nostalgia

#1211: Public Speaking

RECORD STORE TALES #1211: Public Speaking

The year:  1980.

I stood there in the gymnasium, in front of the whole school, holding my two cue cards in my hands.  I had the whole speech memorized.  This would be the second full performance.  I was already chosen as the best speech from my class, so now I had to say it in front of the school:   “My Trip to Alberta”, written by Mike Ladano with a little help from his mom.  It was the story of our summer 1979 trip to the mountains.  The exciting climax to the story was the moment that I fell into the Athabasca glacier.  It was August and I was excited to make a snowball.  ‘Twas the adults who gave me this idea.  “You’ll be able to make a snowball in the summer!”  So I ran towards the snow, and fell into a cold icy stream of water.  I was soaked and it kind of ruined the day for me, but on the other hand, it made for a great speech.  I did a great performance of it, certainly better than most of the other kids.

I came in second, because the teachers thought I probably received too much help from my parents.  I didn’t.  My mom provided the neat and tidy printing on the tiny cue cards, but the words were mine.  It made me bitter and I didn’t put that kind of effort into writing a speech in later years.

Public speaking topic in Grade 5:  Pac-Man

Public speaking topic in Grade 8:  Kiss

Public speaking topic in Grade 9:  Iron Maiden

The Kiss one…oh the Kiss one.  It was good.  I started it by shouting, “You wanted the best, you got the best!  The hottest band in the land, KISS!”  I know I was pissing off the Catholic school teachers every time I mentioned the album Hotter Then Hell.  I can’t say this wasn’t intentional.  I no longer wanted to participate in the big speech-off in the gymnasium.  No matter how great my Kiss speech was, there was no way I’d ever be chosen, so it was the perfect topic.

I have a love/hate relationship with public speaking.  I’ve always been good at it, but the creation of the speech and the anxiety leading up to it lead me to procrastination.  I had to do several more big ones through school.  In my grade 13 year, I had three class-long presentations to do, all within the space of a week.  I had another speech to do in my first year of Sociology at university.  I don’t remember a lot of specifics except that they went over well.  I try to be expressive and speak naturally.

There’s a line that kids always said back in school.  “When am I going to need to use this in my real life?”  Remember in Superbad, when Jonah Hill was talking about making tiramisu in Home Economics class? “When am I going to make tiramisu? Am I going to be a chef? No!”  I haven’t needed public speaking in my professional life, but in my personal life, the experience sure did come in handy.

I’ve spoken at two weddings, and now three funerals.  These things are necessary.

The year:  2025.

I did a eulogy at my grandmother’s funeral recently.  I spent a few weeks working on the speech and polishing it, but not rehearsing it.  I didn’t want that emotional experience, of reciting the speech.  I wanted the first real reading to be live at the funeral.  I was nervous as hell.  I had this idea in my head that I would know everyone in the room.  That was not the case.  My mom has a large family, and so many people came that I kind of recognized but could not remember well.  I became more and more nervous.  I had two panic attacks that day.

The priest, Father Phil, took us aside and told us the order in which the funeral would proceed.  I was last, but I knew my cue.  Fortunately, Father Phil was great (this is not always the case at a funeral).  During the service, he told us of a Bible passage that said “God’s house has many rooms,” and there is a special room prepared for everyone.  He asked what room my grandmother would choose to go to?  There was a long pregnant pause and so I said “the gardens!”  Father Phil said “Great; she would love the flowers in the gardens”.  Suddenly something clicked in my head.  I unrolled my speech, which by now had become a tight scroll.  I found two spots in the speech where I could tie into Father Phil’s gardens.

My moment came.  I started rough.  Starting is always the hardest part (unless you start with “You wanted the best grandma, you got the best grandma!” but I chose not to Kiss-ify my speech).  It took three or four sentences to find my voice and my rhythm, and I was off to the races.  I was brisk and expressive.  I started making gestures with my hands to emphasise words.  I was loose and improvised here and there.  Then came the two moments I was preparing for.

“It was always fun to visit Grandma’s house.  My dad and I would pick carrots from her garden – remember what I said earlier about the gardens?  She had the best carrots, and we took them all, much to her scolding!  [Improvised portion in italics.]

Then the second instance.  Speaking about driving her to the lake, and placing my hands in the steering wheel position, I said, “she would point out all the flowers along the way – remember what I said earlier about the gardens? – which I couldn’t stop to look at because I was driving!”

People laughed in all the right spots.

I sat down, and my dad clapped once, and shook my hand.  My mom and my aunt said “Great speech”.

The funeral ended.  My knees were limp and my hands were numb.  I sat, exhausted, and drank some lemonade (with gingerale, a delightful mixture), and just tried to unpack and unwind from what had just happened.

I was approached by friends.

“Great speech!” they said.

I was approached by distant relatives.

“Great speech!” they said.

I was approached by old friends of my parents.

“Great speech!” they said.  Even Father Phil said it.

I started to think to myself, I think I just gave the best speech of my life.  A moment that can never be re-captured.  It was live, it happened, it existed for a fleeting moment and now it is just a memory.

“I wish I had recorded myself,” I lamented.

“No, it was great, we will always remember it,” said everyone else.

But if I had recorded it…would it have been the same?  Would I have been distracted by the recording device?  Would I have been able to perform it exactly the same, if I knew it was going down on tape?  Would the added pressure have hurt the performance?  These are quantum questions we can never answer.  Sometimes the mere observation of an act can change the act, in physics and in life.  (Maybe there’s no difference between physics and life.)

