music

#429: “What kind of music do you like?”

RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#429: “What kind of music do you like?”

Have you ever spent a little bit of time trying to get to know somebody new that you were interested in romantically? Probably, unless you have people throwing themselves at you like little girls at a Bieber concert. I’m sure most of us have made that small talk, when first making someone’s acquaintance. Nowadays it’s often done in email.  Routine questions and the like.

You know the typical subjects, when you just meet somebody. Do you like pets? Do you like to travel? What’s your favourite food?  (My answers always were:  1. Yes, 2. No, and 3. Anything that swims.)

The most difficult question of them all, the one that I could go on and on and on about was: “What kind of music do you like?”

What kind of music do I like?? How many hours do we have???

How do I answer that question? How do you answer that question?

It’s also a bit of a loaded question.  I learned early in life that if I answered simply “Heavy Metal”, that was a dealbreaker with a lot of girls!  I’m sure things are a lot different today.  I remember my buddy Bob telling me, “This girl at work said she’d go out with me, if I didn’t listen to rock.”

I used to try and keep my answers short. When a person is just starting to get to know you, they don’t necessarily want an essay-form answer to a simple question. “What kind of music do you like?”  I refused to answer “everything” because when most people say they like “all music”, 99% of the time, it’s not true. I’ve certainly dated people who claimed to like “all” music, but didn’t seem to enjoy anything I picked in the car….

Keeping things simple, I used to try to answer the music question in the following ways:

1. “Anything with guitars”.

I stopped using that one early because frankly it’s not true. Ben Folds Five didn’t use guitars. I have jazz and classical music without guitars. And there’s lots of music out there with guitars that just plain sucks!

2. “Anything that rocks”.

I thought, “Hey, that’s better than my other answer. Lots of music rocks. Even electronic music can rock.” But it doesn’t really answer the question, does it? It’s a subjective answer. It’s like answering, “Anything good.”

I had one really, really annoying customer at the Record Store one afternoon. She wanted some new music to listen to. It didn’t have to be “new” new, just new to her. When asked what kind of music she liked, she just answered, “Good music.”

She kept us running around for the next hour, trying to find CDs in the store that she would like. She would sit and try them on the listening station. She sampled the discs that we picked for her to try, and just answer, “I didn’t like these.” We asked again, is there anything specific you’re looking for? “I just like good music,” she answered, clearly as frustrated as we were.

My getting-to-know-you answer evolved into the following:

3. “I buy CDs from every section of the music store, but my favourites usually have loud guitars.”

Honest, true and short. And hopefully from that answer the young lady knew what she was getting into with me!

Did you used to get that question? How did you answer it? Leave a comment!

“Heavy metal, hard-core, punk, pop, or thrash.
You can call it anything it don’t matter to me.
Call it what you want.
It’s all music to me.”

#425: The Soup Nazi

Dedicated to Sebastien Xavier Meunier

RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#425: The Soup Nazi

One of the classic, most popular antagonists from the old TV show Seinfeld is the Soup Nazi .  This character, the proprietor of a busy, highly rated soup joint in Manhattan, was eccentric to say the least.  The Soup Nazi had strict rules about lining up and ordering your soup.

Jerry: “There’s only one caveat.  The guy who runs the place is a little temperamental, especially about the ordering procedure.  He’s secretly referred to as the Soup Nazi.”

Elaine: “Why? What happens if you don’t order right?”

Jerry:  “He yells and you don’t get your soup.”

That’s right!  Deviate from procedure, and there’s no soup for you!  Jerry continues:

Jerry: “As you walk in the place, move immediately to your right.  The main thing is to keep the line moving.  It’s very important not to embellish on your order.  No extraneous comments.  No questions.  No compliments.”

As it turned out, George complained about some forgotten bread.  He was given a refund and had his soup taken away!  “No soup for you!”  Elaine ended up with a one year ban!  The only Seinfeld character with whom the Soup Nazi seems to have an understanding is Kramer.  “You suffer for your soup,” says Cosmo Kramer.  “You demand perfection from yourself, from your soup.”

