As readers here know, when I can get away with putting the minimum amount of effort into a story, I’m going to go for it. This one is lifted directly from my Facebook posts, a couple months after Jen and I got married. Her ongoing education in rock was just beginning. I can proudly say that today, Mrs. LeBrain knows the difference between Van Halen and Van Hagar. But in 2008?
Oct 9 2008:
TOP TWO QUOTES FROM JENNIFER TODAY:
#2Some background, I was playing the track “Me Wise Magic” by Van Halen, an obscure song with David Lee Roth singing. I said to Jen, do you know who this is? And she responded:
“Yeah…is this Van Hagar?”
#1“Wow is your beard ever grey!”
But I’m still gonna stay married to her anyway.
It’s even more grey today.
Jen likes both Van Halen and Van Hagar now, and she’s perfectly capable of telling the difference. She counts “Jump” and “Why Can’t This Be Love” as her favourite VH songs, tied for the #1 position. Considering that in my dating days, girls used to insist on listening to MuchDance95 in the car, I’m a very lucky man. I dodged some musical bullets, and somehow ended up with the best girl in the world.
GETTING MORE TALES #434: The Man in the Bob Marley Shirt
10 years ago was a very interesting part of my life. I had been out of college for a few years, and took a promotion at a company that I had been working at for some time. I was single and enjoying my life as a woman in her mid-twenties doing a lot of volunteering and making great friends. A lot of my friends from earlier years were getting married and having kids, but that didn’t seem like a part of my future at that time. Until September, 18th.
I had made a friend through the world of social media who lived an hour down the highway in Kitchener Ontario. We were spending a lot of time using Messenger to chat and occasional phone calls on land lines. One day this friend was having a bit of a bad day. He had been on a first date the day before with a woman he found on the internet who he described as creepy. He was having a bad day at the job he no longer enjoyed. In our chats I invited him to make the drive up the highway to Bramalea Ontario. He accepted and we made plans for him to pick me up at my family home.
He told me that he wanted a laid back evening with a walk in a park. I told him that I could handle that, but in actuality, I was scared shitless. I had never gone on a single date with anyone from the World Wide Web. I had heard horror stories of serial killers and this guy wanted to walk in parks on a Sunday night. Not the smartest of ideas, but for some reason I went with it. Something was telling me that things were going to be okay.
When he arrived at the house in his green neon I was outside having a cigarette. I approached the car and opened the door. Inside was a very cute guy in a grey Bob Marley t-shirt and a blue sweater. Very cute. We drove around for a bit turning on a lot of streets that started with the letter A so I could get him a bit lost (Bramalea is divided into ‘sections’ where streets are all named with the same first letter after UK communities – I figured if he was a serial killer, I could out run him and call 911, telling the police there was a green neon, lost somewhere on Aberdeen.
We took a walk into the park and played on some swings before making our way down to a creek to talk about our lives. He told me that he was starving and saw a Wendy’s. He asked if we could grab a burger there. For all burger aficionados, Wendy’s is at the bottom of the totem poll. I told him there was a much better burger not too far away. We got back in the car and drove to Sonny’s, a drive in burger joint around since the 60’s. We ordered two hamburgers with ‘funky onions’ (a fried onion with paprika seasoning) and other toppings too our likings. We shared a large poutine and talked a lot on the hard to get picnic table. (The joint is so busy, you usually can’t sit – a picnic table is a prime piece of drive in real estate). We talked so much, that we didn’t even give our burgers a try. We left them in their wrappers to eat at a later time.
After our first dinner, we decided to go to another park to hang out some more. I directed him to Gage Park in Brampton Ontario. This is more of a romantic park that girls like to hang out in. We walked around the park, talking for a while, and then moved to a knoll of grass to sit and do more talking. After a few minutes, the man in the Bob Marley t-shirt leaned in and gave me our first kiss. It was ground-breaking. All bets were off.
After a bit more time of kissing in the park, Bob Marley boy realized that he needed to get home because of an early work start. He drove me home, kissed me one more time in the car and drove back to his home in Kitchener. I entered the house to my half-asleep mother. She asked me how my date went. I sat on the reclining chair next to her and told her that I met the man I was going to marry.