One of the warmest moments came when an older gentleman walked up to me, rubbed my shoulders, and told me that the speech made him feel like he got to know my grandmother.  I was so overwhelmed with faces and names, that I have no idea who he was anymore.

One guest even told me he watched me on YouTube.  That was pretty cool.  He liked the speech, too.

The most important comment came from my mom, who said that my grandmother would have loved the stories I chose to tell in my speech.  Of course, that is the most important thing.  I have told a lot of stories about my grandmother over the last eight months.  Some of them were hilarious, but she wouldn’t have liked them.  For example, the time she gave me some money and told me to “go and buy one of your CD records.”  That’s funny, but she wouldn’t have wanted any stories that made fun of her, so I left all of that out.  If I had kept them in, the speech would have been more like a stand-up comedy routine!  And that would be fine for another time.

I think this speech was the best public speaking I’ve done to date, and I think it’s my proudest moment in my life.  And it all started in 1980, in a glacier in British Columbia.  If I hadn’t fallen in, maybe I would never have been able to do a speech like that for my grandma.  The universe is a multitude of possibilities.  Maybe I was meant to fall in, just as Gollum was meant to find the One Ring?  In this reality in which we all co-exist, I’m just trying to make it through day by day.  However it came to be, I did something that somebody had to do, and my grandmother is now smiling down on me.  I can hear her voice.  She would say, “That was lovely, Michael.  Just lovely.”

That’s more than enough.  However it came to be, the culmination of all these experiences coalesced into a moment that was there, and gone.  I’m just glad I was the conduit.  And it was a heck of a lot better than the 1983 Pac-Man speech!

To read the written version of the speech, click here.

#1180: Games Without Frontiers

RECORD STORE TALES #1180: Games Without Frontiers

One glorious March break in the early 80s, Bob Schipper and I invented a game.  We were just kids, 10 and 12 years old.  We invented lots of games over the years, but this one was one of the most bizarre to outside observers.  If my mom happened to look out the window, she would have seen two kids running, jumping, leaping, dodging, climbing, tip-toeing and diving through the yard, seemingly around invisible objects and opponents.  I  can’t remember what this game was called (perhaps “The Maze”), but I do remember this:  we had fun.  We played it almost every day of that March break.

It started with Bob and I at the backyard picnic table, at which we brainstormed many an idea.  It was made of wood, painted brown, and starting to wear with use.  The picnic table only had a few years left, but it was like home base.  Across the picnic table were scattered sheets of paper.  On those sheets of paper were drawn detailed maps, all from our imagination.  On these maps, we depicted obstacles and enemies.  Starting at point A, one would navigate the map and its obstacles until reaching the exit, and escape.  Quicksand, poison darts, pits, fire, and water would have to be passed, each in turn, like levels of elaborate video games.  Only there were no video games, only Bob and I.  The back yard was our obstacle course, and our imaginations created the obstacles.

Once our maps had been drawn and agreed upon, we began our quest to escape…wherever it was we were pretending to be.

We climbed on top of the picnic table.

“Ready?” asked Bob.

“Ready!” I exclaimed.

“OK.  JUMP!”  We leaped off the picnic table with exaggerated movement and pretended to fall a great distance.

“You OK?” Bob asked as we got up.

“A-OK!” I confirmed.

“OK, according to the map, our next obstacle is a wall of fire dead ahead.  Let’s go!”  Off we ran until we reached whatever hedge or bush was to be our wall of fire.

“How do we get through this thing?” I asked in mock desperation.

“Well,” pondered Bob, “I think the only way through is to run!  Run as fast as we can.  Ready?”

“Ready!” I exclaimed once more.  With a start, Bob was off at a run in his track pants and jacket.  He leapt through whatever trees or bush we pretended to be our fire.  I followed suit once he was through.

On and on we went, for hours, or what seemed like hours.  We had storylines.  We made use of everything in the front and back yards, as well as garage, as we could.   And it was our own private game.  We didn’t want anyone else playing along with us.  We had ideas for future games in the coming days, and we didn’t need outside ideas or players.  It would ruin the good time we were having.  This we knew from experience.  We often made up our own games, and upon bringing in more people, found that they changed it, either by design or accident.  Bob and I were in sync, but the other kids were not.

“We can’t let George find out what we’re doing or he’ll want to join in,” I warned Bob, referring to the annoying next door neighbor.  “He can easily see us if he goes out the side door.”  Bob agreed, and so we planned a cover story if he inquired what were were up to.  It probably involved practising for track and field, and the words “fuck off”.

And so, for four days that March break, Bob and I navigated the most challenging imaginary obstacle course that nobody had ever seen.  We thought it would make a great idea for a movie or video game, if our amazing ideas could ever be properly captured.

They never were, and so we just have this story to remember it by.

#1175: Tie Dye

By request of Dan Chatrand from Off the Charts

RECORD STORE TALES #1175: Tie Dye

Bob Schipper was the instigator.  He was always the one with the creative ideas.  From making our own spiked wristbands from juice tins and black electrical tape, to sketching our own original video games, he was usually the one with the kernel for the idea.  I provided the energy, and was able to spin his ideas off and expand them into entire universes.  On this day in question though, Bob had the idea that we could make our own tie dye T-shirts.

I don’t know where he got the idea.  Probably someone from school.  There was one hippy kid in his grade that I would later work with at the grocery store.  Massive Grateful Dead fan.  The idea probably came from him.

In our world, tie dye wasn’t big.  Metal bands rarely wore the stuff, and we didn’t go back to Zeppelin.  Our horizons were much more recent.  In my world, wrestlers like Superstar Billy Graham were my inspiration.  He was known for his tie dye, and he looked incredibly cool.

