kiss

#653: The Reset King (Music and Gaming and other stories)

GETTING MORE TALE #653: The Reset King (Music and Gaming and other stories)
A sequel to #652: Evolution ’80s: Music and Gaming

Perhaps the greatest awakening I ever had in my life was the moment I first heard Iron Maiden.  It was so important to me, it was the first chapter of Record Store Tales — Part 1, “Run to the Hills”.  At that early age, music and video games collided I was never the same again.  Since that time, music has always been intertwined with gaming and my best buddy Bob.  All three combined were responsible for my rock n’ roll epiphany.

Bob and I played a lot of Atari on the weekends.  Both families had the Atari 2600, but we both had different selections of games.  Depending on whose house we were at, we’d play different games.  “Gorf” was one game he had that I didn’t.  It was a shooter like “Space Invaders” but with different kinds of levels.  More than going for a high score, it was important for us to try and make it through all the levels.  Atari games were so limited.  “Gorf” had five distinct levels so it was more rewarding to see all five than to rack up high scores.

Same with “Frogger”.  That was one of my games, and Bob was very competitive on it.  As you progressed up the levels, more obstacles were thrown in your way, like snakes for example.  It was exciting to make it to a new level for the first time, but “Frogger” was a hair-triggered game where timing was everything.  And Bob used to get very, very excitable when a game of “Frogger” went wrong.  That is how he earned the nickname The Reset King.

Here was his thinking.  If you lose a level early in “Frogger”, the chances of making it to a new high level were greatly reduced.  Bob would rather reset the game than try in futility.  So, he’d dive for that reset button on the Atari console, usually while yelling something at the game.  “The game is cheating!” was a favourite.

The game is cheating indeed, I suppose.  It was easier to let him reset than argue that an Atari 2600 wasn’t sophisticated enough to “cheat” at a video game.  “Frogger” was very touchy, but it wasn’t particularly glitchy.  If you so much as touched a car, you were dead even if it didn’t technically “hit” you.  So it could get frustrating, sure.  We would have to eventually cut Bob off from resets or nobody else would get a turn.

And so, he was crowned the Reset King by my dad, who worried he was going to break the damn switch.  It was a title Bob rejected because the game was cheating, and because David Dolph across the street was way worse with the reset button.

David Dolph was this bratty kid across the street.  His weird family wouldn’t let them play with any toys with guns, like G.I. Joe.  But David was no dummy.  He had a Transformers collection, because he didn’t tell his mom they came with guns.  He was also destructive, and if you let David Dolph near your toys, he’d probably wreck them.  We didn’t like David Dolph, but one afternoon we found ourselves at his house playing video games in the basement.  It was there that David Dolph faced the Reset King.

They didn’t have an Atari, but they did have a Commodore Vic 20 that you could play games on.  We were playing there in the basement, when the Reset King decided to start a game over because it “cheated” early on.

“No fair!” yelled David Dolph.  “No fair!  It’s my turn now!”  He tried to wrestle the controller from Bob’s hand, who didn’t budge.  In fact he just continued to stare intently at the TV and play, with the corners of his mouth attempting to conceal a smile.  Giving up the fight over the controller, David Dolph burst into tears and ran upstairs.  Bob kept playing, a huge grin now upon his face.  We stayed until Bob finished playing games!

David Dolph was a weird kid.  His parents were really strict and wouldn’t let them listen to music, except for Bruce Springsteen.  They approved of the Boss, but heavy metal was satanic to them.  The kid was over at our house one afternoon when I was watching music videos on TV with Bob.  He was visibly upset by “Rock You” by Helix, and left the house.  About a decade later, he sure changed.  I often heard him blasting Savatage’s “Hall of the Mountain King” from his bedroom window when his parents weren’t around.

Maybe it’s the narcissist in me, but who was he blasting Savatage for?  By that time, Bob and I weren’t even talking to him, so I always wondered if he was blasting it at us.

As much fun as we had over the years, you had to be patient when gaming with Bob.  If you wanted play with him, you had to let the Reset King have his way.