She stood up, looked at me and said “You’re just like your father”* and went to bed. That was September 18th in a nutshell.
I love you LeBrain.
* In 1976, Jen’s father was in a Florida hotel. He saw Jen’s mother for the first time in the lobby and went to the phone where he called his best friend and said “Graham, I just saw the girl I’m going to marry. Now I just have to figure out her first name.”
She’s back with another guest shot! Enjoy this two-fer Tale.
RECORD STORE TALES Mk II: Getting More Tale #347: Hortons
LeBRAIN’S TAKE:
Here’s one thing I never understood, either in the Record Store days or today: People who are obsessed with Tim Hortons coffee. I’m married to one and I still don’t get it.
I worked with people who never showed up at a shift without their double double in hand. I worked with others who had to do a daily Tim’s run. I served customers who left their empty cups on our shelves, or at the front counter. That was always a favourite of mine, and it’s not unique. I’ve shopped at many stores, finding the brown empty cups sitting there on shelves. Somebody else’s problem, right?
I fail to understand the obsession. Jen has to have one (large decaf with three cream and one sweetener) every single day. There was an old urban myth (an untrue one) that Tim’s put nicotine in their coffee to keep you hooked. The only reason that myth has such long life is that Horton’s Addiction (HA) is so prevalent in Canadian society.
Now that Burger King, an American company, has bought out Tim’s, I fear for our friends south of the border.
I see a future littered with brown cups. I envision our American friends unwittingly becoming addicted to Hortons’ secret brew. I picture, somewhere in the US, a record store manager not unlike my younger self, pulling empty brown cups from their shelves as I once did.
Just say no to Tim’s. Make your own coffee at home. Hell, just drink water! Don’t fall into the trap of Horton’s Addiction, an affliction for which there is no known cure.
MRS. LeBRAIN’S REBUTTAL
50 years ago, one of the greatest defensemen in NHL history decided to expand his horizons, and open a coffee & doughnut [his spelling] empire. That man’s name was Tim Horton, and he made a damn good cup of coffee.
One thing that is very special about “Timmie’s” (as we call it) is its consistency. Your coffee in Kitchener Ontario will come out exactly the same as your coffee in Kitchener BC.
Every coffee drinker has their ideal cup of coffee, and sometimes it takes years to find that combination of cream and sugar that is right for you. When you do find it, Tim Hortons has dispensing equipment designed to maintain that perfect coffee for you, no matter what size you order it or where you order it from. (The only exception to this rule is Splenda sweetener which is dispensed by hand from packets.) Rival chains such as Starbucks make the customer add their cream and sugar themselves, creating human inconsistencies.
I love the texture of the cream; the feeling inside takes me to a special place. It also doesn’t hurt that they use 18% cream, a treat in itself.
Contrary to the way LeBrain makes it appear, I really do like all kinds of coffee. My Keurig machine is well used in the LeBrain household, but Tim Hortons is the champion, and whenever possible that brown cup will be in my happy hands.
Even LeBrain himself knows that if he ever does something to get him in shit, a five minute trip to the drive-through can fix the situation!
The two greatest things on this planet are hockey and coffee. There was a man who brought those two worlds together, and his name was Tim Horton.
My Grandmother reminded us of this story today. I thought I’d repost it for the new readers who missed it last year. Happy Thanksgiving!
RECORD STORE TALES Part 236: Thanksgiving 2005
Miserable at the record store, and mere weeks away from giving my notice, I still somehow managed to swing Thanksgiving weekend off. The family tradition back then was Thanksgiving at the cottage with my aunt and uncle, grandma and sister. Complicating things for me this Thanksgiving was that I had started dating Jen, the future Mrs. LeBrain. She was alone that weekend, because her parents were spending Thanksgiving in Ottawa. I felt that she was somebody special, and I wanted to somehow have Thanksgiving with her, but also my family. The only catch was that we’d been together less than a month, and she’d never met anybody from my family before. Ever.
As this story is a bit of an indictment against myself, I’ll let her take it from here.
LeBrain told me that his parents and his sister would be staying in this peaceful cabin by the lake. He didn’t tell me about anyone else. It had been a long time since I met a suitor’s parents. A sister too? Well that was uncharted territory to say the least.