We were not able to make tie dye as fancy as Superstar’s.  We were only able to mix a couple colours.  Our methods were simple.  We went to the local Zeller’s store, bought a few colours of fabric dye, and four of the cheapest, plain white T-shirts we could find.  Then, we would walk home and set up in my mom’s basement.  With no regard for other people’s clothes or the mess we were making, we dumped the dye into the big basement sink, and mixed it up. Then, we carefully twisted the shirts up, trying to create a spiral effect.  Once satisfied, we fastened everything with elastic bands, and dipped the shirts spiral-side down into the dye.  We repeated the process with another colour, and let everything dry.  Of our shirt experiments, maybe one out of every two attempts turned out.

The dye started to wash out after two washes.  The shirts wore thin and ripped easily.  One evening, Bob and I were wrestling in the park, when he grabbed and lifted me, and my favourite tie dye shirt ripped.  I had no choice but to finish the job.  “Rip it off like Hogan!” encouraged Bob.  With a roar, and a lot of effort, I ripped the shirt off my body and threw it to the ground.  “Raaaah!!”

Meanwhile at home, Mom was trying to get splashes of dye off of every surface in the basement.  She was absolutely furious with us.  No wonder Bob wasn’t allowed to do stuff like this at his house!

 

#1115: The Winds of Change

RECORD STORE TALES #1115: The Winds of Change

My time in music retail was relatively long, considering how taxing on the soul it can be buying used music from the public on the wrong side of town.  I started in July of 1994, in a small store in a small mall in Kitchener, Ontario, called The Beat Goes On.  We sold some used, some new.  In 1996, I began managing a new store that was a slightly different format:  95% used, with a small Top 40 chart of new CDs.  I stayed there until early 2006.  12 years total, with 10 in management.  Over those 12 years, I witnessed so many changes to the way we did business.  Join me for a journey through time.

Ah, 1994.  I had just start dating a new girlfriend.  Motley Crue had come out with their John Corabi album, which was easily my favourite disc of the year.  I wore cowboy boots to my job interview with the boss man at the Record Store.  I was hired and nervously stepped behind the counter and did my first transactions.

We had a huge cash register, and still took cheques.  Credit cards were processed with one of those imprint machines that made the satisfying CHK-CHK sound when you imprinted the card.  Then began a long process of writing in dollar amounts and getting a signature.  Today, one tap and you’re done!  When we got a debit machine, it used the same phone line as the actual store phone.  When someone called the store, it would interrupt your debit transaction if you had one going.  You usually ended up with two impatient customers that way:  one on the phone and one in front of you!

Our stock was part CD and part cassette, but tapes were on their way out and we only bought and sold used CDs.  The reasoning was it was easier to check a CD for quality visually, looking for scratches.  We carried only those two formats, until one day in November 1994.  Pearl Jam came out with Vitalogy in 1994 on vinyl, two weeks before its cassette and CD releases.  The first vinyl I ever sold.  We only stocked five copies because nobody was buying vinyl back then.  We probably should have stocked 15 or 20, because we were surprised with demand.  People who didn’t even own a turntable wanted it for its collector’s value and larger artwork.

Boyz II Men were big.  TLC were bigger.  Soundgarden and Nirvana were dominating the rock charts.  My kind of music wasn’t popular and wasn’t encouraged to be played  in store.

Tastes changed rather quickly for some of these bands.  Boyz II Men made their way into the bargain.  Thence came Puff Daddy, Mase, and of course the posthumous albums by 2pac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G.  On the rock side, upstarts like Korn, Limp Bizkit, Creed and eventually Nickleback replaced Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains on our charts.  And then came Crazy Town, and by then, it felt like there was no coming back.  Rock was a cartoon.  A “fuck”-laden filthy cartoon.

The job behind the counter became easier.  By 1996, our inventory was computerized.  Cassettes were gone; it was 100% CD.  You could look everything up with a simple search.  Before, I had to physically search the shelves to see if we had inventory.  Of course, we soon learned that just because something pops up on the computer as in-stock, that actually means nothing.  Human error was a huge problem and I was as guilty as everyone else, if not more so!  Putting the wrong disc in a CD case upon sale was so easy to do.  Not every customer realized they bought something with the wrong CD inside, and we didn’t always get them returned.  We ended up with many missing or mis-matched CDs, and also missing cases due to mis-filing or theft.

Soon customers wanted to look things up on computer terminals by themselves.  They also wanted to see what our other stores had in stock, as the we franchised out and grew.  These complicated problems were eventually solved with a little thing called the World Wide Web.

Having internet access at the store in the year 1999 was unimaginable to me of 1994, who had never even been on the internet yet.

Of course, the advent of the internet brought with it an unforeseen danger.  Soon our very existence would be threatened.  No, I’m not talking about computer viruses or Y2k.  Those had little impact at all.  Something else did:  Napster.

Napster changed everything.  Soon we were carrying so much more than just music, to make up for the decline in sales.  Bobble heads, action figures, books, video games, headphones, and so so so so many CD wallets.  Sometimes the toys and action figures wouldn’t have anything to do with music, like the Muppets or the Simpsons.  (Those were carried because a certain regional manager personally liked those shows.)  Osbournes merch was popular.  Kiss had many different toy options available.  Metallica had a cool stage playset.  Macfarlane figures either sold out, or sat around forever.  We stopped carrying blank tapes, but had a variety of CD-Rs available instead.

I recall the boss resisted carrying CD-Rs for a while, because he thought it was counterproductive to our business of selling music on CD.  However eventually it became a case of a dam giving way to a flood.  It was “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” and blank CDs were now being sold by brick or spindle.  Remember bricks and spindles full of blank CDs?