The reset button never broke.  In fact we still have the same Atari 2600.  It works, and we still have all the cartridges…except one.  My sister never forgave me for trading away “Superman”.  However, I traded “Superman” for my first Kiss (Record Store Tales Part 3:  My First Kiss) so clearly I had the greater good in mind.

What did break…frequently…were the controllers.  And that wasn’t Bob’s fault.  Bob owned an Atari and took good care of his stuff.  He was brought up in a Dutch household that understood the value of working for something and taking care of it.  None of Bob’s things were broken like David Dolph’s.  No, Bob didn’t break our controllers.  They were broken by Cousin Geoffrey.  Cousin Geoffrey broke…everything.

My cousin is now a father himself, and he understands things a little differently now.  I think he doesn’t hold it against me when I say he was fucking annoying to play Atari or Nintendo with.  More annoying than the Reset King or David Dolph!

Geoffrey destroyed about three Atari joysticks.  I was pretty good at taking them apart and repairing them, but there was only so much I could do.  An Atari joystick was a plastic handle that activated four switches on a circuitboard underneath.  Geoffrey would push those joysticks so hard that the plastic inside would shatter.  I could take it apart and use hot glue to give the inner plastic frame some strength but it was a temporary fix at best.  You had to buy new controllers.  My dad eventually decreed that Geoffrey was only allowed to play with old, refurbished controllers, not the new ones.

Geoffrey destroyed our original Transformers G1 Frenzy figure, on Christmas day, the same day we got it!  He was just a destructive child, and what he didn’t destroy he simply lost.  I’ll give you some examples of the chaos he caused.

First trip to Alberta, August 1979.  l-r Mike, Geoffrey “Captain Destructo”, and Kathryn

In August 1979, the family took our first trip to Alberta.  It was a two week tour starting in Edmonton and going through the mountains.  My sister, my cousin and I were often given the same toys to play with, so we wouldn’t fight over them.  My sister and my cousin were both given dinky cars of the Batmobile.  Were they ever cool.  They came with a little metal trailer and a plastic Bat Boat you could tow.  We had a lot of fun playing dinky cars on those floors of Alberta motels.  They were also small enough to carry around in your pockets.

Geoffrey threw his first Batmobile off a mountain in Jasper.  He just wanted to see what would happen if he threw the Batmobile off a moutain.  A second Batmobile was bought for him on the same trip.  That Batmobile was flushed down the toilet of a rest stop in Canmore.  He was eventually given a third Batmobile, which, as far as I know, survived a little longer than the other two.

Geoffrey “Captain Destructo” (in cap) sulking after sacrificing the Batmobile to the Mountain Gods.

Another incident of soul-crushing toy waste happened in the summer of 1983.  This time, Geoffrey was visiting us in Ontario.  It was the summer of Return of the Jedi.  The new figures were out.  My mom took us to Zellers and bought each of us a new toy.  I chose Luke Skywalker, partly because he came with so many accessories.  He came with a new lightsaber, a gun and a cloth cape.  Geoffrey got the same figure.  We then waited on a bench while my mom did her banking.

“Come on let’s open these,” said Geoffrey.  My sister and I always waited until we got home.

Geoffrey ripped open his Luke.

“Why are you opening that now?  You’re going to lose the gun.  Just wait until we get home.  This is our last stop.”  I attempted to reason with my cousin but he had Luke out of the package.

Within the first five minutes, he lost the gun.  Before we made it home, he lost the lightsaber too.

“I told you so,” was something I relished saying to him.  My Luke, by the way, still has all his accessories 35 years later.

What these tales tell us is that cousin Geoffrey was a monsoon of chaos and utter destruction.  He also had all the latest stuff, and that included video games.  Fortunately for his parents, the original Nintendo Entertainment System had very robust, button-based controllers.  He couldn’t break them.  He was really good at “Super Mario Bros.” and “Mike Tyson’s Punch Out”.  Unfortunately this meant my sister and I didn’t get much gaming time.  We died early and often, and he played long lives while earning extra ones.  His turns were much longer than ours.

