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!
RECORD STORE TALES #1119: The Olde Toys R Us Store Sure Has Changed…
Where Toys R Us stands today in Kitchener Ontario, there once was a drive-in movie theater. That was torn down in the early 1980s, and the mighty Toys R Us was raised. There it has loomed heavy over Fairview Mall across the street, for four decades, beckoning children with aisles and aisles of Star Wars toys, then replaced by GI Joe figures and Transformers. It was impossible to enter Toys R Us without finding something you wanted. It has ebbed and waned since then, now stuffed with unwanted and overpriced 6″ figures and Super 7 cards.
“At least we still have a Toys R Us,” we say. “Mastermind Toys is closing, and Walmart sucks. Now let’s go check out the vinyl at the Toys R Us store.”
Full stop. What? Vinyl at Toys R Us?
In another attempt to stay relevant as Hasbro drives their prices up and quality down, creating shelfwarming superheroes and Sith lords, Toys R Us is now stocking vinyl at their Kitchener location.
Last time I visited there, about a month ago, they were in the process of re-organizing. Where the Lego and Hasbro products were, was becoming a book section. Interesting! Book stores haven’t done well in the area, with the short-lived Booksmarts closing a decade ago, across Wilson Ave from TRU. Still, we must applaud any attempts to get kids reading books. I didn’t have a look at the book section myself; nothing caught my eye. What did catch my view was the familiar shape of white bins containing shrink-wrapped packages, 12″ by 12″. Each one was different, boasting vibrant artwork.
They were not calendars. They were records. Vinyl had come to Toys R Us.
The first one I noticed was Prequelle by Ghost. $25. Not bad. I picked it up in my eager hands.
I considered buying Ghost on vinyl at that price. Oh, sure, I already own a CD copy with a lenticular cover and bonus tracks, but…vinyl, right?
I put it back. Ghost are more of a car band for me. I wouldn’t play the vinyl more than twice. Decent price though.
Thinking of the bands aching to be collected on vinyl back at home, I looked for Kiss and Iron Maiden. No Kiss; lots of The Killers though. The albums were loosely organized. Toys R Us doesn’t have a dedicated person for this section to keep things organized, and…ouch!! What’s that? A record was clumsily wedged between two rows, pulling the cover in two directions and creating an ugly crease. I put the records back in rows, but this is why you need a dedicated person when you put a record store inside a toy store.
There were some interesting finds there. Purple Rain on vinyl would be cool to have. I chuckled when I saw a Linkin Park Meteora 2.0 box set. Jen used to love Linkin Park. I bought her the Linkin Park/Jay-Z album for Christmas when we were dating.
Over to Iron Maiden. They had a decent selection – better than a lot of the local chain stores. Several albums I needed on vinyl, and even the three-LP En Vivo set. A-ha! Number of the Beast. I just got ripped off at The Beat Goes On with an overpriced copy a few weeks prior. How does Toys R Us pricing compare?
Cheaper! Four bucks cheaper! Toys R Us had The Number of the Beast four bucks cheaper than the $40 copy I bought at The Beat Goes On across the street. How can Toys R Us be beating The Beat Goes On, a dedicated music store, in prices? According to friend Kevin, the record sections are actually little HMVs. They also have one in St. Catharines.
“They really need to work on their merchandising,” said Chris Preston, who had copious notes on how to improve this situation. “No genres whatsoever,” he added. Chris also felt it was a big miss to not sell turntables or accessories with the records.
There was no signage, and the records were as much in order as you’d find at the local mall stores. There were no letter groups – A, B, C, etc. Many additional records were not displayed at all, and just shoved into a lower shelf. That’s where I found Purple Rain. They did have coloured vinyl and limited editions. It wasn’t a bad little corporate record section, if it was properly cared for.
I questioned the wisdom of placing a record section in a store primarily occupied by running and screaming pairs of hands, right around record shelf height. I dealt with this at a CD store, remember. I think they’re gambling on the nerd factor. Those people who are coming in for the newest Lego releases or collectible figures. They’re hoping those people will also stop and buy a record.
