I decided like Aaron to cover an hour in the morning, so it’s not too different from the programming he heard. If I had done an afternoon, there would be some LeBrain promos on Marko’s show, but I chose the Midday Lockdown with DJ Patrick Dynamite.
PATRICK DYNAMITE 10:00 – 11:00 Aug 12 2014
Oasis – “Don’t Look Back in Anger”
Station ID
Def Leppard – “Pour Some Sugar On Me” (single mix)
Patrick announces Kiss/Def Leppard show tonight, and upcoming songs. “Here’s Kiss from ’79’s Dynasty, thanks for rockin’ with Dave.” Knew the album and year – bonus. (The computer doesn’t always give them this info because it often pulls songs like this from a greatest hits CD.)
Kiss – “I Was Made For Lovin’ You”
Station ID for morning show (5 seconds)
Big Wreck – “A Million Days” – great guitar solo often mistaken for Steve Morse! (CanCon)
Patrick announces contest to win tickets to Alice In Chains/Monster Truck next week. Also meet and greet!
COMMERCIALS: Funny clip from morning show, Tim’s, car loan, auto parts, lawyer, Athletic Club, Waterloo Brewing Company, Seagram coolers, station ID.
Trooper – “We’re Here for a Good Time (Not a Long Time)” – first song I could skip. (CanCon)
Station ID for “new rock” – Theory of a Dead Man.
Theory of a Dead Man – “Drown” – crappy post-grunge. (CanCon)
Patrick announces chance to win the last Dave FM Backyard Bash for the summer. Party for 20 plus a new patio set.
LEGENDS OF CLASSIC ROCK with Jeff Woods – Eric Clapton throws a legendary party in ’79: the Beatles reunion that never was, because Lennon didn’t know.
The Beatles – “Come Together”
Station ID (5 seconds)
Three Days Grace – “Chalk Outline” – more crappy post-grunge. (CanCon)
Patrick – recaps the last songs, announces Alice Cooper concert on Halloween in Kitchener! Pre-sale info available for Dave FM members.
COMMERCIALS: Dave FM ride to end Multiple Sclerosis, debt resolution, Subway, auto sales, Fido, drivercheck.ca, Moxy’s, an evening with Alice Cooper, station ID.
RECORD STORE TALES #949: My Music at Work (2006-2007)
None of my jobs since quitting the Record Store have been musical in nature. Dealing in steel pipe and accounts payable were boring by comparison, but everywhere I go, I bring music with me.
For a brief while I was working at Novocol Pharmaceuticals. They make the stuff that freezes your teeth so the dentist can do his work. It was pretty wild; I had a lab coat and a cubicle. One day I heard music drifting in. I got out of my chair and wandered around. I realized that the music was coming from the phone.
Many offices have phones that can play a radio station piped in. A little mono speaker, but better than nothing. It was the first music I had in the workplace since quitting the store. CHYM FM became my nemesis as time went on, but for the moment, I was glad to have music again. James Blunt, Rod Stewart, and a lot of “Bad Day” by Daniel Powter. Remember Daniel Powter?
I was at Novocol for a few weeks, and then I had an opportunity at United Rentals where I spent over a year of some of the best work days I ever had. United was a very special place and I’m glad I got to experience it. I made many friends there, and once again, they had the phone radios set to CHYM.
At United, we had a big back room with 8-10 computers for us to enter invoices. When we started the room was full. And I made myself known as the music guy when Rod Stewart came on the radio, as I spoke up to sing his praises. It was the first good song all day. Probably “Downtown Train”. That station only played one or two songs per artist, unless that artist was Beyonce.
“Right on, Rod Stewart!” I announced to the room. “Great song!”
The immediate response from one of the younger girls in the room was “Who’s Rod Stewart?”
I feigned shock. “Who’s Rod Stewart!? The guy with the spikey hair! You know ‘Reason to Believe’, ‘Have I Told You Lately’, ‘Rhythm of my Heart’, ‘Tonight’s the Night’…no?”
No. They did not.