We saw him make it to Mike Tyson once.  That was pretty cool.  Once he almost made it, but my dad walked in front of the TV during a fight and caused Geoffrey to lose.  Boy he sure threw a fit that time!

Here’s the funny thing.  When we were kids, my cousin took a lot of energy and patience to keep entertained.  When he hit his 20s, he really mellowed out and we bonded like we never have before.  And what did we bond over?  Music and video games.

I took a trip out to Alberta for a week in 1997.  He took me shopping to a couple music stores in Calgary, used and new.  I found a rare CD featuring the early one of somebody named Dave Grohl.  It was the band Scream, and the CD was No More Censorship.  I was kicking off a love affair with Foo Fighters and it was a seriously cool find.  Geoffrey was (and always has been) into to Tragically Hip, so I got him a CD by a similar sounding band called the Barstool Prophets. Meanwhile, he turned me onto the Gandharvas with their last album Sold For a Smile.  Killer album that I still love (and own two different copies of).

At night, he introduced me to one of the best racing games I’ve ever played.  For the N64 system, we spent hours on “Top Gear Rally”.  It was such an immersive game for its time.  We designed our cars, we discovered shortcuts, and had a blast seeing how far we could make it.

Once again, it wasn’t best scores or best times that mattered.  It was seeing how far you could get.  Getting to the third or fourth level was rare and required serious skill.  It was the most fun I’d had playing video games in many years!

All these memories flow like a stream of consciousness, triggered by certain songs.  Early Kiss, AC/DC and Quiet Riot will forever be associated with the old Atari 2600 in the basement.  Bob was a constant gaming companion, and he sets off even more memories.  Discovering music together, like Whitesnake and Kiss albums.  All hail the Reset King.  Long may he reign!

 

 

Sunday Chuckle: When Uncle Meat Leaves a Voicemail

Are you familiar with the song “Sweet Pain” by Kiss, off 1976’s legendary Destroyer album?  Uncle Meat is.  If you can’t remember how it goes, here’s a refresher:

 

Now, listen to Uncle Meat’s version, which I found on my voicemail last week:

 

My mother in law was in the room when I played this voicemail.

Hey, you gotta admit the guy can sing!

 

#643: Boom Boxes and Walkmen

GETTING MORE TALE #643: Boom Boxes and Walkmen

In the 80s, you had to have a Boom Box.  Or a Ghetto Blaster.  Or whatever you wanted to call a portable tape deck/radio.  Everybody had one, because they were awesome.

In order to make your Boom Box truly portable, you needed batteries.  There was often a place on the back where you could wrap up and store the power cable.  Then you’d load up the deck with batteries.  My first Sanyo stereo deck took about eight D-cells.  They’d last less than one afternoon of rock and roll.  When the tape started to slow down, you knew your batteries were dying.

Next door neighbor George liked to prop his Boom Box up on his shoulder as he walked, like the kid in the video for “The Right to Rock” by Keel.  It seemed cool at the time.

My second Sanyo was a dual tape deck with detachable speakers.  To make it portable, you just secured the speakers to the sides and plugged in those batteries.  This one took even more batteries than my first one.  In addition to the D-cells to power the music, it also required two AA batteries for the clock!  The truth is, a Boom Box was such a pain in the butt to make portable, that we tended to avoid it.  Sure, we could take it to the park and assault the tennis court with Black Sabbath, but it was just better to keep it at home.  A Ghetto Blaster, plugged into an extension cord in the garage, could still keep us entertained outdoors.  Parents would yell to “turn it down!”, so we would…for a little while before turning up again.

A Walkman was easier on batteries than a Boom Box.  The only problem with a Walkman?  Nobody else could listen in.  So that made it a little awkward and a lot funny when George would walk down the street with his Walkman.

George worked an early shift at Long John Silver’s, which was walking distance.  In the morning he could be seen strolling off to work, earphones on his head.  My sister and I would watch from the window.  As he walked forcefully down the street, suddenly he burst into song.  A lot of the time, you couldn’t tell what he was singing.  Most memorably though, he serenaded the neighborhood with “Love Gun”.

