Motley Crue

Summer 2000

Part 35: Credit Due

In the late fall of 1995, my enthusiasm for the store had never been greater.  I had already created and posted our very first online ads, on my own time.  The first one was in November of 1994.  I posted it on every C-Net BBS (Bulletin Board System) in the area code.  I drew a full colour (but very blocky!) version of our logo, using the most state of the art BBS software of the time.  It took hours.  In the ad, I hyped that we would be carrying the new Vitalogy album by Pearl Jam the following week, on vinyl!  Limited quantities!

I did this on my own time, because I loved the store.

But back to 1995.  I thought that we had already done an excellent job of giving the store some rocking personality and quality stock.  I had never been more psyched.  I used to go to Future Shop, again on my own time, just to check their prices and stock versus ours.

I decided I wanted to get writing.  I’ve always loved writing and I thought the store could be the vehicle.  I came up with the idea of doing the monthly newsletter.  I even put together a primitive prototype.  It was printed on tractor feed printer paper by a dot matrix printer, stapled in the top left.  It was all I had, but the point was to do a proof-of-concept.  I was demonstrating that we could come up with our own content, from reviews to charts, and do it our way with humour. Not like all the lame corporate type newsletters that other stores had.

The idea was met with dead glances as I passed around my prototypes.  It was shot down for being “too expensive”.

In 1997, the newsletter idea was revived.  It was like mine, but folded instead of stapled, and in two colours at first (red and black).  The kid that printed it couldn’t spell worth shit, but he made it look acceptable for the period.  I received no credit or recognition for what was my idea, nor did I have any creative control at all. I felt like my idea had been taken away from me. But, I went along with it, I happily contributed.  It was better than nothing.

Finally, I was the guy who ran our website, solo, for the first year or two of its operation.  I conceived all the initial procures, I filled the orders, kept the books, filed the emails, and I corresponded with the customers.  I did it all, myself.  I even wrote the FAQ page, and in fact some of my original words are still there online today.  I answered every customer email and question, myself, positive or negative.  For a little while I had my own office with a computer and phone to work out of, although it was about the size of a toilet. It was still a very rewarding experience.

The website was taken away from me because I was told that my time was “more valuable to us in the store.” Fuck! I didn’t spend all those years working at this place to just end up in a store, I wanted to be in an office, doing stuff! That was what I had been promised! I was turning 30, and I didn’t want to be working in a store anymore in my 30’s, but again, I went along with it, because it was better than nothing.

Some of the other people from the organization say that I didn’t stand up for myself enough, that I should have called bullshit on a lot of stuff.  They were obviously right, but I was always sort of a peacemaker.  Never wanted to raise a stink.  So I didn’t.  I kept the peace and kept my tongue.

But what the hell? I’m proud of what I accomplished there, out of sheer passion to be involved and creative, and it’s time I said so.

Part 31: Quest For Music Videos!

Back in 1985 or so, MuchMusic was the window through which we discovered the vast majority of heavy metal.  For a while there, my sister had good taste in music.  Her favourite band was Motley Crue.  She was obsessed with their tall, tall hair.  I taped her the first two albums, Too Fast For Love and Shout At The Devil on two sides of a 90 minute tape.

Together, we watched a shitload of videos.  Our favourites were often the ones where the band seemed to be on some sort of quest, or adventure!  Some of these videos I haven’t seen in years, so forgive me if the memories are hazy…

Motley Crue – “Too Young To Fall In Love”.  It seems like some little kid is telling Motley Crue something important, and then they kick some ass.  My sister used to say to me, “I think that kid is telling Nikki Sixx to stand up.” 

Lionheart – “Die For Love”. You gotta see this one. Dennis Stratton, ex Iron Maiden. This evil guy in a white suit and a wheelchair has a pretty blonde girl captive! The band must come to the rescue! I hope their hair doesn’t get mussed! Good song though. Great song, even. SERIOUSLY funny video though, like those poses…the singer jumps around…they kind of dance-fight with the bad guys….

Queensryche – “Queen of the Reich”.  The Queen turned them to stone!

Thor – “Knock ‘Em Down”.  Thor (Also known of Jon Mikel Thor) was this musclebound metal singer, and his video was hilarious.  This evil space-witch named Pantera enslaves the population of the world below!  Thor, riding in his space ship (which is obviously a Millenium Falcon model with some battleship parts glued to it, and crewed by nothing but big-breasted women), beams down!  The evil space-witch shoots him with her red eye lasers, but Thor reflects it back with his mighty hammer!  The space-witch is defeated!

Dio – “The Last In Line”.  That video actually scared me a little, with the monsters leaking fluid and stuff.  I’m glad the kid got out of hell, although it looks like Dio has to stay.

