WTF SEARCH TERMS Part I: “Exersises for the Plumber Butt”
Crack = Bad
As a WordPress site, I have access to certain statistics. I can see how many hits I’m getting per day, for example, and how many are unique visitors. Some of my visitors are very, very unique.
Some of the more interesting particulars that I’m able to see are search terms. Search terms that people typed into Google (or Yahoo, or whatever) that led them to me. Search terms that boggle the mind as to a) what they were looking for, b) how it led them to me, or c) both. Here’s a selection of some of the most entertaining. This is just the tip of the iceberg. If feedback is positive I’ll post more in the future.
Keep in mind two things!
1. Each of these are real search terms, typed in by real people on a search engine like Google.
2. Somehow, each of these search terms led them to ME!
In the early 2000’s I was very interested in growing a little bit of a classical music collection. Classical music can be had in reasonably priced but expansive box sets, but I wanted to be a little more discerning. There were some things I knew I wanted to get just based on reputation, such as Niccolò Paganini and Glenn Gould. I knew the CBC had a lot of classical programming so I used to tune into them driving home from work after the night shift.
The first time I did so was a turning point. I heard some music, but I didn’t have a clue what it was. It sounded dramatic and soundtrack-esque to me. I could picture a sprawling epic such as Spartacus unfolding in front of me. It wasn’t until I stopped at the red lights that the announcer came back on the air and told me that the piece I heard was “The Pines of Rome” composed by Ottorino Respighi. Respighi…Italian! My countryman!
I went into work the next morning, and checked the computer for anything by Respighi. Turns out, we had one in stock, a London Records recording of Pines of Rome. It was my first true classical purchase, not counting movie soundtracks. Working at a record store enabled me to cheaply expand into any genre of music I wished. I’m strongly in favour of trying new music, no matter what section of the store you find it in.
OTTORINO RESPIGHI – Pines of Rome / Fountains of Rome / The Birds (1969 Decca / London)
Reviewing classical music is tough for me because it’s way out of my zone of expertise. All I know is what I like and what sounds good to my ears. This old recording, conducted by István Kertész, fit the bill for me. “The Pines of Rome” is such an incredible piece. Apparently this is considered a “symphonic poem”. In other words, the classical music equivalent of a concept album! It has majestic moments that phase into romantic interludes; scenes, basically. By the end, it is a triumphant anthem worthy of the most awe-inspiring movie soundtrack. You can easily visualize the sun rising over the tall pines; apparently that was the composer’s intention. It works!
“The Birds” starts as jaunty piece, perfect for a fancy dinner or event! What I enjoy about music like this is that it enables me to travel back in time, in my mind. It is easy to place yourself at the hearth of a warm fire, almost 100 years ago. This piece’s different sections attempt to transcribe birdsong into a musical arrangement: doves, hens, nightingale, and the cuckoo. I can’t help it, I like the cuckoo best. It’s whimsical.
“Fountains of Rome” is another symphonic poem, this one beginning at daybreak. The second movement sounds like a summoning, as creatures begin to frolick. The piece paints a picture, allowing the listener to really just sink in.
RECORD STORE TALES Part 190: The Early Bird Drops the Discs
I hated the mornings. What I really hated were people banging on the door to get in before we opened. I don’t know why it bugged me so much. I guess I was just peeved that somebody wanted to cut into my last few moments of unpaid time.
I rarely let people in early. Usually I would go about my business, sometimes I’d let them know I’d be open in 10 minutes, or whatever. My journal records one instance when a fellow didn’t check to see if we were open yet.
Date: 2004/05/19
This one dude was outside the store at 15 minutes before open, trying to get in. The door was locked and when he tried to open it, his bag of CDs fell down to the ground and smashed. He was cursing up a storm out there!
