At long last, it is time for house renovations! We are receiving new windows and doors, as Phase One of this long awaited project. It begins today, July 28 2025.
In preparation for this project, I have dug up and rediscovered some cool treasures. We will be taking a look at more of them at a later time, but for this video, I decided to take advantage of the calm before the storm. Before the dust starts a-flyin’, let’s have a quick look at some fun re-discovered items in the Grab A Stack collection.
Originally broadcast on Oct 2, 2020 as two streams totaling 2 hours and 12 minutes. This new version has been re-focused down to a perfect 50 minute show.
In October of 2020, right in the thick of the pandemic, Jen had a seizure at a local fast food restaurant. She fell and broke her arm. We decided to make that week’s episode of the LeBrain Train all about epilepsy awareness. While we did our best, we had technical difficulties that night, and the episode didn’t turn out like we hoped.
It’s funny to go back and watch live streams from five years ago. So much has changed since then. The original 2020 show was split into two live streams as some viewers reported that the Facebook feed was freezing, so we stopped and re-started. Additionally, the original show was live and off the cuff, and was interrupted several times. This new edit has all the epilepsy content in one stream. As such, Adventures in Epilepsy episode has never been presented as one cohesive video before.
Hear all about missing out on a free U2 concert, having to leave movies and shows early with no refunds, and nearly walking into traffic! Also hear the lighter side of seizures. We learned early on, if you can’t laugh at these things, you’re doomed.
Join us tonight as we educate and illuminate living with epilepsy. Though a lot has changed since 2020, the experiences remain raw and true. Health has improved since then, which we also touch on with additional narration recorded in 2025.
Jen herself appeared in this episode, as good a sport as any. Good friend and author Aaron Lebold joined the show that night to discuss his own experiences with epilepsy, which he seems to have grown out of in his adult life. Rob Daniels from Visions in Sound and Kevin Simister from Buried On Mars also joined the show at the end to say hello. Though most of their parts were cut to shorten and focus the episode (some unboxings and other outdated content were cut), we always appreciate their support.
1. Prince. The royal single-monikered one was born epileptic and suffered a lot of taunting at school. He obviously came a long way from there
2. AdamHorovitz. This Beastie Boy is sensitive to flashing lights, which I am sure they use in their stage show. It certainly didn’t seem to hold him back from massive success.
3. NeilYoung. He was medicated for epilepsy as a child, but didn’t like the side effects of the meds, which can go all over the spectrum depending on you and your meds. Neil chose to make lifestyle changes instead, and has lived without medication since! And, obviously, rocked the world. Good on you Neil.
GRAB A STACK OF ROCK With Mike and the Mad Metal Man Episode 84: Lost Videos & Shorts – A Grab A Stack of Rock Special Friday Presentation!
While not a live episode, this special presentation was put together by yours truly, with me as your host through these forgotten and lost videos from years gone by. I have been making videos for 36 years now, and this collection of mini-episodes run from 2013 to the present day. These videos were made primarily for this blog, but also for other channels, my old show the LeBrain Train, and Grab A Stack of Rock. Some of these individual clips would require lots of determined scrolling and searching to find otherwise, so I thought it would be nice to take a viewing of some favourites of mine, and add in some that are now new and exclusive. It is certainly amusing to watch my look change, from bearded to clean and back to bearded and clean again.
New, previously unseen, and “lost” topics covered in this special episode: Rare rock and metal CDs sent from friends, rare books and rock magazines, rock band branded playing cards, a discussion on iTunes, video reviews of rare CDs, a updated check-in at the HMV/Toys R Us store, my collection of M.E.A.T Magazines, and the very first video I made in 1989. But that’s not all – stick around for Easter eggs.
I hope you can check it out tonight for this very special episode of Grab A Stack of Rock, assembled with care for your enjoyment.
Friday January 3 at 7:00 P.M. E.S.T. / 8:00 P.M. Atlantic. Enjoy on YouTube or onFacebook!
The other night, Tee Bone was making the artwork for next week’s LeBrain Train episode, Top 5 Ballads. I asked if he could add in a picture of me playing acoustic guitar. It started there, turned into “me recording my acoustic ballad album on the beach”, and it simply grew and grew!
RECORD STORE TALES #964.0: The Year in Review – Part One
Today, some reflection. Tomorrow, the lists!
While certainly not the worst year of my life so far (2018 takes the crown there), the latter half of 2021 was pretty poopy here at LeBrain HQ. There was plenty of new music, which we will discuss in greater detail tomorrow when we run down the Top 11 Albums of the Year. Great music in fact; some deeply impactful albums and important reissues. I also didn’t think that 2021 would be the year for new Guns N’ Roses music, or for me to get a 42 CD Judas Priest box set. But here they are!
2021 started off strong. We had an amazing series of great interviews on the LeBrain Train. More on those for tomorrow’s list. Not to be outdone, John T. Snow hooked us up with one of the best interviews I’ve ever been involved with, which was Paul Laine. But for me, by summertime burnout had set in. I’d been doing the LeBrain Train without missing a single week since lockdown began in March 2020. Sometimes doing two interviews in a single weekend. Sometimes I got stood up by a rock star, sometimes I got stood up by the same rock star twice. By the end of the summer, I needed a break. Badly. It was harder and harder coming up with guests, as we slowly emerged from our Covid cocoons and resumed life. I had to pull the brakes.
Then I had a flood in the house. I had to cancel an interview with with Jack Frost and take a more extensive break from everything. Trying not to snap, I bought a Metallica box set to cheer myself up. Great way to boost myself while crippling my bank account at the same time, but I won’t complain.
Personal highlights of the year:
A fantastic summer at the lake
Meeting and interviewing some true rock greats
Collaborating with creative friends like Meat, Harrison, Tee-Bone, Rob, Kevin and John Snow
Other interesting happenings included making an enemy out of John “J.D.” Roberts, an aborted attempt at doing re-runs on the LeBrain Train, and Harrison’s baffling stance on Queensryche.
This isn’t much of a “year in review” post. Nothing commemorating the many musicians and celebrities we lost this year. Nothing talking about all the great tunes we discovered. This is not the way the year was supposed to end! It remains to be seen how this plays out next year, but at least we still have our Friday nights together. The LeBrain Train will roll into January, because it looks like we need the LeBrain Train once again! When I “pulled the plug” back in August, I did it with the George W. Bush “Mission Accomplished” meme. Because I knew Covid wasn’t really over. I knew the mission wasn’t really accomplished. What I didn’t know was just how badly things would get by the end of the year! I really didn’t think we’d be isolating again this New Year, but that’s exactly what many of us are doing. For the second time.
Big day tomorrow: The end of year lists, and the LeBrain Train New Year’s Eve special. Because Covid needs its ass kicked once and for all, and since we’re all doing the best we can under difficult circumstances, we deserve a night to party. See you tomorrow.
We are nothing if not perfectionists! Tee Bone was determined to get every single guest* we’ve ever had on the LeBrain Train into this intro vid, and I present to you the new updated version that we’ll be using on the next episode. This time Tee Bone started using actual show clips in place of screen grabs in some shots, and I’ll tell you, seeing all that smiling and laughing brings warmth to my heart.
Thanks to everyone who watched or shared Friday’s show, I really appreciate it! I think the new, shorter format is going to work. I also think the new intro video is pretty cool. We haven’t got a version that includes every single person who has ever been on the show, but it is a sampling of some very cool people who mean a lot to me. I hope you find yourself in this video! Music by Tee Bone Erickson.
mikeladano.com 