Iron Maiden

Part 116: IRON MAIDEN’s Gonna Get Ya…No Matter How Far! (The first 10, in 2 CD picture discs!)

Alright folks, strap yourselves in and get ready for the ride.  After the positive feedback from my series of Kiss reviews, I’ve decided to go with popular demand and do all the Iron Maiden next.  We’re going to talk about every studio album, every live album, every compilation, and every rarity that I have access to.  But why not start off with a Record Store Tale?  Here’s how I acquired rare editions of the crucial first 10 albums….

 RECORD STORE TALES PART 116:

IRON MAIDEN’s Gonna Get Ya…No Matter How Far!

My love of Maiden is well documented.  The very first blog here at LeBrain’s Record Store Tales, Part 1, was called “Run To The Hills”. It describes the first time I ever heard the band.  I don’t need to explain to you why I love Iron Maiden.  If you’re reading this, chances are that you already understand.  Iron Maiden are more than just a band.  They are a passion.  With a band like Maiden, the fans strive to own everything.

The setting:  Early 1996, when we still carried new CD stock.  One of our suppliers dropped off a brand new catalogue.  Inside, was a new listing.  An exciting new listing!

Iron Maiden were reissuing their first 10 albums in 2 CD editions, with a bonus disc of B-sides!  Picture discs!  Iron Maiden, Killers, The Number of the Beast, Peace of Mind, Powerslave, Live After Death, Somewhere In Time, Seventh Son, No Prayer, and Fear of the Dark!  Knowing that Maiden usually released a minimum of two singles per album, with a minimum of 2 B-sides per single, this was a MUST for me.  I didn’t have all the Maiden singles.  Not even close.  Some of these songs, like “Burning Ambition” and “Invasion”, I’d never even heard before!  Now I was going to have the chance to own them on CD.

The discs were expensive, even with my staff discount.  But there was absolutely no way I was missing these.  As an added incentive, I didn’t even own all the Maiden albums on CD yet.  Most of these albums I still only owned on cassette or vinyl!  So really, it was a win-win situation.  Not only was I getting the B-sides, but I was also getting all the Maiden albums on CD with a minimum of overlap with my existing collection.  Plus, these were picture discs with Derek Riggs’ singles artwork.  Picture discs were something of a novelty at the time.  Today, most CDs are picture discs and nobody cares if they are.


My boss warned me:  “If you order these, you better make sure you buy them all.”  There was absolutely no question of that, I’m surprised he even mentioned it, knowing what a collector I am.  It’s too bad we didn’t order more, for stock.  The rarity of these discs has shown that we could have sold them quickly, or better yet, hung onto them for a couple years and jacked up the price once they were out of print.

The supplier we were ordering from, the name of which escapes me, was a small-time supplier, and usually couldn’t get everything we ordered.  They had about a 50% success rate.  Yet he listed all these European imports that our main supplier usually shied away from.  The Maiden reissues were all from Europe.  I crossed my fingers.  I wanted all 10.  Not “some”, but all!  “Some” would not do it!

A week later, the first five Maidens arrived!  The following week, another chunk of Maiden shipped!  They only failed to get me one disc: Fear of the Dark.  Resolving to get it somehow, it turns out I didn’t need to worry about it.  Two weeks later, even that one arrived.  Total expenditure:  About $300 with taxes!  I had all 10.  My Maiden B-side collection:  almost complete!  [Note:  When I go through the Maiden reviews, we’ll cover all the B-sides, including songs that are not on these deluxe editions.]

I settled in for some long, long nights of listening.  I made a compilation tape of all the B-sides that I had (including up to the current album, The X Factor), and it ended up being 3 tapes, 100 minute cassettes, which I still have.  To knock so many songs off my wishlist in one fell swoop like this was the kind of thing I lived for.  This was the perk of working in a record store.  What a score!  Today, I don’t know anybody else who has the full set of 10.

