kitchener

#573: Pawning Sh*t

GETTING MORE TALE #573: Pawning Shit

You’ve met new contributor Aaron, and as he begins his story, you’ll get to know him a little better.  But how did he enter Record Store Tales?

It’s a funny story, but I very briefly dated his older sister.  We all “met” online – a local electronic “BBS” or “Bulletin Board System”.  My handle was “Geddy” and his was “Capone”.  He still sometimes calls me “Geddy”!  He must have thought I was cool or something.  I wasn’t even working at the Record Store yet when we first met, but Aaron/Capone was big time into music.  He loved Guns N’ Roses.  It was 1994, and Guns N’ Roses were still big news.

When I started at the Record Store, it was like the floodgates opened!  Suddenly, via me, Aaron had access to all kinds of rare rock.  His favourite band was Nirvana, and a few months later I was getting in rare CDs like Outcesticide and Hormoaning.  We continued to bond over music, and started hanging out on weekends.  He was known to complain a bit about my “80s rock” in the car…my response was always “the driver chooses the music”!

Most weekends revolved around music in some way.  We’d hit all the major local stores:  Dr. Disc, Encore, HMV, Sunrise, and of course my store.  I remember one Sunday shift: Aaron had nothing to do that day so he just hung out at the mall during my shift.  It ended up being a great idea.  He helped out some of my customers when I was too busy!

I couldn’t even begin to guess how many discs we bought on those shopping excursions, but I remember a few.  I got Japanese imports of Kiss Killers and Judas Priest Unleashed in the East, at the Sunrise records at Conestoga Mall.  I can recall one afternoon of introducing Aaron to Iron Maiden.  Their home video Raising Hell had just come out, which was to be Bruce’s “final” show with the band.  They had a “horror magician” on stage named Simon Drake and we enjoyed that video quite a bit.  “Do all their songs sound like this?” asked Aaron, who was more used to the detuned rock of the 1990s.

I have one memory that happened a bit later on, after Aaron had his daughter.  A lady came into my store with a giant box of CDs and almost all were shit.  I had to pass on most of them for a variety of reasons.  It was mostly dance music.  They were in shit condition, they were shit titles, and we had too many of them already.  The lady didn’t care; she just didn’t want them.  “Just keep them,” she said.  She took a few bucks for the discs we could take, and left behind at least a hundred worthless discs.

Worthless to the Record Store, anyway.

We didn’t really have a specific policy at the time regarding what to do with the abandoned discs in this situation.  The store could not sell them.  I’m not sure if the Boss Man would have been pleased that I took them, which is one reason why I’ve chosen to wait 20 years to write Record Store Tales and Getting More Tale.  Aaron and I took the discs to a Cash Converters store, which was a pawn shop on the other side of town.  They were the competition.*  It was funny watching the guy go through all the CDs I had passed on, checking the discs inside and not caring about all the scratches.

One thing Aaron owned that I did not was a Super Nintendo.  I skipped the Super.  My sister had the original NES and I had the Nintendo 64.  Aaron and I had played WWF Wrestling on his Super Nintendo, and I quickly became addicted to the game.  So together we dumped the box of junk CDs at the pawn shop, where I bought a Super Nintendo and a couple games.  Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire was one, a great game that still rocks today.  Unfortunately that Super Nintendo busted after two months.  Rats!

At least we had fun.  Whether it was watching shitty horror movies (Killer Klowns from Outer Space, The Stuff, Frogs), searching for rock and metal in record store racks, or pawning shit to buy more shit, we definitely had our fair share of fun.  And that’s the long and the short of how Aaron fits into Record Store Tales.

* The Cash Converters outlet close to our store was managed by a guy that we named “Jheri Curl Man”.

 

#564: The Smell of Home

GETTING MORE TALE #564: The Smell of Home

What does your home town smell like?