Dio – “Holy Diver”.  Always the hero, Dio awkwardly weilds a sword that is obviously too big for his tiny frame.  But he does slay an ugly dude who doesn’t put up much of a fight.  Is that Jimmy Bain?  George used to say Vinny Appice is the guy forging the sword.  Is this true?

Grim Reaper – “Fear No Evil”.  The band ride into action on an armored APC (Asskicking Personnel Carrier), with spikes and tusks!  They must free the slaves of the evil minotaur.  Steve Grimmitt breaks the chains of the slaves with his bare hands! 

Armored Saint – “Can U Deliver”.  At least the beginning part, they seem to be looking for a sword in a desert!  A techno-coloured desert!

And of course, Kiss – “All Hell’s Breakin’ Loose”.  Gene doesn’t seem too impressed with Paul’s swordplay.  Vinnie looks less like a chick than in the previous video.  The post-nuclear holocaust seems to have somehow increased the size of women’s breases, if this video is to be trusted.

Part 29: Klassic Kwotes V!

1.  “LARS!  Stop that!”  Said by a long-haired dad, to his rat-tailed little brat kid. The dad was wearing a Metallica shirt.

2. “Can you fix this CD?”  We were presented a copy of disc 4 of the Led Zeppelin box set, almost snapped completely in half, so massive was the crack.  For the record, if anyone’s curious:  NO!  You can’t fix a CD with a crack in it! 

3. “Do you want to see a picture of me, dressed up as Snake Eyes, from G.I. Joe?”  I really wish I could remember the context of this one!

4. “Do you have any nice music for the kids?  Not that Backstreet Boys shit.  We don’t like that black music.”  Do I really need to comment?

5. I was buying a large quantity of discs from a lady, but she really wasn’t happy with the offer.  The CD that I was paying the highest for happened to be an Elton John disc, Yellow Brick Road.  One of the lady’s kids asked, “Mommy, why is he paying the most for that one?”  The mother points at me and says, “Probably because he’s a fruit.”

6. Little known fact:  4 out of every 5 parents shopping in CD stores don’t watch their kids.  Surprised?  I bet you’re not!  This one bad parent wasn’t watching as his kid systematically pulled every CD down from an entire section and threw them in a big pile on the floor.  I was at the register and the section was not visible to me, and with the kid being so small I didn’t see anybody over there.  When I saw him, I said, “Oh, no!”  The dad looked over and said, “No big deal, it’s only a couple of discs.  You’ll have them back up there in no time.”  Perhaps, but doing it in alphabetical order took 4 hours.

7. “Can I light up in here?”  Again, no comment required.

8. “What the fuck did you do to your head?” Said to me by a guy after I bleached my hair blonde the first time.  (Can’t actually blame him on this one.  It was memorable.)

9. “How much would it cost to buy every CD in here?”  This very odd question was asked numerous times over the years by curious children.  Why?  I’m not really sure.

10. “Do you want to buy a picture of me with Phil Donahue?”  Said to me, once again, by Snake the Tattoo Man.

HELIX VIDEO featuring SNAKE THE TATTOO MAN!

Part 27: Store Play

Another suggestion from Tommy Morais, my Amazon rock buddy from the east!  He wants to read about glam rock bands, and Canadian bands!  I played a lot of each at the store, especially in the earliest days.  I’m gonna throw some prog and metal in here too.  Here’s some of my fondest memories.

LeBRAIN’S STORE-PLAY CLASSICS!

1996.  We had just opened our flagship store, and I was selected as manager.  This meant I’d be working alone for most of the day, and I could play what I wanted.  In the earliest days there were fewer rules.  The boss might make fun of me for playing Poison, but in the old days, he never told me to take it off as long as it was only once in a while.

I remember playing glam metal stuff like:

Poison – Native Tongue.  I enjoyed trying to turn kids onto music they’d like, but would never touch if they knew who it was.  It sometimes worked!  I think I sold one copy of Native Tongue that way, anyway.

Motley Crue – self titled.  This is in my top three Motley records of all time.  The one without Vince Neil.  A guy from the HMV store in Waterloo gave me props for playing it.  I once sold it to a guy who hated the latest Crue, Generation Swine.  I turned him onto self titled instead.  Instant fan.

David Lee Roth – Your Filthy Little Mouth.  I played this a shit-ton in the spring of 1995 too.  I don’t know why I like it so much, it’s so cheesey.  Dave does country!  Dave does reggae!  Dave does jazzy loungy stuff!  Dave does VH!  But Dave does write hilarious lyrics, and I did like that.

Van Halen – Any time, any where, any how.   But any time we had a copy of 1984?  Hell yeah!  And you couldn’t keep Best Of Volume I in stock for very long.  Certainly not if you played it.  The first year or two it was out, I probably sold it every time I played it!