Be sure to check back in the coming days and weeks for all the reviews, starting with The Soundhouse Tapes, to the present day…

REVIEW: Iron Maiden – Virtual Lights Strikes Over France (1998, bootleg CD)

IRON MAIDEN – Virtual Lights Strikes Over France (1998, bootleg CD)

This awkward title was a disc I was really looking forward to playing.  I snagged it in early 2000 at a record show in London, Ontario.  I remember wanting to look at the discs before I bought it, because cheap bootlegs on CD-R’s were becoming more common.  I wanted to make sure this was an actual factory pressed CD, not a CD-R, and the seller pretended she didn’t know what a CD-R was!

I like the Blaze-era Maiden albums and I was eager to have a live document of those years of some kind.  A quick glance at the back cover reveals this concert to be an excellent choice.  Not only do they play 7 of the 8 songs from Virtual XI, but there are three bonus tracks from 1996’s X Factour as well.  All in all, an excellent cross section of Blaze material, with a smattering of Bruce and Paul.

Upon first listen, however, I was horrified!  Blaze is shockingly tuneless!  The rumours of his voice being shot during the Virtual XI tour seem to be confirmed.  Judging by his recent solo output, his voice is much stronger today.  But in 1998, something was clearly very wrong.  He misses notes more often than he hits them on this one.  Neither Blaze nor Steve Harris have really elaborated on the why’s.

Gratefully, the 1996 recordings are much stronger.  Blaze’s voice here was album-quality strong.  These three tracks are truthfully the only thing on this disc that I can stand listening to.  The rest is just tunelessly bad.

1/5 stars

    

Part 108: Building the Store, Part 2

RECORD STORE TALES PART 108: Building the Store, Part 2

Last time, Statham posted something about a dream he had, of us putting together our own record store. I wish I could have had the experience of opening a store without doing work!  The reality of it varied.  On the couple of times I helped set up a store, it was hardly glamorous.

The first time was when we opened up the first store that I managed.  It was the biggest one so far, lots of stock, all crap. Junk. Shite.  Basically what we did was, maybe starting six months in advance,  just buy lots and lots and lots of stock.  Before long we had, I dunno, maybe 5000 discs, all garbage.  Dozens of Jann Arden, Spin Doctors, Michael Bolton…I had so much Michael Bolton that he took up three fucking rows!  I even had rare Michael Bolton.  Nobody had rare Michael Bolton!  Nobody wanted rare Michael Bolton!  Then you’d go to the Metallica section, nothing.  Kiss, a couple copies of Kiss My Ass.  And we had soooo much country.  We had buckets of country.  And rap artists that you nor I have ever heard of. 

Waltz back over to the rock section and browse the classics.  Did we have any Floyd?  Nothing.  Led Zeppelin?  Just the tribute album, Encomium.  Meat Loaf?  Bat 2, but not Bat.  We had a couple of Rush discs, like Counterparts, but nothing from the 70’s.  No Maiden.  No Miles.  No Dylan.  No Hendrix.

We had no standardized pricing scheme back then.  So, if I was pricing Eric Clapton’s Unplugged at $9.99, the guy next to me might have priced it at $11.99 because maybe he liked it more.  It was very subjective.  Sometimes you knew what a CD was worth brand new and based it on that, sometimes it was so common that it didn’t matter, and sometimes nobody had a fucking clue.  We’d try to fix the pricing it as we went, but it was slow.  After we opened, a customer would come up with three copies of the same album.  “This one is $8.99, this one $9.99, and this one $11.99.  Is that because one is more scratched?”  Logical question!  But no, we just cocked up.

It took weeks to manually input and price all those discs.  Shelving them took a couple more days. Making the header cards, setting things up, all told we were at it for maybe a month.  Then the big day came and we did our opening.  We were only half-equipped:  there was no second computer yet, and only half of our CD players for listening station had been bought.  Signs were still arriving to be put up.

