actual date for Sausagefest wasn’t always known with enough notice.

The other factor in me not going was I was really stuck in a rut at the time with the store.   I was paranoid to leave town.  There were fuckups literally all the time that needed to be fixed, fires that needed to be put out, that I never felt comfortable leaving.  The very last vacation I ever took at the store was 2002.  No coincidence.

However once I was free of that fear, I drove up with no tent and just a cooler full of meat, water, and Roll Ups.  Actually no, that’s not true!  I was told there was no need to bring meat, because there was so much there, it wouldn’t be a problem.  So just water and Roll Ups, that first year!  I slept in my car.

At night, the music starts and the air guitars come out.  But the days have their own traditions.

An Iron Maiden loving guy named Zach brings the lamb.  He brings more every year and there is still not enough to satisfy my hunger.  It is incredible.  Zach is the lamb lord.  Some people put it on bread but I just eat it right with the fingers.  It’s an incredible meal, every year.

There is always beer and plenty of it.  A beer wagon was actually rented for two of the years.  Beer is consumed in massive quantities.  There is always one guy passed out before the top 100 really even gets going.  But that’s OK.  Nobody’s driving anywhere.  Sean often picks up coffee for the boys in the mornings but that’s about it.  We’re in it for the long haul.  And I mean long haul.  Music is often still playing at 3am.

My problem is I can’t sleep in at all, so I’m up by 7.  I’ll grab a book, a beer, and a chair and head down to the river.  My first Sausagefest, I was reading Dune.  It was incredible reading it in the river with nobody even awake yet.

The toilet is always a highlight.  I’m convinced that the boys rented a Porta-Potty for me specifically my first year, to keep me coming back.  Because there hasn’t been one since.  Why?  I don’t know.  We could easily collect for it, just like we do beer.  But they don’t do it!  I’m convinced it’s because part of the Sausagefest experience is shitting in the woods.

I won’t lie, I love peeing outdoors.  I’m not the only one either.  In a survey done at work, 3 out of 4 men enjoy peeing outdoors.  It’s just a natural expression of the animal side that is a part of nature, or something.  That’s what I tell my wife anyway.  What did our ancestors do?  Pee outside.  It’s social.  I’ll be at Sausagefest peeing, and another guy will pee next to me, and be like, “Hey man, how’s it going?  Good tunes eh?”  Anyway, I’m getting off topic again.

There’s a chair with a hole in the seat that you’re supposed to shit in, and the tree next to it has toilet paper hanging from the branch.  Personally I don’t want to see someone else’s shit.  Just a thing I have, I guess.  So I shit in the river.  Yes, I shit in the river.  The river is fast-flowing, like a toilet, but it’s cold.  You turtle right up stepping in.  But it’s also like a combo toilet/bidet.  You’re clean when you’re all done.  And I’ve seen dogs shit in it, so….

The worst thing about Sausagefest is, in fact, the shits.  You’re eating nothing but greasy (but delicious!) meat (not Meat!).  Every year, it is up early on Sunday morning (always by 6:00 am) on on the road, as fast as possible, to an actual bathroom!

Unfortunately, as stated, what happens at Sausagefest stays at Sausagefest, so I really can’t get too much into the stories.  I will say this.  It’s something that I look forward to every summer.  All of those guys do.  We talk about it when we arrive, how this event can be the best weekend of your entire year.  It’s also strange how time stands still up at the farm.  “Wow, just doing that drive up here, it’s so familiar like I was just here last week.”  It happens every year.  You get there and it feels like you never really left.

The music, combined with the fellowship, and of course the sweet joy of swimming in the river when it gets hot, makes this almost a spiritual place.  A Mecca for those about to rock, so to speak.  It is a secret society that I am proud to be a member of.

Part 27: Store Play

Another suggestion from Tommy Morais, my Amazon rock buddy from the east!  He wants to read about glam rock bands, and Canadian bands!  I played a lot of each at the store, especially in the earliest days.  I’m gonna throw some prog and metal in here too.  Here’s some of my fondest memories.

LeBRAIN’S STORE-PLAY CLASSICS!

1996.  We had just opened our flagship store, and I was selected as manager.  This meant I’d be working alone for most of the day, and I could play what I wanted.  In the earliest days there were fewer rules.  The boss might make fun of me for playing Poison, but in the old days, he never told me to take it off as long as it was only once in a while.

I remember playing glam metal stuff like:

Poison – Native Tongue.  I enjoyed trying to turn kids onto music they’d like, but would never touch if they knew who it was.  It sometimes worked!  I think I sold one copy of Native Tongue that way, anyway.

Motley Crue – self titled.  This is in my top three Motley records of all time.  The one without Vince Neil.  A guy from the HMV store in Waterloo gave me props for playing it.  I once sold it to a guy who hated the latest Crue, Generation Swine.  I turned him onto self titled instead.  Instant fan.

David Lee Roth – Your Filthy Little Mouth.  I played this a shit-ton in the spring of 1995 too.  I don’t know why I like it so much, it’s so cheesey.  Dave does country!  Dave does reggae!  Dave does jazzy loungy stuff!  Dave does VH!  But Dave does write hilarious lyrics, and I did like that.

Van Halen – Any time, any where, any how.   But any time we had a copy of 1984?  Hell yeah!  And you couldn’t keep Best Of Volume I in stock for very long.  Certainly not if you played it.  The first year or two it was out, I probably sold it every time I played it!

Def Leppard – Slang.  Again, much like the Poison and Crue, I was trying to turn new kids onto these classic bands that had explored new directions.  Unfortunately, Slang sold like shit.  I think it was too different for the old fans, and too old for the new fans.

And now let’s talk about Prog rock.  Ashleigh used to call prog music “smart-guy rock”.   That’s one reason why I wanted to play it every shift we shared.  I was trying to show her I was a smart guy, see?

Marillion – Misplaced Childhood.  I played Marillion so frequently, that my co-workers Matty K and Ashleigh knew the words to some songs.  Unfortunately, they didn’t consider that a good thing.

Fish – Kettle of Fish.  See above!

Dream Theater – Images and Words.  This came in so rarely, that when it did you had to play it.  It always sold if you played it.  We had so many musicians and wanna be’s (like me) coming into the store, they inevitably would ask what the fuck is this?  This one kid, a drummer named Curtis, loved Dream Theater.  I sold him his first Dream Theater.  Do you know how cool that is, selling somebody their first Dream Theater?  Curtis is a fantastic musician.  He’s jammed with my sister, actually.

