Iron Maiden

Part 33: Special Orders

New CD special orders were something we did, but not frequently, because often the person wouldn’t pick the disc up. At one point in 1995/1996 though, we got this new distributer who had the most insane shit in his catalogue. Our own stock improved dramatically because of this. Suddenly we were carrying the Japanese import Hormoaning by Nirvana in our regular stock.  We were also getting in these UK-issued Iron Maiden imports with bonus discs of B-sides.  They are rare and highly coveted today.  Trevor and I oversaw the stocking of this stuff.  Trevor was made store manager of this first location in 1996, and I was given my own store a few months later.

For me personally these were the peak years, when Trevor and I had the most creative control over the store.  For example I remember we had a “forthcoming releases” board, that Trev and I updated every month.  As a joke, we always had Guns N’ Roses on the board as coming “in 6 months”.  This is because even back in 1996, the new GN’R album was constantly being announced and then delayed.

It came out for real in 2009.

We were also alble to use this new distributer to add to our own collections.  For myself, I ordered a complete set of the afforementioned Maiden collections, 10 albums altogether.  I also got all the new Maiden singles as they came out.  It was a great time to be a collector, and if Trev and I thought something was worth stocking, we had the freedom to do so.  We were starting to carry Oasis singles, where they had always avoided that kind of stock before.

Trevor had his finger on the pulse of what was coming out.  He tweaked onto Oasis very early.  He got me into it very quickly.  In a time when good new rock bands were few and far between, Oasis were a breath of fresh air to me.  For a change, a band inspired by the classics like the Beatles and Stones, not another punk or grunge band. 

One thing Trev and I tried to special order for ourselves, but never managed to get, were the Japanese imports of the first two Oasis discs.  They each contained bonus tracks:  “Sad Song”, and “Bonehead’s Bank Holiday” respectively, both great tracks.

Sometimes a customer would special order something, and you couldn’t wait to see it come in.  I remember a guy ordered Twisted Sister’s Live at Hammersmith, back in a time when it was absolutely impossible to find any Twisted Sister in any stores, let along a double live.  I couldn’t wait to check out the tracklisting.  My buddy Aaron special ordered the Sloan 2 CD edition of One Chord, but we failed to hook him up.  He bought it elsewhere.  No hard feelings Aaron.

I probably special ordered stuff for myself more than Trev did.  Trev had a saying:  “Don’t buy it new.  If you buy it new, it’ll come in used a week later.”  And he actually had a pretty good batting average with that saying.  I would say a good 75% of the time, when Trev or myself bought something new like a special order, we saw a used copy come in within the next 7 days.

It was almost like magic. 

Nowadays, there’s never a need to special order anything.  Amazon and eBay are both happy to do that for you.  New or used.  And the collection grows….

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.

Part 24: Musical Embarrassment

Some record store peolple had shady musical pasts.  In the effort to appear cool, they would conceal any musical sins of the past.

Now, my musical sins are well on record.  Thanks to my sister, who emailed Craig Fee at 107.5 Dave FM on the Friday of LeBrain week, the entire region knows my musical sins.  But I don’t embarass easily.  She thought I’d be embarassed by:

  • Melanie C – I don’t own it anymore.  It was her “rock” album produced with Rick Rubin.
  • Hilary Duff – I liked one song called “The Getaway” that happened to work really well on a CD I made (cross-faded into “Somebody’s Out There” by Triumph).
  • Avril Lavigne – I still stand by her second album, which is really guitar heavy.  If it had solos and nobody knew who she was, it would have been considered metal.

Craig ended up spinning some New Kids clips in her honour.   She was a lot more embarassed than I was.  I wish I’d told Craig she also liked Rick Astley.  (hint)

Anyways, I don’t embarass musically.  I did have a misguided period in the 90’s when it was hard to find good new rock music, where I’d listen to anything.  I’ve since realized that there was a difference between albums you’d listen to at work, and albums you’d listen to at home.  Not necessarily the same thing.  I got rid of everything that I never listened to at home.