I put up with CHYM for a long time, but one day somebody changed the radio station to Dave FM, the local rock station. All of a sudden, Bon Jovi and Quiet Riot at work were a mainstay. Even Judas Priest. “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin'”. Hearing that at work, a band that I was not allowed to play back in the Record Store days, it was awesome. Just awesome. Here I was in an Accounts Payable office, listening to music I liked better than what I was allowed to play at the store.
The boss poked his nose in the door. “Hey, is that Quiet Riot? I used to love Quiet Riot!” I was the only one in the room who knew what he was talking about. He was a good boss; he helped me get my current job.
“Lick It Up” would thump from that little mono speaker. It was still better than whatever I was allowed to listen to when I worked in an actual music store. The only times I played Kiss there were the occasions no bosses were around, and I was confident I wouldn’t get caught. If I was working at an out-of-town store like Oakville, I would play forbidden bands like Kiss and Iron Maiden. I knew nobody would be popping in for a surprise visit.
Not everybody was happy with the music at United. One lady, a couple years older than me, liked CHYM.
United closed their Kitchener office in 2007 and moved operations to the US. Employees were being shed slowly, and in the latter days there were only three of us left in the back room. There was an older lady, a younger one, and me. Two of us loved the music that Dave FM played, one of us claimed it caused headaches. No matter how low the volume was.
“How can you listen to this? It’s just noise,” she would complain.
She wasn’t even that much older than me. Four years tops. But after having Rhianna and Kelly Clarkson forced upon us for a year, my sympathy was not high. I offered to bring in some CDs from home that I thought everyone would like. I chose The Cars. Turns out I was the only Cars fan. We stuck to the radio and Dave FM.
Because the office was closing, we were all looking for new jobs. We were trying to be supportive of each other, but I noticed that the one older lady that didn’t like rock music was starting to become a little difficult to bear. She’d always been like a motherly figure, helping others. This seemed to change as we got closer and closer to the end. She was getting this attitude of superiority and it wasn’t helping my self esteem. I had 10 years of retail management, which she told me wasn’t enough for the kind of jobs I was looking for. I’d have to set my sights lower and work my way up, according to her. A little encouragement would have been better medicine, but talking to her made me feel like I was going to be stuck forever. In a few weeks she’d be gone, thankfully, to a new job as a receptionist. Good riddance. The vacuum enabled me to step up into a leadership role at the end of United. And then the call came through – I was needed. Urgently. And now I’m here!
To my chagrin, my new work had CHYM FM on the speaker phones too. But as in the past, CHYM didn’t last and before too long, Dave was back. History repeats!
GETTING MORE TALE #879: Advertising & the Pennysaver
The Record Store didn’t do oodles of advertising. We had a limited budget. We usually ran ads in the Pennysaver, a free weekly ad paper. Their rep with us was a super ducky guy named Dana McMullen. He was a sharp dresser with a talent for layout. We got along immediately because he was a Queensryche fan. It was always amusing to me how you could run into fellow rock fans almost anywhere. Dana didn’t look like a metal head. His hair and suits were meticulous. But he loved his Queensryche. We were both pretty fond of 1994’s Promised Land.
We opened the store that I first managed in 1996. It was a dry period for Queensryche, but then in ’97 came Hear in the Now Frontier. I was disappointed with it, and told Dana as much, but he bought it like any loyal fan would. He was a good guy.
Dana left the Pennysaver shortly after, and we had a new rep. I can’t remember her name, just that she always called me “Dude”, which I hated. (The part of working retail that isn’t in the manual is that you have to get used to people calling you “Dude”, “Chief”, and “Bud”.) Advertising with the new rep wasn’t as smooth as it was with Dana. I remember she messed up some important details on a few of our ads. One day she was meeting with the Boss Man about these mistakes and she left in tears. Yikes! I didn’t get a “See ya Dude!” from her that day.
I know from making in-store signage that the Boss was hard to please. In 1994, I was green and just started. The first display I ever made, he hated. It was a simple enough job. We got free posters from the record companies all the time, but the Boss didn’t want plain old posters taped to the walls. He wanted them framed. One night he left me with the job to frame some of the free posters we got. The only issue was that the large posters didn’t fit the medium sized frames, so you had to chop them up and make them fit. He assigned me to frame a Jann Arden poster for her second album Living Under June. It was such a huge image of Jann that I couldn’t just trim the edges and make it fit. It was a vertical poster but he wanted the frame horizontal. I had to chop it into pieces and have the picture of Jann on one side and the name and album title on the other. The boss hated it and made sure I knew it. He couldn’t tell me what he wanted it to look like, just that what I made wasn’t it. Fortunately we hired T-Rev shortly after and he was much more artistically inclined. I was relieved of my sign making duties.