“Nerds like records too now, right?” You can imagine an executive asking that question in a boardroom, somewhere in a downtown metropolis where decisions such as these are made.
Considering three, briefly, I ended up not buying any. I considered but dismissed Prequelle, and also Somewhere In Time and Powerslave by Iron Maiden. The prices were a little high for Maiden albums that I remember being stocked at $10 or less at the downtown Sam the Record Man in 1989. Incidentally, Toys R Us had Powerslave cheaper than Amazon at the exact same time, also by about four bucks.
What does it mean when Toys R Us stores are stocking vinyl in a makeshift music section, but no other formats like CD or cassette?
I think this means we have hit peak vinyl. HMV is dumping their stock in these micro-locations, because they have too much. I’ve seen it before. We did similar things when we had too many CDs in our warehouse. The Boss Man tried moving them in bulk to a micro-location. That was one of many schemes that I remember.
I do look forward to buying at least one record at Toys R Us in the future. I’ll keep the price tag on forever, just to prove it happened.
My overpriced Beast vinyl from The Beat Goes On. I wonder how the old Boss Man feels about another chain inching in on his territory, with cheaper prices?
My time in music retail was relatively long, considering how taxing on the soul it can be buying used music from the public on the wrong side of town. I started in July of 1994, in a small store in a small mall in Kitchener, Ontario, called The Beat Goes On. We sold some used, some new. In 1996, I began managing a new store that was a slightly different format: 95% used, with a small Top 40 chart of new CDs. I stayed there until early 2006. 12 years total, with 10 in management. Over those 12 years, I witnessed so many changes to the way we did business. Join me for a journey through time.
Ah, 1994. I had just start dating a new girlfriend. Motley Crue had come out with their John Corabi album, which was easily my favourite disc of the year. I wore cowboy boots to my job interview with the boss man at the Record Store. I was hired and nervously stepped behind the counter and did my first transactions.
We had a huge cash register, and still took cheques. Credit cards were processed with one of those imprint machines that made the satisfying CHK-CHK sound when you imprinted the card. Then began a long process of writing in dollar amounts and getting a signature. Today, one tap and you’re done! When we got a debit machine, it used the same phone line as the actual store phone. When someone called the store, it would interrupt your debit transaction if you had one going. You usually ended up with two impatient customers that way: one on the phone and one in front of you!
Our stock was part CD and part cassette, but tapes were on their way out and we only bought and sold used CDs. The reasoning was it was easier to check a CD for quality visually, looking for scratches. We carried only those two formats, until one day in November 1994. Pearl Jam came out with Vitalogy in 1994 on vinyl, two weeks before its cassette and CD releases. The first vinyl I ever sold. We only stocked five copies because nobody was buying vinyl back then. We probably should have stocked 15 or 20, because we were surprised with demand. People who didn’t even own a turntable wanted it for its collector’s value and larger artwork.
Boyz II Men were big. TLC were bigger. Soundgarden and Nirvana were dominating the rock charts. My kind of music wasn’t popular and wasn’t encouraged to be played in store.
Tastes changed rather quickly for some of these bands. Boyz II Men made their way into the bargain. Thence came Puff Daddy, Mase, and of course the posthumous albums by 2pac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. On the rock side, upstarts like Korn, Limp Bizkit, Creed and eventually Nickleback replaced Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains on our charts. And then came Crazy Town, and by then, it felt like there was no coming back. Rock was a cartoon. A “fuck”-laden filthy cartoon.
The job behind the counter became easier. By 1996, our inventory was computerized. Cassettes were gone; it was 100% CD. You could look everything up with a simple search. Before, I had to physically search the shelves to see if we had inventory. Of course, we soon learned that just because something pops up on the computer as in-stock, that actually means nothing. Human error was a huge problem and I was as guilty as everyone else, if not more so! Putting the wrong disc in a CD case upon sale was so easy to do. Not every customer realized they bought something with the wrong CD inside, and we didn’t always get them returned. We ended up with many missing or mis-matched CDs, and also missing cases due to mis-filing or theft.