I have always had a…what’s the word?…not admiration, but something like that…for the Soup Nazi.  Envy, perhaps.  Not for his gruff demeanor.  Not for his rude reactions to people.  Not for a badass moustache.  Just for his demand…nay!…his expectation on a nice, quiet orderly line.  I like order.

DOUCHE 3-1

LeBrain at the counter, circa 1998, going through a box of discs.

You might be surprised to learn that a used CD store can have a very, very busy counter area.  It’s quite easy for things to go sideways if you’re not on top of them.  The used CD store was a place in which you’re performing multiple duties simultaneously.  While you are buying a pile of 50 CDs (which you have organized meticulously by condition and offering price), you could also be looking up inventory for someone else, and doing a sale for someone else.   Is that the phone ringing?

On a busy day, I could have several piles of discs that I’m buying from customers, and also a few more piles that customers want to buy, but have set aside while they look around some more.  It can get very confusing very quickly if there is not order.

Back in Part 274 of Record Store Tales, we took a look at a type of customer I dubbed the “Hawks”.  These are folks with a lot of CDs to sell.  They were the most annoying customers in the world:  sellers who just want to hang out at the front counter, watch what you’re doing, and chat.  They are completely oblivious to the concept of other people.  They don’t realize there is someone else behind them who is trying to buy something, while they lean and take up all the counter space themselves.  The Soup Nazi didn’t put up with that.

Since I wasn’t a Soup Nazi (and had bosses who could fire me and stuff), I would just politely (as I could manage) tell the guy that he has a line forming behind him, and could he please move off to the side?  I’d encourage them to go and get a coffee and come back later if I was going through a lot of CDs for them.

Even worse than Hawks in some ways though were customers who were just nosy.  “What are these?” they’d ask, before jumbling the piles of CDs that I had meticulously arranged earlier.  “Those belong to someone else, I had them all organized so please don’t mix them up.”  Frustration boils inside, fake smiles on the outside!

So yes, condemn me if you wish.  I can sympathize with the Soup Nazi.  I’m sure the following people burned his britches just as much as they burned mine!

  • The ones who are too busy chatting with their friends or on a cell phone to notice they are NEXT IN LINE!
  • Counter leaners who take up the whole thing, while bombarding you with BAD BREATH!  They tend to leave the counter dirty, and/or sweaty.
  • Counter parkers, who decide not to look around the store at all, but just park there and ask questions. They don’t like making room for paying customers.  They don’t even know there are any other customers.  They just have questions.  LOTS AND LOTS OF QUESTIONS!
  • CLINGERS. These people are not your friends, but they don’t know that.  Friends understand that you’re working and they are not, so they don’t bother you too much.  Clingers were usually customers who seemed lonely, and just wanted to hang out.  They like to chat, ask questions, and make it look like that CD in their hand is something they are really going to purchase.  But no, is it all just an elaborate hoax.  They just needed to kill a couple hours, and someone to talk to.  The person behind the counter is a captive audience.  They buy like, one or two discs a year just so they can’t be officially labelled a nuisance.

Looking back on it today, maybe it would have been better for my soul had I just take a few tips from the Soup Nazi.  No discs for you!

STORE RULES

#424: How to Stop a Thief

RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#424: How to Stop a Thief

Surely, one of the biggest costs of running a retail business is loss due to theft.  If you open your doors to the public, somebody’s going to try and steal from you.  That is just the unfortunate reality of the world we inhabit.  Thieves have existed for as long as civilization, I’ll wager.

We had several defenses in place to protect ourselves from theft.  Although I do not have any numbers, I believe we were about effective as you could reasonably expect.

First and foremost, theft can be stopped by an aware staff.  When I first started at the Record Store in ’94, the boss said that not only is customer service #1, but it can help reduce theft.  If I were to walk up to every customer browsing on the floor to ask if they needed help, then any potential thieves would be aware that I had been watching and paying attention.  The boss taught us that diligent customer service can stop most theft before it happens.