Some people at our store were not quite like me.  There was one guy who was a massive Barenaked Ladies fan back in grade school, but never admitted it.  My sister went to school with him and distinctly remembers that BNL was his favourite band one year.  Now that he’d moved on to the Grateful Dead, he didn’t want anyone to know his dirty secret. 

This is me in grade 9, baby.

Another had a massive crush on W. Axl Rose, and used to love Guns N’ Roses — she shall remain anonymous, since she doesn’t like people knowing this.   I don’t know how she fell out of love with Axl, but I do know that she hates stuff like GN’R now, both lyrically and musically.  I have a hard time understanding how you can swing from one side of the spectrum to the other like that!

And there was another who thought that Limp Bizkit was “#1”!  The following year, she was over Durst and onto the next one.  I can remember pictures of Durst being taped up everywhere from the counter to the bathroom.  Our store was a Shrine to Durst.  I also remember one guy stroked out his name on one of the posters…

Fred Durst Worst!

Meanwhile, I thought it would be more scenic to put up a giant poster of Kittie in the office.  I think I was right. 

I got made fun of pretty hard during my entire tenure for the music I liked.  The same guy who used to like BNL used to call me Cheese Metal Mike.  Cheeser, for short.  Well, at least I still listen to Iron Maiden.  Another made fun of me for buying Tesla.  The last album I got from Tesla was their recent covers set, Real to Reel, which I consider easily in my top five cover albums of all time.  Still love the band.  They kick a fuck of a lot more ass than, say, Mnmnmickelback….

There’s not much that embarasses me, certainly not music.  Girls I used to have crushes on, yeah.  Absolutely.  We won’t go there.  I already mentioned Sporty Spice and that’s enough from me.  If my sister had emailed Craig and had him broadcast the names of all my old celeb crushes, she could have really embarassed me.  Don’t get any ideas, Kathryn.

(OK one more.  I really liked Elizabeth Hurley at the time of Austin Powers.  Something about that accent.  (I ended up marrying a Brit, a girl of Sunderland heritage.)  A year later it was Kate Winslet, and a couple years after that, it was the lead singer of Scratching Post, whatever her name was…Scratching Post had one good song.  I wish I could remember the name of it.  I saw them live a couple times and they were really good live.  Shame their albums sucked so bad. )

To me, the most embarassing thing has to be coming in and selling every CD by a band.  If you have every CD, it means you really liked them.  I’ll never forget the guy with the Motley Crue tattoo who sold every Motley Crue CD when Vince was out of the band.  You’d also see the odd guy here or there who found God and unload a massive amount of music that they find distasteful.  I got a lot of my metal collection that way. 

I’m cool with anybody who finds God, no problem there.  But don’t tell me I’m going to h-e-double-hockeysticks for listening to Ozzy Osbourne.  That happened, in the store.  This one guy told me that Ozzy was the pathway to hell. 

I responded, “Have you heard his song called ‘Killer of Giants’?”

“No, I won’t listen to him at all,” said the guy.

“Well, ‘Killer of Giants’ is an anti-nuclear war song.  All of his old Black Sabbath lyrics are also anti-war or anti-nukes.  I would say that Ozzy and God have a common agenda when it comes to peace among mankind.”

He had no answer for that one.

In short, I’ve never been embarassed about anything I’ve listened to, be it the worst Mike Patton album I’ve ever heard (Adult Themes for Voice) or be it Puff Daddy’s remake of “Kashmir” with Jimmy Page and Tom Morello.  I don’t give a crap.  People have been making fun of my listening to tastes since grade 7, ever since I found Kiss.   (see Part 3: My First Kiss)

I got called out in grade 8 for wearing a Judas Priest shirt to school, in front of everyone.  It was a Catholic school.  How the hell was I to know that “Judas priest!” was a swear word back in the 1950’s or something!  I was embarassed for the moment, but my love for the Priest has only solidified over the years.  Through the departure of Halford to the Ripper years to the glorious comeback, it’s all been good with me.  (I’ll talk more about how heavy metal and Catholic schools didn’t mix back in 1985 in the future.)

