O, By the light of the silvery moon I want to spoon, to my honey I’ll croon love’s tune Honeymoon keep a-shining in June Your silv’ry beams will bring love dreams We’ll be cuddling soon By the silvery moon
(Edwards/Madden 1909)
Oh, the moon! That might explain things. You see, the moon affects the brain.
(Amman – Clash of the Titans 1982)
RECORD STORE TALES #1204: By The Light of the Silvery Moon
I’m not a nocturnal person, though I used to pull a few allnighters with Jen when we were first dating. I do have insomnia, so I often wake in the middle of the night. At home, this usually means checking my email and having a drink before heading back to the sheets. At the cottage, I enjoy stepping out into the cool summer air and having a look around.
I don’t bring a flashlight. I let my eyes adjust to the darkness and wander.
You see things at night. When visible, the moon lends a silvery sheen over the entire landscape. Not quite enough to read by, but certainly enough to see the ripples of waves on the water. Under the cover of trees, silver slits of light pierce the darkness, creating spotlights on the earth. If there is a breeze, the movement of the trees can really make you feel as if you’re not alone.
You hear things at night. Once or twice I heard a coyote, crying like a human child and echoing through the valley. Another deep dark night, I heard a growling that I could not see. We do get bears here. Sometimes the swaying trees can create a growling sound as they move in the night, but this growl scared me and I made a quick retreat back to the house.
I enjoy the total solitude at 3 AM. I feel more connected to nature by the silence (other than wind, waves and nocturnal beasts). I don’t wear shoes on these walks. I can feel the grass or cool sand beneath my feet. Sometimes I stub my toe on a tree root, but that’s a small annoyance in the grand calculus of the pitch black night.
I try not to make a sound. Just observe with my senses. Feel the cool air on my back. It’s mental health maintenance. While I love living in Kitchener (for many great reasons), I feel truly free and alive in the wilderness.
A special moonlight treat is when the silvery satellite turns blood orange. A moonset is a very special sight that not many get to know, or even know about. I’ve seen a few of them. When a crescent moon hits the horizon, people describe as the image of a blazing sailing ship on the edge of the lake. This year, wildfire smoke has prevented us from seeing the moon kiss the horizon, but its orange glory remains as a fiery ember in the sky. When the moon is full, you can imagine it is a burning Balrog, climbing out of a gaping maw in the dark mines of Moria.
Truly the world looks alien at night in the light of the moon. Perhaps that is why I love it so much. I have always yearned to see other worlds, but the beauty of the Earth is enough to last many lifetimes, if you go out at night under the light of the silvery moon.
Of all the versions of “By the Light of the Silvery Moon”, Little Richard’s is one of the highest charting, going to #17 in the UK, 50 years after the song was written. Other renditions were performed by Gene Vincent, Doris Day, Fats Waller, Etta Jams, Burl Ives, Ray Charles, Julie Andrews, and even Bugs Bunny (Mel Blanc) among countless versions.
Wildfires are more and more common as the world warms, but this year has been something else.
The sunsets have been alien and unimpressive. The sun appears as a red dot, but disappears before reaching the horizon. You can’t smell or taste the smoke, like you could in 2023, but the visuals are more obvious in 2025. The windmills that dot Bruce County disappear into the distance. The horizon isn’t a clear line, but a blur. The sky is a hazy blue-grey. The water is a shimmery silver. It is like we live on an alien world, or a place from a science fiction dystopian novel.
This is the first chapter I have written since we lost Grandma on July 30, 2025. If she were here, I would show her the photos and videos and ask if she had ever seen the lake like this, in her 60 or so years at Lorne Beach. While I can never ask her now, I feel like the answer would be no. I don’t think she’d ever seen a sky like this on Lake Huron.
Grandma’s funeral will be August 22. I have been asked to speak. I would have wanted to speak even if I was not asked, but now that the task is ahead of me, I am strangely without words. I have things I want to say, but these thoughts are disorganized and jumbled. When I speak at her funeral, I want it to be the best speech I’ve ever given. I have spoken at weddings, funerals, and my Grade 2 English project, but this feels like the most important speech I have had to do yet. What to say?