SKID ROW – United World Rebellion Chapter One (2013)
I know Johnny Solinger’s been in the band longer than Sebastian was. I know the band probably hate Sebastian’s name even being brought up in a review such as this. I’ve been standing by the band through their last two albums (2003’s Thickskin and 2006’s Revolutions Per Minute). My interest waned quite a bit, on the long wait between releases by the band. This new EP (5 new songs) is failing to rouse me from my ambivalence. So I’ll just come out and say it: Guys, get Sebastian back. It’s time. If Eddie Van Halen can get up on stage again with David Lee Roth and grin that grin of his, then Rachel Bolan can get over Sebastian Bach.
The thing is, there’s nothing wrong with United World Rebellion. (Last album was a “revolution”, now they’re having a “rebellion”. What will the next album be? Defiance, disobedience, dissension, heresy, insubordination, insurgency?) It’s heavy like old Skid Row. It has squealing, howling solos like old Skid Row and riffs reminiscent of the classic stuff. Johnny’s throwing everything he’s got into his performance. It’s just…not memorable.
The most striking song is the first one, “Kings of Demolition”, which is really good. Only problem: It’s more than just a little similar to “Monkey Business” from Slave. “Monkey Business” is a great heavy song, but you’re not going to top it by re-writing it. It’s downhill from there. I must have played this EP eight or nine times now, and I still can’t remember how “Let’s Go”, “Get Up”, and “Stitches” go. They are all heavy, riffy…and non-descript. The only song that stands out is “This is Killing Me”, the token ballad (right smack in the middle of the EP), and it stands out only because it’s a ballad. You can hear the (intended?) similarity to a certain hit ballad by the Sebastian version of Skid Row…but without his soaring vocals. Once again, you can’t create a new memorable song if you’re repeating an old one.
Sorry guys. I’m usually in favour of bands carrying on with new members, because I’d rather have that than no band at all. Unfortunately, Skid Row needs Sebastian Bach as much as Sebastian Bach wants to be in Skid Row. Johnny can take a proud bow, because he’s no slouch and he did the best job possible. I wanna see it happen.
2/5 stars
EDIT: May 15 2013 – There is a European version coming with two bonus tracks, both covers. Bastards.
RECORD STORE TALES Part 183: Klassic Kwotes X – The Final Chapter
Finally the Klassic Kwotes well has run dry. Enjoy Part X, for now this feature will be put on ice. I have a new feature that I’ll be starting really soon. Until then, here’s the final 10 quotes from the Record Store days…
1. It boggled my mind that people would expect a cheap used CD of a good album to just sit there. So it always made me wonder what people were thinking when they’d say, “What do you mean that used copy of Dark Side of the Moon isn’t here anymore? It was here last week!”
2. “I really want a job. It doesn’t have to be at your store, I just want a job. Can you tell me how to get one?” Real phone call.
3. Dandy sometimes has his own stalker types. One day Dandy brought a tattoo magazine to work. His stalker kid saw it on the counter and proclaimed: “Nice! Who’s sick tatty book?”
4. Generic but frequent question: “Do you have any European trance techno jungle DJ mix discs?” Then, when you’d ask for a title or name to give you something to look up, they’d never know the name of a song or an artist.
5. “I just want one song on this CD. Can I just buy a blank CD, and you burn it for me?
6. “Do you have any of those complication albums?” Compilation albums.
9. “I have a CD to sell here. One slight problem, not a big deal. The front cover is for one CD, and the back cover is from a different CD. Oh, and the disc inside isn’t either of those. Can you take it?”
10. “Do you guys buy used CD cases? Like the plastic shells?” No! Nobody does! They just throw them out!
We first got email and internet at the record store in the late 90’s. One of the big fears back then was the dreaded computer virus, but of course we also had to deal with internet abuse. I remember coming in to work one day to find our computer’s MSN Messenger still active from the night shift; Spoogecakes left herself logged in. Myself, I was never that fussed about MSN, I was more an email guy. I got busted emailing a few times, I had verbal warnings, but I never did anything like leaving myself logged into MSN!
The powers that be were concerned about time wasted on the internet, and the viruses. This put into effect a strict internet policy. Part of that was blocking nearly every useful site on the internet. There were only a handful of sites available to us. There was a secret password override, which made the rounds once leaked. The guy who figured out the password decided to share it on his very last shift. His name shall go down in hallowed halls, somewhere, someday.