We also sold CD cleaning kits and tended to stay away from snake-oil CD fixing “solutions”.   Instead, we had a couple of guys who fixed CDs with a grinder and wax in their garage.  Eventually we began fixing the discs ourselves using the same method, but actually improving upon the solution by using soap instead of wax.  I’m not sure how the original guys took that, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t pretty at all.

Competition was always fierce.  We had an HMV store at the mall across the street from the store I managed.  We had a Cash Converters pawn shop buying and selling CDs and video games in the same plaza as us.  A few years later, a Best Buy opened next door, and their prices were often lower.  DVDs began to take up a huge share of our sales, and we now had to make room.  Additional shelving was installed.  Then we ran out of space again.  New formats like SACD and DVD-A started to infiltrate our inventory.  Things became really, really complicated compared to the store I managed in 1996.

There are a million stories.  I remember one guy buying an SACD, and coming back wanting to know why the “Super Audio” light wasn’t lighting up on his player.  How the fuck should I know?  I’d never even seen an SACD player at that point.  The guy actually wanted me to write a letter to Sony and ask them on his behalf.  Yeah, I’ll get right on that sir, after I serve you some fresh Grey Poupon on a charcuterie board.

Technology, transactions and inventory may have changed shape, but one thing never did:  the customers.

When we first opened, we had a single disc CD player and tape deck to play music in store.  There was a TV for MuchMusic, but it was usually on silent while we played CDs in store.  If a customer wanted to hear a CD, we had to open it for them and play it on the store speakers.  They’d signal me when to change tracks.  In 1996, we have six five-disc changers, each with a dedicated set of headphones, for customers to list.  We had another five-disc changer for store play, and eventually one for an outdoor speaker we had.  The six customer listening stations took a dedicated person to serve on weekends.  We had to retrieve the CDs from behind the counters and load them into the players.  We often had to assist the customer in the operation of the machines.  And they broke down, frequently.  Some days towards the end we only had two working stations at a time.

Our first store was in a mall with a licensed restaurant.  We had a few drunks.  The other stores I worked at were in strip plazas.  We had a few stoners, potheads, crackheads and gang-bangers.

Ahh, the good old days when it was just drunks!

One thing we never delved into in my time was selling CD players.  We didn’t want to dip our toes into that kind of thing.  Today, they sell turntables at my old store.  We also, strangely, never sold batteries which people frequently asked for.  I guess margins were so low it wasn’t worth it.  I never lasted long enough to see the vinyl revival happen.  We only sold a few things on vinyl in time.  The aforementioned Pearl Jam was one.  Soundgarden (Down on the Upside) was another.

The change that impacted me most had nothing to do with formats, or technology.  It didn’t matter that I now had two shelves full of Sega and Nintendo games.  The biggest change was in heirarchy behind the scenes.  I started as a part timer with one boss.  I was promoted to manager, with one boss, and several peers at other stores.  Then, suddenly, I had two bosses.  Then there were three, and the worst thing about the third is that we were all told “they’re not your boss, they’re here to help.”  That was false.  Three bosses, and there was now an in-house accountant and other periphery people that seemed to get yelled at less than I did.  I’m sure it’s clear from this story that the winds of change did not bring me happiness.  Instead they chipped away at the job I started with, and diluted the “music store” I managed into a music/movie/game/knick-knack store.  I was attending manager meetings in big hotel board rooms.  There were marketing people and franchisees, and nobody ever seemed truly happy on the inside.  110% was demanded of us, but we had no reason to be invested in what boiled down to a bad retail job that caused a lot of stress.

Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change, and there was one change I was happy to witness:  In the late 90s, Black Sabbath reunited.  It was a happy return, though they had their trailer hitched to a nu-metal Ozzfest which wasn’t my cup of tea.  Music began to shift until one day in 1999, something truly remarkable happened.  We didn’t know how long it would last, or what the new music would sound like, but Iron Maiden reunited with Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith.  Judas Priest were a few years behind them, getting Rob Halford back in the band.  Suddenly, classic metal was back in a big way.  Bigger than ever.  It was not waned since.  I was happy that I got to see this process begin at the end of my days at the Store.

My boss used to say that I resisted change.  I don’t agree.  No sir.  I embraced the good stuff.  The computers, the internet, the website, fixing CDs, the abandonment of certain formats (cassettes and VHS) when they were fading away.  The things I struggled with included the diluting of the store with all these other products like video games.  I started there because I loved music.  Fortunately I also loved movies, so when DVDs began to take over a large section of the store, I was cool with that too.  When Grand Theft Auto was upon us, I had no passion.  Then came the addition of more upper management, and increased demands on our personal time and investment in the Record Store life.  Monthly manager meetings dragged on for hours.  We’d leave scratching our heads why this wasn’t just covered in emails.  We had zero autonomy and little say in what we did.  I remembered a time when I loved my job.  There was no love there anymore.

The happy ending is this.  When I quit that job, I rediscovered my passion for music.  Music was fun for me again, not just something playing in the background as I worked.

Music is joy once more.

 

#1106: “The Entire Population of the World Can Fit in the State of Kansas”

A sequel to #893: Damien Lucifer, and #1104: …Parental Guidance…

RECORD STORE TALES #1106:  “The Entire Population of the World Can Fit in the State of Kansas”

Not all of us have been this lucky.  I had a fortunate and free childhood.  I was allowed to listen to whatever I wanted to:  AC/DC (oh no, “Anti-Christ/Devil Child!”), Kiss (“Knights in Satan’s Service!”), Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest…all the bands that the TV shows said were bad influences on kids.  They would lead us to drink, drugs, violence, and worst of all…Satan.