Rush – Moving Pictures.  Like nails on a chalkboard to the girls in the Operations staff.  Could not play this if they were in the city, let alone the store.  But my fuck, what an album.  I remember Tom put a sticker on it that said, “Best album of the 80’s!”.  I thought to myself, “Then I need to hear the whole thing!”  I had never heard “Vital Signs” before.  I am sure Matty K remembers to this day, “Everybody got to evelate from the norm”.

And speaking of Rush!  I did a lot of Canadian themes.  We had a 5 disc changer.  A lot of the time, I would specifically pick 5 Canadian artists to take up a shift.  You’d often hear:

Sloan – 4 Nights at the Palais Royale.  In my opinion one of the top five live albums of all time.  It is also my favourite Sloan album.

Stompin’ Tom Connors – Anything we had in the store would work, as he didn’t come in frequently.  Unfortunately, Stompin’ Tom didn’t fare too well for store play in Kitchener.  Nobody seems to like him in this town.

Rush – duh?

Triumph – ditto.

Kim Mitchell / Max Webster – Another artist our Operations people hated.  I did one entire 5 disc shuffle of nothing but Kim and Max.  Kim was playing in town that day so I was hoping to drum up some sales.  I failed to do so, but I did try.  I was told to remove the Kim and Max from the player.

Helix / Brian Vollmer – I’d play Helix when it was in, which was infrequent.  I remember playing the Brian Vollmer solo album for Kevin, one of the guys that ended up in my wedding party.  I played the song “Good Times Don’t Get Better Than This” in the store.  I thought he would enjoy it.  Unfortunately, he did not.  I believe the words he used were, “This is not good.”  Kevin, I kindly submit that I strongly disagree to this day.

Even more rarely though came the opportunity to play the early stuff, the stuff with Brent Doerner singing lead.  Once — just once — Breaking Loose and White Lace & Black Leather came in.  I’m kicking myself for not buying them.  But when they were in store, I played “Billy Oxygen” on repeat for about 20 minutes.

Oscar Peterson – I only had the opportunity to do that once though.

Voivod – self titled.  The first one with Newsted.  Metallica had come out with St. Anger and a lot of fans didn’t like it.  I tried to sell this, which was more traditionally prog metal like old Metallica.

Incidentally, at the same time,  I was training a new franchisee around that time.  He was amused by how excited I was that the album Angel Rat, by Voivod, had come in, with 3D glasses intact.  I explained that usually these would be missing, but the CD was mint!  And “Clouds In My House” sounded great in-store!

Voivod crosses the boundary from prog into metal (or is it vice versa?), but I certainly did play a lot of metal in the store.

Bruce Dickinson – Balls To Picasso.  I played this virtually every shift during the fall of 1994.  At the time, I thought “Tears of the Dragon” and “Change of Heart” were among the deepest songs I’d ever heard.  Yeah, well.

Iron Maiden – Brave New World.  I love this album.  Matty K knows every word of “Blood Brothers”.

G//Z/R – Plastic Planet.  Easily the heavist thing I have ever played in store.  Even I was uncomfortable!

sHeavy – The Electric Sleep.  Incidentally, the greatest Black Sabbath album that was not made by Black Sabbath.  Every time, people would ask, “Is this the new Ozzy?”  Every time.  You could put money on it.

Judas Priest – Turbo.  It was the only one I could get away with!

Man, those were good times!   I am sure I could write another dozen of these.  I mean, we played a lot of music.  From Esquivel to Brushy One-String to Pansy Division to Jaymz Bee & the Royal Jelly Orchestra, we tried and sampled everything.

REVIEW: Helix – Good To The Last Drop / S.E.X. Rated (original cassingle!)

HELIX – “Good To The Last Drop” (1990 cassette single)

One thing though that I thought I lost was all my cassette singles. They were stored in a shoebox at my parents’ house, and I thought I lost them in a move. In that box of cassette singles were some tunes that could not be replaced on CD, because they don’t exist on CD. One is the original version of “S.E.X. Rated”, by Helix. There was a remake done on 1999’s B-Sides album with the original lineup, and it’s awesome. There is however an earlier version from the “Good To The Last Drop” cassette single that is early enough that it had to be Paul Hackman on guitar. It was noticably different from the 1999 version, and I have hunted and hunted to find a CD version, but none exist. I tracked down a couple “Good To The Last Drop” CD singles, but they contain just one track, the Remix version of “Good To The Last Drop”, which they later re-released on a Best Of  CD.

“Good to the Last Drop”, the remix version, is superior to the album version.  The main difference is that catchy keyboard hook.  That’s not there on the album version.  It’s not available on many CD compilations now, although its B-side is not.

In 2007, my parents were digging away in the basement and they found the box of cassette singles. There are a couple other winners in there too. But the Helix one is there, and in remarkably great shape, probably because BOTH tracks are on each side, so you’d play the tape half as much.  The integrity of the tape would presumably last longer. At least if one side starts to sound bad, you can play the other side.

The song is really different from the other version, it starts with a spoken-word intro. Somebody that sounds like a radio DJ says, “Hi, this is Johnny (something?). And this is for the girl that wants me to love her for her mind. But I want to love her because of what she doesn’t mind.” And then the band kicks in, and the lyrics to the song are the same as the ’99 version. Sounds like it could be Fritz on drums. On the cassette sleeve, the track is credited as “Produced by Helix” as opposed to Helix and Tony Bongiovi, as the album was. Recorded at a separate session perhaps? Daryl’s bass sounds great, punchy and driving. In general the track sounds great.

I like how the cover says “INCLUDES BONUS UNRELEASED TRACK”. The back cover reveals the tape was released in 1990, probably late 1990 if I remember, because I seem to remember getting this tape around or during Christmas holidays 1990.

Incidentally, I emailed Brian Vollmer about this version of “S.E.X. Rated” and asked if there was a CD version ever coming.  He said he can’t remember anything about another version.  I asked Daryl Gray, and his response is below:

try the CD version of Long Way To Heaven album…

Nope.  Sorry Daryl!  Not there, got that one too.  So there you go!  A Helix rarity that even the band doesn’t seem to know about.  Cool.

5/5 stars

Part 22: The Regulars 1.0

Have you worked retail, or anything like that?  Did you ever have regulars?  People you’d see on a regular basis that you either loved or loathed.