I’m sure when he looks at my site now, the Boss must still think my graphic skills still suck because they haven’t changed much!
We expanded to radio ads. I hated our jingle, but I remember early conversations with the radio people that could have taken us in another direction. Although he had a tiny office in the back, it wasn’t really good for meetings, so the Boss would have a lot of his meetings in the store. I was there when one radio guru pitched his ad concept.
“It’s Beavis and Butt-head see, and they go, ‘Hey Butt-Head, heh heh, where should we sell these awesome used CDs?’”
The boss wasn’t into that one. “I think Beavis and Butt-Head are a little passé,” he asserted.
He might have been right, but I didn’t agree with that; the Beavis and Butt-Head movie was only a year old. Their voices were recognizable. The Boss just didn’t like them. My only contention was that I could do better Beavis and Butt-Head voices than the radio guru. We didn’t need him!
While I didn’t always enjoy having these meetings going on in my workspace, and having to work around these people, it was fun listening in. Sometimes the Boss would ask afterwards what I thought of the pitch.
Later on, after we started expanding and (in my opinion) losing our path a bit, the Boss hired an expensive marketing expert. I didn’t care for her ideas. I remember he sent us one of her proposals and it just lost me. We were supposed to read it and offer our feedback. I thought we were a music store, and here’s this marketing proposal with all these empty buzzwords in it. Words like “synergy”. It felt like a huge disconnect between upper management and working on the floor. The business was simple – we bought CDs from the public, and we sold them back to the public. Now we’re spending money on marketing while I have to wait weeks just to get paid my mileage cheques.
Having said all this, take it with a grain of salt. He’s still in business and this year will be celebrating his 30th anniversary. He must be doing something right.
GETTING MORE TALE #780: That Time a Canadian Idol Reject Borrowed Money and Didn’t Pay Me Back Formerly: Radio Friends & Exes
I’ll always be grateful to radio for giving me a start. I won’t rehash the whole story but I used to be a call-in contest winner and then became a semi-regular guest. Radio is a lot of fun, though I don’t really listen to commercial stations anymore like the one that got my name out there originally. (I still appear on Rob Daniels’ Visions in Sound, and I’ll be back there in December at the latest to talk about new Star Wars music.) One thing that hasn’t changed is that I have met so many solid people through radio.
There’s Jolene the Jays fan, always raising money for good causes. Or Greg, the contest winner who seems to have free tickets to offer to me all the time. I met one of my best friends, Jay, through the radio. He noticed I was talking about Transformers one day and next thing you knew, we were buddies. And let’s not forget about Jamie, an old-school rocker who was writing articles for Access magazine under the tutelage of Keith Sharp back when I used to read it! It used to be that we listened to the same radio station, but in 2019 I was honoured to be a guest at Jamie’s wedding.
I’m very happy and proud to have met such good people thanks to radio. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that radio stations and their personalities are often very active in the community. They bring people with similar interests together, while making the city a better place.
Of course, like any platform, it’s not exclusively good people. There have been some seriously weird fucks that I’ve come into contact with thanks to the airwaves. Like Dean, the conspiracy theorizing anti-vax, bike-riding vegan. Or amateur wrestler turned far-right radio mogul Raymond. A few Proud Boys. The usual assholes.
I have fresh wounds from another radio listener. I never met him. Mike Lorbetski. A former Canadian Idol reject. He moved out to Alberta for work. He was one of those guys who would periodically have serious life problems and post them all over social media. Then he’d disappear a while and come back a few months later. His latest problems involved a workplace injury. He needed antibiotics and was short $28. He sent me a private message.
I thought about what my old man has said in the past. “If you loan somebody money, consider it a gift because you’ll never get it back.” And my dad is right; I’ve helped people out in the past and don’t usually get repaid. Sometimes it’s because I said “Don’t worry about it, you need this more than I do.” But usually it was just people stiffing me.