I’ll never forget our sign that showed up that said, “WE PAY CSAH FOR YOUR USED CDS!” 

Regardless of how crappy the stock was, it sold!  I couldn’t believe it!  There were only a few decent albums and I figured once they were gone, that was it.  That wasn’t the case at all.  People kept buying the old rap and country discs.  Tanya Tucker?  Check!  We had lots!  And people were buying it!

Then, used stuff started coming in at a rapid pace.  Crazy stuff too.  I remember this one huge Tangerine Dream box set coming in, on the Thursday of the first week.

After we opened and good stuff started coming in by the box full, all the hard work seemed like it was paying off.  But the setting up was long and tedious, and I couldn’t stand Todd, who was also on setup duty.  But who gives a crap?  I spent weeks doing nothing but data entry while listening to music (our own music, which we brought in – of course).  I rocked a lot of Deep Purple those weeks.  It was awesome.

I remember that I had just found two Purple albums that I wanted:  Concerto For Group and Orchestra, and King Biscuit Flower Hour.  I also rocked Purpendicular, which had just come out, as much as I could.   Todd didn’t understand the music at all.  All he was interested in listening to was Floyd, nothing else.  He played Bush once or twice, but otherwise it was all Floyd.  He really, really liked P.U.L.S.E.  And he just murdered Floyd for me, for a long time.

When I listen to albums like Concerto and Purpendicular, it brings me right back to doing data entry in that store.  Not a bad soundtrack to work to.

Part 93.5: Recognition

Missed part 1?  Click here.

Part 2

Even though half a decade has passed, sometimes I still get recognized from the CD store today. Just two weeks ago, I was at a lunch with some friends of my wife. One guy recognized me. “Do you still work at the CD store?” he asked as I said hello to everyone. He was an old regular. Not all regulars still recognize me. An older gentleman, Charles, my best classical customer, didn’t recognize me when he bought classical discs from my garage sale last summer.

Today, I tend to get recognized not for my face but for my name. Rather, my nickname: LeBrain.

I never mentioned how that handle came to be. After winning my umpteenth 4 O’clock 4-play on 107.5 Dave FM, Craig Fee dubbed me with that name. “Mike Ladano and his massive brain…his massive LeBrain!” The nickname stuck, and that is how I became LeBrain. Next thing you know it, we had an entire “Stump LeBrain” week where I guested at the station for a week, and a full month (“LeBrainuary”) of my own 4-play quizzes.

I was first recognized in person by the owner of the local UPS store, while picking up a parcel. “Are you that guy from the radio?” he asked me. Turns out he was a fan. He’d listened to all of LeBrainuary in his store.

I was also recognized by some of the younger chaps at Sausagefest, who thought my voice was familiar. “I know that voice…is that LeBrain?” they said.

I buy a lot of stuff off eBay (you’ve seen much of it here on the blog!), and the girl at my local post office now knows me as LeBrain. She is always excited when my parcels come in. “What’s in this one?” she’ll ask.

“Oh, that one is a rare Maiden 12” single,” I’d say.

“Cool! That’s awesome!” One time, she knew one of my parcels had arrived immediately, because the seller had put a Kiss sticker on the box. I walked into the post office, and she said, “I know which parcel is yours!” with an excited tone in her voice. She explained that she heard me on radio earlier as LeBrain.

So, to Post Office Girl: Sorry, I don’t even know your name. I would like to dedicate this blog to you, and my 15 minutes of fame!

REVIEW: KISS – Alive III (1993)

Part 31 of my series of Kiss reviews, leading up to the release of Monster!

KISS – Alive III (1993)

I like Alive III, but I don’t think any fan can say it’s as good or better than I or II.  How could it be?  Artificial or not, Kiss Alive! is one of the greatest live albums of all time.  Alive II was a contender.  Alive III simply could not live up to either.