Don’t let anybody tell you what music is good and what music is crap.  Including me!  If you like something because your friends like it, that’s not sincere.  If you honestly sincerely like something because it’s resonating with some part of you, then it’s true and good!

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 20: I Believe In A Thing Called Love

I’m going to jump ahead.  My wife does not feature into the story until very close to the end, although she is a critical component to it.  I think it’s only fair that I introduce her early.   Jen has, shall we say…good but “flawed” taste in both music, and hockey teams.  (Take a guess which one.) 

RECORD STORE TALES PART 20:  I Believe In A Thing Called Love

When I met Jen in 2005, I knew I had met someone special.  I knew this was something I didn’t want to screw up.   I didn’t know one day we’d be married, but we might never have met if not for music.

It started with Stompin’ Tom.  I think I had told her that I had a stack of new movies, a huge bag of chips & a case of Red Bull, and was ready for the weekend or something.  She responded, “Sounds like you’re ready for a Sudbury Saturday Night.”  So right then and there, boom!  She was speaking my language.

Yes, Jen loves Stompin’ Tom.  I said she had flawed taste in music?  She still thinks Kurt Cobain is the greatest songwriter since John and Paul.  See what I mean?   Her favourite radio station is the grunge one on satellite radio.  I can only take so much grunge in my daily diet.

We bonded over a mutual love of the Beatles, Foo Fighters, Johnny Cash and the old school of country.  She was brought up on a steady diet of Beach Boys and oldies, where I had heard a lot of movie soundtracks and country music growing up.

There are some things I’ll never turn Jen onto.  I know that Kiss and Rush are a completely lost cause with her.  However, lemme tell you a lil’ secret that Jen doesn’t want people to know about.

One night we were coming home from a party at Lara’s house.  I was driving, and Jen had a couple drinks.  (She used to drink wine back then.)  We were coming back to my place after midnight on the 401.  I had Iron Maiden’s latest, A Matter of Life and Death, on the car stereo.  Jen was leaning back enjoying the drive, and then she sat up.

“Who are these guys?” she asked.

“This is Iron Maiden,” I responded.  The song playing was “For The Greater Good of God”, one of their more epic pieces.

I could tell she was really getting into it.  I kept glancing over at her.

“These guys…are…amazing!” she blurted out.  “This music is…wow!”

She claims to this day it was just the booze, but every once in a while, I play that song, and I catch her singing along.

Our wedding was pretty amazing.  For the ceremony itself, we had a Beatles theme.  The girls came in to an acoustic version of “Something” by George, solo.  We signed the register to “In My Life” by Johnny Cash.  We exited to “Here Comes the Sun”.  It was gorgeous outside.

My sister Kathryn played the cocktail hour at the reception with a jazz trio.  Her set ended with their rendition of John Williams’ “Cantina Band” from the first Star Wars!  Bass clarinet as the lead instrument, with guitar and drums backing…it was the perfect wedding version.

Into the dinner, I snuck in some Zappa (“Peaches En Regelia”) and some Kiss (“And Then She Kissed Me”)  We danced to more Beatles, tons of AC/DC, The Darkness, GN’R, and other good stuff.  I had the best music of any wedding I’ve ever been to.

And all because I have the best wife!

Part 19: The Rules (IRON MAIDEN – The First Ten Years box set gallery!)

RECORD STORE TALES Part 19:  The Rules

After a few years had gone by, there were too many damn rules to follow.  There were so many, we literally had books full of them, with new rules being added regularly.  It was pure insanity, because you had to remember some rule that was made (for example) 26 months ago.  Not to mention if you dug far enough back, you could find rules that contradicted each other.  It was like telling a dog to sit and come at the same time, you can’t do it.

One rule that stood firm was:  “Thou Shalt Not Buy Product From a Sister Store“.