I went to a Catholic grade school where wearing a Judas Priest shirt to class earned scornful glares and harsh words.  I also had several friends in highschool from other religions with strict views on dress, music, movies, and TV.  I knew how good I had it at home.  I never had to hide my Guns N’ Roses tapes from my mom.  I didn’t have to crop my hair short like a couple of the highschool kids.  There was a family though…oh, there was a family across the street.  And this is a story about those strange characters that I loathed, then and now.

Now, keep this in mind:  I have no issues with faith.  I do have issues with dogma and assorted silliness.  So if you’re offended, I am sorry.  I’m cool with Jesus but not so much with strict, outdated thinking.

With that in mind, let’s push play on Ghost’s Opus Eponymous CD and dive on in.

Let’s call these people the Davids.  Mr. and Mrs. David, and their two kids, Boy and Girl.

Mr. David was a teacher.  I have rarely encountered such a dumb educated person in my life.  Maybe dumb isn’t the right word.  Airheaded?  Scatterbrained?  Moony?  Oblivious?  I once saw him pull out of his driveway, realize that he forgot something, stop his car in the middle of the road, run in to get whatever he forget, and get back in his car.  He used to park on our side of the road because he liked our shade tree, but he would park his car backwards against traffic, which drove me nuts to no end.  I would purposely park as close to his bumper as I could get without pissing off my own parents.

They had embargoed all kinds of fun stuff in their house.  One day we were out tobogganing.  Mrs. David was driving a car full of kids.  I was talking about how much I loved Doctor Who, in particular the villainous Daleks.  They may have looked like little pepper pots with a plunger sticking out, but their cries of “EXTERMINATE!” rattled the bones of every kid.  They were awesome!  Mrs. David simply said, “We are not allowed to watch the Daleks in our house.”  Ouch!  Talk about a buzz killer.  What the hell did she have a problem with?  Intelligent science fiction with badass villains, I guess.

In 1984 they all went to go see Bruce Springsteen. His music was allowed.  Helix was not.  I can remember Boy David coming over and watching the Pepsi Power Hour with Bob and I on television.  He was absolutely terrified from the “Rock You” music video.  I seem to remember him bailing and running home when it came on.

‘Twas Mrs. David who spied my MAD magazine and was so offended by the cover story about “Damien Lucifer“, lead singer of “Antichrist”.  She reported the offending magazine to my mother, who asked me about it.  I laughed and took great joy in telling my mom that Mrs. David thought a MAD Magazine was real.  Mrs. David was a child psychologist.  She fell for an obvious parody.  Directly below the Damien Lucifer picture was a contest, with the prize being getting trampled at a Motley Crue concert.  There was a “six page fold-out” of Gene Simmons’ tongue.  I mean, come on.

The weird thing is this.  About a decade later, Boy David was blasting Savatage’s “Hall of the Mountain King” from his front window so loud you could hear it around the corner.  Banning music didn’t really work for the David family.

Through the years, my parents have maintained suffering contact with the David family.  They always come home bitching about them, but haven’t been able to completely get themselves away.  I sense that they wouldn’t mind if they never had to socialize again, but don’t want to be the ones to make the break.

One night while I was still working at the Record Store, my parents came home from dinner with the Davids, and my mom immediately started with the stories.  The things these people would say!  My parents would sit in stunned silence, sipping drinks and nibbling food, but not really reacting.

“You wouldn’t believe what Mrs. David said at dinner tonight,” began my exasperated mother.

“You’re going to like this one Michael,” nudged my dad as he walked past.

“Tell me!” I squealed in delight.

My mom set up the story.  Mrs. David was on about the state of the world, natural resources, overpopulation, and lord knows what else.  Malthusanists, they were not!  You see, they adhered to a particularly hard (but traditional) interpretation of God’s infallibility.  Because God is incapable of error, the Earth that He created is flawless and perfectly made for us to use.  Hard-core Catholics used to believe that extinction was impossible, due to this perfect intelligent design.  Equally impossible is overpopulation.  God told us to “go forth and multiply,” did He not?  Therefore, overpopulation is absolutely impossible.

“You know, the entire population of the world can fit in the state of Kansas?” asked Mrs. David to my stunned mother and father.

“How the hell did we get on this topic?” they thought to themselves as they concentrated on their food.  My mother told me this in the kitchen that night, and I just laughed uncontrollably.

“Sure, if you packed them in like sardines!  What is wrong with those people?” I asked.

“I do not know,” said my mother in a flat, tired tone.

The last time I saw anyone from the David family was in the 1990s.  I’d like to keep it that way.

#1043: Music From the Elder – Winter 1986

An expansion upon #579:  Entering the Asylum

 

RECORD STORE TALES #1043: Music From the Elder – Winter 1986

As much as we teased him, and as much as he may have deserved it, George Balazs was something of the elder statesman of music on our street.  An awkward kid with big glasses, big hair, and knobby knees, George was an outcast from every group.  Yet, George was passionate about music to a degree that pushed the rest of us further in as well.

George fancied himself a bass player, and Gene Simmons was his idol.  He posed like Gene, he sang like Gene, and just really wanted to be Simmons.  He surely gave it a shot, but to most of us, he was a joke.  An awkward, porn-obsessed older kid who dressed in the full metal regalia with studded wristbands and bandannas.  What he did have going for him was a pretty good record collection.