Example:  One I liked was this guy named Aaron.  I’m still in touch with him today.   He was a good guy.  One time he went down to the ‘States, picked up the US exclusive Sho ‘Nuff box set by the Black Crowes for me, and delivered it.  Awesome dude.  Another time he bought me (as in gifted) the first single for the new Crowes album By Your Side.  Later on, he burned me a CD of all their B-sides that he had.  A disc I still own by the way.

Aaron was a regular that I loved.   In the bro’ sense.

Then we have the ones I loathed.  There was this one guy who obviously played guitar because he was a total guitar snob.  He always wore black fingerless gloves too, that is one detail I’ll never forget.  He was an older guy, probably approaching 50, but a total guitar snob.

Whatever I was playing in store, he picked it apart.  The first time I ever encountered him, I was playing the new Deep Purple record, the excellent Purpendicular.

The guy snorts at me from the other side of the room.  “These guys are nothing without Blackmore.  Nothing.  Biggest mistake they ever made was getting Steve Morse.”

“Really?” I said.  “I like this album.”

“You really like this crap?” he said.   “What do you like about it?”

Now remember way back in chapter something-something, my boss taught me that valuable lesson about not getting into conversations with customers?  Well, that went out the window this time.  I mean, I’m passionate about music.  I just am.  It’s in my DNA.  (That’s actually a fact.  My sister and I have traced our lineage to many musicians.)

“I think it’s a strong album,” I began, “better than Battle Rages On which I thought had too much filler.  I like this one because it’s a little more dark, it’s progressive…”

“Progressive?!?  You call this progressive?  All it does is repeat!”

He was referring to the central guitar part in a song called “Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming”.  He’s right — the guitar part does repeat through the song.  It is also a classic song that is still in Deep Purple’s set today.

Anyway I let it go, but he kept going.

“Blackmore’s a superior guitar player to Morse.  Have you heard the new Rainbow?  Incredible album.  Incredible guitar playing on that one.  That’s real guitar playing, not this…”

Anyway, I’d see this guy periodically.  We called him Guitar Snob Man, or later on Pompous Ass.  Sometimes one person has a nickname for a regular that they made up on their own.  Meanwhile, another person has encountered the same regular, and has their own name they use.  Later on, when you’re working together, you realize you’ve been talking about the same guy all along, just you had different names for him.

I’d see Guitar Snob Man several times that year, and he almost never had anything good to say about the music in store.  Except this one time.

I was playing Yngwie J. Malmsteen.  (Pretty much also not allowed for store play either.)  Guitar Snob Man turns around to me, points to the CD case with his black-gloved hand and says, “Did you pick this?”

“Yup, that’s me.” I said.

“Good pick.  Great guitar player.  Absolutely amazing what this guy does.  Good choice.”

And I don’t even like Yngwie that much.  Too much Yngwie is like razor blades coming at your ears after a while.

But anyways, I shut up.  I said nothing.

Another regular was this guy named Shane.  Shane is a great guy, great guitar player, great singer too.  I met Shane during my first year as manager of my own store.  He was one of my first customers.  He immediately liked the store, because the guy behind the counter was playing rock music, and know what he was talking about.  In fact that first year I sold him Purpendicular by Deep Purple.

Shane came in for a whole year, trusting my musical taste.  I hadn’t led him astray once.  He liked good guitar players.  I sold him Maiden, Purple, Satriani, anything that just smoked.  He trusted me implicitly.  Until 1997.

In 1997 I sold him an album called Schitzophonic, by Nuno Bettencourt.  Shane did not like Schitzophonic.

The funny this is, even though I solidly praised the album to him then, I probably haven’t listened to it in 10 years myself.  In 1997 there wasn’t much to choose from in terms of new rock albums.  Bruce Dickinson made one of the few worthwhile albums that year.  Everybody else, from Jon Bon Jovi to Metallica, where making rock albums infused with alternative influences.  As a result a lot of those albums don’t sound that great today.  Nuno’s album was melodic and simplistic and fit in with what was going on in 1997.  That’s my excuse.

Shane came in, and just said, “Mike, I’m a little disappointed in you.”

To this day, Shane will remind me that I sold him the worst album he ever bought, Schitzophonic.  To this day, I hang my head in shame.  I’m sorry, Shane.

I let him exchange the CD which was even against company policy at the time.  I mean, fuck!  It was my fault, he could have saved his $12 if I’d used my bloody head.  Shane didn’t care that Nuno was in Extreme, one of the most guitar shredding bands of all time.  He wouldn’t want it based on that alone.  The album itself had to shred.  Duh.  I should have got that.

Years later, Shane and I recontacted each other via Brent Doerner from Helix.  Shane was playing in Brent’s band My Wicked Twin.  That’s Shane singing lead on “Never Turn Your Back” from the first album, Decibel.  Brent only plays with other guys who can play well, so that should tell you something about Shane’s capablity.

Great guy.  Glad to have met him.  All because of the record store.

SHANE

Part 16: Travelling Man

For the record, I’m not much the traveller.  If I were any shorter and hairier, I’d be a hobbit.  Happy kicking my feet up, at home.

So when I got the phone call one Thursday afternoon that I was needed in Oakville later that same afternoon, my heart just sank.  I’d already pulled shifts at numerous stores.  Because I was the most experienced person in the whole organization, I was the trainer.  I also covered asses when people didn’t show up and got sick.  I’d worked in at least 11 different stores by the end of it all.  But this Oakville stint was different, in that in was both sudden and indefinite.

There was some sort of staffing issue where they lost the main guy and needed someone in right away.  I didn’t want to do it and said so, but I did it anyway.   Thus began what was easily the worst month or two of my entire life.

Commuting on highway 8 to the 401.  401 to the 6 South.  6 South to the 403.  403 to the QE.  Do it twice a day nearly every day, many of those days being a full 12 hours long.  Leave for work at 8 am to get through the traffic, which was always uncertain.  Traffic jams were the only guaranteed thing, and a daily occurance on the 403 on QEW.  Close up shop at 9:30 usually, do the drive home, usually around 10:30 if there’s no traffic on the way back.  Your social life is on hold, your leisure time nearly nonexistent.  My boss noticed I was miserable and took me aside.

He said he noticed I hadn’t “been doing well with the whole Oakville thing.”  Now, the whole time I was responsible for Oakville, I was also responsible for my home store.  This meant keeping the books for both, doing inventory at both (a year-end inventory for both!), and doing the monthly sales books too.  Considering I was literally going insane, I was pissed off that he actually said anything to me about it.