We watched him walk when he suddenly yelled, “ALRIGHT! LOVE GUN!” just as Paul Stanley did on Alive II.  And then George ripped into the chorus:  “Love Gun, Looo-ooo-ove Gun…”

It was hard not to laugh.  George singing in the mornings was a daily event, rest his soul.  We teased George a bit but he was a good person.  He was certainly unique and a non-conformist.

My parents bought me a neat little speaker set to go with my Walkman.  When fully packed up, it looked like a cylinder with the speakers on each end.  When you opened it, you could remove the speakers and set them up on your desk or shelf.  Just plug in a Walkman and you were good to go.  If you wanted to go portable, there was room inside the set for both speakers and your Walkman.  It too was heavy on battery use, but it was a very cool little set.  I brought it to school when I needed musical accompaniment to any of my OAC-level presentations.

Who misses stocking up on AA and D-cell batteries?  And don’t forget extras for when your Walkman slows down. You don’t want to be stuck without batteries! Isn’t it so much easier to just charge some USB speakers and plug them into your phone?  Sure is!

 

 

#631: The Locker Door

GETTING MORE TALE #631: The Locker Door

Before the first day of highschool even began, I had selected the posters I was going to hang up inside.  For my first locker ever, at the beginning of grade nine, I chose Gene Simmons.  It was a weird picture of him from the Asylum era, no makeup, and his tongue pinned to the neck of his bass by the strings.  I was truly disappointed that girls found the picture repulsive and didn’t want to talk to me.  I’m still proud that I was flying the Kiss flag right from day one.  For some reason, I also had a picture of Mr. Mini Wheats, from a box of the same-named cereal.

Meanwhile, my best buddy Bob had something cooler.  It was a poster of Bruce Dickinson, circa 1986, standing next to the giant stage Eddie from Somewhere in Time.  Everybody seemed to agree that the new Blade Runner Eddie was the coolest one yet, and that poster was the envy of the hallway.  When he was done with it, Bob passed the locker poster down to me.  I was thrilled — so much that I used it again the next year.

Bob moved on to Samantha Fox.  She took over from where Eddie and Bruce once were.  “Hey, that one’s topless,” remarked the English teacher Mr. Payette as he strolled past.  She was covering her modesty with her arms, but she was indeed missing her top.

In grade 10, Bob and I did something sneaky.  On the first day of school, he advised me to bring an extra lock, and see if I could snag an extra, unoccupied locker.  I did — right next to my own, in fact.  So that year, Bob and I had this spare locker that we shared right next to mine.  He had this little Nerf basketball set.  You could hang a net from the locker door.  We also had gotten into remote control cars.  We stashed them in the spare locker and played with them during the lunch hour.  We got caught by the stern science teacher, Mr. Branday.  “Take this to the gym!” he shouted at us.

Branday was a weird guy.  Every year, he began his science class with the same line.  “Science is a tool of the mind.  With it, one can open more doors than with the bare hands alone!”

Bob and I had such a good time, that year of the two lockers.  A fresh succession of posters went up, although I hung onto Bruce and Eddie until it was literally falling apart.  One I liked a lot was a cardboard cut out of ZZ Top’s Eliminator car, from a Monogram model kit I built.  I always wanted to rig up a Walkman with a speaker in the door of that locker, but we figured if the racing cars got us in shit, music would even more.

Locker posters usually came from magazines such as Hit Parader, but it had to be a vertical poster.  A horizontal one would only be good for home.  A kid down the hall, Michael Wright, had a picture of a computer in his locker one year.  I tended to stick to rock stars.  Def Leppard went in there, and so did a rare picture of Vinnie Vincent in his Kiss makeup.