I wish I could show you the wildfire haze, Grandma. Actually I wish you were there on the weekends like you used to be. I used to drive her to the lake. I would pick the music. She liked my picks. She didn’t even mind Sloan’s 4 Nights at the Palais Royale, which was the exact length that it took to go from her driveway in Waterloo to her cottage. A few weeks ago, we decided to drive to the cottage listening to music she’d like, so we picked the Swingers soundtrack. She loved Dean Martin. She loved Tony Bennett. A lot of our family’s musical inclination came from her side of the family. Though my dad played saxophone, Grandma’s family were the musicians.
I miss talking to her. I used to say she was the only one in my family who understood me when I spoke.
I’m going to have to come up with a heck of a speech for her.
Things you didn’t know about Grab A Stack of Rock summer HQ!
It’s not just about the music and showing off our collections in paradise. It’s also about emergency preparedness! Check out this helpful video in the event you’re ever up in cottage country during a nuclear meltdown.
These kits are distributed to residents within 10 km of the Bruce Nuclear power plant. I thought it would be at least interesting to have a good look inside one!
These three drone videos are the edited-down results of everything I shot on the weekend of July 4-6. All videos were shot with the Potensic Atom SE. I brought both the Potensic and the Ruko, but as you can see, it was a very windy weekend and I did not want to risk the Ruko. Next weekend, I will attempt to fly the Ruko again.
Enjoy these magnificent videos, and amazing songs by Deep Purple, Hello Hopeless and the Arkells.
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!
SOONER [Noun]: “Sooners” is how my dad refers to the people who show up to go to the beach for the day. I wondered what “Sooners” meant so I looked it up. He must have got it from one of his cowboy movies. Sooner: “a person settling on land in the early West before its official opening to settlement in order to gain the prior claim allowed by law to the first settler after official opening.”
RECORD STORE TALES #1190: Return of the Sooners
I like to do something new every time I go to the lake, if possible. This time, I didn’t have anything planned. I had two shows to do, but otherwise I wanted to enjoy my time and the surroundings without too much goal-setting.
This time, however, plans took a turn of their own. Allow me to explain.
John Snow invited me to co-host an interview with a big, big name. That interview was scheduled for Thursday afternoon, the 22nd of May. I had planned to go to the cottage on Friday afternoon. However, the big interview got re-scheduled at the last minute, to Monday the 26th. Frustrated, I decided to cheer myself up by going to the lake on Thursday night instead, and working from there on Friday morning. Something unthinkable just five years ago.
The wifi is better at the lake and I have more space. We left town Thursday night and I dutifully worked a cold, rainy Friday morning from the cottage. I wanted to work from the porch, but the cold and rain made this impossible. It is rarely so cold in May, but here we are. We have not had one nice weekend at the lake yet this season!
Even so, working from the lake was awesome: making my bacon mere inches away from my laptop, or being able to step outside and enjoy the (cold) fresh air! But best of all, when the day was over we didn’t have to drive anywhere. We were already there! The bonus time spent at the lake was a game changer.
Friday afternoon was booked off. We went into town to buy some treats, and came back to a Friday afternoon all our own. There was nobody around. Not one cottage on our stretch was occupied that weekend. The peace and quiet was unusual! The last time up, I was worried that the guy across the road was going to blow leaves all through my Friday show. This time there was nobody across the street.
Mid-afternoon, sitting in my armchair, I saw a car across the road. I saw him stop, look out the door, and pull into the neighbour’s driveway.
“Ah crap,” I murmured to myself. “Looks like we won’t be alone after all this weekend.”
A few moments later, I noticed five people standing and sitting around our bench at the beach.
“That wouldn’t be the neighbours,” I said to myself. “They have their own property on the beach. They have never used ours. Who are these people?”
I allowed them a few minutes to take pictures or do whatever they were doing, but they didn’t move on.
Sooners. Goddamn sooners! They were back after a long absence. I hadn’t seen any sooners in two years. I decided to make sure they knew they were on private property, and using my bench!
I put on my hoodie and walked down to the beach. I saw them turn and watch me approach. Five guys. They looked like students to me.
I nodded as I approached my bench. I was curt with them.
“Hey, just going to use my bench. This is my property.” I paused. “See ya.”
They began moving on, but back through the neighbour’s property.
“You can’t go that way,” I alerted them. “That’s private property. You have to use the public walkway.” I pointed to it, a few feet to their left.
“Do you know where there is parking around here?” one of them asked.