For whatever sympathetic reason, I sent the guy $30. He even sent me a picture back of the medication to prove that’s what he spent it on. I have no reason to disbelieve any of his story. He asked me for money again a few weeks later, promising to pay back the original $30. I said no that time. Then he asked for $20 for bus tickets. He caught me on a good day that time. A few days later he needed $25; I sent him a final $30 and said this would be the last time I could help him out. I left it unambiguous: this is the last time I can help you out. “Man I love you!” he responded.
One weekend in late September I heard frantic messages on my phone. I checked and it was him, needing $44 urgently. He was being evicted and was short $44 to rent a U-Haul van to move his stuff. He sent screenshots of landlords that owed him money. He sent screenshots of his bank balance in single digits. He showed an angry message from a landlord explaining that he already had three days’ court-ordered notice to pick up his stuff, and it would all be taken to the dump on the weekend. I was getting all these messages while my wife was recovering from a humiliating public epileptic seizure. I told him that I was very sorry, but I could not help him. The messages continued through the night as I was dealing with my own shit. He was promising me $88 in return for $44, within 24 hours.
I sat there, thinking to myself. On one side, I felt for the guy. Assuming he was being honest with me, he had only a few hours to raise $44 and move his stuff in a U-Haul. He was going to lose all his possessions that day. I felt terrible for him. I was already down $80 so what’s another $44? On the other hand…is there nobody else he can ask for help? Somebody who lives in the same province as him? Somebody who’s actually met him in person? Friends? Family? Not a stranger that he used to listen to on the radio?
Sunday afternoon my wife had another seizure. I heard my phone dinging but I didn’t answer it. I had bigger things on my mind. Later that evening, I checked my messages. His belongings had been taken to the dump.
“This is the point I’m done with social media,” the message began. From that I gather he’d been asking other Facebook “friends” for money. “Needed $44 to save thousands, got zero. Will be lucky to maintain an empty apartment on my wife’s money, my tools are gone so I can’t contribute.” Guilt trip time? I couldn’t believe this guy. Why should Facebook, or me for that matter, be responsible for you?
“Likely never hear from me again. I’m out.”
This one I responded to.
“Likely never hear from you again…even though you owe me money?”
I felt terrible the whole time I wrote this, but it had to be said.
“I told you last time, I would not be able to help you again. I don’t even know you. We have never met face to face. And now you are guilting me and threatening to rip me off?
“I am sorry but at this point I have no choice but to block you. I will never see my money again, I know that, but I refuse to be guilted when I have already been so generous.
“I hope whatever your problems are, you sort them out, but I cannot have this in my life.”
Alternating between feeling the guilt that I said I wasn’t going to let myself feel, and wondering what the fuck this guy expected of a total stranger, I went on with my night and worrying about my own wife. But what did he expect? I gave him money three times before. Small amounts, but I knew I wasn’t going to be paid back, and I told him on the third time that was it. Did he think we were…actual friends? Because he knew my voice on the radio, and because I write about my life in public, did he think we were…friends? He also wrote things about his life, but I tried to stay out of that. He seemed to be having problems with his job, his wife, and his sexual identity and I wanted nothing to do with a stranger’s problems. I have plenty of my own, believe me.
I tried to be a good person. I feel like I was a good person three times, but had to draw a line somewhere. The day that my wife was in the hospital having a seizure seemed like the right time to draw that line.
As for lines? The bottom line is that I have made some amazing friends through the radio, and I wouldn’t change that, ever. But you always have to have your guard up for the problems that come with it.
I’ve had the same routine for over 10 years: get to work, turn on the radio, and listen. I would occasionally hear new bands that I had to get into. I wouldn’t want to do without Greta Van Fleet, Royal Blood, or A Rebel Few in my life. But every routine eventually gets stale.
For the last several weeks I’ve been trying something different. No matter how much radio tries to shake it up, you are guaranteed to hear certain songs and bands every single day. AC/DC, for example, are a radio staple. You will hear them on rock stations every single day, usually from a pool of 10 to 12 songs. In my regular daily album-listening life, I don’t actually listen to AC/DC that often. In fact, I’m less likely to listen to AC/DC when I hear them on the radio daily.