If it didn’t sell well, I don’t particularly blame Kiss.  It was the summer of “live albums”.  Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne, and Iron Maiden all had double live discs out that summer, and that’s a lot of money to be spent by the devoted rock fan.

Although the first two Alives avoided song overlap, Alive III does contain some old Kiss songs that were previously played on one of the first two:

  • “Deuce”
  • “Detroit Rock City”
  • “Rock And Roll All Night”
  • “Watchin’ You” (given a funkier touch here by Bruce)

Everything else is a more recent vintage, and rightfully so. Kiss hadn’t done a live album in 16 years at this point, so there were lots of new songs to play. “Creatures Of The Night” had been a setlist staple for ten years at this point.

Performance wise, this is really good. With Bruce Kulick and Eric Singer in the band, Kiss had evolved to a sleeker machine. The songs were played much more expertly, and not as loose. A critic would use the word “mechanically” but it’s just different, and a matter of taste. Bruce Kulick at this point was not playing his solos with as much 80’s trickery, and was now much more suited to playing Ace Frehley’s songs. Eric Singer seemed to master a nice middle ground between Peter Criss and Eric Carr’s styles.  He is in fact my favourite Kiss drummer because of his creativity on the kit.

All songs are sung by Gene and Paul, although Eric sings very nice backups.  There is one instrumental, Bruce Kulick’s guitar showcase on the “Star Spangled Banner”, never recorded by Kiss in studio form!

On the negative side, I don’t like the production, once again by Eddie Kramer who also helmed the first two.  It sounds too polished.  The audience sounds artificial, pasted on.  When Paul raps, the audience just screams through, there’s no reaction.

Interestingly, there are a total of five songs from Revenge (including the Japanese/vinyl bonus track “Take It Off”). That shows how strong the new material was, and why there aren’t more Kiss oldies.  It is a shame that today Kiss doesn’t sprinkle that much new material into setlists.

A point of trivia, at one point the inclusion of a brand new studio song called “Carnival Of Souls” was discussed. It was finally released a decade later on Gene’s solo album, Asshole.  So this is the time period from which that song originated.  Astute fans will recognize it as the title of an eventual studio album.

A Gene song was even selected as the first and only single:  “I Love It Loud”.  Personally I feel that even Eric Singer can’t play this song like Eric Carr did.  And it’s way too overplayed now.

Alive III is not as essential as the first two, but if you pick up the Alive Box, which is the route I stronly suggest you take, you’ll get them all (with the exception of the symphonic Alive).   Listening to I, II and III in a row will reveal growth and a strong catalogue of songs not immediately noticeable otherwise.

4/5 stars

With the long-awaited Alive III now behind them, Kiss began work on a number of new projects, including their own tribute album, a studio album to be called Head, and an acoustic “konvention” tour.  Check this space again for all that and more.

Part 82: Impact
Your gracious host

Your gracious host

The first time a record store person had any impact on me was actually well after high school.  Until then, I never spent much time interacting with them.  I always knew how to find what I wanted, and I never special-ordered anything because the stuff I wanted, they couldn’t get anyway.  I had to order my rare albums from magazines.

In 1990, Peter and I got heavily into Faith No More.  Peter got Introduce Yourself before I did, but I found We Care A Lot first.  I found it at Sam The Record Man, generally considered the best store in town at the time.  Angel Dust had just came out on CD, but I hadn’t got it yet.  We Care A Lot was a rarity; therefore a priority in my spending budget.

It was there, on cassette.  $14.99.  Not cheap.

Al King was behind the counter.  Al King was the undisputed music guru in town.  Undisputed.  I strived to be what he represented.  Heck he even had a feature spot on a weekly local TV program — The Metal Mike Show — which I watched many times.

“Do you have the new Faith No More yet?” Al asked me as he took the security tag off my purchase.

“No, not yet.  I saw this and I had to get it because I’ve never seen it before,” I answered.