“No, you’re right,” I answered.  “I hate doing that drive every day.  You know I hate driving, everybody knows I hate driving.  I’m not seeing my family, I don’t have time to do anything, all my time is plugged into the store.  And on top of that I still have the other store.  And you’ve got me working full days with no relief on some of these days.”

He pondered that a moment, and then asked, “Does your car have a tape deck?”

“Yeah, sure.”

He then retorted, “Why don’t you bring some of your old tapes with you, and listen to music in the car.  That’ll be a lot of fun for you.”

I’d been doing this and in fact doing it with a theme.  I’d been playing my oldest, most seldom played cassettes from back in the 80’s.  Stuff I hadn’t heard in years, like Winger.  One thing I learned from this commute is; when you’re stuck in traffic on the 403, in a torrential downpour, listening to Winger, it still sucks pretty much as bad as it would if you weren’t listening to Winger.

He didn’t get that, so he reminded me of all that nice mileage money I was making.  I hadn’t been paid any of it yet, but I was looking forward to one day maybe being lucky enough to have a cheque show up.  I was gassing up every day on my Visa card and I didn’t have enough money to cover it.

So off I went to Oakville again, listening to Helix this time, because Helix reminded me of Kitchener.  The next day it was something else, and the next day something else, but the days just blurred together.  Did I mention I was working weekends?

By the time December hit I was running on energy drinks and pepperoni for a diet.  By first snow, my dad was starting to get worried.  He knew my car (a 1998 Dodge Neon) had a history of malfunctions and the tires were getting old.  But there was no time to have a service done, since I was always on the road.

There were still other aggravating factors.  The stay in Oakville was indefinite.  Nobody had any idea when their continued staffing issues would end. I didn’t even know if I’d be working there on Christmas Eve, doing the commute home.  Everything was up in the air so in a sense there really was no light at the end of the tunnel.

The very worst thing about Oakville was this one small minority of customers that had a habit of ruining your day.  Sme of them seemed quite well off.  They drove fancy SUV’s and Hummers, and parked them in the fire lane, too.

Many SUV curb parkers were really nice, chatty, funny.  Others were indifferent.  Another kind completely was the Busy, Very Important Business Man.   Their shoes were very shiny.  Their coats looked expensive and warm.  Their gloves looked like they were made of soft leather.  They were on their lunch.

Now, I need to back up a moment here so you understand the scenario about to unfold.  In Ontario, a used CD store operates like a pawn shop.  There are procedures and laws to be followed.  Anyone selling used goods must be 18 years old or older.  They must present, and I must record, the proper identification.  There were several items on the “good ID” list and many more on the “bad”.

Good

  1. Driver’s license.
  2. BYID (identification to buy liquor)
  3. Up to date passport, as in, you’re not 5 in the picture.

Bad

  1. Health card.  Yeah I know the government puts it out, laws are laws and we were told by the cops, don’t take these.
  2. Library card.  I know that seems obvious.
  3. School ID cards.
  4. Business cards.
  5. A note from your mom.  I didn’t make that one up, some kid tried that and the stupid person working that night actually took it as ID.

When a rich Oakvillian came into the store with a box of CDs to sell, it was always the worst day of the week.  Sometimes I’d bring a sandwich instead of pepperoni, and they’d always come in while I was eating.  Guaranteed.

This one guy, on this one particular day, was ornery.  I mean he was just not having a good day and you could tell.  He was still on his cell when he walked in.  He comes up to the counter, ear still to phone.  He drops the box on the counter.  He’s not even making eye contact with me.  He’s nodding his head and talking.  I stand there looking at him.  He hasn’t even made eye contact with me let alone speak to me.

Finally, the guy motioned to me to start looking through his CDs.  This was not a good start because I wasn’t able to briefly explain our buying policy with him, e.g. what to expect.  I had no idea what his assumptions were, but by experience I concluded he’d think his discs were worth a lot more than I was going to be able to give him.  They were good, classical, jazz and blues.  This stuff sold well in Oakville, and over the internet, but just because it’s jazz and classical doesn’t make it expensive.  A lot of factors played in.  Record labels, remastered, non remastered, retail price, supply and demand.  This guy, you’d think, would understand these business principles.  Turns out he didn’t understand this.  It also turns out he doesn’t like to bargain with the serving class.  Nor does he like to be asked for ID by the serving class, but more on that later.

One drawback to classical and jazz was that they were sometimes more complicated to look up and price.  I mean, Rachmaninov is a lot to type in on the best of days, let along ones where you feel asleep and caffeine buzzed all at once.  I had to take my time.  I wasn’t doing it on purpose.  I had to get it right, so I could say to him confidently that I was doing the very best I could for him.  If he wanted to bargain up ten or twenty bucks, for this many discs, I could have done that, I was able to value the discs higher if I needed to.

He didn’t like the way I priced his discs, and he really didn’t like it when I told him that some, a small number, were scratched.  He got visibly upset about the ones that were scratched a bit too badly for me to take.

“These play fine.  Try them.”

I explained, “There’s more to it than that.  We have extremely high standards to the visual look of a disc.  We have several locations and I have to remain consistent with our other stores, which all are held to a very high standard.  I’m sure the disc plays fine, I really don’t doubt it.  I’ll just never get this disc to look completely new, and that’s what we’re trying to go for.  I’m sorry about that but I really can’t buy that disc.”

“You don’t play a CD by looking at it, do you?  It plays fine, this is absolutely ridiculous.”

He was really pissed off now.

I went through the values I was offering for the discs.  Knowing this was not going to go well, I started with the high ones and worked down to the lower valued ones.  He wasn’t happy right from the start.  Things that I was offering $6 for, which was high, he wanted $10.  I couldn’t do it.  Multiplied across so many discs, I couldn’t bury the cost elsewhere.

I played my $10 bargaining chip and upped my offer.  It just seemed to make him more angry.  I went up $15.  $20.  I started to wonder if his skin would turn green.  I saw it unfold in my head.  It starts at the eyes, they glow green, then his skin, then the muscles burst through the shirt.

“Who do you think you are?” he asked me incredulously.

Who do I think I am?  Who the fuck do you think you are?

“I’m sorry sir, but this truly is the best I can do.”

“This is highway fucking robbery.  I’ll take the money,” said the man in the expensive jacket.