Soon customers wanted to look things up on computer terminals by themselves. They also wanted to see what our other stores had in stock, as the we franchised out and grew. These complicated problems were eventually solved with a little thing called the World Wide Web.
Having internet access at the store in the year 1999 was unimaginable to me of 1994, who had never even been on the internet yet.
Of course, the advent of the internet brought with it an unforeseen danger. Soon our very existence would be threatened. No, I’m not talking about computer viruses or Y2k. Those had little impact at all. Something else did: Napster.
Napster changed everything. Soon we were carrying so much more than just music, to make up for the decline in sales. Bobble heads, action figures, books, video games, headphones, and so so so so many CD wallets. Sometimes the toys and action figures wouldn’t have anything to do with music, like the Muppets or the Simpsons. (Those were carried because a certain regional manager personally liked those shows.) Osbournes merch was popular. Kiss had many different toy options available. Metallica had a cool stage playset. Macfarlane figures either sold out, or sat around forever. We stopped carrying blank tapes, but had a variety of CD-Rs available instead.
I recall the boss resisted carrying CD-Rs for a while, because he thought it was counterproductive to our business of selling music on CD. However eventually it became a case of a dam giving way to a flood. It was “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” and blank CDs were now being sold by brick or spindle. Remember bricks and spindles full of blank CDs?
We also sold CD cleaning kits and tended to stay away from snake-oil CD fixing “solutions”. Instead, we had a couple of guys who fixed CDs with a grinder and wax in their garage. Eventually we began fixing the discs ourselves using the same method, but actually improving upon the solution by using soap instead of wax. I’m not sure how the original guys took that, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t pretty at all.
Competition was always fierce. We had an HMV store at the mall across the street from the store I managed. We had a Cash Converters pawn shop buying and selling CDs and video games in the same plaza as us. A few years later, a Best Buy opened next door, and their prices were often lower. DVDs began to take up a huge share of our sales, and we now had to make room. Additional shelving was installed. Then we ran out of space again. New formats like SACD and DVD-A started to infiltrate our inventory. Things became really, really complicated compared to the store I managed in 1996.
There are a million stories. I remember one guy buying an SACD, and coming back wanting to know why the “Super Audio” light wasn’t lighting up on his player. How the fuck should I know? I’d never even seen an SACD player at that point. The guy actually wanted me to write a letter to Sony and ask them on his behalf. Yeah, I’ll get right on that sir, after I serve you some fresh Grey Poupon on a charcuterie board.
Technology, transactions and inventory may have changed shape, but one thing never did: the customers.
When we first opened, we had a single disc CD player and tape deck to play music in store. There was a TV for MuchMusic, but it was usually on silent while we played CDs in store. If a customer wanted to hear a CD, we had to open it for them and play it on the store speakers. They’d signal me when to change tracks. In 1996, we have six five-disc changers, each with a dedicated set of headphones, for customers to list. We had another five-disc changer for store play, and eventually one for an outdoor speaker we had. The six customer listening stations took a dedicated person to serve on weekends. We had to retrieve the CDs from behind the counters and load them into the players. We often had to assist the customer in the operation of the machines. And they broke down, frequently. Some days towards the end we only had two working stations at a time.
Our first store was in a mall with a licensed restaurant. We had a few drunks. The other stores I worked at were in strip plazas. We had a few stoners, potheads, crackheads and gang-bangers.
Ahh, the good old days when it was just drunks!
One thing we never delved into in my time was selling CD players. We didn’t want to dip our toes into that kind of thing. Today, they sell turntables at my old store. We also, strangely, never sold batteries which people frequently asked for. I guess margins were so low it wasn’t worth it. I never lasted long enough to see the vinyl revival happen. We only sold a few things on vinyl in time. The aforementioned Pearl Jam was one. Soundgarden (Down on the Upside) was another.