“The new one is…pretty different.  Have you heard Mr. Bungle?” he inquired.

Al was engaging me.  He had just seen Bungle live.  He liked Bungle, but the new Faith No More was still growing on him.  He explained to me that you could really hear the Bungle influece on it.  The next time I came in, he told me he had just seen Faith No More.  He told me everything about the show.

Years later, things cycle around, and I found myself in Al’s shoes.  Kids were coming up to me and asking my opinion on things.  I tried my best to be honest and treat them with respect.  I had my bad days — we all do — but I certainly didn’t want to recommend music that I didn’t think was any good.

When I saw a young guy or girl come in buying Kiss, that was an instant obvious coversation starter.  Tall One and Short One, who I talked about several chapters ago, started getting into bands like Kiss and Oasis, so I tried to steer them into the albums I was into.

I made a lot of friends that way.  Shane Schedler, who I’ve talked about twice before was one guy who trusted my opinion implicity.  There was another guy, Italian Tony, who always wanted to know what I was into.  I sold him Slash Puppet that way, I knew he would be into that band.  And then there’s my buddy Statham.  Some found me on Facebook, some I just run into randomly.

Of course I had just as many failures.  Sometimes you expect someone to be into a new Maiden album just because they liked the old Maiden, for example.  Then they don’t trust you anymore.

I don’t think I appreciated my position back then.  I don’t think I saw myself as Al King.  I think I saw myself as still trying but not quite succeeding at being that guy.  It’s only now that I talk to people and get it.  Somebody will say to me, “You told me to buy this album, and I did, and it’s in my top ten of all time now.”  That’s a cool feeling.  I wish I appreciated it back then.

The truth is, it was a job just like any other.  You were a business and businesses were supposed to make money.  Stores have to be cleaned, books balance, shelves stocked.  Sometimes it felt like conversation was keeping you from your job.  And spend too much time with a single customer, and you got dirty looks from people with the authority to give you dirty looks.

I appreciate now though, that conversation was the job.  Conversations that I don’t even remember have turned out to have huge impacts on people’s musical lives.  Al King was a trusted musical guru to me.  It’s weird to think that I might be that to other people.   But if that truly is the case, I have to say thanks, because that’s all I ever really wanted anyway.

Well…that and a staff discount.

Yeah. Slash Puppet, baby.

Part 75: 2012 Sausagefest Report part two

Haven’t read part one yet?  Click here.

Since pictures speak a thousand words, I’m going to let the pictures do most of the talking this time.

The countdown resumed Saturday afternoon.  “Love Gun” from Alive II was my pick.  We were inundated with Mammoth, more Tool, more Maiden, and awesomely enough, “Watermelon Man” by Herbie Hancock, light years ahead of its time.  We also heard from old stanby’s such as Rush (“Between the Wheels”), and others like Crosby, Stills & Nash, Dire Straits, and Starship (?)(thanks Zach).

The #1 song on the countdown was Kyuss’ “Gardenia”.  Oh what a beauty.  Must get.

Meat’s going to post the whole countdown when he’s back online (see: last installment) which should be soon.   Thank God for warranties.

Speaking of warranties, my car deck had to be replaced.  Sausagefest’s rainstorm killed it, I guess.  It took with it the new Tenacious D disc.  But the unit was covered on warranty so all is well.

It’s always sad when Sausagefest is over, and we always look forward to the next one.  It reminds me of what it was like to be a kid.  At the end of summer holidays, sometimes you waved goodbye to friends and said, “See you next summer,” and you just can’t wait for next summer to come.  That’s what Sausagefest is like.  I’d do it again next week in a heartbeat!

Part 74: 2012 Sausagefest Report part one

What happens at Sausagefest stays at Sausagefest.  That’s been the rule since day one, 11 years ago.  Having said that, I can talk about some of my own experiences this year, the best Sausagefest I’ve experienced to date.