Steeling myself against the barrage I expected, I dropped one final bomb.

“I’ll just need to get some government issued ID from you.”

A pause.  “Who the fuck do you think you are?  I am not giving you my ID.  You legally can’t even ask me for my ID.”

Again, consistency.  If I let this slide and he comes again when someone else is working, they’d get the inevitable “Well, the other guy said I didn’t need ID!”

“I actually have to sir, that’s actually the law.  In Ontario, that’s the law.  The police do come in here to collect our books regularly.”  Which was true.  And I’ve been yelled at and threatened by cops for not following procedure.  It’s less fun than being yelled at by rich guys, truthfully.

He reached into his wallet.  “That’s bullshit.  I’m a lawyer.  I’m not showing you my ID.”  He pulled out a business card.  He was indeed a lawyer.

“Sir, I can’t use this.  I need government issued photo ID, like a driver’s license.  This all goes into my computer, I can’t do the transaction without the proper ID.  If I used that, I couldn’t even complete the screen to do the transaction.  None of the information I need is on here.”

He looked even more exasperated.  He’s not the only customer in the store.  Some glance over, some studiously avoid glancing over.  One’s just completely disinterested.

“What information do you need?!” he bellowed.

Inhaling deep, I answered.  “I can’t do this without your date of birth and address, bare minimum.  I’m sorry sir.  That’s all I can do for you.”

He started stuffing the CDs back into the box.  He stormed to the door.  He turned.

“You’re a real asshole, you know that?”

And that was the last thing he said to me.  I never saw him again.

Part 12: The Pepsi Power Hour

RECORD STORE TALES Part 12:  The Pepsi Power Hour

I’m going to take you back in time a bit.  Back to a time before the record store….

I remember back to the 80’s and early 90’s when MuchMusic was king. Back when there was no Jersey Shore and they played actual music videos.  There was no internet at that time, so you had to go to the store to buy your music (more often than not, on cassette). To hear new bands, you watched videos on Much and listened to the radio. There was no YouTube.

There was this frickin’ awesome show on Much back in the day — you remember it. It was originally only on once a week (Thursdays at 4 if I recall) and was hosted by one John “J.D.” Roberts. Yeah, the CNN guy. After he left, the hosting slot rotated between Michael Williams, Steve Anthony, Erica Ehm and Laurie Brown and then finally the late Dan Gallagher. Despite his long hair, Dan didn’t know a lot about metal — he didn’t know how to pronounce “Anthrax” and had never heard of Ratt. But that show was by far the best way to hear new metal back in the day.

That show was THE POWER HOUR.

It was so popular that they eventually had two a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4, which was awesome for me since by 1989 I was working every Thursday at Zehrs.  I could still catch one a week, usually.

I remember tuning in, VCR at the ready to check out all the new videos and catch onto the newest bands. There was this band called Leatherwolf that I found via Hit Parader magazine and first heard on the Power Hour. I loved that band. There was another band called Sword from Montreal. Psycho Circus. Faith No More. Skid Row. Armored Saint. Testament. You could always count on the Power Hour to have Helix on. That show rocked.

They had some of the best interviews as well.  Usually they’d have someone come in and co-host for an hour.  They had everybody from Gene Simmons to Brian Vollmer to Lemmy.  In depth stuff too, at times.

Then in 1990 something else cool happened. I discovered a magazine called M.E.A.T (the periods were for no reason at all, just to look cool like W.A.S.P. but eventually they decided it stood for “Metal Events Around Toronto”). M.E.A.T was awesome because it was monthly, free, and had in depth articles clearly written by knowledgable fans. There was no magazine with that kind of deep coverage. Even Slash loved M.E.A.T, at a time when Guns hated rock magazines! I loved M.E.A.T so much I eventually sent them $10 to subscribe to a free magazine.  I did this on a yearly basis.

I discovered a whole bunch of great bands via that magazine. I Mother Earth, Slash Puppet, Russian Blue, Jesus Christ, not to mention they were way ahead of the curve on alternative. They had a Nirvana concert review back in 1989. They got behind Soundgarden way before they were cool. And you could count on them hanging onto the oldies. They’d put an indi band from Toronto on the cover one month, and put Black Sabbath on the cover the next month.  Next issue they’d have an in-depth interview with Kim Mitchell.  They’d talk about bands that nobody else did.

Their CD reviews were my bible! My music hunting was probably 90% based on their reviews, especially since by then the Power Hour had changed into the 5 day weekly Power 30 hosted by Teresa Roncon, and sucked.  The started playing too much thrash and grunge and never gave the old bands a shot anymore.

Things have changed so much now. I never get into new bands anymore, back then I used to just eat them up. I guess new bands just don’t interest me anymore. I like my old time rock and roll. I did buy the new Sheepdogs, twice.  The last new band I got totally and 100% excited about was The Darkness, and that was, what…2003?

Yet I can’t get into these new metal bands. The music sounds so sterile to my aging ears. The rock has lost its balls. The album I have been most excited about in 2012 was the new Van Halen — a band that is approaching 40 years old. But my God does it rock.  Kiss and Black Sabbath both have new records coming out, and I’m excited about them, but I could two shits about the new Nickelback.

In a lot of ways, it’s a better time for music now.  With eBay and Amazon I’ve managed to fill nearly every gap in my music collection.  There are some bands that I now have complete sets of, and others that I am achingly close.  I’m missing 4 Maiden EP’s and 1 Deep Purple import, for example.  Back in the 80’s you didn’t have access to this.  You didn’t even have access to an accurate and complete discography.  It wasn’t until the internet that this kind of information was even available.

Aside from that, today kind of sucks for music.  Sure, it’s easier to find new bands now, but we did OK in the 80’s.  M.E.A.T turned me on to lots of bands, and they were always giving away sampler cassettes.  Much played all the new videos by all the  metal bands at least once, basically.  You had to work a little harder, but we only appreciated the music more.  It wasn’t disposable.

And there were a lot more new bands around that just plain rocked!

BRENT DOERNER: Cranking the Decibels (Exclusive interview!)

This is another old one.  I did this interview back in 2006.  Brent Doerner, who had quit Helix in 1990 and again in 1993, was about to dip his toes back into music again with a smoking hot new band called Decibel.  I met Brent at a Helix show at Molly Bloom’s and we kept in touch.  Brent rejoined Helix in 2009 staying until September 29, 2012.