Some of the posters that survived

I tried to take care of my posters so I could use them again.  They seemed like a big part of my identity.  I brought my posters to school on the first day every year, so my locker would never be bare.  Nobody but Bob seemed to get that.  I always enjoyed carefully packing them up on the last day of school before summer holidays.  Except for the last year of highschool, when I knew it was the very last time.  There would be no more lockers.  The very last locker posters were coming down, for good.  I hated the feeling, the finality of it.  Knowing life was about to change and almost all my old friends would be gone doing their own things.  It was a…lonely feeling.  The lockers were always a communal place.  You’d chat with friends before or between classes.  Life really felt different afterwards.

Somewhere in this house in an old video tape, of my grade 13 year circa 1990.  Bob and I rented a camera one weekend, went into the unlocked school and did a tour.  On that video is a detailed look at my locker posters of 1990-1991.  One day I’m going to have to get a USB VCR and take a look.

#621: Bad Axes

GETTING MORE TALE #621: Bad Axes

Ever have extracurricular activities at work?  Do you enjoy them?

We had very, very little at the Record Store.  In 1995, the mall had a bowling tournament.  Different stores faced off against each other.  The Record Store had to take on the ladies from A Buck Or Two, a bargain shop.  We had a lot of fun, and I cannot recall who won, which means we probably lost.

We did have annual Christmas parties at the Record Store, and for a while we even had summer parties.  There was nothing else though that would have qualified as an extracurricular activity, unless you count endless staff meetings.  I know some places have team building events, like going to an “escape room”.  That sounds like fun, unless you don’t like your co-workers.

The best work event I had the pleasure to attend was Jan 31 2009, right after Jen and I married.  I received four passes to go see the Toronto Maple Leafs from a private box.  My boss and I went, and of course I had to bring Jen.  It was fantastic!  So much food:  nachos, chips, prime rib, chicken, sushi, ribs, wings, everything!  On top of this, it was Dougie Gilmour night, and they raised his number 93 to the rafters.  I didn’t even know who Doug Gilmour was.  But the Leafs beat the Penguins and Sidney Crosby.  Good thing; the rest of the season sucked!

Our work is doing a team building event this Friday, which unfortunately conflicts with Star Wars, but that’s life right?  We all voted, and for our event we are going axe throwing!  How metal is that?  Fortunately I do like all my co-workers, so I’m not worried about any errant axes headed my way.  The establishment is called Bad Axe Throwing.  By that I hope they mean I’ll be like a bad ass, not that I will be throwing axes badly.

Knowing my teammates, we’ll be laughing as much as throwing.  I’m looking forward to it, though the timing is shitty.  This will be the first Star Wars Saga* opening that I’ve missed since Return of the Jedi.  No big deal; it’s only a movie and I’ll see it soon enough.

Axe throwing is just so metal!  With that in mind, here are five awesome tracks involving axes.

1. KISS – “I Love it Loud”, because of Gene’s axe bass.

2. KICK AXE – “On the Road to Rock”, because they have axe in their name.

3. PINK FLOYD – “Careful With that Axe, Eugene”.  Not metal, but good advice.

4. HELIX – “Axe to Grind”, from my home town!

5. THE SWORD – “How Heavy this Axe”. Really fuckin’ heavy!

#608: Hot in the Shade

GETTING MORE TALE #608: Hot in the Shade

November of 1989 was an historic moment in time.  Three events collided in one day that I distinctly remember unusually well.  Based on historical records, I almost can nail down the exact time I first heard Kiss’ then-new Hot in the Shade album that year.  I can remember being on a bus for a school trip, sitting next to a German kid, as the news of the Berlin Wall coming down became the top story of the day.  It was probably the 10th of November, a Friday.

It was huge news.  I grew up in the tail end of the Cold War, and hope was finally on the horizon.  I can remember in 1983, kids in the school yard talking about the Korean passenger liner that the Soviets shot down.  “There’s gonna be a war,” one kid said, and it sure did seem like it.  Every other year, it seemed like it.  November of 1989 was a different kind of time, when fears suddenly melted away albeit briefly.  Sitting next to that German kid on the bus, Mark, was the best place for me to absorb the greater meaning of it.