We had a complex structure of locations, but under no circumstances could a staff member buy product from a store that had a different owner.  Their product was for their customers and not for us to pillage.  But, when one of those owners who was a friend, sees the Iron Maiden First Ten Years box set come in, they call you to tell you.  The rules meant nothing at that point.  There were greater goals at hand.

This ultra-rare box was issued in 1990, as 10 discs, all sold separately.  You could also get them on vinyl.  I recall seeing a few of them, on 12″ vinyl, at my local Sam The Record Man (run by the near-legendary Al King) during one of my many teenage record store excursions.

IMG_20140427_101356CDs are my preferred format today.  Collect all ten of the Maiden singles, and you could send away for the box that contains them.  Obviously, a complete set is a rare find.  This set came in complete, as is.  I still have the receipt.  I paid $135.99 on Oct 7, 2003.  (With taxes, $156.39.)

It was worth every penny, but it was also worth the shit I caught for buying it from another owner.  And did I get in shit for it!

At best, I was bending the rules.  At best!  I paid full price (no discount!), the owner himself rang it in, and he was happily on board with making a quick buck.  He even personally delivered it to Kitchener.  He could have simply said, “No”.  He didn’t.  Now, I take responsibility for my actions, but an owner has a lot more say in things than I do.  I didn’t deserve what happened next.

A higher-up stormed into my store, pulled me into the office, slammed the door, and yelled.   And yelled.  And pointed a lot, and yelled some more.

It was a weird feeling.  Here I was getting screamed at so much that the dogs could hear it 4 miles away, but also elated about my Iron Maiden find at the exact same time.  It was like I didn’t know if I should be happy or pissed off!  It’s like any time you see someone trying so hard not to smile.

I pulled it off.  I also owned the fucking Iron Maiden First Ten Years box set!

Their big argument was “It’s a bad example to the employees”.  But really, that wasn’t an issue.  No employees knew about it — not one! — until they made a big show of it by yelling at me in store!   The one that said I was a bad example, was the one who let the cat out of the bag.

I walked out of the office, head hanging, but then when out of sight, grinning ear to ear.  Of course the two people who overheard the whole thing asked about it afterwards.  Dandy Douche asked, “Do you think it was worth it?  Would you do it again?”  I said, “Absolutely.  But next time I’m wearing a beard and a moustache, the whole disguise, and buying it in person!”

Unfortunately I never had the chance to do that.  The Iron Maiden box set was one of the last big big items from my “holy grail list.” that came in.

Each disc contains two singles, plus an unreleased 10 minute interview with Nicko.  One on every disc.  They are called “Listen With Nicko!” parts I through X.  Well worth the money, Nicko is friggin’ hilarious.

FIRST TEN_0002All singles included are complete (except Maiden Japan), plus a “Listen With Nicko!” bonus track.  And again, you had to buy these all separately!   On import!  And according to the terms on the mail-in card, only UK residents could order the boxes to house the discs.  Another thing I found interesting was that you had to mail in all ten slips in order to get the box.  Whoever owned my box previously still has nine of his ten slips!  (I am missing #9, “Can I Play With Madness” / “The Evil That Men Do”.)  This can only make my box set rarer and more desirable to collectors.

DISC 1 – Running Free / Sanctuary

DISC 2 – Women In Uniform / Twilight Zone

DISC 3 – Purgatory / Maiden Japan

DISC 4 – Run to the Hills / The Number of the Beast

DISC 5 – Flight Of Icarus / The Trooper

DISC 6 – 2 Minutes to Midnight / Aces High

DISC 7 – Running Free (Live) / Run to the Hills (Live)

DISC 8 – Wasted Years / Stranger in a Strange Land

DISC 9 – Can I Play With Madness / The Evil That Men Do

DISC 10 – The Clairvoyant (Live) / Infinite Dreams (Live)

Click below to embiggen the brand new photo gallery!

 

And the old Nokia pics below:

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!

Part 10: What’s it like, working in a record store?