For more photos please go to GALLERY: Sausagefest 2012

Sausagefest 2012 has come and gone once again.  This year for me was full of new music, new flavours, and new faces.   There were still four alumni from my record store days.  Older, wiser, maybe a little fatter, definitely a little greyer.  All four of us sported white somewhere on our heads….

Meat and a few others has spent the previous night seeing Tenacious D.  I’m hoping I can get him to do a concert review because that’s a tale in itself.  Suffice to say, I can’t imagine a better preface to Sausagefest than a Tenacious D show.

Meat, myself and a first-timer named Chris made the trek in my vehicle (Dougie Carmore) rocking to the “D” and stopping only for beer and ice.  We arrived at our hallowed, sacred meeting place in record time and began setting up camp.

For me, that was pretty easy since I have chosen to sleep in my car most years.  The new PA system was set up and shortly thereafter, the rock began.

The countdown was different this year:  A top 75 instead of 100, culled from the 31 submitted lists.  In addition, 31 tribute songs, one for each submittee!  A total of 106 songs plus comedy sketches and about 10 “LeBrain” bits about the tunes, trying to do my best Jeff Woods impression.  The countdown took two evenings and I don’t know how many hours….

But it was solidly amazing all the way through.  That first night, we heard my tribute song which was my #1 this year:  “Strutter”.  We also heard plenty of Rush, tool, Sabbath, and everything else too.  And that was just the first night.  Saturday, we’d hear the top half…

The equipment was (mostly) put under a tarp, and we all went to our respective sleeping places.  I say “mostly” because not only did Meat leave all his clothes outside, but he also seemed to have soaked his laptop charger.  I awoke in the middle of a thunderstorm.  I think the storm lasted about three hours.

Then, I discovered that my car stereo was out.  Kaput.  How?  Must have been the storm.  But it wasn’t a fuse.  We went into town for an amazingly greasy good breakfast and hit up a car parts store for fuses.  It wasn’t a fuse.  At presstime it isn’t fixed yet.  So my car stereo is busted, and Meat still doesn’t have a charger for his laptap.  Would we trade the weekend in for anything else?

Of course not!

Check back later for part two.

Part 60: Back to the Start

Holy crap!  Part 60 already?  I hope you’ve been enjoying the Record Store Tales so far.  For this sort-of-but-not-really-special edition, I’m going to take you back to the start. 

Marko Fox asked me today, “LeBrain, how did you get to be LeBrain?”  Well, it was a unique set of circumstances Marko.

1. Obsession.  Ever since I was a kid I think I was an obsessive-compulsive collector.  I had to have every Star Wars figure, I had to have all their names memorized, I had to have it all.

2. Rock Magazines.  The first rock magazine I ever bought was an old Circus special on Kiss.  All my friends seemed to know all the important details about bands:  Which guy was the bassist and which played guitar, the names of the members, the brands of the guitars.  I decided to needed to catch up and so I started reading magazines.

3. The Power Hour. This MuchMusic show ran for an hour, twice a week.  Two hours of pure rock a week!  I taped them religiously and never missed one until I got my first part-time job.

4. Columbia House.  Remember them?  Buy 11 CDs for a penny, get 2 free, and only have to buy 8 more at regular club prices within the next two years?  We got Columbia House when I was in grade 11, my sister and I, and we split it evenly.  I read the Columbia House catalog cover to cover every month.  So that meant I not only knew who Iron Maiden was, but also Miles Davis, Bell Biv Devoe, and Alan Jackson.

Those four factors sealed into my brain and endless stream of musical knowledge and listening experience that has only grown with the the birth of the Interweeb.

Jump-cut to 1994.  It is July.  I just started at the record store a few days ago.  My boss is having me file discs to get to know the inventory.  He is shocked that I know where to file Miles Davis.  He is surprised that I know which Alan Jackson album has “Chattahoochee” on it.  He asks me how I know this stuff?  I tell him, “Columbia House!”