As we approached the cottage through the woods, my anxiety started to increase. The car stopped and my heart began beating in my throat as I looked into the cottage’s big front window.
Mike’s mom and dad, sister, and her boyfriend were waiting at the window! So were his aunt, uncle, grandmother, and the disapproving family dog!
After introductions, Mike walked me to his bedroom where I’d be staying while he was sleeping on the couch. The door closed behind me, and what I saw on the wall was a vision to haunt me, and to one day tell our future grandchildren about. It was a gun rack, made with actual deer parts, holding a gun.
“Maybe this online dating thing is a bad idea!”
Gun rack given to me by my Grandfather
It’s only a pellet gun. Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!
I really had this coming. In Part 314 (The Musical Crimes of Mrs. LeBrain) I exposed the somewhat embarrassing contents of Jen’s CD wallet. I knew retribution would come. Enjoy this penultimate episode of Record Store Tales, and its final guest shot, courtesy of Mrs. LeBrain. (Warning: LOTS of pictures!)
By MRS. LeBRAIN
RECORD STORE TALES Part 319: The Musical Crimes of LeBrain
#10 HIM – And Love Said No. That deep dark gothic prince Ville Valo makes lonely girls swoon, but he is also hanging out on LeBrain’s shelf.
#9 Soundtrack – SMALL SOLDIERS. I don’t know how this made it into the LeBrain home. I understand his need for everything Geddy Lee has ever created, but “Mixed by DJ Z-Trip“?? Is that really worth it? (Not to mention that you have to rock out to Bone Thugs-N-Harmony to get there.)
#8 ROD STEWART – “If We Fall In Love Tonight” CD single. Going through my adventure here, I came across this single, designed to get the listener to first base. YOU’RE MARRIED. THAT SHIT DOESN’T NEED TO STAY.
#7 Soundtrack – THE KARATE KID, Part III. “Wax on, wax off.” The case and book for this CD do not meet the demanding criteria that LeBrain enforces on his collection, but neither does the track list. (I don’t know who most of these people are, but I have heard of the Pointer Sisters.)
#6WOODSTOCK 99 – Various. Look at the first six tracks from crap bands, and try not to laugh (a challenging task). The second CD is just as bad.
#5 Soundtrack – SON IN LAW. The Pauly Shore franchise was known for making really bad movies. The soundtracks are not much better and this shouldn’t be taking up valuable shelf space.
#4 ELMOPALOOZA – Various. If LeBrain were a daddy, this CD might make sense (Steven Tyler has a song about trash). But LeBrain is childless, and Tickle-Me-Elmo is pretty pointless here!
#3 ZZ TOP: A Tribute From Friends – Various. Three words:
MIKE OWNS NICKELBACK!
#2 AVRIL LAVIGNE – The Lavigne Collection (see below). In Part 314, LeBrain threw me under the bus for wanting to marry Joey Mac from New Kids on the Block, 25 years ago. Payback time! Just because he wanted to be her “Sk8tr Boi” doesn’t mean he needed to buy her entire repertoire.
And #1! HIT ZONE 4– Various. LeBrain’s messiest musical moments have been in his “Various” section, but this one takes the cake. My husband owns tracks by NSync, the Backstreet Boys and Boyz II Men? And to top it off this boy band festival, here’s Hanson! Regardless, I think the most disturbing thing about this CD is cover. Look at the scratches and scrapes on the case. This tells me the CD has been well enjoyed.
CONCLUSION:
LeBrain, with all the mess on YOUR shelves, you really can’t make fun of me. But no matter what crap you listen to, you’re still mine.
If you missed the Top Five Albums of 2013 lists,click here!
Some people got carried away and submitted more than 5 in their lists this year, Uncle Meat being the number one offender. But since Tom & Uncle Meat were good this Christmas, here are the Top Five (or Six) (or Ten) Movies of 2013. And while we’re talking about movies we may as well do a Top TV Shows of 2013 as well huh?