I may complain a lot, but I do actually love this town.  I was born in Kitchener.  I don’t want to live anywhere else.  It’s certainly not the greatest town in the world, but it’s mine. Kitchener isn’t known worldwide for its burning hot music scene (polka music at Oktoberfest time excluded).  That said we have produced a few local legends:

  • Helix (formed 1974) was based out of Kitchener for many years.
  • Errol Blackwood and Messenjah are our claim to fame in the reggae community.
  • Singer/songwriters Paul MacLeod, Danny Michel, Rob Szabo and Steve Strongman all hailed from here.  You also may have heard of one of the greatest bass clarinetists in the world, Kathryn Ladano.
  • Bluesman Mel Brown wasn’t born here, but he made it home.

Not a lot to boast about, but better than a kick in the pants.

Kitchener also is not known for its arts (that would be Waterloo) or its education (also Waterloo) or sciences (Waterloo again). What it does seem to have in plenty is a number of distinct smells.

Driving up Victoria street, you can smell the Weston’s bread bakery cooking up lots of delicious scents.  My dad has a song he used to like to sing when driving by:

“Weston’s bread,
Is full of lead,
If you eat too much,
You’ll surely be dead.”

That was a nice smell, but I remember a far worse smell in the Record Store days.

I spent the majority of my years in the Fairway Road area of town.  I remember taking the garbage out on many, many nights and smelling the same unexplainable smell.  It only happened during the summer. I don’t even know how to describe it properly.  I used to call it “grape flavoured urine” smell.  It was a weird mix of grape and pee, and in the evenings taking out the garbage, it was everywhere!  What the hell was it?  Nobody knew.  I haven’t smelled grape flavoured urine in a long time…but I remember it clearly any time I take out the garbage on a warm summer night.

There was an even worse smell when I was transferred to “the wrong side of the tracks”.  The garbage bin there was behind a diner.  Back there it always smelled of dirty cooking grease.

I hope your town smells better than “grape flavoured urine”, although you don’t have Messenjah or Helix….

Oh and that red poo-shaped sculpture?  Nobody has a clue what it is!

#540: I Can Drive 55

GETTING MORE TALE #540:  I Can Drive 55

In 25 years of driving, I believe I have only had three speeding tickets.  Apparently, I can drive 55. Most of the time.

I took driver training at Canada Driving School, and there is one thing I’ll never forget from one of the in-class sessions.

“Music can have an influence on your driving,” said the instructor.  “Fast and upbeat music can trick your brain into driving faster without realizing it.  Keep an eye on your speedometer and don’t listen to AC/DC if this is a problem!”

A couple months later I had my license and was driving myself to and from school in my dad’s Plymouth Sundance.  There was no graduated licensing in Ontario back then.  I was driving alone on the expressway.  Of course, I loved having a car stereo to myself.  In short order it was proven that listening to AC/DC was not a problem for me.  Instead of weighing down the accelerator pedal, AC/DC kept me calm in traffic.  Silence made me nervous but music soothed.  If I was speeding it had nothing to do with the song on the tape deck.  If anything, I tended to slow myself down a bit so my trip could take a little longer, and I could finish a song.

In fact, recent studies have shown that, generally speaking, if music is an influence on driving it tends to be a positive influence.  I can’t say I’m surprised.

Sure, I’ve admitted to air drumming and so on in the car.  This is usually at red lights though, so I’m letting myself off.

I like to listen to live albums in the car.  They work very well in that noisy environment.  Instead of silence between songs that lets in all that road noise, you hear only the screaming of a crowd.  In addition, the length of a live album works well for highway driving.  If I’m heading to the Toronto area, a typical double live album will easily get a full play on the road.  At home, I don’t always have time to listen to a double live album in one sitting.

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Facing the roads on a daily basis in this town can be like taking your life in your hands.  I’ve whined and moaned about the drivers here and it has been getting worse.  The 401 is undergoing heavy construction and drivers have a loose grasp on what lanes are lanes and what are not.  It’s treacherous, and more and more drivers are thinking only about their commute time rather than driving like a sane person.  Instead of weaving in and out desperately trying to get a little further ahead in the pack, I tend to stay in one lane as much as possible.  Perhaps this is the calming effect of good music.  I don’t need to race home if there is a good song I want to finish.  Maybe the racing guys should put on a good song, too.