It wasn’t too long before I was teaching him things, too.  I remember I bought a disc for stock by Pigface (Fook).  The next day he took me aside, holds up the CD, and says, “What is this that you bought?  You paid $4 for this?”  I said, “Yeah.  Side project of Ministry.”  That was when I became known as the guy who knew the side projects from just about everybody.

He was more than happy to stock something if I told him I know it would sell.  With him knowing what was going on with the charts, and Trevor knowing what was happening with new rock, we were a formidable force.

So there you go, Marko.  That is how LeBrain became LeBrain.  You’ll note that two of the four contributing factors don’t exist anymore, so perhaps there could never have been a LeBrain if not for the 80’s!

Part 53: Heavy Negotiations

Sometimes, things just came into the store that no matter the cost, you had to get it. You’ve all seen Pawnstars, right? It could get that way. 99% of transactions were pretty ordinary, but sometimes you’d get a pretty wild score, and you couldn’t back down.

You’d see imports, singles, bootlegs, promos, special editions, bonus tracks, bonus discs, and sometimes damn near complete collections of several artists.  Tom tells the legend of a guy who came in selling a near complete Zappa collection.

There was one guy that I just loved. We’ll call him C. He was addicted to hard rock, heavy metal, and Euro metal. He was a collector and he had numerous Japanese imports. And frequently, he sold us those Japanese imports, of just about anything decent. A few that weren’t so decent, but very very few.  I don’t know where he got the stuff, and I didn’t ask.  None of my business!

Thanks to C, I have a pretty close to complete collection of Japanese Harem Scarem imports, Bruce Dickinson, and Journey. Whoop de do for a lot of you, but these things are mucho expensivo to buy! Why?

In Japan, it is actually cheaper to buy a CD imported from America then their own (superior) domestic product.  So the Japanese counteract this by putting bonus tracks on their domestic product.  Much of time, these are songs specifically exclusive to Japan.

A really good example of a song written and recorded specifically for the Japanese market would be “Tokyo is Burning” from W.A.S.P.‘s K.F.D. album.  Another would be “Himalaya” by Glenn Tipton.  (Ignore that the Himalaya mountains are not in Japan, please, I’m guessing Glenn didn’t know that when he wrote it.)

There are collectors in every city and every town who pay premius prices to get these discs imported here from Japan.  Average prices can run from $35 to $50 for a single disc, much more if you’re talking about multi-disc sets.  The most I ever paid for a single Japanese disc (new) was $80  (Come Hell Or High Water by Deep Purple), and the least I paid (new) was the “Woman From Tokyo” single by the same band.

So back to the point, these discs were worth coin.  And C might actually bring in 4 or 5 at a time.   I recall he brought in 4 Harem Scarem imports at one time, each with bonus tracks.

Now, C wasn’t stupid.  He knew that if he didn’t get what he wanted for the discs, he could try downtown where there were more collectors and afficianos, and fewer hockey moms.  However, he also knew it would be much easier to come to me personally, because I knew what I was doing when it came to imports.

And frequently, since I was usually seeing stuff I wanted for my own collection, I’d be willing to up the ante when needed.  Since I frequented Amazon, I knew exactly what these things were worth.

One of the coolest things he ever brought in was a Helloween Japanese box set, 4 discs.  I’m shooting myself in the foot for not picking it up back then.  I’ll never see it again, I’m sure. 

Often, the Japanese imports were packaged with extra goodies:  stickers, extra booklets, patches, posters.  To find a used Japanese import with these goodies still intact was very rare.  That ups the value as well.  And for the ultimate collector, Japanese discs come with something called an obi-strip.  They are a piece of paper with Japanese writing on it, that goes over the jewel case of the CD.  This is what they look like:  click to embiggen

    Because the obi strip is actually outside the jewel case, it’s hard to keep, and most people end up throwing them away.  Add a couple bucks to the end value of a CD if the obi strip is intact.  See how this goes?