I don’t know where he got the money, working at Long John Silver’s down the street, but George always had a steady stream of new records coming in.  Sam the Record Man, Dr. Disc, or Encore Records was his supplier.  George always had a hustle going on, selling old comic boys or toys.  He always felt like he was making money, even though he was buying the comics at retail price and selling them for half that.  I got my entire GI Joe collection from him that way.  George was acquiring complete collections of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Lee Aaron vinyl.  Kiss was nearly complete:  By the start of 1986 he finally acquired Kiss Killers, and only needed Double Platinum and The Elder.

George always made it well known how good his Kiss collection was.  We all knew what he needed.  He made sure that was publicly known.

Meanwhile, I was in grade eight, a miserable year of fake friends and emboldened bullies.  There was a newer kid in class, named Joe Ciaccia (pronounced “chee-chaw”).  In casual conversation, Joe boasted that he already had a complete Kiss collection.  I suspected he was lying to impress me, but I pressed him on it.  If his was complete, maybe he’d sell his copy of The Elder to George.  I was being selfless here.  Even though I had started getting Kiss albums myself, I was thinking only of George.  I knew George would allow me to record it, once acquired.

I informed George that I knew someone who had The Elder, and George nearly leaped out of his shoes.

“WHO?” he asked.

“Joe Ciccia, this kid at school.  He says he has all the Kiss albums.”

“Bullshit,” said George.  “There hasn’t been a copy of The Elder for sale in this town in two years.”

“Well he says he has it,” I insisted.  I was instructed to broker a trade, and so I did.

On a slushy Sunday afternoon in the dead of winter, I loaded up my Sanyo ghetto blaster with batteries and my Kiss Asylum tape.  With Bob Schipper and George Balazs, we trudged off in the snow, blasting “King of the Mountain”.  I can still remember holding that stereo as steady as I could, while Eric Carr pounded out the drum intro.  Asylum was their newest album, and my copy was only a few months old.

George was adamant that we were going to Joe Ciccia’s place, and not leaving without The Elder.  The address and time were set up.  “I don’t care what he wants for it, I’m not leaving without that record.”  The Elder was all but legendary.  None of us had heard any of the music, except George, who had seen the music video for “A World Without Heroes” once.  He loved the song.  He could not wait to get that record in his hands and on his platter!  No matter the cost.

It wasn’t a long walk, it just took forever with that slush all over the ground.  It was a wet, dark Canadian winter day, and we were on a mission.

Joe lived on Breckenridge Drive, the same street as Brian Vollmer and Ian Johnson.  Joe was about to inherit a certain crown from Ian – the king of lies.

We arrived at Joe’s apartment and buzzed.  No answer.  Buzzed again.  No answer.  It became clear that, as I had suspected.  Joe was all talk and no Elder.  We waited outside in the cold a while, but there was no sign of Joe.  We were at the right place at the expected time, but Joe was hiding.  As expected, George was partly crushed and mostly pissed off.  Joe dodged me at school the next day.  George kept pestering me to arrange a second hookup with Joe, thinking he still had that copy of The Elder that he wanted so badly.  I realized Joe was full of shit and told George my unfortunate opinion.  The record was not there, period.  Joe was telling stories, trying to act cool and impress me at school.  Then he got caught in the lie, not realizing that George was going to go apeshit and do whatever he had to do to get this record, and he hid.  This was after going so far as to arrange a trade and giving me the address.  He really went all the way before his lie could take him no further.

George did get a copy of The Elder a  short time later, and he still taped me a copy.  It was a strange album to me, with a lot of music that didn’t sound like rock, but I liked it because it was Kiss.  Songs like “The Oath”, “I” and “Odyssey” were immediately appealing.

What happened to Joe?  He was one of the first kids to have a girlfriend at school.  I seem to remember it being quite scandalous for our little Catholic school.  He was making out with Sharon Burns, a girl we’d known since Kindergarten.  Then we graduated and I never saw him again.

When I think of Joe I’ll always remember him for two things:  the colossal Kiss lie, and making out with Sharon on a religious retreat at Mount Mary.  Things you just never forget.

#951: Set Your VCR, It’s 1986 and KISS Meets The Phantom Is On Tonight!

Special thanks to Jennifer Ladano for telling me to write this story down!

RECORD STORE TALES #951: Set Your VCR!
It’s 1986 and KISS Meets The Phantom Is On Tonight!

When thinking back about my earliest rock and roll discoveries, it’s important to recall the order in which I got the albums, or first heard the tunes.  It seems like I had always known “Rock N’ Roll all Nite”, but since my first Kiss albums were Alive! and Hotter Than Hell, those were the songs I knew best.  And I barely knew them!  I got my first Kiss in September of ’85.  But I was learning slowly.  Eventually I’d get Asylum, and gradually tape Kiss albums from my neighbour George.

Something else happened that exposed me to Kiss in a new way, that I sometimes forget about.  It was the first time I saw Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park.

Everybody knew about Kiss Meets the Phantom, but few of us were old enough to have seen it.  When it showed up in the TV guide one week, on some Buffalo station, it seemed like every kid with access to a VCR set it to record.  It was being shown at something like 1:00 in the morning on a Sunday.

Upon waking, I got my sister up early and we raced downstairs to watch.  We did not have time to watch the whole thing that morning.  It was winter, possibly the tail end of Christmas holidays, and we were off to the lake for one day.  We watched some, went to the lake, had lunch at the Embassy, and came home to finish the movie.

I noticed there were far more ads to fast forward through on late night TV than during the day!


Actual ads from the actual tape of the actual night.