“There isn’t any. This is a private road. You have to go park up the side road.”
I watched them leave. After a while, I walked up to the side road to see where they parked. They were nowhere to be found. They had left the subdivision completely. I guess I scared them off.
In the Battle of the Sooners in 2025, the score is now 1-0 for me!
Because of the cold and rain, we didn’t get a lot of outdoors stuff done to report on. However, the weekend was not over, and we did get some drone time and some photos taken, so there will be more to come.
RECORD STORE TALES #1188: I Wanna Be A Lifeguard: Long Weekend at the Lake – May 2025
Jen and I were fortunate enough to spend a long weekend at the cottage, arriving Thursday night (May 8). As has been my goal for several seasons now, I try to do new things each time, when possible. This time, it was something out of the box.
Having become more comfortable working from home thanks to the pandemic, I asked my bosses if I could work from home Thursday afternoon, saving me 30 minutes of commute time and accumulating traffic, and getting to the lake that much faster.
“That’s a great idea, you should do that,” came the first response.
“Why don’t you just work the whole day from home?” came the second.
I was pleased to receive so much support. With that plan in motion, we hit the road at 4:30 sharp.
Unfortunately traffic was slow, and it took over two hours to get there, but imagine if we didn’t have that extra time. Music on the way up included Sing the Sorrow by AFI, to prepare for that Saturday’s show with D’Arcy Briggs, an album in review. Once we arrived, I hit the porch and rocked out to “I Wanna Be A Lifeguard” by Blotto. I delighted in emailing Broadway Blotto the video footage.
With coffee and snacks in hand, we were well prepared for a great weekend. Though cold, I did manage to spend a lot of time outdoors, with hoodie protecting me from the bitter breeze. All the snow was gone now, though only recently.
The next morning I went for a fly down to the river with my drone, and captured some wonderful footage.
Music: Blue Rodeo – “Dragging On”
At 8:15 AM, we headed out to get the best choices of steaks at the Beef Way. We chose two T-bones, some fry-pies, and for me, lake trout and duck legs. The duck legs made for a tasty lunch that afternoon. I wanted to do some kind of potato in duck fat, so I boiled two potatoes in hot water until they were soft, but still solid. I then got a grooved aluminium tray, and laid slices of potato in the grooves. I placed the seasoned legs on top and seasoned everything. When the duck fat started to render, the potatoes fried in it, making them so crispy with a pleasant accent to the flavour. In short, the best fries I ever made. And the duck legs weren’t bad either.
Sometimes at the cottage when it’s cold, you have to force yourself to be outside, so I pulled out some old Transformers toys (some vintage, some reissues) and did some fun photos on the front porch. I even experimented with filming one of the big ones from the air with my drone.
I had more changes to fly on the weekend, capturing incredible images of Lorne Beach, on the western coast of Lake Huron. The footage was some of the nicest I’ve managed to take.
Music: Bruce Cockburn – “Lovers In A Dangerous Time”
It is always fun editing these drone videos to music. This time it was all Canadian content and nothing too hard. There’s a line in “Lovers In A Dangerous Time” that has long resonated with me:
“Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight, got to kick at the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight.”
Playing the song on the front porch that afternoon, I dedicated the song to a couple of friends who are dealing with health struggles. Raise your goblet and send some love to these friends.
I watched a lot of Doctor Who, ate too much meat, and had a great time feeling like a kid again. There was one eerie moment of déjà vu, and I absolutely love when these moments come. Usually the come when music was the trigger, but this time it was Doctor Who. I was watching some classic Tom Baker era episodes on Tubi, on my laptop on the front porch. As a kid, I always associated Doctor Who with Sunday nights. There would be a few episodes to watch (either Jon Pertwee or Tom Baker) before bed time, and back to school the next morning. As the day grew late and I started working on dinner, it felt like a Sunday night again. Family dinner as the sun was getting low. It was actually Friday, but the feeling of Sunday was uncanny. Do you ever get the Sunday blues? It was like that, but warmer because it was Friday and just a memory of happy childhood.
We didn’t see any wildlife, which was disappointing, but there’s always next time.
Seeking to avoid a Monday crash, I tried to place my mind in the right set. We drove home without much talking, but a steady soundtrack of Kiss. Rock and Roll Over, Love Gun, and Dynasty. When I really need to feel good, Kiss are usually a good band to go to. Nothing but good memories with Kiss.