Def Leppard – Slang.  Again, much like the Poison and Crue, I was trying to turn new kids onto these classic bands that had explored new directions.  Unfortunately, Slang sold like shit.  I think it was too different for the old fans, and too old for the new fans.

And now let’s talk about Prog rock.  Ashleigh used to call prog music “smart-guy rock”.   That’s one reason why I wanted to play it every shift we shared.  I was trying to show her I was a smart guy, see?

Marillion – Misplaced Childhood.  I played Marillion so frequently, that my co-workers Matty K and Ashleigh knew the words to some songs.  Unfortunately, they didn’t consider that a good thing.

Fish – Kettle of Fish.  See above!

Dream Theater – Images and Words.  This came in so rarely, that when it did you had to play it.  It always sold if you played it.  We had so many musicians and wanna be’s (like me) coming into the store, they inevitably would ask what the fuck is this?  This one kid, a drummer named Curtis, loved Dream Theater.  I sold him his first Dream Theater.  Do you know how cool that is, selling somebody their first Dream Theater?  Curtis is a fantastic musician.  He’s jammed with my sister, actually.

Rush – Moving Pictures.  Like nails on a chalkboard to the girls in the Operations staff.  Could not play this if they were in the city, let alone the store.  But my fuck, what an album.  I remember Tom put a sticker on it that said, “Best album of the 80’s!”.  I thought to myself, “Then I need to hear the whole thing!”  I had never heard “Vital Signs” before.  I am sure Matty K remembers to this day, “Everybody got to evelate from the norm”.

And speaking of Rush!  I did a lot of Canadian themes.  We had a 5 disc changer.  A lot of the time, I would specifically pick 5 Canadian artists to take up a shift.  You’d often hear:

Sloan – 4 Nights at the Palais Royale.  In my opinion one of the top five live albums of all time.  It is also my favourite Sloan album.

Stompin’ Tom Connors – Anything we had in the store would work, as he didn’t come in frequently.  Unfortunately, Stompin’ Tom didn’t fare too well for store play in Kitchener.  Nobody seems to like him in this town.

Rush – duh?

Triumph – ditto.

Kim Mitchell / Max Webster – Another artist our Operations people hated.  I did one entire 5 disc shuffle of nothing but Kim and Max.  Kim was playing in town that day so I was hoping to drum up some sales.  I failed to do so, but I did try.  I was told to remove the Kim and Max from the player.

Helix / Brian Vollmer – I’d play Helix when it was in, which was infrequent.  I remember playing the Brian Vollmer solo album for Kevin, one of the guys that ended up in my wedding party.  I played the song “Good Times Don’t Get Better Than This” in the store.  I thought he would enjoy it.  Unfortunately, he did not.  I believe the words he used were, “This is not good.”  Kevin, I kindly submit that I strongly disagree to this day.

Even more rarely though came the opportunity to play the early stuff, the stuff with Brent Doerner singing lead.  Once — just once — Breaking Loose and White Lace & Black Leather came in.  I’m kicking myself for not buying them.  But when they were in store, I played “Billy Oxygen” on repeat for about 20 minutes.

Oscar Peterson – I only had the opportunity to do that once though.

Voivod – self titled.  The first one with Newsted.  Metallica had come out with St. Anger and a lot of fans didn’t like it.  I tried to sell this, which was more traditionally prog metal like old Metallica.

Incidentally, at the same time,  I was training a new franchisee around that time.  He was amused by how excited I was that the album Angel Rat, by Voivod, had come in, with 3D glasses intact.  I explained that usually these would be missing, but the CD was mint!  And “Clouds In My House” sounded great in-store!

Voivod crosses the boundary from prog into metal (or is it vice versa?), but I certainly did play a lot of metal in the store.

Bruce Dickinson – Balls To Picasso.  I played this virtually every shift during the fall of 1994.  At the time, I thought “Tears of the Dragon” and “Change of Heart” were among the deepest songs I’d ever heard.  Yeah, well.

Iron Maiden – Brave New World.  I love this album.  Matty K knows every word of “Blood Brothers”.

G//Z/R – Plastic Planet.  Easily the heavist thing I have ever played in store.  Even I was uncomfortable!

sHeavy – The Electric Sleep.  Incidentally, the greatest Black Sabbath album that was not made by Black Sabbath.  Every time, people would ask, “Is this the new Ozzy?”  Every time.  You could put money on it.

Judas Priest – Turbo.  It was the only one I could get away with!

Man, those were good times!   I am sure I could write another dozen of these.  I mean, we played a lot of music.  From Esquivel to Brushy One-String to Pansy Division to Jaymz Bee & the Royal Jelly Orchestra, we tried and sampled everything.