What were we doing sitting on that bus?  We were on the way to Pickering, to visit the nuclear plant.  Our names had to be submitted weeks in advance to get the clearances, but we were inside an operational nuclear facility!  It wasn’t even my first tour of a nuclear plant, though it was the first time being inside one.  When I was a youngster, the family took a tour of Bruce Nuclear’s grounds and visitor center on summer vacation one year.  I remember being really small, and asked to try and lift some depleted rods of uranium.  I couldn’t; it was far too heavy!  This demonstration indicated the density of the nuclear fuel.  “Did you have your Wheaties today?” asked the tour guide to the chuckles of the group.  But in Pickering, we got to look right inside.

The Pickering plant was impressive.  We had helmets on to go with our visitor badges.  There were checkpoints everywhere, where you had to put your hands and feet in a scanner to make sure you didn’t pick up any radioactive dust.  Once you were cleared, you could go into the next area.  We saw the big rooms where the spent fuel is kept.  Not surprisingly, everything was immaculately clean.  Every surface gleamed, and all the equipment appeared new and in top condition.  We were told that amount of radiation we were exposed to was about the same as an X-ray at the dentist.  The trip was optional, and at least one kid opted out because he didn’t want to get zapped.

There was a more intensive scan at the end of the trip before we were allowed to leave.  You had to pass a full body scan; if not they had to confiscate your clothes and send you home in paper hospital gowns.  I had a brief moment of terror when my scanner refused to give me the green light.  “Come closer” the damn machine kept saying to me.  “I’m as close as I can get!” I retorted to the infernal contraption.  A guide helped me get standing correctly and thankfully I passed the scan!  No hospital gowns for me, which is especially good because the next stop on the trip was Pickering Town Center for lunch.

I ate a sandwich for lunch that my mom packed for me.  She always made sure I had a lunch every day!  We had time to kill at the mall so Mark and I hit up a record store.  It was probably A&A Records and Tapes, though it certainly could have been an HMV.  Either way, they had two new releases that I had my eyeballs on:  Trouble Walkin’ by Ace Frehley, and Hot in the Shade by Kiss.  I only had enough money for one, and Kiss had to take priority of solo Ace.  I remember having a conversation with the guy at the counter about how Anton Fig was back playing drums for Ace.  (And that right there is a lesson about customer service.  That guy made an impression on me that lasted 28 years, just by mentioning Anton Fig on the off chance that I’d know who he was.)

So I walked out of there with Hot in the Shade in my Walkman, and I had a chance to hear the new Kiss album for the first time.  I always enjoyed a first listen.  I’d look at the song titles and try to guess which were Paul’s and which were Gene’s.  I really liked the acoustic slide guitar that opened “Rise to It”.  Bruce Kulick was proving his awesomeness, though I didn’t enjoy his tone on Hot in the Shade.  It was only later that I learned Hot in the Shade was essentially a set of demos that were polished and finished for album release.  That might explain why I felt the tone was so…flat.

Mark also encouraged me to listen to one of his tapes, a group called Trooper.  “I bet you haven’t heard of Trooper,” he said, and I hadn’t, which was odd because they were Canadian.  Trooper didn’t make any lasting impressions other than remembering that Mark was rabid for them.  One thing I remember about Mark:  he hated long songs.  He liked songs in the three to four minute range, and that’s pretty much all of Trooper’s hits.

Our final stop was Lakeview Station, a huge and now defunct coal fire plant in Mississauga.  “Don’t touch anything,” the teacher warned us before going in.  “This place is covered in black coal dust.  If you touch any, you’re going to get it all over the next thing you touch which will probably be your clothes.”  And he was right.  Every surface had coal dust on it.  The tour was noisier and far grimier than the nuclear tour.  This was intended to make an unsubtle point about the differences between the two.

We were all glad to get out of Lakeview and back on the highway home.  I flipped sides on my Kiss tape and tried to get into the album.  I was struggling with it.  Some songs were really good, like the ballad “Forever” which was immediately discernible from the pack.  Others made it seem like putting out an album with 15 new songs might have been a better idea on paper.