On top of that, another thing I would do is purposely work right next to a suspicious person.  If I saw a customer acting all shady like they were trying to hide what they were doing with their hands, I would walk right next to them and start straightening CDs where they stood.  That probably helped, too.

SECURITY CASEThe second thing we did, at least in the early days, was apply magnetic tags to every item in stock.  For our CDs, that was easily done.  Remember those big, plastic security cases that had to be unlocked at the counter?  Some stores still use them.  You couldn’t break them open without wrecking the contents, and you couldn’t open them without the key, which was behind the counter.  Each security case had magnetic tags in it.  Put a CD in one of those things, and it’s not going anywhere without setting off the alarms.

For tapes, we didn’t have those security cases so we applied the magnetic tags directly to the cassette.  We’d try to hide them on the side opposite from the spine.  This was effective, but less so.  A thief could peel off those magnetic tags and often did.  It was never a good day when we found a bunch of those tags stuck under a shelf somewhere, like an old piece of gum.

Every Wednesday, we’d do a “tape check”.  Either T-Rev or I would go through every single tape in house, and make sure the magnetic tag was on there securely.  If it was peeling, we’d tape it on.  If it was ripped off (sometimes just from age and shelf wear), we’d replace it.  We were encouraged to replace as few of those as possible.  The stickers were something like 5 cents each, and that adds up very quickly when you have a few thousand tapes in stock.

With the magnetic tags and the tape check every Wednesday, we had it partly covered.  You’d also have to watch for kids trying to bypass the security gate.  You might see a kid walking out with his backpack lifted over his head (and gate).   I had also heard that a notorious local gang of thieves had lined their coats with tinfoil.  Tinfoil can stop the magnetic tags from setting off the alarms.  People used tinfoil to make “booster bags” – a device you can hide a tagged item in, in order to steal it without triggering the alarm.  Although I never witnessed it myself, the rumour was that these guys used something similar, and lined their coats with the stuff.  That’s how they managed to steal such huge quantities.  The gangs didn’t steal from us, but they targeted the big chain stores like HMV.  They were known all over town.  Every once in a while, I’ll still see one of their names in the newspaper.  The leader was recently busted in a meth sting, after having racked up 40 convictions over the years.

STEALING DISCS

Been Caught Stealing indeed!

When we changed the store’s format to 99% used CDs, we did away with the magnetic tags.  Instead we displayed empty cases only, while the precious CDs themselves were behind the counter.  This did result in some confusion, but much less costly theft prevention.

I’d still have customers walk up to me and say, “Hey buddy, I think somebody ripped you off.  This CD case is empty.”  Apparently, that customer didn’t notice the 7000 CDs behind me.

To try and help the customer understand what was going on, we put little signs on the CD shelves.  “All cases are empty.”  Even this caused confusion!  A few people would walk up to me and ask, “It says all cases are empty, so does that mean I have to buy the CD separately?”  Others would ask, “So you only sell the cases, not the CDs?”

Yeah, that’s it….

Unfortunately we could never completely stop theft.  Sometimes we would look up a CD in inventory.  The disc would be listed in stock, and the CD itself still behind me…but the case nowhere to be found anywhere in store.   We would check our sections regularly, but many cases never showed up.  I guess some thieves just ended up with empty ones.

Serves them right, but the last laugh was on us, because we ended up with a lot of case-less CDs that could not be sold.  The parasitic thieves cost us again.

WTF Search Terms: Joey Tempest Strikes Back edition

DARTH TEMPEST

WTF Search Terms XXVII:  Joey Tempest Strikes Back edition

Been a long time since I rock and rolled?  Hardly!  I just rock and rolled last night actually.  But it has been a long time since we’ve seen some WTF Search Terms!  (The last was in March.)  These are the most bizarre of the bizarre search terms that somehow led people to mikeladano.com.  Today’s instalment includes a couple for the Dark Lord of the Sith himself: Joey Tempest (you devil, you!) and a fair share of farts.

