RECORD STORE TALES #908: Practice Practice Practice
Time for another confessional!
After our amazing interview with Paul Laine a little while ago, I finally have the confidence to say that I feel like a good interviewer. I didn’t always feel that way. My very first interview, with Eddie Jackson of Queensryche, was 20 years ago. That was a great interview, but I didn’t think I was a good interviewer yet. I felt like I needed a few more under my belt first. My next interview didn’t go nearly as well, and I stopped pursuing them.
Here’s the truth. I don’t care how stupid this sounds. You go and interview Paul Laine yourself if you think this sounds stupid.
When I was younger…I used to practice interviewing rock stars in my room.
Paul Stanley. Ace Frehley. Bruce Dickinson. I made up questions and I practised asking them. I worked on my cadence and imagined loose, fun interviews. I pictured myself improvising followup questions. I practised!
This continued into my 20s. Listening to albums. Reading interviews. Thinking, “I could do better than this.” Pondering the questions you really wanted to know the answers to.
I’m happy that I’m now well past the point of practising. Only experience can be my guide now. If this shtick comes naturally to me, it’s only because I practised at it for years!
Deke and I are beyond psyched to welcome Greg Fraser and Patrick Gagliardi of STORM FORCE to the show tonight!
If you didn’t already know, Storm Force released their debut album Age of Fear in January. Nine months later it remains one of the best records of the year. If you haven’t heard it yet, you will want to after our chat with Patrick and Greg. It’s been praised by reviewers from Canada, the US, Australia and Sweden as a must-hear for fans of melodic hard rock “the way you remember it”.
Tune in at 7:00 PM E.S.T. at the location of your preference below.
While a certain percentage of readers know me as “LeBrain” on 107.5 Dave FM, my first radio appearance was actually a decade ago. Back in the late 90’s/early 2000’s, we used to get interview requests from a lot of students. Some were in business, some were in broadcasting, but they all wanted to talk to someone at the record store, usually the owner since he founded the whole operation on his own.
In this case, I was approached by a broadcasting student. He asked me if I’d like to do a radio interview over the phone regarding Napster, downloading, and how that was affecting the music business. Normally in the past all interview requests were passed on onto the owner. I thought that I could handle this one myself.
Even though I had serious doubts about the health of physical music sales at the time, I put on the brave face. There were still positive things happening.
“We haven’t noticed a decline in sales,” I said. “At least not a major one. The industry is responding to these concerns. I fully agree that $20 or more is too much to pay for a CD. I can tell you that if anybody is getting rich off the price of CDs, it’s not independent chains like ourselves. The markup we make on new CDs covers the shipping of the product to us and our overhead, and that’s about it.
“As I said though, the industry is responding. They’re putting bonuses inside the CD that you can’t get by downloading it off Napster,” I continued. “You’ll notice lots of bands, System of a Down for example, putting bonus DVDs or CD-ROMs in the package for virtually the same price.” Metallica too. Lars has obviously learned something from all this: Inside the then-new Metallica CD you got a free full length DVD plus a free concert to download on mp3.
I wasn’t optimistic about the future of physical CD sales, but I didn’t let on. I’d heard the buzz from customers and even staff members, downloading more and more, where they used to hunt for songs in brick-and-mortar stores. Some staff members of a certain generation refused to download on principle, but we were a shrinking group.
“Since I sell used discs,” I continued, spinning it positive, “a lot of the downloaders are selling off their collections to me. For us it’s turning into a winning situation since I have more, and better, stock than 5 years ago.”
The interview aired a day or two later. As it happens my boss happened to hear the interview and liked it. Although it might not seem like a big deal to all readers, I was just proud of myself for taking the initiative and doing it myself. He was surprised to hear the interview, since I hadn’t told him about it. I was confident in my experience and communication abilities, and I wanted the opportunity.
It wasn’t the last. The next one was a TV interview, for the local cable access channel. I don’t know if my boss ever saw that one, but he wouldn’t have liked it as much – all my facial piercings were visible! The idea of a dude with a labret stud and nose ring representing his store on TV might have been too much for him to handle!
mikeladano.com 