I listened to the album on my boombox when I got back home.  I listened intently and tried to figure out what sounded “off”, and the only thing I could figure was the guitarist.  “I don’t think Bruce Kulick’s tone is right,” I said with a twinge in my gut.  Of this, I’m glad he proved me wrong by the next album Revenge.

What a memorable day that was.  I’m just glad I didn’t come home radioactive and hot in the shade!

Check out the album review tomorrow as part of the  KISS RE-REVIEW SERIES.

#607: Every Picture Tells a Story

GETTING MORE TALE #607: Every Picture Tells a Story

 

If you’re like me, you probably look at childhood photos and are immediately flooded with a million memories. Music, pictures and memories…they all go together don’t they? One triggers another and all three merge together in your grey matter. With that in mind, put on something nostalgic and join me with some short stories about some old pictures. If you can’t think of something to listen to, here’s Bryan Adams doing “Summer of ’69”!

I can tell by my hair that this picture is winter of 1989-1990. On the far left, you’ll notice my Darth Vader lamp, hand made by my mom a long time ago (though not very far away). Darth is priceless to me, and I still have him on that very same dresser today. Next to Darth, I notice that I didn’t think to remove the Speed Stick before taking a photo.

That was my first guitar. I just had to have a whammy bar. That thing would simply not stay in tune. In the 80s, you had to have a whammy bar, although Slash was slowly causing them to go out of fashion. My mom found a guitar teacher, a really nice guy named Gary Mertz. He was teaching my sister, myself and my best friend Bob all in one shot. He came to the house, and did 30 minute lesson with my sister on keyboards first. Then 30 minutes with me and 30 with Bob on guitar. I just wasn’t any good at it. I just don’t have the coordination. How my sister got to be such a great musician, I really couldn’t tell you. I got the shitty genes.

A year and a half later, and look at that hair. Sleek?

Second guitar. A flying V I bought off a guy from work.  He was a huge Eddie Van Halen fan, and he customised the V with different pickups to try to emulate Eddie’s brown sound.  I still had to have a whammy bar.  Constantly diving for it made it sound like I was playing something other than random notes.  I was pretty useless on guitar.

A little older now, this is about 1993 and that’s my first beard! Zeppelin and the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701 D) on the same walls as before.  The Enterprise and the Kiss sketch I’m holding were both birthday gifts from my buddy Peter. I still have that Kiss sketch on my wall right behind where I work at LeBrain HQ.

Check out this model kit I build. That’s a Klingon Bird of Prey, a Romulan Warbird and a Ferengi ship. I bought it for the Warbird, truly a beautiful ship design. If you look close enough, you can see where I painted in little yellow windows on the forward section, just like the show. I did the same on the Ferengi craft, which actually turned out the best of the three.

And finally, I don’t know what compelled me to take pictures of all my stuff. Here it is, and all laid out specifically just so. Why? Couldn’t tell you. But there’s some cool stuff there!

With the exception of the cassette tapes, I still own most of this stuff.  Some CDs have been replaced by expanded editions.  The vinyl didn’t go anywhere though, and I definitely hung on to those Star Trek figures.

My collections for each of these bands has expanded so much that I couldn’t fit them all into a single photo anymore.  It’s funny to look back and think, “Wow, that’s all I had!?”

WTF Search Terms: Surströmming edition

WTF SEARCH TERMS XXXVIII:  Surströmming edition

Heyo, LeBrainiacs!  It’s time for more WTF Search Terms, those weird and wacky things that people typed into search engines to bring them here.  I’ve gathered 10 more for your enjoyment.

People often search for “naked lebrains”.  Should I be flattered?  Setting the record right, once and for all:  I have never, and will never, do porn.  I’m glad that you keep searching for it, but give it up will ya?

  • lebrain hot dee
  • www . sex photo lebraln fucking

This isn’t a how-to site, but I loved this next question.  It had to be from a Trailer Park Boys fan.  Nobody else would think of it.  Bless you, whoever you are:

  • i want to turn my living room into an ice rink

True north strong and free!