First up, a follow-up to the bizarre Joey Tempest Conspiracy Theory (TM):

  • satanic signs of joey tempest

I think the next person was looking for Joey aka Joakim Larsson as well!

  • presinor in paradies song

Here ya go, fella!  This would actually be the first album with Fake Joey.

Here are some fart and bowel related search terms:

  • thunder fart piss
  • how to rip on coworker who is constipated
  • white lion till death do us fart
  • faith no more farts

The video where Mike Patton farts into his microphone is called You Fat Bastards: Live at the Brixton Academy.  Here ya go, fella!* 20 seconds in. You’re welcome. You’re all welcome!

Here’s an old classic for you.  Were you aware that the Boobsy Animation Whore Wearing Glasses Acquired Screwed series was up to Part 7 already?

  • boobsy animation whores wearing glasses acquire screwed hardcore part 7

The question below is one I have often wondered.  Not really a WTF, but a good question.  Should they have called the album something else?

  • why did cinderella release “long cold winter” album in may

In England, it was released in July.  Imagine that!

Then, the below search term is a belief I do hold.  It’s OK if you don’t but why are you searching for this?  Is there one definitive authority who “knows” this?  (If so, let it be me?)

Finally, I’d like to close this batch of search terms with a guy who, well, he hasn’t been featured in WTF search terms for a long time.  His last appearance was WTF Search Terms XVI, back in February 2014.   Please welcome back the founder and bare buttocks of W.A.S.P., Mr. Steven Edward Duren aka Blackie Lawless!

  • biggest ass in leather
  • black lawless is an arse hole

Thank you, goodnight!

* Yes I made the assumption that the searcher was male.  Because farts.

#423: The Tyranny of Cassette in the ’80s

RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#423: The Tyranny of Cassette in the ’80s

Anyone who grew up in the mid to late 1980s probably enjoyed their music on the most popular format at the time:  cassette.  Vinyl LPs were still around, and still popular, but not nearly as much as cassettes.  CDs were new and only a few of us had CD players yet.  Cassette tapes had the portability factor going for them.  Everybody had a Walkman, and those who didn’t probably had one on their Christmas list in 1985.

Vinyl was a dying breed in our highschool halls.  There were still some older kids who boasted of the superior sound quality, but none of my friends had equipment good enough to enjoy that sound quality.  I certainly didn’t.  All I had was a turntable hooked directly into a Sanyo cassette deck for amplification.  The sound was harsh and tinny.  The scratches inherent with the format were also more distracting than the tape hiss of cassette.

So, it was all about cassette!  Buy ‘em, trade ‘em, swap ‘em and re-record over them when you decide you don’t like the music anymore.  I have a cassette copy of Michael Jackson’s Thriller that had long ago been erased and taped over with other stuff.  When you couldn’t find a fresh blank tape to record on, you could just erase something else.  Everybody did it.  My friend Bob had a cassette of In Through the Out Door that he recorded over with us talking and goofing around!

For teenage highschool kids, cassettes were enough for our musical fixes.  A decent quality name brand tape could hold up to 110 minutes without stretching.   We used them to tape anything and everything.  (I have a tape with the sound of a friend’s dad taking a massive shit — no, I did not record it, they did!)  Since cassettes were re-recordable, that meant that every kid could even record their own music and become a rock star in his or her own basement.  You couldn’t do that with your fancy schmancy LPs, we all thought!  Don’t like your song?  Just rewind and record it again!  Those who didn’t play music could have their own fun, DJ’ing and and writing skits.  And let’s not forget about taping your friends’ albums.  Recording tape to tape would always result in excessive tape hiss, but kids didn’t seem to mind in the 1980’s.  We ignored the hiss.  It was something we considered part of the music, because we really never heard any music without hiss!

