kula shaker

#1076: Weekend Listening At Home

RECORD STORE TALES #1076: Weekend Listening At Home

When I have time and the inclination at home, I like to go through dusty corners of the CD collection and finally get them ripped to PC.  I take my hard drives with me everywhere, so my music collection is always portable.  This weekend I took some deep dives, and sampled the sweet exotic fruits of the E section, a sampling of K’s and L’s, and some new arrivals too.

First of all, the newer stuff.

I’m going to have to re-review Morning Report by the Arkells again!  Turns out, I made a mistake in my original review.  I said that the deluxe edition had three bonus tracks, but I was wrong.  I didn’t realize that there was another bonus track inserted as track #2, between “Drake’s Dad” and “Private School”.  This makes all the difference in the world to the sequencing.  Now we get “Knocking At The Door”, a new single, as the new track #2.  Since “Drake’s Dad” and “Private School” were my two least favourite songs, having something of much higher quality between them really helps the flow.

I always buy something after doing a show on Grant’s Rock Warehouse.  This time, it was the Stone Gods.  I’ve acquired the single for “Burn the Witch”, which comes with two awesome non-album songs:  “Breakdown”, and “Heartburn”!  “Breakdown” is exactly like Thin Lizzy, to a tee, except with Richie Edwards on lead vocals.  “Breakdown” is of equally high quality, a light and humorous tune about Pepto-Bismol and Gaviscon.  Expect a review at some point in the future.

Finally, I sampled some April Wine, from Over 60 Minutes With…All the Rockers.  People ask me “Why do you not own any April Wine?”  I said “I never grew up with April Wine, my friends didn’t like them, so I never bothered.”  Well Tim Durling said I need April Wine.  I will evaluate this at a later date, but I have some April Wine now.

The next batch of discs was from the last part of the E section, five discs that had escaped ripping to the PC all these years.  It could be 20 years or more since I have last played some of these.   Earth, Wind & Fire, nothing need be said here, that’s essential.  I was surprised at the quality of Elf, as boogie-woogie isn’t usually my thing.  The Rik Emmett CD is cool because it has 2001 live versions of some of his old Triumph classics.  Episode Six runs the gamut from quaint to psychedelic.  “UFO” is one cool such song, a spoken word bit over drums, that reads from UFO sighting reports.  But that’s Ian Gillan and Roger Glover on the front cover, yes indeed!  Finally, the Eric Singer Project (ESP) was the weak link in this batch.  Just a bland covers album to me.

Next, over to the K section.  I noticed that none of my Kula Shaker music was on PC, and I have a lot of Kula Shaker.  That’s the entire collection below, in fact.

Look!  The 2 CD edition of debut album K with a cool remix of “Tattva”.  Two CDs of “Govinda” singles with B-sides and remixes.  “Grateful When You’re Dead/Jerry Was There” CD single with two non-album tracks. The highlight of me of these was “The Leek”, a quiz show style radio appearance by bassist Alonza Bevan.  (A distant cousin of Roger Glover, in fact.)  Really funny stuff.  To me, anyway!  Two CDs of “Hush”, the Joe South cover (also covered by Deep Purple Mk I) with lots more non-album tracks.  Then we have the Summer Sun EP, which has four of the previous B-sides and two songs I didn’t have elsewhere.  The second album, Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts spawned a CD single called “Sound of Drums”, both of which are here.  More non-album tracks on that as well.

Well, it turns out, I still love Kula Shaker!  Like, a lot.  That Britpop sound, mixed with 60s psychedelia and far Eastern influences just tickles my fancy.  There were a couple tracks I really loved, but none more than “108 Battles of the Mind” from the second album.  What a cool, manic track that definitely benefited from the Austin Powers era.

One thing about Kula Shaker that needs to be addressed:  the stellar musicianship.  These guys can jam!  Special notice to drummer Paul Winterhart who is absolute monster.  Incredible band.  Once I start re-absorbing these songs back into my memory, I may have to catch up with what they’ve been up to since 1999, where my collection ends.

Continuing through K, and into L, the listening continued on Sunday morning.

Kyuss is a band that I don’t think was summed up well by compilation.  I will have to dig further.  I have their split EP with Queens of the Stone Age, which has “Fatso Forgotso” on it, but I think Kyuss were an album band.  The two Kulick albums are excellent.  Corabi is on Transformer, which is signed!  I didn’t know I had a signed copy!  The James LaBrie solo disc also sounds great from what I sampled!  Very Dream Theater, in a good way.  Some heavy, some soft.  Then we have Life Sex & Death, also called LSD.  Their gimmick was their lead singer “Stanley” who was supposedly homeless (but wasn’t).  This 1992 album is one that needs more exploration.  What I heard was heavy, gritty and riffy while retaining some melody.  To be further examined in the future.

As far as I got on the weekend, this just scratches the surface.  Look at all this stuff that is still sealed in my collection.  Time or inclination just haven’t lined up with the proper mood yet.  Some are newer arrivals, like Metheny, Hollywood Vampires and Eric Carr.  Others have been sitting around for years.  The Kiss compilation may as well stay sealed for collector’s purposes, but The Boxed Life by Rollins…that could have been waiting a decade on these shelves.  The Garth Hudsons have been here since 2020.  The Etta James and Beatles since 2018.  They were in Jen’s mom’s collection.

Wish me luck as I continue to delve into these unheard corners of my collection.  What would you be playing first if you stumbled onto these discs?

 

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

Yours Truly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I remember Tom walking in, during Holy Diver. 

“Wow.  That’s ballsy man,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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