My sister recalls liking Kiss Meets the Phantom; my memories are quite different.  I was bored to tears any time Kiss wasn’t on screen, and you had to wait through, like, an hour (with ads) for Kiss to arrive at the bloody park!  I didn’t know who this Anthony Zerbe fellow was, but at age 13 I considered him possibly the worst actor I had ever seen.

It was my first time seeing Peter Criss on video and not just still photos, and I was surprised at his voice.  I told everyone, “Peter Criss sounds like Aquaman.”  I had the show right, but the character wrong.  Michael Bell did the voice of Peter Criss in Kiss Meets the Phantom, and Wonder Twin Zan in the cartoon Superfriends.  Legend has it that this was because Peter didn’t show up to loop his lines in post-production.  Whatever the case, it led to a different urban legends:  that Peter Criss had given up rock and roll, and taken up a lucrative career as a cartoon voice actor!

I thought Gene’s distorted voice was tiresome after a while, and Paul seemed the coolest.  My sister liked that Kiss were like superheroes with powers.  On the other hand, I didn’t like that.  If Paul Stanley couldn’t shoot a laser beam out of his eye in real life, I didn’t understand why he would in this movie.  They were still Kiss, still playing the same Kiss songs, but also super-powered.  My rigid brain couldn’t reconcile the two.

As for the music, the movie contains several songs that I heard for the very first time that day.  “Beth” (acoustic, no less), “Shout It Out Loud”, “God of Thunder” and “I Stole Your Love”.  (“Rip and Destroy” doesn’t count.)  Now, because I didn’t know these songs, and there were no captions, I had to guess at the titles.  “Shout It Out Loud” was the easy one.  But these were the live versions taken from Alive II, fast and reckless.  Not to mention we were hearing it on a TV with mono speaker; state of the art for the time, but not for proper music listening.  So that’s why, for that day at least, I thought “God of Thunder” was “Not a Doctor”, and “I Stole Your Love” was something that sounded like “I Ho-Jo-Ho”.

The process of discovering Kiss was so memorable because it’s so fun.  The superhero character aspect appealed to my sister and there’s no denying that it had something to do with why I loved Kiss too.  But hearing the songs and albums for the first time can only happen once.  And I can clearly remember a tinge of sadness when I finally acquired Rock and Roll Over, the last original Kiss album I needed to finish my collection.  I was starkly aware that I was having this experience for the last time:  hearing a classic Kiss album, guessing who was singing the songs by the title alone, and discovering hidden favourites.  As I learned when Crazy Nights came out, hearing a new Kiss album was simply not the same as discovering the classics!

Kiss Meets the Phantom was a struggle to sit through then, but fortunately I saw it at an age when Kiss still seemed larger than life.  Objectively, it is a pretty terrible film, best enjoyed as a trainwreck.  The best parts are the concert scenes, which was the closest I got to seeing Kiss live at age 13.  It was my first exposure to some really important songs even if I wondered why Gene was singing about being “Not a Doctor”!

#950: A Letter To S

Hey S,

I felt like writing again, I hope you don’t mind.  My emails are not the esteemed A Life in Letters by Isaac Asimov, but it’s more about the process of the writing for me.

I’ve been listening to Van Halen in the car a lot.  Long story short:  I’ve been having issues with my music hard drive in the car, with it repeating tracks.  I discovered I could fix it by formatting the drive and starting over.  Certain Van Halen albums used to give me issues in the car, with the repeating songs.  It’s been a pleasure to rock to King Edward this week.  It’s hard to believe but he died over a year ago now.

I remember coming home from work the day he died and I was just in a foul mood.  Not only was I grieving Edward Van Halen, but I felt stupid for grieving someone I never met and never hoped to meet.  It was a torrent of shitty feelings, plus I hadn’t eaten properly.  It was a Tuesday and I had to do laundry or something, and I snapped at Jen.  I felt like an asshole afterwards.  I also remember telling you this story, and you were the one who said it was OK to be grieving.  Until that moment I didn’t really consider that maybe you don’t have to be a psycho to be upset about Van Halen’s death.

Music aside — which was usually warm, fun with instrumental and occasional lyrical depth — Van Halen meant a lot to me.  I must have been 13 years old when I was sitting on the porch with my best friend Bob, hearing 1984 on the tape deck for the first time.  My dad came home from work, heard the noise and asked what we were listening to, as dads often did.  “Van Halen!?” he said.  “Sounds like some kind of tropical disease!”

My dad was always good with one liners!  When we watched music videos on Much, he would mock the singers shrieking their best operatic screams.  “What’s wrong with that man?  Should he go to the hospital?  He sounds like he’s in pain!”

Good memories, all.  I’m very attached to those childhood memories.  I’m trying to commit them all to writing before they’re gone.  Often, lost memories can be triggered by an old photograph.  But there are many things I wish I had video of!  If only there was a tape or photograph of that first time I heard Van Halen.  But film was a precious commodity until the last 15 years or so.  You didn’t just take pictures of you and your friends listening to music on the front porch.

I remember some of the tapes, and conversations.  Iron Maiden’s Maiden Japan was popular in our porch listening sessions.  George would come over from next door, and Bob would come over with his tapes.  My house was right in the middle!  I wonder how much of my happiest childhood memories are due to geographic concerns.  If my house wasn’t right there in the middle of everybody, maybe I never would have been there that day to hear Van Halen or Iron Maiden.

Sometimes I worry that I spend too much time living in the past and trying to recapture those moments.  But then I think about what you would say to that.  “Why are you worried about something that brings you happiness?” I think you might ask.  And you’d be right.  So bring on the Van Halen.  Bring on the Iron Maiden.  Let’s party like it’s 1985.  Might as well go for a soda — nobody hurts, nobody dies.