Some of the sites that we were allowed to access included Canoe, so we could print out the charts, and Allmusic so we could do album lookups. Allmusic was next to useless, being so slow and inaccurate. I preferred Google. The beauty of Google was that you didn’t have to use it to actually go to another (potentially shady) site, you could use it just to answer a simple question. For example:
So there’s your answer, without even having to click on one of those shady lyric sites.
Now, I showed my bosses how to use Google to answer the toughest customer questions. Often, a customer would come in and say, “I’m looking for a song, but I only know a few words. Can you help?” This was long before you could hold up your iPhone and use an app to do it for you. You had to ask the folks on the radio, or at the record store.
Google was the easiest most accurate way to answer these questions. So, here’s a question you might get: “I’m looking for a song by somebody that goes, ‘in the midnight hour, I want more more more'”.
Plug it into Google like so, and you get your answer.
Again, you don’t even have to click on the shady lyric sites. Then once you know the artist (Billy Idol) you could just run over to the shelves and see if you had that song. If you didn’t, Allmusic could tell you which album you want, now that you knew the name of the song and artist.
I showed them this trick, but they would not budge on the block policy. They insisted that Google be blocked. They thought you could use Google to visit a blocked site. Just clicking the link, they thought, would bypass the block. They thought the block only applied to the address bar.
I explained this but the answer remained “No.” Google was to remain blocked, purely because they didn’t understand how Internet Explorer worked. Essentially, we were blocked from a simple tool to answer common questions. At least many of us secretly had the override password, but before that leaked, we couldn’t access a search site like Google. I had a customer say to me, “Can’t you check the internet? The guy at HMV can.” And no, technically I couldn’t. Allmusic didn’t have a feature to look up song lyrics, and its search engine was pretty shitty as it was.
With today’s technology you can do this easily with a cell phone, that was unimaginable to us 10 years ago. Regardless of the policy, I used the password to use Google and answer questions. And I checked my email, too!
So here we are, the tail end of 2012. While I’m sure you’re just starting to get your drink on, we here at LeBrain’s Blog are tirelessly bringing you the rock even into the wee final hours. This is the time, traditionally, when we look at the past year!
We used to do Top Five of the Year lists at the record store, when we used to have our newsletter. Unfortunately I don’t have copies of any of those newsletters, not a one, which is a real shame since I poured my heart and soul into them as much as anybody else at the store. It would have been fun to look back 15 years and see what my top five of 1997 was. I do know for certain two albums that were on it: Accident of Birth by Bruce Dickinson, and The Colour and the Shape by Foo Fighters! The rest have been lost to the dusts of time.
Hey, if any of you guys are still speaking to me and have copies of the newsletter, lemme know eh? ;)
Back to the present for a moment:
What can I say about 2012? Before I even thought about doing my own blog, events were in motion that pushed me in that direction. My good buddy Craig Fee invited me down to 107.5 Dave FM for an entire week — Stump LeBrain Week! I spent a week on the air, with listeners trying to stump me. There were even a couple LeBrain Weeks and an entire month of LeBrainuary, where every single day’s 4 O’clock 4 Play quizzes were mined from my own brain’s knowledge. It was a blast, and left me hungry for more.
I’d always been writing Record Store Tales. The oldest ones were at least a decade old on my hard drive, but I had no idea what to do with them. I’d also been writing reviews — well over 800 of them on file before I launched — that very few people had seen. Craig said to me, “LeBrain, you need to get blogging this stuff. Write something every day. If you build it, they will come.”
So that’s what I did, and I thank you for reading.
Back to the Record Store Tales:
I published Part 1 on March 9 2012, the beginning of the story, called Run to the Hills. It was about the very first time I heard Iron Maiden, a date I’ll never forget. And thus LeBrain’s Blog and Record Store Tales were launched.