I’ll admit it, driving is far from my favourite activity.  My favourite kind of day off involves no driving anywhere.  There are estimates that we spend about five years of our lives locked in our cars on the road.  I prefer to think of that as five years of road testing some amazing albums.  I would also argue that roughly 50% of the music reviews here are mikeladano.com were brainstormed while listening to the albums in the car.

Quite frankly, I don’t understand the speed demons.  Where are you going in such a hurry?  Maybe you should have left a little earlier.  Some music in the car makes the time fly easier.

han-solo-cameo-in-the-i-cant-drive-55-music-video

Did you catch Han Solo’s cameo in the “I Can’t Drive 55” music video? Left – John David Kalodner. Right – Han Solo.

 

 

 

#531: The More Things Change…

GETTING MORE TALE #531: The More Things Change…

The first record store I worked in no longer exists.  It closed (moved actually) in 1996, but even the physical location it was in has gone.  It was tucked away in a mall, but that unit was torn up and enlarged and made into a discount store.

That entire mall has changed completely in the last 20 years.  I spent a lot of years in that mall as a kid, teen and young adult.  Before the record store opened in ’91, I would mostly shop at the Zellers store.  Zellers wasn’t bad.  They carried 7″ singles, and that is the very store about which Record Store Tales Part 4:  A Word About B-Sides was written.  The fact that they even had singles made my early music collection much more interesting.  Once I even spied a very rare Def Leppard promotional cassette called Soundtrack to the Video Historia.  It was exactly that — a cassette version of all the songs on Leppard’s Historia home video.  I assumed it would have the rare video mix of “Pour Some Sugar On Me”, and I wanted it.  But they wouldn’t sell it to me, even though it appeared in their flyer that week.  Whoops.

During my highschool years, the mall even had an A&A Records & Tapes.  A&A closed up shop nationwide in 1990-91 (much sooner in our mall).  Now Zellers is gone too (turned into a Walmart) and the grocery store Zehrs has grown supersized.  My first ever job was at the Zehrs store.  Now I can’t find my way around it; it’s too huge.  Trying to find a box of crackers takes me 15 minutes.  I have so much history with that mall.  My dad worked there before I did.  Amazingly, the bank at which he used to work is still open, though completely changed and enlarged.  His old office is now just part of the general reception area.  The old vault, which my dad used to let me into when we visited, is also long gone.

When we were really young, my mom, sister and I went to visit my dad at the bank regularly.  We liked playing with the calculator and his phone.  My sister enjoyed sitting in his big chair.  Within reach of her tiny hands was the silent alarm, hidden under his desk.  She found it, and decided to try it out and see what it did.  Nothing!  Nothing at all.  We left and headed home, while my dad continued work.  A few minutes after we departed, in rolled a squad of cops responding to the silent alarm!  My dad had no idea, but he figured it out in short order.

Needless to say, I grew up with that mall as a second home.  When I was in grade school, it was basically right next door.  I knew every inch of it, at least the way it used to be.  The Baskin Robbins – long gone.  Little Short Stop where I bought all my comics, candy and Star Wars cards — gone.  The sole restaurant — gone.  Black’s Photography – gone.  Radio Shack – also gone.  Entire wings of the mall don’t exist anymore, swallowed up by other stores.  Nothing decent moved in to replace them.  Walmart took over the skeleton of Zellers and the grocery store expanded.  Everything else was taken up by crap discount stores of questionable value.  Nobody shops there anymore.  The mall is dead.  It used to be infested with mall rats.  Now you couldn’t find a teenager within 100 meters of that place.

The second record store I worked in was also in Kitchener, but not in a mall.  It was in a strip plaza.  That strip plaza has also completely changed over the last 20 years.  When we first moved in there, they had a coffee shop and a bank.  The coffee shop was gone within the first year and the bank a few years later.  There were two gigantic gift and craft shops – both gone.  There was a dollar store where we could pop in and buy a bag of chips – gone.  “Cheese chips” was our thing at that location.  It was a new flavour to us, cheddar cheese.  We bought a lot of cheese chips from that store.