Mike

 

#901: 5150 Time Again?

Distilling some stories from the 5150 live stream.

RECORD STORE TALES #901: 5150 Time Again?

Van Halen’s 5150 was their first #1.  It was their first with Sammy Hagar and their first truly divisive album.  As a young kid on a weekly allowance, I had to pick and choose what to buy.  Van Halen’s marketing campaign involved making no new music videos for 5150, only releasing live clips.  Since music videos were 99% of my new music exposure, 5150 didn’t make it high on my priority lists.  Van Halen didn’t want to compete with David Lee Roth, seen as the master of the music video.  Unfortunately this meant kids like me only had live versions to preview.

In particular, the live video for “Why Can’t This Be Love” turned off many of the kids in the neighbourhood.  Scott Peddle remembers not buying the album specifically because of that video.  It was a combination of Sammy’s new haircut and the off-key scatting.  This is all we had to judge the new album by!  I didn’t have any friends who owned 5150.

I ended up getting a second hand cassette off a kid in school named Todd Burnside.  I was sorely disappointed that after paying him five bucks; the front cover to the tape was all ripped.  I had to put it back together with Scotch tape.  I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t bother taking care of his tape.  Then again, Burnside’s nickname in school was “Burnout”.  At least it played well.

Maybe two years after 5150 came out, there were rumblings about Van Halen working on new music.  In the 80s, there was no internet but there was a rumour mill.  You’d read something in a magazine, or hear it on the TV.  For example, there were almost always rumours that Van Halen were on the verge of splitting.  This happened in 1987 when Sammy Hagar released his self-titled solo album (even though said solo album was made with Edward Van Halen himself).  At the same time, there were rumours that they were also working on a brand new Van Halen album.

It wasn’t inconceivable, with our naive little insular world view, that the forthcoming new Van Halen album could leak, and someone could get a hand on a tape.  It seemed possible.  Kids in my neighbourhood had all kinds of rare music on tape that we couldn’t trace back to a source.  Live tracks by Iron Maiden, or even the legendary “Rodeo Song”.   It was taped from one kid to another to another until you didn’t know what generation you had.  This story is about the time I thought the girl I liked got her pretty little hands on the new Van Halen.

The story goes like this.  Her boyfriend taped her a Van Halen cassette, with no titles written down.  Huge pet peave, right?  Such bad habits lead to misunderstandings like this story.  I was friends with her younger brother, and one day I was talking to her on the phone and she mentioned her favourite song by Van Halen.  “I love ‘Contact’,” she said.  “It’s on this tape my boyfriend made.”

“Contact”?  I never heard of that song.  I knew my Van Halen song titles and “Contact” was not one of them.  Not realizing that she had to be making up the title herself because no songs were written down, I concluded she might have her hands on a pirated tape of the new Van Halen.  I wanted to hear it next time I came over.

I told my friends about this possible lead into the next Van Halen album and promised to report back.

I went to visit one afternoon.  They had a pool.  But I wanted to get down to business first.  I brought a blank 60 minute tape with me in case I needed to dub what I was about to hear.  Let’s see this Van Halen tape!

She brought out the tape and I noticed there was nothing written on the cover, so there was absolutely no information available about any of the songs.  But I didn’t need information as soon as she hit “play”.

The familiar cascading keyboard melody echoed from the tinny speakers of her ghetto blaster.  What the hell?!  This song wasn’t called “Contact”!  It was called “Love Walks In”!  How could she not know that?

My disappointment was only assuaged by a dip in the pool, with extra splashing.  I came home empty handed.  No Van Halen, and worse than that…the girl I liked didn’t even know the proper name of “Love Walks In”!  How the hell?

My crush on her dissipated shortly thereafter and I moved on to other interests.  She wasn’t a real Van Halen fan after all.

 

LeBrain Train Easter Weekend Schedule

The LeBrain Train: 2000 Words or More with Mike Ladano

Episodes 57 and 58 – Max the Axe & Easter Special weekend!

 

Happy Easter everyone — a weekend I have traditionally looked forward to ever since I was a kid.  Spring is in the air!  The last two Easters have been pretty weird, but I’m glad to spend some time with you during this global crisis.  It’s only getting worse currently here in Ontario as the third wave threatens to undo all our progress.  So, this weekend I’ll be doing two shorter shows instead of one long one.  Here’s the plan:

Thursday April 1 – Max the Axe “Straight Outta Lockdown” session – 7:00 PM E.S.T.

For the first time in almost a year, Max the Axe reunited for a rehearsal.  It was rough and ragged but lead vocalist Uncle Meat has given me the thumbs-up to play some songs from this session, including the brand new “Pygmy Blowdart”.  Special guest:  the one, the only Max himself!

Friday April 2 – Good Friday – Easter Memories – 7:00 PM E.S.T.

Similar to the “Christmas Memories” show from last year.  I had a lot of good Easters.  Join me on Good Friday for some happy memories, musical and otherwise.  Such as:

  • Easter ’85 – Condition Critical in Ottawa
  • Easter ’86 – Quiet Riot air guitar weekend, Turbo, Crossbows & Catapults on the kitchen floor
  • Easter ’87 – Digging trenches in the back yard for GI Joe.
  • Easter ’88 – Skyscraper in Ottawa
  • Easter ’91 – Welcome to My Nightmare?
  • Easter ’92 – Pandora’s study regime
  • Easter ’16 – Record Store shopping in Ottawa

Hope to see you this weekend on the LeBrain Train.  NEXT WEEK:  Andy Curran!