At the recommendation of Uncle Meat I’ve been loading up flash drives and bringing them to work instead. This has enabled me to not only listen to whoever I feel like, but also given me the ability to play full albums.
The first day without radio was an interesting experiment. In the morning, I played the entire Max Webster The Party box set in its completion. In the afternoon, an album I hadn’t played in years: Neil Diamond’s 20th Century Masters! Part of doing without radio is forcing myself to listen to albums that don’t get regular rotation at home. Especially multi-disc sets. It’s easy to listen to a box set when you’re seated at the same desk for eight hours.
A nice big flash drive means I have hundreds of my favourite albums available at a click, but there are pros and cons.
PROS:
1. The chance to spend my listening time with my own music; hopefully neglected music. 2. Hearing full albums. 3. The ability to “pause” when I am interrupted and have to do something else.
CONS:
1. No traffic or news reports. 2. A feeling of disconnection from the community and friends during the day. 3. Missing those new tunes and rarities that sometimes surprise you on the radio. 4. Going from a stereo radio behind me to a mono speaker in front of me.
It was really weird going without the morning radio news reports at first, but I’m used to it now.
This far into the journey I’ve played virtually every studio album by Kiss and Black Sabbath. I’m working my way through Priest next, and a whole bunch of soundtracks. I actually played Jeff Wayne’s legendary War of the Worlds musical two days in a row, so enthralled was I with the album. Featuring Justin Hayward, Richard Burton, and Philip flippin’ Lynott, it is an album I am glad to have finally caught up on. It’s the kind of thing you need to have the time to play, the more the better.
Hopefully, listening to more albums will enable me to review more albums. The unfortunate thing is not being exposed to new and unfamiliar songs. I’ll just have to rely on readers and other sources for that.
With flash drives by my side, 2018 will be the Summer of the Album. Let’s see how this experiment works!
One of the folks at work, who I call “Happy”, is a super guy but he doesn’t throw around compliments very readily. He’d rather tease most of the time. He happened to walk into my office while I was listening to the show. He listened with me for a few minutes, and then began his speech.
“You know, you might be offended by what I have to say, but listen,” he began. “You and I could be sitting in a bar and I would have no interest in anything you are talking about. You like music, I like sports. We have literally nothing in common to talk about.
“But you need to do a book, or a show, or something. I have listened for two minutes, and I am already interested in what you’re talking about. I don’t care about this stuff. But you made me want to care.
“It was the same when you were on that other station, Dave FM. We were listening here at work when you were on. I don’t care about any of that music, but you make it interesting.
“It’s like when I am watching soccer with my wife. There can be an amazing British commentator talking about it, and I am so into what he is saying. My wife, she does not care. Not at all. But you, you can talk in such a way that you make it interesting for people who do care, and people who are not interested at all.
“You have a gift, and you need to be on a show, or do a book. And if you’re offended by this I don’t care!”
Big thanks to Craig Fee over at 107.5 DaveRocks for this one!
During Craig’s live “Tedious Tiresome Trivia” segment on the Tuesday afternoon show (on which he takes live phone calls), he received a call from Ray at “Visa Mastercard”. The entire thing went out on the air, live, just as you hear it below. There’s nothing Craig loves more than messing with a solicitor calling into his show. Needless to say, things go wonky very quickly.
What I learned from “Visa Mastercard” on this call is that, apparently, your credit card number is not personal information. It’s right there on the face of the card, so that makes it public…apparently. “Anyone can see that or memorise that,” according to the “Visa Mastercard” rep (“not a third party!”) that unwittingly called a radio station.
I might not rock and roll all night, or party every day. I do, however, sleep well at night because I rock and roll most of the day.
I play music every day. I have played music every day with only a few exceptions for the last 30+ years. A grade 8 weeklong Catholic school retreat at Mt. Mary meant a week of no music, so I listened to as much Kiss as I could beforehand. I hoped to have the tunes in my head all week. Unfortunately that’s not a substitute for the real thing, but I did survive Mt. Mary.