That plaza doesn’t even look the same anymore.  Today, most of the stores have been bulldozed, including my old record store.  However they moved down a little ways; not too far for the customers.  These stores were torn down to make way for a new grocery store.  Quite a shock, to see my old store reduced to rubble.  There was nothing but concrete shambles where I spent every weekday for many years not so long ago!  A strange sight to behold.  So much happened on that little patch of rubble!  Half of Record Store Tales came from that destruction zone.

I think it would be fascinating to take a look at these places in another 20 years.  Will they even exist?  Will anyone care?  Or am I just another old fogie reminiscing about the “good old days”?  You only live once and I’m very happy to have lived where I have.

#526: Location, Location, Location

GETTING MORE TALE #526: Location, Location, Location

I worked at many Record Store locations over the years, often temporarily for training and managing.  Some of them I spent a few days at, others were several weeks or months in total.  Each one had its own flavour and clientele.  While experiences and mileage may vary, here are some memories of some favourite locations (all in Ontario, Canada).

 

cambridge1. Cambridge

The store in Cambridge was our first to carry movies, initially in VHS format.  It was a lot of fun working there from time to time, buying and selling used movies.  There was always something I wanted for my collection, and it broke up the monotony of seeing nothing but CDs every day.

Cambridge was also interesting because we used to get a number of people coming in just to ask where the strip club was.  “It used to be around here!”  I don’t know why the dudes looking for the strip club kept stopping in the Record Store (as opposed to the Tim Hortons or a gas station or anywhere else), but they did indeed used to ask.

Some of the customers in Cambridge were…well, let’s just say they were not all our best and brightest.  T-Rev managed that store, and I took over temporarily when he was on road trips elsewhere setting up new stores.  The customers there wore me down more than anywhere else.  Especially when they came in to sell, which was frequently.  Cambridge bought a lot of stock.  If the customer wasn’t happy with my offer, they’d ask when the “regular guy” would be back.  Maddening since I was more generous than a lot of other folks.

There was one customer in Cambridge who hated selling to me, he always asked where “the regular guy” was.  He asked my name and I told him it was Sanchez.  When T-Rev came back, we had a laugh over the employee named “Sanchez” who was apparently low-balling this customer for his dance CDs.

 

hamilton2. Hamilton

The store I worked at in Hamilton was pretty quiet most of the time.  There was a lunch time rush when kids from the nearby highschool would come in to listen to and occasionally buy CDs.  Given Steeltown’s reputation, I was pleasantly surprised to find the kids I dealt with to be polite and friendly, more than I was used to seeing.  The adults weren’t always so friendly, but no more or less than any of the other stores I worked in.  Hamilton was a shitty place to drive (confusing one-way streets), but I didn’t mind working there at all.

 

kitchener3. Kitchener

I worked in three different stores in the Kitchener area.  One of the other guys there used to refer to Kitchener as a “ham & egger” town, a phrase I never heard before.  A lot of blue collar customers.  It was still a step up from Cambridge, depending on which Kitchener location I was working in.

I’ve said many times that my favourite store was the original one, in a small mall in Kitchener.  It was our only mall store ever.  It was a special place to work.  It was tiny and compact.  It could get really busy on the weekends.  There were a lot of regular customers, more than I remember elsewhere, probably due to the fact we were in a mall.  There was a familiarity – I knew them, and they knew me.  When I was eventually given a larger store elsewhere to manager, I missed the faces I would see on a regular basis at the mall.

I also missed the “unique” individuals you’d meet at the mall store.  Malls have a whole ecosystem of life forms, unlike others in the outside world.  There was Johnny Walker, so named because every day he would walk the circuit around the mall, talking to himself, all day.  One day, something peculiar happened.  He came in, stopped talking to himself, and bought a tape.  He paid for his cassette and then resumed walking and talking to himself again.  I only saw that happen once.  There was Butts, the guy who would dig through ashtrays looking for cigarette butts.  Let’s not forget Trevor the Security Guard, and the drunks at the restaurant next door.  It was a blast!  I didn’t care for the mallrats, but they were a minor annoyance.