Although the flaws of cassettes are patently obvious today, in the 80’s we were just discovering these troubling issues for ourselves.  We overlooked the tape hiss, but it was harder to ignore speed issues.  The biggest problem that I had with cassettes was inconsistent speed.  Some tapes, especially those made by Polygram and EMI in Canada, seemed to have a lot of internal friction.   Grab a small screwdriver and open up an old cassette tape some time.  Inside you will find rollers, spindles, and bits and pieces all designed for the cassette tape to roll smoothly.  Whether they worked right always seemed to be a matter of random luck.  When friction inside caused the tape to run slow, it was immediately obvious.  The pitch would be noticeably lower, and often the tape would warble as your player tried to play it at normal speed, but fought against the friction.

On the other hand, sometimes the problems came down to your player.  Your tape deck had even more spindles and doo-dads to turn that tape around and around.  Those got dirty and worn out, too.  Sure, you could buy tape head cleaners and demagnetizers, but did they ever really have a noticeable effect on your listening experience?  Probably not.  I used to diligently clean the insides of my tape decks with lint-free cloths and isopropyl alcohol.  Although I could see black filth coming off the rollers when I cleaned them, the sound and speed never really improved.  It was always very frustrating when a tape would play fine on a friend’s deck, but went slow as molasses on your own.  My Sanyo went in for service and professional cleaning more than once, but that didn’t help either.

Although cassettes sounded like shit, and only got worse the longer you kept them, they did have a big advantage over CD for me, and that was portability.  I preferred cassettes in the car, up until fairly recently.  The reason for this was, working in the used CD store, I saw so many CDs that were just utterly destroyed by car CD players.  You don’t get that problem so much anymore, but in the 90’s and 2000’s, there were a lot of discs just annihilated by a lot of car decks. It didn’t seem to matter if the car player was a high-end stereo or a piece of crap.  People would bring their used CDs in to me, and ask me how they looked.  I’d usually ask, “Did you play this in a car deck?”  I could always tell.  Customers would ask me, “How did you know?”  Because the CD would be completely scratched, but always in perfect circles.  Some dirt clearly got into the car deck, and scratched up the discs as they were spinning.  Or, the disc was just scraping up against the internal workings of the car player as it spun.  Either way, the result was usually a CD that looks like a kid’s Spirograph drawing.

At least when playing a cassette in the car, those things could take a beating.  I only ever had one or two that were “eaten” by the player.  Compare that to the thousands of CDs that I saw destroyed by car decks over the years.

If life is a musical journey, then cassettes were my travelling companions for over a decade.  We had a necessary parting of ways, and now I am happy to stick to CD and flash drives when on the road!

#419: Things Customers Do that Annoy Retail Workers

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RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#419: Things Customers Do that Annoy Retail Workers

A few days ago, I saw this “20 Things Customers Do that Annoy Retail Workers” via George Takei’s daily (hilarious) Facebook posts.  It is so true that it hurts!  The memories it brought back…shudder.  I could relate to almost every single one.  The list was generally about clothing stores, but many of the points were wide-ranging.  Here are my favourite parts from the list that applied to us, with my own notes from the front lines of the Record Store!

1.  Asking “Do you work here?”  That used to drive me nuts.  Our boss used to make us wear these ugly STAFF tags.  It was like wearing a big hanging sign around your neck, it was so humiliating.  And still we’d get these questions!

5. “Tell you that an item that you sell is cheaper in another store.”  I’m not sure why people felt the need to do this at my store.  Their tone didn’t make it seem like they were trying to help.  Especially that one lady who told me, “Walmart has this cheaper than you.  HAH!”

