RECORD STORE TALES #1197: Moose Sausage & Mental Health

Summer is well on its way.  I’ve waited a long time to get here.

I love doing live broadcasts from the cottage.  This weekend was going to be packed full, just like our bags and boxes that we loaded in the car for our first trip of July.  We hit the road at 4:30 on Thursday.  Preparing for Friday’s live episode of 50 Years of Iron Maiden, we played all of Live at Donington on the way to the lake.  Not necessarily the best album for a lake drive, but Jen liked it, and it helped me prepare a little bit extra for the show.

Thursday night was peaceful, but hot.  There was not much to do but play music on the porch.  I cued up Tonight At Toad’s Place by Blotto, and started working on some show-related writing.  Dr. Kathryn came over for a quick visit.  We gossiped a bit about people we used to know, and after dark I shut it down for the night.  Friday was going to be a fun day for us.

I began my Friday morning by cooking up a delicious moose sausage, and editing a new episode of 50 Years of Iron Maiden.  I wanted to do minimal editing, just to fix a couple spots with issues, but I ended up having a little more fun with it.  At 8 AM we left for the butcher (The Beefway) and bought two steaks, a chicken breast, some lamb chops, and the best bacon I’ve ever cooked in my life.  This extra thick cut bacon was so soft and sweet.  It led me to an idea.

Canadian breakfast:  moose sausage & mayo on a bun, with coffee.

We were going to do roasted potatoes on the BBQ.  Jen likes to stuff hers with butter, but I had a different idea.  I sliced up some fatty parts of the bacon and stuffed my potato with that.  The end result was a delicious potato that tasted like a Smokey Bacon BBQ potato chip.  The bacon pieces inside were soft and melted like butter in your mouth.  A new masterpiece, but one that I feel I can only do with the exact right bacon.  It has to be cut thick with lots of fat.  And it worked beautifully.

The lamb, chicken and steaks also turned out really well.  I did up some stuffed peppers with cream cheese, green onions and more bacon.  The chicken breast ended up being the best one I’d ever made.  The Beefway simply have the best food, and I have to admit I’m not too bad a chef myself.  I used about half a bottle of BBQ sauce on one chicken breast, but that’s because I wanted it perfectly and completely coated.  It came out so juicy and flavorful.  Grocery store chicken seems to have a weird preservative taste these days.  Not the stuff from the Beefway!

Friday night’s episode of 50 Years of Iron Maiden went really well.  It was our first live episode in quite a while, but I am glad that Harrison and I still have the skills.  A surprise came that night:  a donation!  Our very first donation!  Viewer Ryan Potter had this to say:

Thanks for this series guys! I’ve been enjoying revisiting these albums and going through my Maiden Collection with each episode.

Thank you Ryan for this first-ever thank-you.  If we ever felt like we were not doing as good a job as we want to, Ryan’s comment will remind us that we’re doing just fine.

Friday was a difficult episode, because we had to review four CDs of Iron Maiden:  A Real Live One, A Real Dead One, and Live at Donington (2 CDs).  There were also two CD singles with an additional three bonus tracks to tackle.  It required a lot of listening and a lot of notes, but Harrison and I managed to cover it all between the two of us.  A proud night.

Friday night’s broadcast location for 50 Years of Iron Maiden.

But that was just the beginning for our live streaming adventures on the weekend.

Jex Russell, my “other” main co-host for many moons in the past, has been dealing with life lately.  He recently had some free time come up, and said to me, “I’m ready.  I want to do a live show.  I want to tell people where I have been and what I’ve been up to.  Let’s call it Ask Jex Anything and we’ll discuss mental health.”

I loved this idea.

We discussed when to go live.  I was pushing for 8 AM Saturday morning, based on a past show we did in that time slot together.  Mostly though, I didn’t want to do two live shows during prime cottage hours.  One was fine.  Two would be spending too much time on a screen during the best time of day.  Jex was hesitant.  What’s the point of an “Ask Jex Anything” episode if there’s nobody watching to ask?  I crossed my fingers and set up the broadcast from my favourite spot:  fireside.  I gathered the firewood and a Canadian flag for an epic backdrop.  I waited for 8 AM to come.

I think I had pretty much the best broadcast desk of any music show on YouTube today. You can get Pete Pardo with his wall of CDs behind him, or a “Hair Metal Guru” with loads of memorabilia, but nobody else in music had a backdrop like mine.  A roaring fire, a Canadian flag, and nature.  A few people walking down the road were wondering why this guy was out at 8 AM, talking on a laptop, at a computer desk in the middle of a beautiful green enclave.  Why?  Because it’s awesome!

Saturday’s office.

I had confidence that we would do a good show, viewers or no viewers.  We always do.

It didn’t take long for the viewers to show up, and for Jex and I to open up, about mental health, music and balance.  The questions began pouring in, and I could not keep up with the comments.  Some people woke up early just to watch this special episode of Grab A Stack of Rock.  Johnny Clauser and Tim Durling joined as surprise guests to share their own stories.  Confessions were made, and I told a chapter of my story that I have never revealed before.  Not even in Record Store Tales.

I believe that Satuday’s show, Ask Jex Anything: Music and Mental Health, is the most important episode we’ve ever done.  Much to Jex’s relief, we had great views.  Even exceeding the previous night’s 50 Years of Iron Maiden.  We are very, very proud.

It ended up being a very good decision to go live in the morning.  Black Sabbath were playing their final concert that afternoon.  Everybody would be watching that, had we decided to go live later on.  The morning show was a blessing.

From that point on, Saturday was ours to enjoy.  It got hot – very hot.  Eventually we went into town to get some air conditioning and soda pop.  Staying cool was a challenge, and it prevented me from doing too much that day.  No writing completed.

Droning on.

I did get to fly my drone a bit.  I chose to fly my original drone, the Potensic.  It is the better drone for stunt flying, and I made a few great videos.  I still have to edit these.  I managed to get one uploaded, which is “Nothing At All” by Deep Purple, to the visuals of a Lake Huron sunrise.

Sunday morning was time to pack our bags and head home.   My mood crashed that day.  It was an uncanny feeling of autumn; of “back to school”, even though it was only July.  I could not shake that depressed feeling.  We listened to April Wine on the way home because I wanted music that I was less familiar with.  “All Over Town” is my new favourite song, but the crash hit me hard.

We tried to cheer me up by ordering in a nice dinner (The Burgers Priest), but failed.  I woke up Monday morning unable to get out of bed.  I lay there for hours, tired and worn out.  I worked from home on Monday.  In the old days I would have gone to work and felt worse and worse as the day went on.  This time I managed.  It is nice to have those options to work from home.  It saved my Monday.

A beautiful weekend was had, despite the crash at the end.  We’ll be back for my birthday.  Close yet far!