 

oakville4. Oakville

I did not like working on Oakville, as was discussed in Record Store Tales Part 16: Travelling Man.  Many of those customers were snooty; just too good for you.  They felt entitled to park in the fire lane, because they were more important than you.  Read the Oakville tale for the misery that was working there.

 

mississauga

5. Mississauga

More than any other location, I may have resented Mississauga the most.  It was a shit location.  There was nothing of any value around.  There was a health products store, but nowhere to buy a snack or a lunch.  There was no foot traffic.  Across the street was an empty field.  It was a dead store from the day it opened.  I invested myself deeply in my work.  There are many things in life that can crush your soul.  One of them is working hard at something (training employees, helping set up a store) and seeing it come up to nothing.  That was Mississauga.  In the used CD business, you depend on customers bringing in good stuff for you to re-sell.  Mississauga provided very little good stuff.

 

There were more, all with tales of their own.   These however were five of the most memorable, each for its own reasons.  While a change of scenery is nice once in a while, there is nothing better than working in a location you love.

 

RIP Paul MacLeod (1970-2016)

PAUL

2016 has taken another precious musical genius, and this time it hurts even more, because Paul MacLeod was one of our own.

MacLeod was the local prodigy that joined Skydiggers and launched an impressive series of solo albums.  I’d heard lots of Paul’s music over the years but it was only a short while ago that Uncle Meat told me, “You have to get the CD by this band called Hibakusha.  They are the local Rush.”  So I did and he was right.  5/5 stars.  That was the first CD of Paul’s that I bought.

Paul was very close to a number of friends of mine, Uncle Meat in particular.  His heart is now broken, his dear friend gone.  Below is my favourite Paul MacLeod video. Recorded live in the downtown streets of Kitchener, “Down on the Street” is simply amazing.  There are many people here that miss Paul.  Rest in peace.

#442: Oktoberfest

GETTING MORE TALE #442: Oktoberfest

Gemütlichkeit and willkommen!  Love it or hate it, it’s that time of year again:  Oktoberfest!

Based on the original 200 year old Bavarian festival in Germany, Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest attracts thousands every year to bask in our glorious beer, Polka music, sausage and fall weather.

It’s also the time of year that parts of the downtown gets closed to traffic, and congestion increases to an undesired, maddening level.  With all the construction and destruction this year, Oktoberfest 2015 will be the hardest yet to navigate with your vehicle.  I dread my daily commute in and out of town.  Add in the potential for drunk drivers and you have a great old time lined up, right?  Approximately one million people will show up for the celebrations here, the second largest Oktoberfest in the world.


The climax of the movie Strange Brew was filmed and takes place at Kitchener Oktoberfest.  “Take the 401 to Kitchener,” says Doug McKenzie in this clip.

It’s not all bad.  Sausage and schnitzel on a bun is always a treat, but people don’t come all this way for anything except the beer.  Sample one of the many, many brews while you are here…just don’t make an ass of yourself while you do it.   As a local, I’ve never been fond of this time of year.  I don’t drink beer anymore so there is very little to draw me to the downtown core during Oktoberfest.  However, there are plenty of draws for the rest of you.

Polka music and dancing!  If that’s your thing, then put on your lederhosen and dirndls!  Get ready to do the Bird Dance and check out the accordion of Walter Ostanek.  Sometimes there are some good Oktoberfest shows to be seen, such as the year I Mother Earth played (with Ostanek!).  There are beer exhibits and dining experiences.  There’s Onkel Hans, Tante Frieda and the tapping of the keg.  There’s Miss Oktoberfest and the annual parade.

Actually, forget it – I don’t care about any of these things!  I’ve gone to the parade before, but it’s always so cold that you wished you stayed home and watched it on TV.  I have done my fair share of Polka dancing.  In fact, Polka dancing was compulsory in grade school.  Learning such cultural cornerstones as the Bird Dance was deemed important enough to justify teaching kids about a beer festival in grade school.  While my opinion is certainly not held by all residents, I was burned out on Oktoberfest before I was even old enough to drink.