7. “Try to return products which have been damaged by misuse”.  Ugh!  Someone in my store sold a brand new, sealed copy of Hit Zone 2 to a lady whose kids clearly used it as a skating rink.  When she returned it, she was furious!  “Do you always sell CDs that don’t work?” she asked me in a huff.  I said no, I’m really sorry, but we can exchange it for you.  Then I looked at the CD!  I had never seen a brand new CD that had been so quickly destroyed.  I did the exchange, but then I made her open up the new copy at the counter, inspect it, and sign her receipt saying she had seen the CD in perfect condition and it could not be returned.  She was just abusing the system.

8. “Spend half an hour browsing the when the store is trying to close.”  I can add my own note to this one: “And then leave without buying anything.”

10. “When they hand you a $50 or $100 bill, and while you’re checking it they say ‘I just made that myself’”.  I know you think you’re really original, coming up with that line, but half the people that hand me a $100 bill say it.  The other half got really pissed off when I said “We don’t take $100 bills.”  (We had a sign that said so at the counter.  One employee named Chris liked to say, “Don’t make me tap the sign again.”)

12. “Parents that allow their children to run rampant”.  This was one sure-fire way to ruin my day.  There’s nothing like watching a kid destroy your store, while the parent is browsing Limp Bizkit yelling, “Calm down!”  Obviously, the kid doesn’t calm down, and so he moves on to another section to destroy.  One youngster tore down my entire country section – put the whole thing in one gigantic pile on the floor.  The dad just said, “That’s not too bad, you’ll have that back together in no time.”  Thanks for the help.

14. “Complain about the prices. News flash, I don’t set the prices!”  Self-explanatory.  As manager I had the ability to offer you a discount.  However, being annoying and complaining constantly would not get you a discount.  Being polite would.  Turns out we gave very few discounts….

18. “You look like you need something to do.”  Usually said by someone carrying in a box of 400 CDs for sale, which will take me the rest of the morning to look at.  Thanks for the joke asshole, and so help me God you better not have more Limp Kizkit in here.

20. “So that means it’s free, right?”  That was probably funny the very first time somebody said it, when a price tag fell off the item they were buying.  Probably.  But that was also probably in ancient Greece and it hasn’t been funny since!

#416: A Day Off

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GETTING MORE TALE #416: A Day Off

I’m taking today off from blogging.  It’s my birthday!  So I’ll be opening stuff like this, while you are hopefully enjoying a nice day off, too.

I deserve a day off!  I’ve been posting here almost daily for three and a half years!  I’ve accumulated almost 1600 posts in that time, so I’m sure you won’t hold it against me.

In the meantime, you can check out the past birthday related posts.  I’ll be back tomorrow with more rock!

Thank you Aaron for the gift…whatever it may be…well, it could be a bomb but it’s not ticking!  I will be sure to update you all with photos of whatever musical treasures await me today.

Best,

LeBrain

#410: Doing it Right

Christmas

RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#410: Doing it Right

I’ve complained about the way I was treated toward the end of the Record Store Days, but that was a small part of my life there.  In the beginning before we grew too big for our britches, it was a wonderful place to be.   There were a lot of things we did right, and there are hundreds of great memories of that era.

What did we do right, or differently, to make it so special for us?

  1. No uniforms! I remember the staff at HMV had these ugly shirts they had to wear.   We had plain T-shirts with a logo, which were optional most of the time.
  2. A better listening selection. Although the rules about this got more restrictive later on, back then we could listen to pretty much any one of the thousands of used CDs we had in stock.  Big chain stores at the time had less flexibility in their playlists.
  3. I felt a real “all for one, one for all” attitude.  It was inclusive.  I felt like we were the up-and-comers, underdogs ready to take on the big record stores.  Management were excellent at sowing this kind of feeling, that we were all on the same team even if we worked at different stores.  When the owner took a step back and let others run the show, the feeling of camaraderie changed into a feeling of exclusion.  Nothing lasts forever, but I felt much more job satisfaction when I felt like I was contributing to a real team.
  4. Rewarding the staff.   We had an annual Christmas party, and an annual summer house party.  These were epic.  “Time to release the hatch!”  As a store manager, I always did my best to reward my own staff, by buying them CDs that they wanted.  I did this voluntarily with my own cash because that’s the kind of manager I tried to be.
  5. The owner was willing to help out.  I remember him saying in a newspaper interview that he “still washed the windows sometimes.”  While I never saw him wash the windows, he was always willing to jump behind the counter when we were busy.  This continued even into my last year.
  6. People power. I don’t know if anything is more important in the workplace than the quality of the people you work with.  Work is a second home.  In some cases you spend more time with your co-workers than your family.  Both the owner and his people were very good at hiring excellent staff.  There will always be a certain percentage of bad apples and people who don’t work out, but I had the privilege of working with some of the best.  I feel genuinely blessed to have the experience of knowing and working side by side with these unique folk