The change that impacted me most had nothing to do with formats, or technology. It didn’t matter that I now had two shelves full of Sega and Nintendo games. The biggest change was in heirarchy behind the scenes. I started as a part timer with one boss. I was promoted to manager, with one boss, and several peers at other stores. Then, suddenly, I had two bosses. Then there were three, and the worst thing about the third is that we were all told “they’re not your boss, they’re here to help.” That was false. Three bosses, and there was now an in-house accountant and other periphery people that seemed to get yelled at less than I did. I’m sure it’s clear from this story that the winds of change did not bring me happiness. Instead they chipped away at the job I started with, and diluted the “music store” I managed into a music/movie/game/knick-knack store. I was attending manager meetings in big hotel board rooms. There were marketing people and franchisees, and nobody ever seemed truly happy on the inside. 110% was demanded of us, but we had no reason to be invested in what boiled down to a bad retail job that caused a lot of stress.
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change, and there was one change I was happy to witness: In the late 90s, Black Sabbath reunited. It was a happy return, though they had their trailer hitched to a nu-metal Ozzfest which wasn’t my cup of tea. Music began to shift until one day in 1999, something truly remarkable happened. We didn’t know how long it would last, or what the new music would sound like, but Iron Maiden reunited with Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith. Judas Priest were a few years behind them, getting Rob Halford back in the band. Suddenly, classic metal was back in a big way. Bigger than ever. It was not waned since. I was happy that I got to see this process begin at the end of my days at the Store.
My boss used to say that I resisted change. I don’t agree. No sir. I embraced the good stuff. The computers, the internet, the website, fixing CDs, the abandonment of certain formats (cassettes and VHS) when they were fading away. The things I struggled with included the diluting of the store with all these other products like video games. I started there because I loved music. Fortunately I also loved movies, so when DVDs began to take over a large section of the store, I was cool with that too. When Grand Theft Auto was upon us, I had no passion. Then came the addition of more upper management, and increased demands on our personal time and investment in the Record Store life. Monthly manager meetings dragged on for hours. We’d leave scratching our heads why this wasn’t just covered in emails. We had zero autonomy and little say in what we did. I remembered a time when I loved my job. There was no love there anymore.
The happy ending is this. When I quit that job, I rediscovered my passion for music. Music was fun for me again, not just something playing in the background as I worked.
Harrison the Mad Metal Man continues to be under the weather, and insisted that I open his parcel in the meantime. So I got Metal Roger on the line and opened Harrison’s box.
My memory is horrible and there is a good chance I already knew about all of this stuff, but here’s what Harrison sent me in a handy-dandy video. Or, if you’re not patient, there are some photos with additional details below as well.
This video is for fans of metal, CDs, and those damned Marvel Lego blind boxes that cursed me last fall! At the end, Roger and I took a brief foray into an interesting subject – the Mount Rushmore of metal mascots. A topic for a future show to be sure.
Thank you Harrison for your generosity once again.
Iron Maiden – Live After Death – remaster in digipack
Food For Thought – Iron Maiden tribute
Dio – Holy Diver – 2005 Rock Candy reissue with bonus interview track
RECORD STORE TALES #1104: We Don’t Need No, No No No, Parental Guidance Here
In our house, we always had the utmost support. It didn’t matter if my parents liked the music. Like it or not, they provided it in spades.
My dad fully enabled my early John Williams addiction. I had a good collection of Star Wars and Indiana Jones music. The only way for me to listen to them was on the big family stereo in the living room. My parents had a good pair of headphones, so noise wasn’t an issue. There I would lay, my Star Wars toys scattered about, as I read the liner notes to The Empire Strikes Back, LP spinning at 33 1/3 rpm on the turntable behind me.
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change, and in 1984 change was afoot. Star Wars could not last forever without films to sustain it, and the Kenner action figures were scraping the bottom of the barrel for Ewoks, and other creatures with mere seconds of screen time. It was, for all intents and purposes for this child, over.
