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 twicebefore 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.
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!
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.
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?
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!
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 CultCollection 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 CrueMusic 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!
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….
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.
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.
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!
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.
mikeladano.com 