Yours Truly

Everybody always wanted to know how awesome it was to work in a record store.  They all had this Empire Records idea of it when the truth is much closer to High Fidelity.  I kind of considered myself a combination of the John Cusack and Jack Black characters.  I ran the place like Cusack, but I was a Jack Black-like smartass.  Black played a character named Barry.  You know that scene where the guy in the suit is looking for the song, “I Just Called To Say I Love You”?

Customer: Hi, do you have the song “I Just Called To Say I Love You?” It’s for my daughter’s birthday.
Barry: Yeah, we have it.
Customer: Great great… Well, can I have it?
Barry: No, you can’t.
Customer: Why not?!
Barry: Because it’s sentimental tacky crap that’s why! Do we look like a store that sells “I Just Called to Say I Love You”? Go to the mall!
Customer: What’s your problem?!
Barry: Do you even know your daughter? There’s no way she likes that song! Oh oh oh wait! Is she in a coma?
Customer: Oh, okay buddy. I didn’t know it was Pick on the Middle-Aged Square Guy Day. My apologies. I’ll be on my way.
Barry: Buh-bye!
Customer: Fuck you!

I never quite went that far, but I was always fond of the subtle insults.  I was also known for being stubbornly obtuse.  Like for example, the guy who couldn’t pronounce “Triumph”.  I knew very well what band he was looking for, but he kept saying, “Tramp”.  He didn’t know how to spell it either.  Just the very idea that he couldn’t spell nor pronounce the word “triumph”…how could I not have fun with that guy?  I eventually sold him The Sport of Kings, when I felt like he’d earned it. 

Spelling was an issue in this part of town.  We had a lookup terminal where you could search for inventory on your own.  The best question I ever got at that terminal was, “Mike, how do you spell ‘metal’?  I don’t spell so good.”

In short, stuff grinds your gears just like it does at anybody’s job.  There are times when you saw a number on call display and just did not want to answer.  Just like any job.  Annoying callers, annoying customers, lazy customers who made you do absolutely everything for them, including pick what they want to buy!

You had sales quotas just like any day job.  You had responsibilities to get done.  If they weren’t done, you can’t just say “we were really busy” if your sales numbers weren’t big.   And you had to do things accurately.  In any environment where you buy and sell used goods, you had to be sure of what you were buying and what you were paying for it.  This is made just as difficult in a music store as anywhere else, due to the multiple versions, reissues, special editions, and imports of a CD that determine just what it’s worth.  You could go from offering $2 to $20 for a single album, the exact same title, just a different version thereof.

Same album different versions, and none of these are even the standard version. How would you price them?

And customers really hated being told their discs were “too scratched to re-sell.”  They really hated that one.

You got to listen to tunes all day, that was true.  That is something that I thankfully still do today, thanks to the radio.  I actually prefer the radio to choosing store play discs.  You were so tightly constrained by various rules, which narrowed the scope.  I actually loathed picking store play discs.  If I was working to someone else, I often just said, “You pick, I’ll pick something later.”

Lo and behold, I still have a copy of the store play rules!  I’m a packrat.  I keep everything.

  • Forbidden bands list:  Kiss, Rush, Frank Zappa, Spinal Tap, Dio, Judas Priest
  • Nothing heavier than Metallica’s “black” album
  • No musicals, no classical, no instrumental
  • Must play one new release in every shift
  • Must play 5 discs in shuffle mode, must never play album all the way through except in specific promotional cases
  • Each of the 5 discs must be a different genre
  • No songs with swearing
  • No rap
  • No comedy
  • Could only play discs that were in stock for sale instore

Jazz, soul, indy, and oldies were encouraged.  Hard rock was especially discouraged. 

Of course we broke the rules. If I knew there was no chance of getting caught, I’d bring in my own discs from home all the time.  The best shift I ever had, I played all 5 discs of the Kiss box set, in a row!  I played lots of shit with swearing, all the time.  It wasn’t intentional of course, it’s just that sometimes a great album has swearing on it, and I like to listen to great albums.  Sinatra at the Sands, for example.

We sold Sinatra at the Sands in minutes, by the way…by playing it instore.

I played Dio all the time when I could get away with it, even though he was strictly off limits. 

