Robert Alan Wood

#1067: I Tried! (Shirts and Shoes Must be Worn) [MarriedandHeels]

The final word on Married and Heels is DARKNE$$ BE MY FRIEND.

Sequel to #1066:  Grab A Stack of Drama

RECORD STORE TALES #1067:  I Tried! (Shirts and Shoes Must be Worn)

Roughly a year ago, I was decided I was done with live streams.  A few months later, I also decided that I was done with writing about music.  I killed my Def Leppard review series, unfinished.  And why should I have continued?  I was burned out.  I was cynical and jaded, and after 10 years of writing my ass off, I was ungrateful for what I had achieved and only jealous of the things I hadn’t.

Pandemic times were different, and I thrived during lockdowns with writing, live streaming and connecting with people that way.  People like Tim Durling and Marco D’Auria came into my life during that time, as we connected virtually.  Those days had to end as we all returned to our lives.  As expected, people stopped watching live streams in the numbers I was used to.  They also stopped reading reviews.

I worked hard on my stuff.  I was upset nobody was reading.  I decided to basically burn it all down and stop cold turkey.  I was done writing about music.  Or so I thought.

Around the same time, connecting with Joelle the California Girl, known to her “fans” as MarriedandHeels, I became more interested in writing things like fiction, and creating short videos.  I thought I’d spend less time researching music and more time drinking soda pop and filming my reaction, and why not?  Dare I say why not?  I was getting the same amount of views either way, effort or no effort!  She happened to show up at a time in my life when I was 110% burned out, running on fumes, and looking at a future of seasonal affective disorder and a big dental surgery.

I carried on, trying on different hats.  I put California Girl on Grab A Stack of Rock, got lots of views, and thought I was winning.  I tried.  I definitely tried.  As we have seen, my attempts to create a heels empire on YouTube have imploded.  It was worth a shot and for a time, I thought it was working.  I mean, I guess it was, but her world and my world were…well, worlds apart!  Her fans made it unambiguously clear that they preferred her stripshow to my “shirts and shoes must be worn” YouTube version.  And, well, I’ll admit that I preferred dental surgery to her fans!  That ultimately failed.  But I tried!

I can’t believe she did this.  On her live stream February 10, 2023, she asked her “fans” if they preferred Grab A Stack of Rock, or her stripshow.  I was horrified.  Of course they preferred seeing her taking her clothes off.  She set me up to fail and then tried to reassure me it wasn’t intentional.  It was awful.

 

I will single out a few names here because in my time trying to bounce back regarding California Girl’s sudden departure from Grab A Stack of Rock, I’ve really leaned hard on certain people.  Jexciter, Aaron KMA, Robert Daniels, Tim Durling, Chris Sarre and my wife Jen have been instrumental in helping me stay focused on the things that count.   I have a mental health team advising distance over reconnection.  With the help and advice of these people, I am slowly returning my focus back to music, and people seem to have responded.  We’re doing list shows again – the Nigel Tufnel Top Ten is back!  Uncle Meat would have been glad to see this.  Jex Russell has helped give the show a shot in the arm, no matter the subject matter.  He was there for both the heels era, and the post-heels comeback!  He has a certain perspective that matches well with the fun side of the show that I like to present.  So, as Paul Stanley says, “Welcome to the Show!”  Glad to have him with this great team.

The future is looking up!  There may be a summer break coming up for yours truly, but rest assured, any breaks this time are not born from a cynical outlook.  Any break this summer are due to some simple, undeniable facts.

  1. The breeze coming off the lake in the evenings is pretty refreshing, and a computer screen tends to block it too much.
  2. I can choose to prioritize me without feeling guilty or bitter about it.
  3. Sometimes it pays just to listen to music without spending too much time thinking or talking about it.

Yet there are times that the music just begs to be discussed, and when that happens, I’ll be ready to do so.  And hopefully put a smile on your faces while doing it.

Let’s get this summer started, folks!

Mike

Had to remove her face from my merchandise.

#1066: The Road to 25 – Grab A Stack of Drama [MarriedandHeels]

The final word on Married and Heels is DARKNE$$ BE MY FRIEND.

RECORD STORE TALES #1066: The Road to 25 – Grab A Stack of Drama

What a strange trip it’s been!

This week, we are celebrating 25 episodes of Grab A Stack of Rock.  There were times I didn’t think we would even make it this far.  Some history:

I killed the LeBrain Train after the July 15 2022 episode, a Mystique movie interview with Marco D’Auria and special guest Martin Popoff.  I was tired.  It was the third inteview in three weeks and views were down, down, down.  An argument in June with one of my former co-hosts cemented my decision to kill the show.  It wasn’t worth the drama it was causing to me.