Brent Doerner:  Still Cranking the Decibels

One of the most iconic images in Canadian rock is from the music video Rock You, by Helix.  You know that image.  The guitar solo kicks in, and the guitar player emerges from the water, Gibson in hand.  Anybody who has seen that video should remember that solo.  It’s just one of those things:  an image that’s etched into our rock and roll memories.  It clearly stated who this band was, and what their purpose was.  They were here to rock you.

That guitar player was Brent Doerner, who played on and wrote many Helix classics.  Brent Doerner left the band in 1990, but never quite left the Helix family.  He rejoined the band briefly for their It’s A Business Doing Pleasure album, and has made guest appearances on many of their CDs since leaving the band.  If you picked up a CD like Back For Another Taste, B-Sides, or even the recent Rockin’ In My Outer Space, you’ll hear Brent playing.

Aside from these guest shots, Brent’s been fairly quiet musically until now.  He took up a lucrative career in carpentry, moonlighting as a country guitar player in various bar outfits.  Honing is chops via his newfound love of country, Brent felt the urge to write some songs.  In late 2006, he was ready to make some noise again.  The result is Brent Doerner’s Decibel, which is both the name of his new band and new album.  It’s an album he’s very proud of, and justifiably so.  For him, it’s all about songwriting.

“If you don’t write good songs, it ain’t gonna fly baby,” he says after inviting me in for a beer.  Brent’s passion for songwriting is nothing new.  While Paul Hackman and Brian Vollmer wrote the majority of Helix originals, Brent did write (and sing) some of their classics.  Continuing about the art of songcraft, he stresses if you can’t write, “that’s it, it’s over.  You can be the best players in the world, and it won’t save you.  A lot of guys could play like the wind, or drum like the wind, [but can’t write].”  Focusing his writing, the result was an album of what Doerner calls high-energy rock.

Decibel is a record of unique songs.  The lyrics are fun, out of leftfield, and catchy.  The guitar playing is hard, with the smoothness picked up from his country gigs.  Some of the songs are quirky, bringing to mind vintage Guess Who.  It’s been a true labor of love for Brent Doerner, who’s been working on these songs for the better part of a year.

“I was bound and determined, come hell or high water, to make an album.  I bought a 24 track, one of those digital things, and I said, ‘I’m making an album, I don’t care how I do it.’  I still had all my guitars, or some [at least], and I just started writing.”  He also hooked up with his new band, consisting of Shane Schedler on lead guitar, Chick Schumilas on guitar, and Dan Laurin on drums.  There’s even a smattering of guest appearances on the CD.  Perhaps most exciting is a guest shot by Brent’s twin brother, and ass-kicker on the drums, Brian Doerner.

Interestingly, with Brent playing guitar, the band has three guitar players.   Brent tells the story:  “We kind of like the idea of three guitars in the band, with a bass player and a drummer.  I met these other guys, Shane, Chick and Dan, when I was living alone in my house.  I was writing songs, and going at it with a vengeance, really.  These guys kept coming by to my house and saying, ‘We got all these songs too!’  I got to their hall, with some beer, and I sat down, and they blasted away for a friggin’ hour, just earthquake volume.  When they’re done, they say, ‘Well what did you think of the songs?’  And I said, ‘Well I didn’t hear any songs, just all this music.’”  The band responded with, “Well we did the hard part.  You just have to write the melody and the lyrics!”

Brent continues, “But they were bound and determined in the end that they wanted three guitars.  And what’s happening with me when I lead sing is, I stop playing so I can sing, because some of this stuff I can’t sing and play over it.  I can sing and play over a lot of shit, but it seems that I can’t sing and play over some of the stuff that I wrote!”  Brent points out On Bended Knee (one of the album’s highlights) as one in particular that is hard to sing and play at the same time.

Even though Brent’s been singing since 1978 with Helix (that’s him on Billy Oxygen and Crazy Women, among others), he wasn’t too keen on singing this time out.  “I didn’t really want to be the singer.  We kind of looked around for singers.  That’s how we got Hills (Hilliard Walter) on one song and Shane on the other.  I was trying to sing Dancin Frogs and I knew I was failing.  I’m not that great of a singer, really.  So he came in there, and I was making Hills nervous by standing there, because he’d never even heard the song before.” Deciding to leave Hills alone for a moment, “we went outside for a smoke, came back and he was done.  Three takes, he’d never heard the song before, I thought that was pretty friggin’ good.  And he picked his own melody, he didn’t follow what I tried to teach him.  He roughly, loosely followed.”  The improvised vocal is one of the highlights of the album.  Hills Walter is well known in the Kitchener music scene for his strong soulful voice and versatility.

The aformentioned Dancing Frogs is one of the coolest, most unique moments on the record.  Surprisingly, according to Brent, it almost didn’t make the album.  “I didn’t want to present it to the band, because I didn’t think it fit the rest of the album.  We were short songs, we wanted 12 and we only had 11.  I had this one sitting around for a while, so I sang it, and they said, ‘That’s fuckin’ cool!  Put that on there!’  So we just tried to make it a little heavier, play some double leads…there’s no lead solo in that song. Instead of playing a big fancy lead solo, we threw in a couple ‘oogha’ [car] horns!”

Brent thought that the vibe of the song evoked the classic image of the dancing frog from the Warner Brothers cartoon One Froggy Evening.  “You can just picture the dancing frog with the top hat and the cane!”  The song is subtitled The Zamboni Song because Hills actually drives one!  “We’ve got the best damn Zamboni operator/driver/singer/lead vocalist in the country, man!”

Doerner reveals that he’d like to get Hills into the band, full-time, as a bass player.  “He’s got some screwed up hours on that Zamboni though.  He’s got to go in at like 4am or 5am!”

Songwriting wise, Brent is really turned on by writing lyrics.  He likes to find inspiration in a variety of places, writing down phrases that catch his eye, and figuring out a way to work them together into songs.  On Bended Knee, he says, was inspired by Shakespeare.  The Sum of 2 People was pieced together using math phrases he found on the internet.  “I worked really hard at getting unique titles.  I’ve never heard a title before even close to that, and I want unique titles so I can have unique songs.  When I wrote it, I wrote the chorus first because I liked the title.  When I have my chorus I can go ahead and write my verses because I know what I’m going to be writing about.”

He strove to make the song unique musically as well as lyrically.  “I used 6/8 time, and four unusual chords put together in repetition.”