I have always said that listening to the radio at work is a much better fate than listening to whatever was popular at the Record Store in the later days. Better for me, anyway, rather than being force-fed Franz Ferdinand, Alicia Keys, or Big Shiny Tunes all day. I’d much rather check out what’s on the local rock airwaves. The higher-ups at the Record Store didn’t like my kind of music much, so when they were around I stuck to the stuff they wanted played. I didn’t want to get in shit for playing Kiss in store anymore.
Below you’ll find what a typical happy day at work sounds like today. I used July 5 2017 as a sample date. There are a few readers here who listen to the same radio station I do (107.5 Dave Rocks where I have done guest shots in the past) so some will know these songs well. Then there are others who loathe the radio (which is fine) and they can skip this one.
I started my daily commute that day with the second disc of Rush’s 2112, the 40th anniversary edition. The drive to work consisted of the cover tunes by Foo Fighters, Billy Talent, Steven Wilson, Jacob Moon and Alice in Chains. On this trip I was struck by how little like Alice in Chains they sounded. I was also very impressed (as usual) with Jacob Moon. I’m almost embarrassed to add that Billy Talent is gradually growing on me, and this Rush cover doesn’t hurt their case.
When I got into the office I turned on the radio to hear One Bad Son. They are a new hard rock band from Saskatoon, but they sound international. A band to keep an ear to the ground for. The day went on as you see it below. I have marked all Canadian Content songs with a red CC, since radio stations in Canada must play certain percentages of CanCon.
1. One Bad Son – “Raging Bull” – Great rock reminiscent of Skid Row!CC
2. Spacehog – “In the Meantime”
3. Alice in Chains – “Check My Brain” –Killer track, it’s been a while.
4. April Wine – “Weeping Widow” – I’ve never heard this smoking track before.CC
5. Motley Crue – “Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)”
6. Age of Electric – “Ugly” – Vintage Canadian alternarock!CC
7. The Cars – “Just What I Needed” – I will never get tired of this.
8. The Struts – “Kiss This” – I absolutely hate this song.
9. The Tragically Hip – “Fully Completely” CC
10. Bon Jovi – “Born to Be My Baby” – Old classic back in circulation.
11. Soundgarden – “Rusty Cage”
12. U2 – “Beautiful Day”
13. The Guess Who – “American Woman” CC
14. Bryan Adams – “Kids Wanna Rock” CC
15. Foo Fighters – “All My Life”
16. Bachman-Turner Overdrive – “Hold Back the Water” CC
17. Papa Roach – “Help”
18. J. Geils Band – “Love Stinks”
19. The Trews – “So She’s Leaving” CC
20. Aerosmith – “Back in the Saddle” – I did air guitar in my office for this song.
21. Metallica – “Until it Sleeps”
22. Harlequin – “Thinking of You”— A great old tune that deserves your attention.CC
23. Monster Truck – “The Enforcer” CC
24. The Kinks – “You Really Got Me”
25. Sublime – “Santeria”
26. The Killjoys – “Today I Hate Everyone” CC
27. Led Zeppelin – “Night Flight” – Points for a more obscure song!
28. Pop Evil – “Footsteps” – Sorry Pop Evil fans. I can’t get into this band at all.
29. The Cult – “Wildflower”
30. The Wild! – “Living Free” – Tyler Generoux is into these guys.CC
31. Kaleo – “Glass House”
32. Moist – “Resurrection” CC
33. Guns N’ Roses – “You Could Be Mine”
34. Rush – “The Big Money” CC
35. The Rolling Stones – “Rocks Off”
36. Soundgarden – “Burden In My Hand”
37. The Who – “I’m Free”
38. Blink 182 – “Bored to Death – I’ve really been enjoying their new songs with Matt Skiba.
39. Nirvana – “Breed”
40. Neil Young – “When You Dance You Can Really Love” CC
41. Sloan – “She Says What She Means” CC
42. Our Lady Peace – “Supersatellite” CC
43. AC/DC – “Rock N’ Roll Train” – It’s nice to hear “newer” Black Ice material.
44. Led Zeppelin – “Four Sticks” – The second Zep of the shift.
45. Stone Sour – “Bother”
46. Scorpions – “The Zoo”
47. Jimi Hendrix – “Fire”
48. Metallica – “The Unforgiven”
49. ZZ Top – “Sharp Dressed Man”
50. Nickelback – “Feed the Machine” – First and thankfully only Nickelback of the shift. CC
51. Max Webster – “Paradise Skies” CC
52. Sam Roberts Band – “If You Want It” CC
53. Foo Fighters – “D.O.A.” – Second Foo Fighters of the shift.
54. Van Halen – “Hot For Teacher”
55. Hole – “Awful” – Ironically not awful!
56. Rush – The Analog Kid” – Second Rush of the shift.CC
57. The Guess Who – “Bus Rider” – Second Guess Who of the shift.CC
58. 311 – “Down” – I hated them then, and I hate them now.