I remember Tom walking in, during Holy Diver. 

“Wow.  That’s ballsy man,” he said.

I played Spinal Tap once, but one of my buddies got written up for doing the same thing.  Seriously.  That time I was playing Spinal Tap, there was this guy seriously rocking out to it.  He didn’t look like a fan though.  He walked up to me and said, “Sounds like you got some Sons of Freedom going on here!”  Oops!

And I played heavy stuff too.  I know I played Maiden in the store, any night I could.  (Astute readers will recall that Maiden is where we started.  Go back to Part 1 if you haven’t.)  I remember two little kids laughing at Bruce Dickinson’s shrieking during a live take of “Fear of the Dark”.  But, I also remember lots of cool kids in Kiss shirts, buying their first rock albums, and it was cool corrupting those kids.

So what did I have to complain about?  Well, I only played those albums when I could get away with it.  Which wasn’t often.  There was usually someone  in there store who could give you shit for it.

So you’d have to put up with the following:  Much Dance xx, Big Shiny Tunes, TLC, Christmas music all day while seasonal, Dave Matthews band, Linkin Park, plenty of new country, and whatever was the flavour of the month at the time.  There’s a reason I know entire albums inside and out by shitty band like The Dandy fucking Warhols.  I could tell you every fucking song on the first two Coldplay CDs.  I had the unfortunate fate of having to listen to the self titled album by Blur every fucking day for a month.  There are bands that I legitimately like, such as Oasis and Kula Shaker, that I rarely play at home anymore because I have heard them so many Goddamn times.  It sucks when you can’t stand music you actually like.

The record store will do that if you spend too many years there, and I spent too many years there.  Gratefully, I love music again.

The worst thing about the record store though were the cliques, and from what I’ve heard, many record store were like this.  You either fit in or you didn’t, and I definitely did not fit in.   They were all into the latest indy rock bands, and all wore sunglasses.   I’ve never been a sunglasses kind of guy.  Indoors, I think they’re just pretentious.  I tried, oh but I did try.  I went to their shitty bars and drank and pretended to have a good time, but I just couldn’t pretend that I liked the Dandy fucking Warhols.

But, if I didn’t experience all that, I guess I wouldn’t be LeBrain!

Part 6: The Record Store, Year 1
Myself on the left, Trev on the right.

We were pretty slow most evenings.  You could study for exams at work most nights. Fridays got busy, but Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights were dead.  That didn’t mean we doing nothing.  Rule #1:  “If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean.”  We had scheduled to do something every night.  Mondays was cleaning the mirrors which lined the store walls.   Tuesday was putting away new stock, which always came Tuesdays.  Wednesday was checking the security tags on every cassette in the store.  Every fucking cassette.

For the first 2 months or so, it was just me and the owner.  Once September hit, he hired this other guy, Trevor.  I didn’t like him at first, he was the “other guy”.  He was the same age as me, also finishing school at the same time as me.  We shared similar musical interests.  Influences we shared:  Guns N’ Roses, Van Halen, The Four Horsemen, Kim Mitchell, Rush, and any bands with amazing drummers.  Over the course of the years, he introduced me to:  Steve Earle, Oasis, Metallica, Megadeth, Max Webster, anb Buddy Rich.  I give him a lot of credit for expanding my horizons during those days.

A lot of memorable releases came out that first year.  Superunknown and Purple were already out, but I was on board for some major ones.  Nirvana Unplugged was the biggest release of the fall 1994 schedule.  There was an Aerosmith hits disc, a Bon Jovi hits disc, and the Eagles reunion album which was absolutely massive.

The new Tragically Hip, Day For Night, came out on a Saturday.  We sold out by Sunday.  The boss drove down to Scarborough to get more on Monday.  Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy came out on vinyl the week before the CD was released.  We got just five in.  He didn’t expect it to sell, but we sold out before my shift even started.  Interestingly, none of the customers planned on playing it.  They either a) didn’t even have something to play it on, or b) were keeping it sealed as a collector’s item.  It definitely was a cool package.