In general, Doerner likes a little humour in his lyrics.  “There’s no killing, there’s no blood, there’s no death in the lyrics anywhere.  If anything there are tongues in cheeks, all over the place.  I just couldn’t picture myself singing about death and destruction, I’m not that way.  A lot of these songs are love songs in a funny way.  Dancin Frogs is a love song.  That guy frog really likes that chickie frog!”

It’s not all just lyrical fun with the Decibel boys though.  There’s quite a lot of instrumental goodness going on too.  A song that Shane sings called Never Turn Yer Back features a neat bass part actually performed by Brent.  “I play that.  I play the intro and the exit on that.  That’s from me being a guitar player, it sounded cool on bass.  We had a bass player play the rest of the song.  Mikey (Mike Benedictine), we had him come up from Hamilton, for free, drove up here, learned the songs and recorded a couple of them, and drove home, just to say he was going to be on this record.”

On an album of many highlights, A Body For You stands out.  The riff came from Chick.  “When I met Chick, he had that, and the intro too.  A Body For You is the first song I’ve ever written on all my albums that I didn’t write the guitar part to.  I wrote the lyrics and the melody to Chick’s guitar lick, except the chorus.  So I was just going, ‘Wow!  I’ve never tried this before and it’s working!’  He’s just all rock, Chicky.  He only wants to write high-energy guitar rock.  He doesn’t want to get too fancy.  And you’ll notice there are no slow songs on the album.  Let somebody else put slow songs on their albums, thanks!”

For the fans who like to try to figure out the licks, there’s a lot going on with this record.  “The other guys in the band were getting brain cramps figuring [the songs] out.  I was using double-stop country style, double picking, and they had a hard time getting on to that.  It was a new technique to the rockers!  And that’s what got me into the rocking again, was learning something new.  I kind of got tired of the rock for a while because I wasn’t learning anything new.  And then I got into the country, and I got fired back up again.”

Brent’s been listening to a lot more than just country.  He lists some of his favourite newer artists:  Audioslave (he loves the character in Cornell’s voice), Shinedown, and Evanesence among many.  The last three CDs he bought were Nickelback, Cheryl Lescom, and (of course) Helix.  In particular, he’s inspired by Kurt Cobain, although he missed the Nirvana train the first time out.  “I was doing my country thing at the time, so I wasn’t really listening to Nirvana.  And I now know why Nirvana is so popular.  I really like his songwriting style, his lyrics.  Why are they still on the radio?  You hear them every day like you hear Led Zeppelin every day.  And there’s gotta be a reason.”  The conclusion, he reasons, breaks down to the core once again:  good songwriting, unique songwriting.  These are goals to which Doerner aspires.

Rock and roll thrives in the live setting.  Brent Doerner is eager to get out there and play some gigs.  He had a blast at the Helix 30th anniversary show, when he joined his old bandmates for some of his classic songs.  However, it didn’t come easy.  “I practiced a lot for that gig because my guitar playing was really rough, I hadn’t been playing enough.  When I knew that I was going to be playing in front of a whole bunch of people…I mean, the songs I wrote on those Helix albums, I don’t run them over every week!  I had to run over them a bunch of times to remember my own songs.  I don’t play my own songs all the time.”

And will we hear any Helix at Decibel shows?  Billy Oxygen, perhaps?

“I wrote that one.  We’re talking about playing it live.  We only have nine songs that we put on the album, and I wrote Billy Oxygen, and I wrote Crazy Women, so we were thinking of adding those two to the set.”

Either way, a Decibel show is sure to be a good time, if the band’s rehearsals are anything to judge by.  “It’s too much fun, I tell you, when our band gets together it’s like the friggin’ Decibel Comedy Hour.  Do you think you can get a word in edgewise?  We get together, it’s just a friggin’ laugh.  I don’t know how it can be so funny, but it is, every time, about anything.”

Be sure to catch Brent and the boys live.   Pick up the CD.  Play some air guitar to it.  You’ll be glad that you did.

Part 2: Gimme an R!

RECORD STORE TALES Part 2:  Gimme an R!

When I was growing up in Kitchener, you had only a few choices of who it was OK to listen to. In 1984, your status depended on your listening choices.

Quiet Riot and Twisted Sister were both “finished” by that point, if you liked them you were not cool anymore. Kiss were kind of cool, but only if you only liked their newest album. The stuff with makeup was “lame” and “old fashioned”.  Van Halen were passé by the time David Lee Roth did “California Girls”.  Judas Priest was OK, but the singer had short hair. And Ozzy?  He scared us.  Even then we couldn’t understand a word he said, plus he looked like a monster on his records.

Your only real choices were: Iron Maiden, W.A.S.P., or Helix.

And no matter who you were into primarily, everybody liked Helix. Why? Well, mainly because Brian Vollmer lived on Breckenridge Drive. I could probably see his place from my parents’ bedroom window.

Fritz (Helix) and LeBrain

Fritz (Helix) and LeBrain

All the kids who lived on Breckenridge, like Ian Johnson, would always tell stories about Brian, who lived three doors down. Brian’s got a cool car, he’d say. Brian got a Christmas card from W.A.S.P., and it was so fucked up…something about “Slashing through the toes, in a one horse open slay…” But then again, Ian Johnson also told us he knew George Lucas and he a squad of ninjas who had a secret base in his basement.

Ian Johnson did not have a basement.

So, Helix were the band you had to like. But the stories of Brian Vollmer and his bandmates were considered heresay at best. I had never actually seen Brian in the flesh. He was considered a legend, a myth, like Loch Ness or Sasquatch. Ian, after all, couldn’t be trusted.

Well, fast forward two decades, and now Helix is now a rock institution. They keep truckin on, with new members and new records, but Brian Vollmer is still at the helm, proudly still asking us to give him an R.

Of course, in this day and age, everybody has a website, and an email. The first time I ever wrote to Brian a few years ago, I asked him if he did indeed live on Breckenridge. He confirmed for me that he did, with his first wife, during the early 80’s. Ian told the truth! (I never did email George Lucas to find out about that part of the story.)

Hell, just last night I was surfing http://www.planethelix.com and saw the very Christmas card from W.A.S.P. “Slashing through the toes”. Brian had scanned it and added it to the memorabilia on his site.

Every time you went to the grocery store in 1984 or 85, you’d take a second look at all the long haired guys. I swore I saw Brent Doerner buying soda at Zerhs, but I lost him in the crowd.  Or was it Brian Doerner?