As for the cottage, it is always sad saying goodbye, but we came home on Mother’s Day and had a nice visit with the folks, and a dinner on Dad. We’ll be back soon enough. And in fact, when we do return, we’ll be doing our first live episode of 50 Years of Iron Maiden from the cottage. Little things like that get me excited. I’ve already started packing.
RECORD STORE TALES #1185: The Worst Weather, and the Best Weekend! April 2025
We had a busy weekend lined up, but we were prepared for the worst – and the best! We got a bit of both, but our spirits have never been higher. Let’s rock this spring 2025!
Preparation is always key. We left town at 8:30 AM, bound for Toronto. It was time for Jen’s annual face-to-face with the neurologist, but traffic was light. Apparently it was quite busy the day before, with Metallica in town playing Thursday for the first of their no-repeat weekend. That was a stroke of luck, but then we hit a second one just as we arrived. Our appointment was for 10:00, and the 9:30 had cancelled at the last minute. That means we got seen early, and we got to the lake early too!
The doctor was happy with Jen’s progress, and is increasing a couple medications that seem to be have a positive effect. Good appointment, and we were back on the road.
The music to Toronto was Live-Loud-Alive by Loudness, and the music to the cottage was the brand-new Dreams On Toast by the Darkness. The Darkness album is easily their best since Last Of Our Kind, and will warrant a lengthy review over its 29 combined tracks.
We had a second pleasantly uneventful drive up, arriving in Kincardine at 2:00 PM. We made our first stop of 2025 at our butcher, the Beefway. There we picked up two beautiful T-bone steaks, some assorted bacon ends (applewood smoked), and some pickerel, pickles & pies. In and out in under 10 minutes.
Friday afternoon was a weird one. It was cold, then it rained, and then got warm and humid. I took a stroll and found the last patch of snow left on the beach. I attempted to make a snowball, but the snow was not good for packing. It was dark all day, and I set up on the front porch to rock the music. The first album of the year was Combo Akimbo by Blotto, since the guys have been so cool to me this year. Always a fun record. Around “Metal Head”, I decided to try flying my drone. Just as I got it in the air, it started raining. No flying on Friday. The rain did not hamper the 100th episode of Grab A Stack of Rock, which broadcast from the porch as planned. Even Broadway Blotto came to check out the festivities.
We were indoors for the rest of the weekend, but the pickerel and steaks were sublime. The sun did finally come out Sunday morning, which enabled me to take the first real flight of 2025. Nothing fancy, but plenty of beauty. I think I need to start flying less as a pilot, and more as a cinematographer. Maybe that will be part of 2025’s goals. Improve the drone videos with better, smoother shots. I may have something in the works there.
I always like to do something every year at the lake that I have never done before. Here are three for this weekend alone:
First time seeing snow at the cottage this late in the season.
First time barbecuing Spam. (Frying pan is better for Spam.)
Took the drone a teeny bit further this time and got a look down the river.
The music home was, of course, Iron Maiden! There is no rest for the wicked, nor for 50 Years of Iron Maiden. Fear of the Dark is next up on the recording schedule.
It was such a packed weekend that I slept for 13 hours on Sunday night.
We’ll be back soon. The April showers will bring the May flowers.
When summer turns to fall at the lake, there is a constant roar. It is always there. It is a mixture of a churning lake only meters away, dulled by the branches of the evergreens, but amplified by the wind. The wind is steady now, always pushing us towards fall.
When we arrived on Thursday night, the weather hadn’t turned foul yet. It was still warm, and the wind was tame enough to fly. I took the drone up for its first lake flight in a month. We haven’t been here for a long time. And now, it’s time to wind things down. No more stocking up on food and games for the season. Instead we are faced with a full freezer needing consumption, and a shelf of Uno variants that we just never got around to.
Models kits unbuilt. ZZ Top’s Eliminator, and a gold C-3P0. Never got to ’em this year. And now there’s no time for it this year. Next year, maybe.
We drove up to the sounds of Triumph Stages, a cottage classic. It took us almost the whole way. When here, we played ELP’s Brain Salad Surgery for research purposes. Opinions were mixed. More on that another time.
My usual routine involves setting up on the porch with my speakers and some music. It’s getting darker sooner, and this was probably the last weekend of the year for that routine.
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