Some highlights from the early months that you may have missed if you’re fairly new here:
You know this was gonna happen. Aside from the fact that I’m the biggest Kiss fan around, it’s a fucking great record. Read LeBrain’s review of Monster here.
Runner up: Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson – TAAB2 Thick As A Brick 2.
The art of buying and selling used music mainly hinges on two factors: condition, and re-sell value.
Condition can be subjective. Is it slightly scratched? Heavily scratched? Do those minor marks from wiping the CD count as scratches? Our upper management tried to give us consistent guidelines to follow on condition. The customers didn’t always agree, but we tried to be consistent – not an easy task when you have dozens of buyers!
Value, on the other hand, could get very subjective. For example, let’s say the year is 1996. You went out and bought yourself a brand-spankin’ new copy of Live Through This, by Hole. You paid $23.99 for it at your local store. You played it a couple of times and didn’t like it, and they won’t take it back without the receipt. So, you come to see me with a mint condition copy, only played twice. You’re hoping for good money. You paid $23.99, maybe you’d like to cut your losses and get $10 back?
Well, it never worked that way. We’d never pay that much for a single regularly priced CD for many reasons:
If you paid $23.99 for Live Through This by Hole, you still paid way too much, even in 1996. You could have got it cheaper elsewhere.
We have to make a profit on it too. Whatever we pay, we’d generally have to double it to make a profit, after the overhead of running a store are considered.
What if we already had a couple copies, that have been sitting here for a month or two? Do I really need a third to sit there?
These are all factors that came into play.
The next thing the customer would often say was this:
“I’m not looking for my money back, just another CD. Can I just trade this to you, one for one?”
Well, again, no. There’s no profit in that either. I’m just swapping your disc for my disc and not making a dime on the transaction. Essentially, I’d be doing you a favour and that’s all. And chances are, you’d want to trade it for something better than Live Through This!
One time, while having this very same discussion, I explained to a customer why I couldn’t pay him $10 for his CD. “Because that’s what we sell it for, I wouldn’t be making any money on it.” He shrugged and said, “That’s your problem, not mine.” No, it’s your problem, since I won’t be paying you $10 for your disc.
Another reason that people expected more money for a disc was rarity. If something was considered rare, yes, we would generally pay more. But who decides if something is rare?
I remember a guy holding up a copy of Big Game by White Lion, saying, “This CD is worth over $50!” Well, maybe somebody was asking $50 for it somewhere, and maybe somebody was willing to pay that. So yes, to those two people, it’s worth $50. But if you look, you could definitely find it for under $10, guaranteed. Even in 1996. All you had to do is hunt a little. I did, and I got my copy for under $8. It’s a title that was not in demand.
Some things that WERE considered rare:
The Traveling Wilburys – Volume I. We asked $50 for that one. It was out of print for many years. Out of print Bob Dylan is worth a lot more than out of print White Lion!
Metallica – Garage Days Re-Revisited. Also out of print. We asked $50 for that one too, until it was reissued as a part of Garage Inc. Reissues would usually kill the value of an our of print disc.
Some things that were NOT considered rare:
A lot of old soundtracks. Soundtracks were a tricky thing. You might be the only person in town that gives a crap about the Operation Dumbo Drop soundtrack for example. Maybe it’s out of print, and maybe you collect soundtracks, but maybe I already have a copy priced at $5 that has been sitting there half a decade!
We tried to be as fair as possible, but it’s not always easy to see when I’m giving you $4 for a CD that you paid $24 for. You can’t please all the people all the time. Still, it was better than a garage sale!
The much anticipated new Foo Fighters album was a big deal to us fans — for the first time, a five-man lineup, three guitar players, and the return of Pat Smear. In other words this album has the same lineup as the glorious Colour and the Shape era of the band, plus Chris Shifflet. Add on expert production by Butch Vig, mixing by Alan Moulder. It sounds glorious! What it lacks in the diversity from the previous two albums, it makes up with the sheer youthful energy from the first two.