59. The Glorious Sons – “Mama” CC
60. Big Sugar – “Dear Mr. Fantasy” CC
61. Led Zeppelin – “Rock and Roll” – Third Zep for the shift and the most typical.
62. The Offspring – “Gone Away” – A band I never ever liked.
63. Def Leppard – “Hysteria” – Their greatest ballad ever.
64. Bon Jovi – “Lay Your Hands On Me” – Second Jovi of the shift and second from New Jersey.
65. The Trews – “Lotta Work Little Love” – Second Trews of the shift.CC
66. Soundgarden – “Blow Up the Outside World” – Second Soundgarden and second from Down on the Upside.
67. Triumph – “Lay It On the Line” (remixed) CC
68. The Rolling Stones – “Gimme Shelter” – Second and best Stones of the shift.
69. Green Day – “Revolution Radio”
70. The Clash – “Rock the Casbah” – Booooring.
71. The Standstills – “Orleans” – Great Canadian blues rock duo. Check them out. CC
72. Van Halen – “Unchained” – Second Van Halen of the shift. It’s the Craig Fee Show!
73. AC/DC – “Who Made Who” – Second AC/DC of the shift.
74. Bryan Adams – “Summer of ‘69” – Second Bryan of the shift. CC
75. Big Wreck – “You Don’t Even Know” CC
76. Foreigner – “Hot Blooded”
And that was it. That’s 7:30 to 4:30 right there, not a bad shift to work. I went home resuming the Rush, and that got me to the door.
How do you like that day? There were very few stinkers in that list of songs. I could leave behind the Nickelback, the “Rock the Casbah”, and the Struts among others. Those tracks aside, this was a very solid day of great rock and roll, new and old. No repeat. Only a few bands had more than one song played. A good number of songs were off the beaten track. Pretty good for a full day at the office, right? I count my blessings every day, believe me! I am very grateful I get to listen to such great music at work.
I’m the office Milton. I even have thered stapler.
Regular readers know that for the past five weeks (except one!) I’ve been appearing with Rob Daniels on his radio show Visions in Sound at 98.5 CKWR, talking about movie soundtracks. Also appearing were Erik Woods and Jason Drury live from the UK. May was Star Wars month, and we did four shows dedicated to the 40th anniversary of that franchise:
May 6: Star Wars for a New Generation (Rogue One, Rebels)
May 13: Alternate Forces (Star Wars video game soundtracks – I missed this one due to prior commitment)
May 20: The Prequels (Music from Episodes I, II, and III)
And there was also the June 3 show, the celebration of The 30th Anniversary of Spaceballs, a classic Mel Brooks parody of Star Wars (and other classic sci-fi).
So thanks Rob for asking me to be on the show, and to new friends Erik and Jason.
Not to toot our own horns too much, but these were great shows. It’s hard to listen live at 12:30 in the morning, but if you take the time to listen to one of these shows in the archives, I know I’d appreciate it. Great music was played, much geeking-out was had, but you’ll also hear a ton of knowledge that you probably never knew before, from four guys who live and breathe this stuff.
I will be going LIVE at 12:30 AM (ET) Saturday morning with Robert Daniels on VISIONS IN SOUND. Tune in on your dial to 98.5 or internet toCKWR! You folks in the UK can tune in as you enjoy some morning java!
Rob says: “May is Star Wars month on Visions In Sound and we will be celebrating the 40th Anniversary with a slew of special shows. Joining me this week will be special guests Jason Drury, Michael Ladano & Erik Woods to help with the celebration. Featured music will be from the original Star Wars trilogy (John Williams). Join Us THIS Saturday 12:30-2:30am (ET)”
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