I’ve somehow managed to find great places to work with amazing people.  Today I work with another completely different crew, and each and every one of them is awesome.  I’ve never seen a more diverse bunch and that keeps it fun and interesting every day!

#396: Ladano


The song “Ladano” written by Veronica Tapia, performed by Stan Climie (bass clarinet), Laurie Radford (electronics)

RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#396: Ladano

It looks easy to say, and it is!  LA-DA-NO.  Emphasis on the middle DA. That’s it!  That’s all!

Yet, as a kid, I knew that if I ever wanted to be a famous rock star, I’d have to change my name.  I considered “Michael Ladd” as a good stage name.  See, the problem is that most of my life, people haven’t been able to pronounce my last name.  Would Peter Criss be famous today if he went by his real name Peter Criscoula?  Would Gene Simmons still be the Demon today, if he stuck with the name Chaim Witz?  I don’t know, but it’s hard to imagine the 1960’s with Robert Zimmerman instead of Bob Dylan, right?  “Michael Balzary” is harder to say than “Flea”…and would Declan McManus had a shot at the charts if he didn’t change his name to Elvis Costello?

The ironic thing is, my grandfather changed his last name’s spelling in the early 1900’s to “Ladano” so that Canadians would be able to pronounce it easier.  I’m sure he would have been disappointed in my 2nd grade teacher who must have thought I was related to Lando Calrissian, since she pronounced it “LaLando”.

Sometimes my sister, also a musician, will be referred to simply as “Lando”, to which she would really like to respond, “You’ve got a lot of guts coming here…after what you pulled.”

She has stubbornly refused to change her name even after marriage.  In fact she has a song called “Ladano”.

Here are some more of the best variations of my last name that I have seen and heard:

  • “Ledano”
  • “Ladana” (in my dad’s first email address set up by Bell!)
  • “Ladno”
  • “Landon”
  • “Landano”
  • “Landono”
  • “Landoni”
  • “Laudon”
  • “Ladino”
  • “Ladeeno”
  • “Ladhani”
  • “Ladayno”

And finally, my favourite:

  • “Radono”

That last one was on an official cheque from a major bank!

My last name is traditionally supposed to be spelled Laudano.  I’ve traced my family back five generations to Amalfi, Italy in the mid-1800’s.  Our side of the family left Amalfi for Sicily, opening up a shop there in Porto Empedocle.  The Laudanos then left for America in the early 1900’s and changed the spelling on purpose after arrival.  I think my grandfather would be disappointed to see the many mutilations of our name, despite him simplifying it to Ladano!

There are many Laudanos still out there, some in Ontario, Canada and others in New Hampshire.  One thing we all have in common:  Whether it is spelled Ladano or Laudano, we’re all family and we call each other “Cousin”.  (Turns out the Laudanos are actually a musical family with an extensive history of musicians!) One recent “cousin” I have met is Luigi, who came here from Amalfi Italy, where the Laudanos also originated. He is a very popular server from the highly recommended local restaurant Borealis (“Think Global, Eat Local”). Luigi married into the Laudano family, so now we call ourselves “cousins”! Getting to know those Laudanos has been a lot of fun for us.