My exposure to music up to that point had been pretty mainstream. There was an earlier dalliance with AC/DC’s “Big Balls” and some “Mr. Roboto” by Styx earlier, but otherwise I only knew John Williams and whatever MuchMusic was playing those days. Billy Ocean’s “Loverboy” was a big one. (The rock connection there was production by Robert John “Mutt” Lange.) I had Michael Jackson and Culture Club cassettes, but neither were played beyond the big singles. I loathed slow songs. I spotted John Fogerty’s “The Old Man Down the Road” and thought it was pretty cool. My biggest dip into heavy metal to date was Quiet Riot, but that day in 1984 changed the course of my life.
Suddenly the vacuum was filled by Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, W.A.S.P., Motley Crue, Helix, Lee Aaron, Triumph, and Kiss. Especially Kiss.
So what did my parents do? They bought me some of my first music cassettes. Powerslave, Walkin’ the Razor’s Edge, Asylum, Condition Critical, and all those seminal albums that shaped my first year as a real music fanatic. Just as I was obsessed with Star Wars and collecting, now I had a new focus and I was on it like a laser. My earliest purchases in the field of rock music were magazines: Faces, and Hit Parader. I had a Faces Kiss special, catching me up on all the essential facts into 1985. (Interestingly, the Faces special talked of the next studio album, which was to be followed by Alive III, they said.) I taped all the music videos off the Pepsi Power Hour like a maniac, soaking up everything I could that wasn’t too scary. (Venom were scary. So was Motorhead.)
My parents relinquished control of the VCR to me during the Pepsi Power Hour broadcast time. 5:00 PM, one day a week and then later on, two days a week. This was seemingly set in stone. The basement gradually became a music den for me, and Bob Schipper would join me as often as possible as we watched all the latest music I had captured on magnetic tape. Bob would offer his opinions, pro and con. We didn’t always agree. He loved Skid Row, and I was more into Badlands. He was early on to D-A-D, but didn’t really get what I loved about Savatage.
Whatever demons and dragons were on the covers of the albums I wanted, my parents would buy them for me. Whether Ozzy was dressed as a priest on the sleeve, or if a guy in a metal mask was being held in a psych ward, they bought the albums. They never said no. They never blinked at titles such as Live After Death or Screaming For Vengeance. I remember my mom once asked me if it was true that AC/DC stood for “Anti-Christ/Devil-Child”. I kind of laughed. She let it go. I think my mom knew how silly all those stories about “satanism in music” really were. It always seemed so far-fetched, and far removed from the songs I was enjoying in the basement with Bob.
His parents were pretty much the same, except he was older and had to buy his own tapes. They didn’t mind the shirtless Vince Neil poster on his wall. Me, I just wondered if he really had a crossbow launcher on his right gauntlet.
A lot of these rock stars looked like wrestlers or apocalyptic warriors from Mad Max. All these influences poured together in a potpourri of hard rock and heavy metal bands, marketed through the TV and magazines that I was consuming, to appeal to my age group. I was the target demographic, and it was working. There’s nothing particularly “evil” about that. That’s the world of capitalism that I was born into, and that record label executives hitched their wagons to. I suppose my mom had probably endured something similar when she was a young Beatles and Elvis fan. Her younger brother, my Uncle Don Don, had Led Zeppelin records. I was just listening to the next generation of rock down the line.
My parents’ support reached its zenith in 2021, when they bought me the Judas Priest box set, 50 Heavy Metal Years of Music. Easily the biggest music gift I ever received, it just proved how far they’d go to enable my musical habits. They don’t understand it, but they support it. That’s a pretty amazing thing, isn’t it?
Sometimes it’s fun to make a big deal out of something that doesn’t matter.
Let’s figure it out. What should the first song of 2024 be? I just woke up, I have not played any music yet in the new year. This is the kind of thing that music nerds make a big deal out of. The first song of the year! As if it sets the tone for the next 366 days (leap year!), let’s pretend that the first song played in 2024 is somehow really, really important.
How we do make such a decision? Let’s narrow it down step by step.
1. Let’s start easy. Should we play the song currently stuck in my head from yesterday? That would be “Past Life” by the Arkells with the Cold War Kids. Thematically it works. It’s all about moving forward instead of backwards, which works well with the whole “new year” thing. “I’ve been running from a past life, I wanna live this life instead!” Uplifting, and also I get that “scratch that itch” feeling of playing a song stuck in my head.