Again, fast forward a few years. When the movie “Fubar” came out, Sum 41 contributed a version of “Rock You” to the soundtrack. I was working at the record store, and a gentleman came in and asked if he could listen to it. He used to be in Helix, you see, and wanted to hear Sum 41’s version. It was Brian Doerner, Helix’s drummer in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Brent’s twin brother. The Doerners are very distinct looking, I should have recognized him immediately. I of course identified myself as a big fan, and we had a nice chat. Brian Doerner turned out to be the nicest guy.

I saw Helix in 1987 and again in 1996, and again from the second row in 2006 (opening for Alice!), and a bunch of times in 2007. They were great every time.  It’s funny because I can’t think of too many kids in the 8th grade who still proudly listen to the same music then as they do now.  They’re all probably embarrassed that they used to listen to Mr. Mister, or Boy George.  I don’t mind boasting that I was never into the trends.  I knew what I liked then, I know what I like now, and although my tastes have grown and expanded tremendously, I never felt embarrassed by my roots.  I still love Maiden, I still love Helix, more now than then.

I remember when Paul Hackman was killed in 1992. It was the total Cliff Burton accident; he was thrown from the tour bus in a crash. My friend Mike McNeill was in a band opening for Helix at the time, he was there.  When we first met in my record store, that’s one of the first topics that came up:  Helix!

Playing the albums today, you can hear that so many of them are solid all the way through. The first two, Breaking Loose and White Lace & Black Leather have that 70’s sound, as only an indi band in 1978 could sound. I think those albums probably only sold about 2000 copies each at the time. But they are solid, the band was writing varied music. And they were always superb musicians. Brent Doerner’s a really talented guitar player, with an amazing stage presence.

“Billy Oxygen” from the very first record , aptly titled Breaking Loose, is a marvel.  Drums:  Brian Doener.  Fast, accurate, and hard, like a good jazz drummer.  Bass solo courtesy of Keith “Burt” Zurbrigg.  Brent Doener took the lead vocal on this, a song he wrote and garner the band some of their first airplay.  The lyrics seemed to be about a spaceman named Billy Oxygen, who went to other planets looking for people to party with.  Not exactly Arthur C. Clarke-ian, but to a me, any sci-fi reference in a song was cool.  (That’s why we older rock fans love Savatage, those silly Trekkies.)

When I was in University I tried my hand at bad, bad science fiction short stories.  Suffice to say, none of it survives today with good reason.  However, Helix had a little moment in my fiction:  My spaceship was called an ES-335, named after Billy Oxygen’s ship in the song.  And only a little while ago did I learn that ES-335 wasn’t the name of a spaceship at all.   An ES-335 was a Gibson guitar.

There were other science fiction moments in Helix songs as well. “Wish I Could Be There”, from the same album, is one such song.  It’s about a guy who dreams of going to space.  That song represents their epic, their “Stairway to Heaven”.   “Time for a Change” from the second album spoke of nuclear war, if we do not change our ways, a common theme in the sci-fi of the era.

I should clarify, however, that we didn’t even know about these first albums back in 1984.  The earliest song we knew was “Heavy Metal Love”, and even that was pretty new.  We were vaguely aware that they had existed before 1984, but we didn’t know for sure because there were no music videos before that, and those records were out of print.  You couldn’t walk into Sam The Record Man and ask Al King for them.

Occasionally we would hear rumours.  Usually these “little known facts” would come from that one uncle that everyone had, the one who wore no shirt, watched a lot of football, and had a handlebar moustache.  Usually this stereotypical uncle would say, “Yeah, Helix have been around a long time, like 20 years, I saw them when they were still a country band.  My buddy was in the band too.”

Some nights I sat up in a sweat about this.  A country band?  Helix?  Sure, I didn’t hate country music, my dad played that Johnny Cash stuff and it’s alright.  (I even saw Johnny Cash live in ’83, before I ever heard of Helix.) But Helix were rockers!  Rockers were about breaking loose!  They sang about their heavy metal loves!  They told us not to do what people tell you to do, and to always be yourself!  If a bunch of country guys were now posing as rockers to make a buck, well, that would be a black mark on Rock N’ Roll.  Why?  Because it would prove that our dads were right:  Rockers were just in it for the money.  If we couldn’t trust Helix, you couldn’t trust any of them.  Especially W.A.S.P.

We didn’t speak of these things often.  It was bad to speak of these things.  But each of us dreamed—nightmared—about finding a copy of an early Helix album in our uncles’ musty collections.  And in the dream, there they were always on the cover.  A black and white photo.  And they’re wearing cowboy hats.

It never came to that.  When their first two albums, Breaking Loose and White Lace & Black Leather, were finally issued on CD in 1992, they sounded pretty damn good.  It’s classic rock, but harder, much harder.  And best of all, it sounds like home.  Everything about those two albums sounds like right here.  If I played them for you, you’d hear nothing.  But to me, I can’t understand how nobody else can hear that these albums were born right here in Kitchener,Ontario.

Brian Vollmer and I, back in in 2007 at Planet Helix!

Brian Vollmer and I, back in in 2007 at Planet Helix!

The kids from Kitchener 1984 didn’t hear about Helix until MuchMusic started throwing “Rock You” into heavy rotation.  The song was everything we needed at the time.  It was catchy, yet you and your tone deaf friends could all chant it.  Hey, maybe that’s the same reason hip-hop is popular today?

The video for “Rock You” was equally cool.  There were whips, chains, nearly naked girls, leather, guitars, and fire.  The best part of the video was when Brent Doerner comes out of the water with his Les Paul screaming the guitar solo.  And then your friends would debate:  “Could that guy really play under water?”  “No way man, he’d get electrocuted!”  “Are you sure?  That looked awesome though.”  It was catchy, but you could still be a tough guy if you liked this band, because clearly they got lots of girls.

Come to think of it, Helix seemed to get lots of girls.  There were girls in every single video that we had seen!  Granted, the one in “(Make Me Do) Anything You Want” was doing ballet and stuff, but she was still alright.

Oh, and by the way, Ian Johnson also took credit for the “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'” video.  He said, and I quote because I will never forget this, “Yeah, that was my idea.  I told Brian that he should make a video with a lot of girls in it.  So, he did.”

But then again, Ian Johnson also said that he wrote the Disney movie “Bambi”.

But that, dear friends, is another story.