Some poeople have a “swear jar”.  We had an alarm jar.  If you forgot to de-tag a customer’s purchase and thusly set off the alarm, you had to put a dollar in the jar.  We would use the spoils on our annual Christmas dinner.  It created some friendly competition between us.  That first Christmas is when I started working directly with Trevor, and I started to like him due to his excellent musical taste.  But in the alarm jar game, we were always about equal.  Sometimes you just forgot!

One lady may well have stolen something and set off the alarm, and I’ll never know, because, well….  As she was walking out the alarm went off.  I asked her to come back in the store and check to see if she had something from another store that may had set it off.  She was so upset at the alarm, she really wanted to show me she had nothing on her person.  So, she removed her top.  “See I’m not hiding anything in here!”  Covering my eyes, I told her it was quite alright, I believed her, and she could go.  First time I’d been flashed on the job.  Not the last.

She wasn’t even drunk.  They actually used to serve alcohol at this mall.  There was a licensed restaurant right next door to the store.  The regulars would start in the morning and keep going.  You’d see them in there every day, and they’d wander in completely plastered.

We had a few regular psychos at that mall.  There was Johnny Walker, who would just walk around the mall talking to himself, all day.  Literally, all day.  The story goes that he was quite rich.  He didn’t need to work, wasn’t capable of work, and just came to the mall and walked around all day, talking to himself.  Sometimes he would argue with himself and he had been ejected from the mall a couple times.  He came into the store a couple times but never caused any problems on my shifts.  One time, he even bought a cassette.  It was like the madness turned off.  He spoke to me, bought the tape, and walked out.  Madness set back in, and he’s off arguing with himself.  I wonder what happened to Johnny Walker?  He’d been walking the malls since grade school, sometimes changing malls when he got permanently ejected from one.

Then, there was Sue.  Sue had been in an accident years before, and had a walker.  She moved very  very slow.  She had a bit of a crush on the owner.  She stalked him relentlessly and gave him Christmas gifts.  She’d park her walker right there in front of the counter and talk his ear off for hours.  Hours!

One day, a large Japanese woman was shopping.  The owner said, “Go ask that lady if she needs help.  Then he stood back and waited.  I didn’t know it, but he had just given me my first challenge.

“Hi, can I help you find anything today?”

“No thank you though,” she answered, then almost immediately, “Do you have Soundgarden?”

I showed her what Soundgarden we had both new and used.  We also had the latest copy of M.E.A.T Magazine, and Chris Cornell was on the cover.  I’ll never forget that detail.

“Do you like Chris Cornell?” she asks.

“Yes, he’s actually one of my favourite singers.”

“Oh!  Really!  I love Chris Cornell.  He’s sexy.”

It was too late now.  I had opened Pandora’s box.  She opened the magazine to his picture inside.  She went on:  “I like when he wears his sexy black boots.  Chris Cornell wears black Doc Marten boots.  Do you know the boots?  Chris Cornell wears black Doctor Martens boots.  Do you like Doc Marten boots?”

I was on my own.  The boss just stood back.  I couldn’t even figure out a way to improvise my way out.  I was a rookie  I decided that this woman was most likely a lil’ crazy and I played the polite card.

“Yes, I do…”

“Chris Cornell is sexy.  Did you know that Soundgarden had an original bass player who was Asian?”

I did know that.  “Yes, his name was Hiro Yamamoto…”

“Yes Hiro Yamamoto.  He is Asian.  There are not many Asians in rock bands did you know that?”

This went on for a good 20 minutes.  After she left (not without asking my name, fuck!) my boss came to speak to me.

“That’s your first lesson.  Don’t get into conversations with customers.”

And of course we had the drunks.  I remember one jolly drunk came in that first Christmas Eve.  We all wore ties Christmas Eve, that was the tradition.  It was a tradition I kept every year to my last year at the store, even when I was the only one left who still did it.  This drunk came in, a big Grizzly Adams dude just reeking of alcohol.  He was definitely in great spirits though.  First he asked us why the ties?  The quick-witting Trevor answered, “I’m wearing mine because it makes me feel important.”  We laughed.  I then went over to see if he needed help finding anything.