2. However, 2024 is the 40th frickin’ anniversary of a very significant year in my life. 1984: the year I committed to music as “my thing”, specifically heavy metal. The exact date was December 26 1984, Boxing Day. Perhaps I should play something from that year to commemorate this occasion. “I Wanna Be Somebody” by W.A.S.P., “Run to the Hills” by Iron Maiden, “Rock You” by Helix, or “Heaven’s On Fire” by Kiss would be appropriate.
3. Or, we look ahead. There are albums to come in 2024, and we have heard some of the new music already. Judas Priest have released two singles from the forthcoming Invincible Shield. That would be a great way to start the year right — by looking forward.
4. …Buuuut I’d be starting the year by playing a song to which I have no emotional attachment yet, if I played the new Priest. That doesn’t seem like the right note to kick off a new year. Also, do I really want to start the year with a song about a “Panic Attack”?
5. Kiss is my favourite band. I first got into Kiss during that mythical year of 1984. And, the debut album Kiss came out 50 years ago, in 1974.
6. I prefer to listen to albums over songs. 1974’s Kiss gives me an excuse to play a whole album. Playing that debut would be a way to honour both my roots in 1984, and the album’s 50th in 2024.
7. …However, I didn’t know that album in 1984. I was just getting into rock, and I only knew two Kiss songs at that point: “Heaven’s On Fire” (1984) and “Rock and Roll all Nite” (1975).
8. Just a side note: this is the longest I’ve sat at my desk writing with no music playing!
9. The way I see it now, we can go one of two ways. 1984’s “Heaven’s On Fire”, which commemorates its 40th anniversary, and my discovery of heavy metal music the same year. Or, 1974’s Kiss. 50 years of Kiss is a big deal, and they were one of the first five bands I ever liked back in ’84. I prefer playing full albums, and overall I have more nostalgia for it.
10. Flip a coin. Heads: “Heaven’s On Fire”. Tails: Kiss 1974.
BRUCE DICKINSON – “Afterglow of Ragnarok” (2023 BMG 7″ single)
In 2024 we will be graced by a new Bruce Dickinson platter, his first solo album since Tyranny of Souls in 2005. He’s back with Roy Z, and a forthcoming concept album called The Mandrake Project. This single is billed as a “prequel”. It comes with a beautiful, full colour comic book insert, installed in the middle of the gatefold. The story will be fully revealed next year, but this is a project that Bruce has been working on a long long time…
Witness: The B-side “If Eternity Should Fail”, a demo version of a song that Iron Maiden re-recorded on The Book of Souls. It’s not the first time Maiden have lifted a song from Bruce’s solo compositions! He remarks in the liner notes that the song is radically re-imagined on the final Mandrake Project album, but that the keyboards on this demo actually made it to the Maiden version! Bruce on keys, Roy Z on bass and guitar. It’s really not that different at all! The drums are most noticeable. Presumably this is a drum machine. Roy’s bass work is pretty cool too. It introduces the character of Necropolis, who will feature on the album.
The A-side, “Afterglow of Ragnarok”, is promising. Drums thunder, in cavernous hugeness. Downtuned guitars provide a metallic gutpunch, with a riff that is as solid as any in Bruce and Roy’s impressive history. The chorus is another demonstration of power and melody. A Bruce classic, this will be.
Looking forward to The Mandrake Project, we are. Bruce’s solo work has often rivalled Maiden in quality, not to set expectations too high. This single is a positive omen.
In 2021, Blaze Bayley released one of his finest solo albums, War Within Me. It was his 10th studio album and somehow it was also his best, rivaling his work with the inimitable Iron Maiden. It is also his most Maiden-esque, though heavier. Blaze fails to fall into lyrical cliches and presents a series of cutting riffs, elevating this album to apex predator status.