Unfortunatley,  C usually threw out to obi strips, so most of my Japanese imports lack them.  You can easily store the obi strip by putting your CD in a sandwich bag as you can see with my Bon Jovi single. 

One of the drawbacks of dealing with C is that he became used to a certain level of money when he came in.  And, nobody else liked C.  They all hated him.  I heard it had something to do with him chewing gum when he talked.  Never mind the cool-ass shit he brought into the store that nobody else in town could get!  So, negotiations could get heavy.  He knew what his stuff was worth, and if I could have owned it all, I would have!

Another situation where negotiations could get fierce were with large sales.  The largest I ever saw was an estate sale.  I can’t remember how many discs we looked at.  I’m thinking the number is close to 3000, all in one shot.  I think they were in these big gray convention containers that could hold about 400 each.  And there were 7 containers, plus a few boxes.  And in this case, it was good, good shit.  Sometimes, you’d buy a handful of crappy stuff just to get a mountain of good stuff.  Because the seller often wanted them all gone and not to deal with them anymore.   Clear slate.

When going through these big estate sales, you’d often have a pile of awesome jazz titles alone that probably numbered in the hundreds.  Blues, same deal.  Of course you’d also get boxes of crap, but sometimes you’d take it just to get to the blues and jazz titles. 

Inevitably, there were times when you just could not justify asking as much as the customer wanted.  I remember, very unhappily, having to turn down this Rolling Stones CBS years box set, which came with a bonus EP.  The box even had this neat paper tongue.  I just couldn’t give the guy what he wanted and still make any money off the thing.

Another one that sucked to turn down was the Cult Collection 1984-1990 box set. This sucker is hard to find. I just couldn’t give the guy what he wanted.  I wanted it for myself as it was, so I was willing to go even higher than the call of duty allowed.  Alas, it was not to be.  Thankfully, most of those tracks have been released on the Rare Cult boxed set(s), which I have…thanks to C!

Other great box sets I got from C:  Black Sabbath‘s The Black Box.  Bon Jovi’s 100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong.  Metalogy, by Judas Priest, complete with limited edition DVD.  A complete Motley Crue Music to Crash Your Car To box set with the poster and stuff still inside.

Sometimes you’d see stuff that, if you don’t grab it, you’ll never see it again.  One of my treasures is an Aussie import of Faith No More‘s Angel Dust with a 4 song bonus disc called Free Concert in the Park.  Snagged it.  Never seen again.  On the Faith No More front, I also picked up a split live bootleg album with King’s X called Kings of the Absurd.  I have the first Tea Party album, which actually came in more than once.  I paid at least $50 for it.  Possibly $100, I don’t remember anymore.  There was at least one album that we could sell for $100, which was Standing in the Dark by Platinum Blonde.  And people would pay it.  I was offered a $100 reward once to find the album, as in, whatever the CD cost if I found it, plus a $100 finder’s fee.  I never did find it, but I later picked up Alien Shores at a cool hole in the wall in Stratford, and gave it to Peter.

Nowadays, just about everything I want is available from my sofa, even if it’s located in Japan. eBay and Amazon have changed everything about finding rare music.  Just a few weeks ago I snagged the Japanese disc of You Wanted the Best, You Got the Best!! by Kiss.  Been hunting for that since 1996.  Never seen it for sale anywhere, and the one I got was mint.  Got it for $40.  Incredibly, a month or so ago, I found one of the last two Maiden singles that I still needed.  I got “Hallowed Be Thy Name (Live)” for $35.  This single, thought at the time to be Dickinson’s swan song with the band, features a cover of Eddie impaling Bruce through the chest!

My advice to aspiring collectors out there:  Pick your #1 favourite band, and start on Wikipedia.  Explore the discography, and see what you’re missing.  Check eBay and see what the pricing is like.  Then hunt until you find one at the right price.  Good luck!