By the way:  There are plenty of safe transportation options for drinkers, including free busses from the festhallen, free soft drinks for designated drivers, and the excellent company Over the Limit Designated Drivers (1-888-594-9144), who will drive you and your car home safely.

Working the Record Store days, I always hated the seasonal requests for Polka or “Oom-pah-pah” music.  Our used Polka CD selection (filed under World Music) rarely had anything in it, and when it did, it would be snapped up long before Oktoberfest.  Once, Walter Ostanek came into the store himself looking for Polka music.  When I responded that we had nothing in stock, he handed me his card and said, “If you need any, let me know.”  I responded, “Hey, I know you!  You’re the guy who won all those Juno awards.”  He paused and looked at me gravely.  “They were Grammies,” he corrected me.  Whoops!

Oktoberfest 2015 runs from October 9-17.  Come to the festhallen and biergartens, get your Polka on, and get pissed.  But please, don’t drink and drive.  Use one of the options listed above to make sure everyone gets home safely.

Walter Ostanek
Hans Haus on Benton street

#395: Dutch Boy

RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#395: Dutch Boy

As kids in the 1980s growing up in Kitchener, we would buy our music anywhere we could find it.  A lot of mine came from the mall: stores like Zellers and A&A Records.  Other places to find music included Hi-Way Market on Weber Street.  That store was incredible!  They had the largest toy section I’d ever seen, and every Christmas a professional Lego builder would put together a giant display.  None of these places exist anymore.

Another place that carried a small section of music was actually Dutch Boy Food Markets, just down the street from Hi-Way Market.  It too is long gone, but I have many memories.  It had a modest dedicated music area, but they also sold food, toys and clothing.  It was considered a supermarket but it had a little bit of everything.  My dad remembers buying many of my beloved G.I. Joe figures at that store.  He also says that we bought our Atari 2600 there.  That Atari still works today.  I think we got it in 1982.  My aunt actually used to work at a Dutch Boy location (not the same one) in Waterloo.

My friend Bob used to go there frequently.  I used to think it was because he was Dutch, but it probably had more to do with the fact that one of the Kitchener stores was within biking distance.

One afternoon in early ’88, we hopped on our bikes and hit Dutch Boy to check out the music section.  This “new” band called Whitesnake had been in our ears lately, but we only knew two albums:  Slide It In and Whitesnake/1987.  I didn’t even know they had any albums out before Slide It In at that point.  You can imagine our surprise when we found numerous other Whitesnake titles at Dutch Boy:  Snakebite, Trouble, Lovehunter, Come An’ Get It, Saints & Sinners, and Live…in the Heart of the City.  All reissued by Geffen, all on cassette.

WHITESNAKE FRONT

“Woah!” Bob exclaimed.  “Whitesnake!  Is this the same band?”

“No it can’t be.” I said.  “They’re only supposed to have two albums!”

Each of us grabbed a mitt full of Whitesnake cassettes and began examining them for more details.

This Whitesnake and our Whitesnake were both on Geffen.  This Whitesnake shared the same logo that was found on Slide It In.  It had to be the same band after all.  I explained this to Bob.

“This is the same Whitesnake,” I said.  “Look…they are using the same logo.”

“Yeah,” he replied, “but have you ever seen that guy before?”  He pointed to Mickey Moody on the cover of the live album.  He sure didn’t look like anybody I knew from Whitesnake, but it was impossible to ignore the evidence.

MOODY

“I think,” concluded Bob, “that Whitesnake are another band that had albums out before we heard of them.”  That happened from time to time.  We would discover a “new” band like White Lion or Europe, only to find that they had some little-known earlier albums.  It made it both frustrating and exciting to try and collect albums.

We both started collecting the earlier Whitesnake music.  Bob was first, picking up Saints & Sinners at Dutch Boy.  He brought the tape over one afternoon for me to copy. We loved the original version of “Here I Go Again”, as well as “Crying in the Rain”.  Later on, I added Snakebite and Come An’ Get It to my collection.  I enjoyed the earlier, more rock & roll sounds of these previously unknown Whitesnake tapes.