Wasting Light hits you right away with the one-two punch of “Bridge Burning” and “Rope”, fast jagged hard rock songs with riffs and Grohl screams. Not totally immediate, but they set the stage for some of the best tunage the Foos have ever laid to wax.
The dark and powerful “Dear Rosemary” is the first bonafide classic on this album, and you can definitely hear the benefit of the three guitars as rhythm & catchy licks merge into one moving whole. “Dear Rosemary”, features Bob Mould (Husker Du) sharing lead vocal duties. What an incredible song. It was a bit of genius inspiration, working with Mould on it. The result is an instant classic, one of the best Foo tunes in the canon. (A Foo-Du tune?)
“White Limo” starts with a brutally heavy metal riff, something that harkens back to Voivod, with Grohl doing his best distorted metal screams overtop. This is primo thrash metal, a total surprise for me. I always knew Grohl was a metalhead, but I didn’t expect anything this overtly metal to appear on a Foo Fighters album. But it’s a welcome change, and my current favourite song for pure adrenaline pumping energy.
“Arlandria” starts slower, but builds to a melodic, dramatic chorus with crashing chords and cymbals. By this time the album has begun to take shape: It has melody but the foundation is the guitar riffage. “These Days” is a total change of pace, a much softer song, but still propelled forward by the beats of Taylor Hawkins, and of course the guitars still crash come chorus time.
“Back and Forth” has a pretty crummy snare drum sound, but Nate Mendel’s bass rings clear and true underneath. It takes a while to get going, but the chorus is still solid. “A Matter of Time” is the weakest song so far, an awkward, jagged non-standout rocker.
“Miss the Misery” is a return to form, starting with a brief “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” drone before settling into an i irresistible set of melodies, punctuated by catchy guitar licks buzzing in and out of the mix. Again, you can hear where three guitar players is coming in handy, as there is a lot going on here guitar-wise. Fee Waybill on guest vocals! Next, Nirvana fans will be excited by an appearance by Krist Novoselic on “I Should Have Known”. Including Pat Smear, this is a reunion of the three surviving members of the final Nirvana lineup, a little mini-historic event in the annals of rock. It is a slow mournful song, with Grohl’s voice back in the mix, singing “I cannot forgive you yet”. It is a beautiful song, and a welcome change of pace. Novoselic’s bass, when it kicks in about halfway, just rumbles. It ends as dramatically as anything else on the album.
The standard edition of the album closes with a song called “Walk”. This is a brighter song, guitars chiming and ringing, and exactly the way an album like this needs to end. But suddenly the pace picks up, and the guitars cascade like the greatest Foo songs of old. This one reminds me, for a number of reasons including riffs, melody and pacing, of “New Way Home”, the awesome closer from Colour and the Shape.
The Foos have created another fine album, not an easy thing to do when you have albums like Colour and the Shape and In Your Honor under your collective belts. They certainly have lost nothing to age, and they have not exhausted their energies. I also think that, after two very diverse albums, it was exactly the right move to return to a predominantly rock direction for this album. It re-grounds the bands back to their roots.
It’s not over yet though, as the iTunes and Japanese editions of the album have bonus tracks. iTunes have an absolutely useless remix of “Rope” by Deadmau5. I guess people who like this kind of music will appreciate it, but it has no place on an album like this. It is monotonous and boring, a waste of five minutes of my time. Much more appropriate is another song called “Better Off”. “Better Off” is almost Beatles-y in melody, but with heavy layered guitars pummeling your ears. I love the lyrics as well — “You know you’re better off, you bastard!”
Wasting Light has been a great and pleasant surprise to me. I wasn’t sure what direction the Foo Fighters were going to take with this record, but I’m pleased that they took a step back to guitar-based basics, yet still retained all the lessons they learned about melody, songwriting and arranging.
BONUS! Just to do something special and unique, and to make a point about recording this album straight to analog tape (no computers!), Dave Grohl has sliced up his original master tape for Wasting Light, and included a piece inside the first run of the CD. Cool, man. Worth hunting down a first pressing for, if you care about such things!
mikeladano.com 