Opening with a blitzkrieg of battering drums and lightning fast riffing, the title track “War Within Me” is exactly what it sounds like. It is a battle for the mind! “Never give up, I won’t back down!” howls Blaze, singing as strongly as he did 30 years ago. “War within me, every day I fight!” What an opening! A mission statement from Blaze, with ribbons of guitars ensnared with cannon-blasts of beats.
Blaze takes us from the battle of the mind to the Battle of Britain of World War II. The RAF No. 303 squadron is the subject of “303”. Of course, this is a subject Blaze is familiar with, since Iron Maiden targeted the Battle of Britain with their own “Aces High”, one of Blaze’s top ten Maiden songs that he didn’t sing on. Like the opening track, this one too blasts forth with the throttle locked on full. Importantly, Blaze maintains a firm lock on vocal melodies and guitar harmonies. It’s very Maiden-esque, but cranked.
Blaze wisely slows things down on the third track, “Warrior”, one of the man’s very best songs of his whole career, before he speeds up once again. The guitar breaks are very Maiden-esque, perhaps even more like Bruce Dickinson’s latter-day solo work with Roy Z. This is tasty metal, sprinkled with explosive guitar spark. “I can be a warrior, with courage to rise up again!” growls Blaze like he means it. Along similar inspirational lines is “Pull Yourself Up”, a grinder that takes the tempo back a notch or two. The chorus on this one will eventually work its way into your skull like a drill. One of the riffs is very much like present day Maiden. The lyrics are obviously very personal to Blaze, with lines like “They said I could not sing.” This is something you see from those who don’t know.
Stop doubting yourself, Questioning yourself, Stop hating yourself, To believe in yourself. Control my own thoughts, Control my own mind, They said I could not sing, Come and sing with me!
“Witches Night” is one that takes a few listens to sink in. Once it does, the chorus sticks. The acoustic guitar segments add texture to the album, and again there’s a late Maiden quality to it. Then, “18 Nights” also takes a listen or three to hit properly. This is a simple tale of a South American tour – flights and earthquakes, oh my! “Evacuate to higher ground!” warns Blaze. “Stop the show!” A blazing winner – pardon the pun.
War Within Me has a semi-conceptual segment that I call the “scientist trilogy”. There are three parts: “The Dream of Alan Turing” about AI, “The Power of Nikola Tesla” about free energy, and “The Unstoppable Stephen Hawking” regarding his survival against the odds. “They only gave him three years to live, but Hawking defied them!” This track is all about not listening to those who say there is no hope. “They don’t know everything!” bellows Blaze. All three songs are excellent, each one different, but all three possessing a mighty Maiden-esque strength, heavier than that band but with similar flavours. Brilliant choruses on all three.
Appropriately, the album concludes with a ballad called “Every Storm Ends”. It’s about overcoming, which Blaze has certainly done. With War Within Me, Blaze has topped everything he released before under his own name. Not bad after 35 years making music.
Three cheers for the Mad Metal Man! For over a year of co-hosting Grab A Stack of Rock, he has earned the right to pick his own show topic! His punch card is full, witness below and see for yourself! And what did he pick with his full punch card? He picked Blaze Bayley! And he doubled down. Foregoing the rules (again), Harrison didn’t pick a Nigel Tufnel Top Ten. No, Harrison technically picked 22 songs. All Blaze or Blaze Bayley-branded versions.
I chose songs from all three eras of Blaze: Wolfsbane, Iron Maiden, and solo.
Harrison and I only had one song in common. That means combined we have given you 32 songs to check out. Harrison and I also provided a lot of context and background to our picks (Harrison more so than I!) and we hope that this episode is in-depth enough for the Blaze diehards. And we know there are Blaze diehards out there.
We also took a look at some physical rarities: Two Iron Maiden X Factor Japanese CDs, an X Factor singles box set, two lenticular Virtual XI CDs, a “Holy Grail” live album, one CD that Mike needs, one CD that Harrison needs, and a Wolfsbane cassette.
I sincerely hope you take the time to watch this passionate, insightful episode about a singer that deserves more of your attention, Blaze Bayley.
mikeladano.com 