I’m not sure exactly when Dutch Boy closed, but I do remember the last album I bought there.  It was now spring 1990, and I had a CD player by then.  Once again Dutch Boy did not disappoint.  I found a Van Halen disc there that I had never seen before on any format other than vinyl.  The album was Fair Warning.   Since it was the most “rare” Van Halen I had found so far, I chose to buy it.  It came to about $24 with tax, a lot of money for an album that was barely half an hour long.  It should go without saying that Fair Warning was one of the best purchases that my young self ever made.

Too bad Dutch Boy had to shut its doors.  It was a good store and I hear a lot of fond memories of it from others.  Do you remember?

DUTCH BOY

REVIEW: Zero Option – Gates of Utopia (1991) #TBT

ZERO OPTION_0001ZERO OPTION – Gates of Utopia (1991 Fringe)

Here’s a blast from the past for your Throwback Thursday! Most readers will never have heard of Zero Option. Too bad! Zero Option blasted out Kitchener Ontario in the early 90’s with a fresh power metal sound. They released a debut album on indi label Fringe, a label best known for its punk rock roster including bands like Dayglo Abortions. Singer Phil Maddox was well known about town for his powerful pipes. Lead guitarist Rick VanDyk is probably best recognized for his later stint in another (more famous) Kitchener band — Helix.  The Helix connection must go way back to this album, because Greg “Fritz” Hinz is thanked in the liner notes, as is legendary vocal coach Ed Johnston from Fergus Ontario, who also coached Brian Vollmer in the technique of Bel canto.  (Johnston passed away in 2008.)

Zero Option sound nothing at all like Helix.  They present their metal with a bass-heavy Megadeth groove.  Maddox’s voice is nothing like Mustaine’s, but it too is a matter of taste.  He has a smooth singing voice, and the ability to belt it out, but lacks the range to hit some of the notes he’s going for.  Gates of Utopia is only a first album, and the guy probably would have grown as a singer had they made a second CD.  He already had a pretty unique voice, as I struggle to compare him to someone else.

Opener “State of Panic” occupies that Mega-groove (think “Symphony of Destruction”) and boasts some pretty wailing solos and a decent chorus.  “Face to Face” is a standout track, a thrash metal mash with a variety of cool elements: time changes, busy drums, guitar harmonies, and smoking riffage.  In 1991, Zero Option were going for a sound that was based equally in classic metal and thrash, and they were considered to be on the cutting edge with Gates of Utopia.  Listening back today I still get a feeling of “they were onto something cool”.  You can understand why people were raving about the CD back then.  The guitar work on “Face to Face” is top notch and the band were capable of tricky arrangements.

ZERO OPTION_0002

Other tracks good enough to put the CD on your want list include “Lords of the New Church”, which has a memorable chorus and tasty guitar harmonies.  “Think Tank” thrashes pretty hard and has dualing guitar solos, a gimmick I always enjoy.  “Right Off the Face” is one of the slow, grindy catchy ones.  Gates of Utopia is less about the individual songs and more about the overall impact: there are lots of guitar and vocal hooks over the course of this solidly made album.  It’s hard to judge it fairly by 2015 standards.  In 1991, these guys were right on the cusp of something new.  Something that bands such as Megadeth and Metallica would master and exploit to sell multi-platinum albums in just a short while: a cross pollination of thrash metal heaviness with more mainstream metal sounds.  Gates of Utopia couldn’t have done what those mega-sellers did, but another record or two and who knows what Zero Option could have sounded like fully sharpened?

 

The serious weak link here is the lyrical department.  For example, from “Rise and Fall”:

When the universe was created,
Man was not around.
Centuries later,
Evidence was found.

Subject matter discussed on Gates of Utopia are standard fare: censorship, TV preachers, the dangers of drugs, insanity, pollution, and girls.  They are adequate, but pretty highschool.  Of course, these guys were barely out of highschool.

Rick VanDyk still plays music today, in a Metallica tribute act called Sandman with former Helix members Brent “Ned” Neimi and Paul Fonseca.  So there ya go!

3/5 stars