Tom
Movies
6. Sound City
5. Star Trek: Into Darkness
4. This Is The End
3. John Dies At The End
2. The World’s End
1. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
TV Shows
10. Rick and Morty
9. PTI
8. Colbert Report
7. Daily Show
6. Eagleheart
5. Venture Brothers
4. The Jeselnik Offensive
3. Aqua Teen Hunger Force
2. Community
1. Game of Thrones
Meat
Movies
10. Carrie
9. Kick Ass 2
8. Pacific Rim
7. This is the End
6. Man of Steel
5. Star Trek: Into Darkness
4. 42
3. Sound City
2. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
1. The Wolf of Wall Street
TV Shows
Meat came up with a Top Nine. Sure, why not!
9. Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
8. The Following
7. The Killing
6. Walking Dead
5. Californication
4./3. Tie: Mad Men/Breaking Bad
2. American Horror Story: Coven
1. Game of Thrones
Seb
Movies
5. Iron Man 3
4. Pacific Rim
3. Star Trek: Into Darkness
2. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
1. Man of Steel
Seb also had some Top Concerts he wanted to mention: “Brian Setzer and Meshuggah….. Yeah, I know its weird….he he he!”
Mrs. LeBrain
TV Shows
5. Jeopardy!
4. Dragon’s Den
3. Blue Bloods
2. The Big Bang Theory
1. Hockey Night In Canada
LeBrain
For a variety of reasons I don’t get out to the movies often, so I decided to just post Five Movies I Saw in 2013!
Movies
5. Man of Steel
4. This is the End
3. Sound City
2. Star Trek: Into Darkness
1. The World’s End
TV Shows
When Mrs. LeBrain wasn’t watching hockey, I watched these shows in 2013:
5. Star Trek re-runs (best I could come up with)
4. The Liquidator
3. Toy Hunter
2. Survivorman
1. Breaking Bad
This album is significant to me for one reason only: It was the first CD bought for me by my lovely wife, Mrs. LeBrain. She knew I liked Kiss and she knew I didn’t have this album. It was a total surprise! It was also a total disappointment.
Paul’s 1978 solo album is a milestone for me, it’s one of those albums I can put on any time, any where, anyhow, and I always love it. When Paul wrote (quoted in the “Kiss: Behind The Mask” book) “Let’s just say it needs a sequel right about now,” I was so excited. Yet I forgot, the word “sequel” has many different connotations.
Unfortunately, Live To Win is a sequel in the sense that it’s inferior to the original in every way. The production is plastic, modern synthetic, and boring. The songwriting is good in parts, but there are three ballads here. Paul’s first solo album had nine songs and one ballad. Here, there are ten songs and three ballads. You can work out the math on your own. The playing is bland and generic. John5 plays guitar a bit, and he’s always great, and Bruce Kulick plays bass (why bass?) on a few songs. Everybody else is just a studio cat, guys who are paid big bucks to make people like Avril sound good. Good players, but there’s no personality on this album. Not like when Bob Kulick ripped Paul’s first solo album to shreds.
There are two good songs. They are “Wake Up Screaming” and “Where Angels Dare”. “Wake Up Screaming” starts off with some terrible drum machines. (Yes, not a misprint. There is far too much ProTools and programming on Live To Win.) It’s generic sounding, until Paul’s melody and vocal elevates the song to a whole different level. Still, it’s not aggressive enough for a song called “Wake Up Screaming”. Raw production would have turned this into a classic. The other good song is “Where Angels Dare”. It’s another great song with Paul’s riff, vocal, and melody taking it where it should be. A highlight.
“Live To Win” is also decent, it has a good chorus, but the riff and verses are boring. “Bulletproof” sounds like a Hot in the Shade outtake. “Lift” should have been on Carnival Of Souls, it has that grungy sound. The rest of the album is just plain boring, especially the ballads. Among the ballads there’s nothing here that can hold a candle to the dynamics of “Hold Me, Touch Me” even though they are every bit as schlocky.
Paul, I’m disappointed. For a guy who had the idea to go back to basics and record the Kiss album Sonic Boom on analog tape, this just doesn’t even sound like it came from the same person. Maybe if your first solo album wasn’t so good, so classic, then I wouldn’t have expected so much. Yet, Paul, you are a rock god. There’s no denying it even to non-fans. You are an icon, and you are responsible for a dozen or more of the best songs in rock history. There’s no denying it! For you to put this out, I can only conclude you were out of touch with your fans and rock in general. Or, worse, you were trying desperately for a hit.