I wonder if my cousins have had their name as mangled as mine?!*

BASS 2

* In a strange twist, one of my former online handles used to get mangled, too.  “Geddy”.  I used to use the name “Geddy” on message boards about 20 years ago.  The majority of people misspelled it “Getty”.  I’m not kidding. 

#395: Dutch Boy

RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#395: Dutch Boy

As kids in the 1980s growing up in Kitchener, we would buy our music anywhere we could find it.  A lot of mine came from the mall: stores like Zellers and A&A Records.  Other places to find music included Hi-Way Market on Weber Street.  That store was incredible!  They had the largest toy section I’d ever seen, and every Christmas a professional Lego builder would put together a giant display.  None of these places exist anymore.

Another place that carried a small section of music was actually Dutch Boy Food Markets, just down the street from Hi-Way Market.  It too is long gone, but I have many memories.  It had a modest dedicated music area, but they also sold food, toys and clothing.  It was considered a supermarket but it had a little bit of everything.  My dad remembers buying many of my beloved G.I. Joe figures at that store.  He also says that we bought our Atari 2600 there.  That Atari still works today.  I think we got it in 1982.  My aunt actually used to work at a Dutch Boy location (not the same one) in Waterloo.

My friend Bob used to go there frequently.  I used to think it was because he was Dutch, but it probably had more to do with the fact that one of the Kitchener stores was within biking distance.

One afternoon in early ’88, we hopped on our bikes and hit Dutch Boy to check out the music section.  This “new” band called Whitesnake had been in our ears lately, but we only knew two albums:  Slide It In and Whitesnake/1987.  I didn’t even know they had any albums out before Slide It In at that point.  You can imagine our surprise when we found numerous other Whitesnake titles at Dutch Boy:  Snakebite, Trouble, Lovehunter, Come An’ Get It, Saints & Sinners, and Live…in the Heart of the City.  All reissued by Geffen, all on cassette.

WHITESNAKE FRONT

“Woah!” Bob exclaimed.  “Whitesnake!  Is this the same band?”

“No it can’t be.” I said.  “They’re only supposed to have two albums!”

Each of us grabbed a mitt full of Whitesnake cassettes and began examining them for more details.

This Whitesnake and our Whitesnake were both on Geffen.  This Whitesnake shared the same logo that was found on Slide It In.  It had to be the same band after all.  I explained this to Bob.

“This is the same Whitesnake,” I said.  “Look…they are using the same logo.”

“Yeah,” he replied, “but have you ever seen that guy before?”  He pointed to Mickey Moody on the cover of the live album.  He sure didn’t look like anybody I knew from Whitesnake, but it was impossible to ignore the evidence.

MOODY

“I think,” concluded Bob, “that Whitesnake are another band that had albums out before we heard of them.”  That happened from time to time.  We would discover a “new” band like White Lion or Europe, only to find that they had some little-known earlier albums.  It made it both frustrating and exciting to try and collect albums.

We both started collecting the earlier Whitesnake music.  Bob was first, picking up Saints & Sinners at Dutch Boy.  He brought the tape over one afternoon for me to copy. We loved the original version of “Here I Go Again”, as well as “Crying in the Rain”.  Later on, I added Snakebite and Come An’ Get It to my collection.  I enjoyed the earlier, more rock & roll sounds of these previously unknown Whitesnake tapes.

I’m not sure exactly when Dutch Boy closed, but I do remember the last album I bought there.  It was now spring 1990, and I had a CD player by then.  Once again Dutch Boy did not disappoint.  I found a Van Halen disc there that I had never seen before on any format other than vinyl.  The album was Fair Warning.   Since it was the most “rare” Van Halen I had found so far, I chose to buy it.  It came to about $24 with tax, a lot of money for an album that was barely half an hour long.  It should go without saying that Fair Warning was one of the best purchases that my young self ever made.

Too bad Dutch Boy had to shut its doors.  It was a good store and I hear a lot of fond memories of it from others.  Do you remember?

DUTCH BOY