“Hi there!” I began.

“Not yet, but I will be when I get home.  Hahahaha!” he answered.

Ultimately the jolly drunk guy couldn’t remember what to buy, so he bought $100 in gift certificates for his grand kids.  That was a great sale, and the best part was that it turned out to be $100 of pure profit for the store.  The bearded drunk guy probably lost it, because all my years with the store, they were never redeemed!

After Christmas, the owner confided in Trevor and I that he was going to be opening a second location.  This location would be in Waterloo.  It would be easily accessible by one high school, two universities, and one college.  He would be splitting his time between our store and setting up the new one.  Ultimately this meant he’d be in much less and we’d be getting more hours, and also bhe was bringing a new guy in.

I walked in one Tuesday to see this black-bearded behemoth behind the counter.  It was kind of awkward because the owner didn’t introduce us at first.  I looked around for an hour, stealing glances at this big grizzly bear of a man with the thickest blackest beard you can picture.  Finally he introduced me to Thomas, later to become Tom, the legendary founder of Sausagefest.  Ahh, but that comes much later.

TOM

Tom was a wicked cool guy who expanded my musical tastes even further than Trevor had.  Tom and I had many influences in common.  I had met another kindred spirit.  Influences:  Black Sabbath, Dio, Rainbow, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Van Halan (not Van Hagar!) and Johnny Cash.  Music he would introduce me to:  Miles Davis, Willie Nelson, Fu Manchu, and the whole stoner rock scene in general.  His place was plastered with rare Marillion posters.  Tom was serious about music.

Tom was so serious about music that it was actually hilarious.  Kids, this is the difference between liking music and loving music.  Nobody loves music as much as Tom.  Dare I say it, Tom loves music even more than me.

One night in Toronto, we visited the big HMV on Yonge St.  Tom was methodically working his way through every decent section of the store.  Long after Trevor and I had finished shopping, Tom was just finishing browsing rock.  With a handful of discs by Rainbow and Saga, Tom would then announce, “OK…I just have to check country.”

20 minutes would pass.  “Alright…on to jazz.”

20 more minutes.

“I just have to check blues.”

10 more minutes.

“Oohh…I wonder if they have the soundtrack to the Godfather.”

Checkout.  Trev, Tom and I usually checked out of that store $200 lighter.  Each.

Then, repeat.  We walked down the street to Sam’s, and finally to Virgin.  Rock, country, jazz, blues.  Every store.  That was Tom, three stores, one night.

Seriously those early days at the store were the best times I ever had working.  Working hard or hardly working?  No, we worked hard.  If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean.  We ran that store with the owner making guest appearances, adding to it with our own creative ideas.

I graduated school in the summer of 1995, and hadn’t decided on my next move.  After that I was putting in increasingly more hours at the store.  It gradually built up from a part time job to full time.  When the new store opened, Tom split hours between the two of them so there were plenty of day and night shifts available, usually alone, which were the best times because you could play whatever you wanted!

I remember Tom walked in one night when I was playing Dio.  Back in 1995 you could not play Dio in a mainstream record store.  That would be like the equivalent of playing Michael Bolton in one today.  He was so far removed from what was selling at the time.  But I was rocking out to Holy Diver and Tom appreciated that I had the balls to do it.

Tom went to a lot of concerts.  After we had bonded over the mutual love of metal, I joined him and many of my future Sausagefest friends at a Black Sabbath concert.  It was Motorhead opening on the Sacrifice tour, and Black Sabbath headining, supporting their final studio album (17 years and counting!) Forbidden.  They played at Lulu’s Roadhouse just down the street.  A few weeks later we saw Queensryche in Toronto on the Promised Land tour.

Trev, Tom and I would have many adventures.  Such as that time seeing Kiss in…ahh, but that’s another story.  Before I talk about Tom and Trev again, I need to tell you a really shitty story.

TBC…