These folks also had some Trailer Park Boys questions:

  • in tpb europe do they throw up

It sure looked like they did, in Stockholm after opening a can of putrid of fish called surströmming.  Nothing appeared to be faked for the cameras!

  • what episode is the trailer park boys where they go to denmark

I know this is hard to believe, but it’s the episode called “Copenhagen”.  Because it’s the capital of Denmark.  C’mon guys, use your heads before asking Siri to find out for you.

  • trailer park boys europe wheres randy and lahey

Not in Europe.

  • trailer park boys quotes they’re canadians they don’t know any better

I plead the Fifth.

This next one is related to Kiss.  I wish this is what I titled from review of Kiss at the Ritz:

  • kiss shit fits at ritz review

And then there’s this, obviously triggered by “Kiss” and “Maiden” who I’ve reviewed, but I don’t know what this person was searching for:

  • I fear they kiss，gentle maiden

And then in the “Conspiracy Theory that Just Won’t Die” category…guess who’s back!?

  • joey tempest lookalike

 

Thanks for checking out these search terms.  Subscribe so you never miss any!

 

 

BOOK REVIEW: KISS Still On Fire – Dave Thomas & Anders Holm (1988)

The KISS RE-REVIEW SERIES Part 37: bonus book review

 Still On Fire – Dave Thomas & Anders Holm (1988 Melody Line)

In the 1980s, there were generally no Kiss books on the market.  If you found one, you bought it.  The only widely known Kiss book back then was 1978’s paperback Kiss by Robert Duncan.  I was lucky to find Kiss Still On Fire in Stratford Ontario on December 27, 1990 in a great little store called The Book Vault.  Still On Fire is very very unofficial, but it was unequalled in its time:  130 magazine sized pages, mostly in full colour, loaded with pictures, facts and a few errors.

Peppered with old interviews and article snippets, Still On Fire takes a balanced look at the band and isn’t afraid to get critical when it’s warranted.  It also attempts to take a crack at who played what on some of those tracks where it wasn’t quite clear.  For example, Ace Frehley is pictured on the front cover of Killers, but didn’t play on any of the new songs.  Still On Fire quotes a Paul Stanley interview.  Was it Bob Kulick playing lead on these tracks?  “Bob did come out, yes, but he didn’t play.  When I couldn’t handle things — and I don’t consider myself the ultimate lead player — another friend of ours came in and gave us a little help.”  The book states this friend was Robbin Crosby of Ratt, a claim that is not backed up in other sources.  Did Crosby play on Killers?  Who knows, but according to this book, he did.  Other books such as Julian Gill’s Kiss Album Focus claim Bob Kulick did play some on Killers.  In other words, if you read something interesting in this book that contradicts what you’ve read elsewhere, take it with a grain of salt.

There’s a bit of content here about what Gene was doing in the 1980s outside of Kiss:  producing bands such as Black & Blue and EZO.  Gene was responsible for EZO’s fantastic single “Flashback Heart Attack”, co-written by James Christian of Simmons Record act House of Lords.  Gene was also working on movies but was having trouble finding the time.  Apparently Sergio Leone really wanted Gene Simmons for Once Upon a Time in America in the role of Max, ultimately played by James Woods.  Can you imagine?

Besides the ample photos, the most impressive feature of Still On Fire is the discography.  Though incomplete, Still On Fire attempts to document myriad Kiss bootleg recordings, including cover art.  There are also interesting promo and foreign releases, such as the Special Kiss Tour Album and Kiss – The Singles.  Side projects and solo albums are included, from major (Frehley’s Comet) to obscure (Bruce Kulick’s band The Good Rats).  A variety of singles, picture discs and videos are on display, fully illustrated.  All of this was completely new to me then.  Not to mention the titles of unreleased songs!  What the heck were “Don’t Run” and “The Unknown Force”?  (The Elder demos.)  This is also where you’ll find the most typos and spelling errors.  (I really want to hear this song called “Pick It Up”.)

Still On Fire isn’t definitive nor is it definitely 100% accurate, but it should still prove to be a valuable resource for your Kiss library.

3.5/5 stars