Miserable at the record store, and mere weeks away from giving my notice, I still somehow managed to swing Thanksgiving weekend off. The family tradition back then was Thanksgiving at the cottage with my aunt and uncle, grandma and sister. Complicating things for me this Thanksgiving was that I had started dating Jen, the future Mrs. LeBrain. She was alone that weekend, because her parents were spending Thanksgiving in Ottawa. I felt that she was somebody special, and I wanted to somehow have Thanksgiving with her, but also my family. The only catch was that we’d been together less than a month, and she’d never met anybody from my family before. Ever.
As this story is a bit of an indictment against myself, I’ll let her take it from here.
LeBrain told me that his parents and his sister would be staying in this peaceful cabin by the lake. He didn’t tell me about anyone else. It had been a long time since I met a suitor’s parents. A sister too? Well that was uncharted territory to say the least.
As we approached the cottage through the woods, my anxiety started to increase. The car stopped and my heart began beating in my throat as I looked into the cottage’s big front window.
Mike’s mom and dad, sister, and her boyfriend were waiting at the window! So were his aunt, uncle, grandmother, and the disapproving family dog!
After introductions, Mike walked me to his bedroom where I’d be staying while he was sleeping on the couch. The door closed behind me, and what I saw on the wall was a vision to haunt me, and to one day tell our future grandchildren about. It was a gun rack, made with actual deer parts, holding a gun.
“Maybe this online dating thing is a bad idea!”
Gun rack given to me by my Grandfather
It’s only a pellet gun. Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!
Back in 2006, a few weeks after I left the store, I became a “normal customer”. (As if there is such a thing!) I started getting calls from my former compatriots any time they saw something cool come in for me. Which was frequent back then. Today I have a hard time finding discs locally that I still need, as my collection is pretty beefy.
I drove on a snowy Saturday to one of my former haunts to see my friends and former co-workers. I managed to snag a mint condition used copy of Dio’s Holy Diver – Live. It was his newest album. (Also, sadly, his last album released while he was still alive.) The package was 2 CD’s including one disc of Holy Diver, performed live in sequence. I tried to explain to Jen how cool this release was:
It’s the first time he’s played the whole album live. It was his first album, and considered his best solo album by a lot of fans. It’s a landmark album — you’ll know some of these songs.
Jen had already heard some Dio. I played Intermission (on vinyl) for her regularly, and she knew tunes like “Rainbow in the Dark” quite well. Plus, Jen enjoys back rubs. If she wanted a back rub, for example, I’d put some tunes on, usually Dio. Soon it became known as “Dio Massages”. It wasn’t too long before Jen knew most of Dio’s best tunes from Rainbow and beyond: “Man On The Silver Mountain”, “Holy Diver”, and so on. Dio Massages became a regular weekend ritual.
So, when I picked up Holy Diver – Live, I was stoked! I got it cheap, used, which was not always easy with new metal releases. Metal fans tend to hang on to their new releases, since they’re not always easy to come across in mainstream retail outlets. Jen and I listened to disc one, and went to bed.
I had rather stupidly left the CD case (with second disc still inside) on the end table. Right next to Jen’s can of diet Pepsi. An idiot could have predicted what would happen next. My only defense is “I am not an idiot!” but it didn’t save my Dio CD. Jen reached for her diet Pepsi, missed, and spilled. Dio was drenched – the booklet, the back cover, and the second disc. I owned the CD for less than a day, and it was already wrecked. In the morning, the second disc (previously mint) had little beads of dried Pepsi on it. The booklet and back cover were a lost cause. Couldn’t even open the booklet, like a teenager’s first Playboy mag!
I called up my buddy at the store where I had bought the CD. We’ll call him “Steven Tyler” as an alias. (He happens to share the name of a famous rock star in real life.)
“Steven! You got any more of those Dio live albums floating around in the system?”
“Nope, sorry man. You got the only one,” said Steven.
I ordered a replacement copy from Amazon later that morning. New. Over $30 all said and done.
MORAL: DO NOT LEAVE YOUR DIO DISCS NEXT TO A CAN OF DIET PEPSI OVERNIGHT!
I still love my wife more than anything. She still loves “Rainbow in the Dark”.
mikeladano.com 