One door closes and another opens.  Two weeks later I met the California Girl, and like a breath of fresh air, I began plotting how to do an interview with her on my show.  She had hit 200,000 followers herself on Instagram, just launched an OnlyFans, and I thought why not.  I liked her content, but we were friends.  I really bonded with her.  She needed time to work herself up to it, and I let her take that time.

Meanwhile, my former co-host had an idea for a future show, and said “why don’t you just grab some stacks of rock and show them off?  That could be a show.”

On October 28 2022, for the first time since July 15, I asked Harrison if he’d be up to doing a show that night.  He said yes, and Grab A Stack of Rock was born.  We didn’t announce anything.  We just went live with no preparation, and it went well.  By the following week, November 4, we had a name and a theme song:  Grab A Stack of Rock!

The show rolled on, and we brought back some of our favourite guests to help out:  Aaron KMA, Tim Durling, John T. Snow, Robert Daniels and Marco D’Auria were among our first guests.  But I was having trouble booking the same co-host who conceived of grabbing stacks of rock in the first place.  Drama, unfortunately, would mark the show from that point forward.

California Girl made her debut appearance on the November 25 show for our “Ask Harrison” segment.  Reception to her debut was confused.  Who was this girl in the short skirt and fishnets, and why?  But I was determined to bring her in as the newest member of our crew.  She expressed interest in being my new “guy in the window”, a concept I wanted to steal from the Tom Green Show.  He had a guy, Phil, who just drank coffee in a window and laughed.  Chris Sarre didn’t want to be that, but California Girl thought it would be fun, so I kept including her, week after week, with “Ask Harrison” until she was ready for her real life debut.  We finally did that with a pre-taped episode on January 3.  It was our 10th Grab A Stack of Rock episode, and most popular to date with over 1000 views.  She was ready to go live next time.  A huge triumph, but little did I know that everything would change in just a few short months.

On January 20 we did another popular show, Dr. Kathryn’s debut, with the Karate Kid.  Apparently, our karate was a joke, because afterwards I had a final fight with the former co-host who came up with this concept in the first place, and I ejected him from the show permanently.  To put it simply, it wasn’t working anymore, professionally or personally.  We did not have the same goals or ideas.  Ending the friendship was difficult, but not as hard as the argument I had with him the previous summer.  This was more like anticlimax.

I started cancelling shows due to stress and illness.  February 17 was cancelled after my grandmother and other family members got sick.  March 17 was cancelled due to illness.  We tried again on March 24, which almost got cancelled as well.  I actually had Covid!  California Girl showed up for a surprise cameo that night, but unfortunately, she and I were soon to be heading in different directions.  She was now comfortable enough to do her own mature-themed live streams on OnlyFans.

The final show of April was almost cancelled due to more last-minute drama.  I haven’t discussed this part publicly yet, but I am ready to now.  On her own live stream, California Girl began going topless April 28.  This was a line I was unwilling to cross with someone I considered a friend, and so I declined to watch.  I don’t think she understood this.  I’d seen her in lingerie, so what’s a little less material?  Enough to bring me out of my comfort zone.  Things got tense in the following days, though we did schedule her next show for May 12.   Before we could even get there, I failed to show up for my Cinco de Mayo Metallica show, as my friendship with California Girl finally erupted into an inevitable argument only minutes before the show was scheduled.  Once again she had gone topless that day, and once again, she suggested I watch.  I told her I’d never seen a friend of mine topless before and I wanted to talk about it, which she refused to do.  Though I tried, our friendship will never recover from this massive fight.  I was absolutely shattered by her cold heart.

California Girl was already scheduled for a special cottage Grab A Stack the afternoon of May 12.  She chose not to join me in the fallout of that fight.  I was prepared to do a solo show, but thankfully Jex Russell and Grace Scheele helped make it one of our best shows to date.

On May 16, after waiting almost 24 hours for an answer, California Girl declined to participate in a future unboxing episode to show off the Lego minifigure that Harrison custom made-to-order for her.  It was the first time she ever flat-out declined.  Even though it was only four days after our scheduled appearance, she said she was “a little busy”, and the future uncertain.  Her message lacked specifics and I was forced to read between the lines, so I considered this her resignation from the show.  My heart was broken, again.  As an added kick in the teeth, I keep getting regular hits from “social media girls forums” looking for her nude pictures.  Just a reminder of the subject that triggered everything falling apart in the first place.  But one door closes…and another opens.  California Girl may have elected not to spend her summer at the cottage with me Grabbing Stacks of Rock, but other friends have stepped up.

The hardest show to date was June 16, the day that Jen had a seizure, did a faceplant, and insisted that the show must go on.  I’m glad she did.  I’ve cancelled enough shows.  I haven’t missed a show since May 5, though a break is overdue.  I don’t want to burn out like I did after over two years of LeBrain Train.

As summer hits, I don’t know where this show is going.  I know that guys like Harrison and Jex are willing to step up any time they can.  I’ve lost two of my closest friends in six months, and this fucking show always seems to be connected.  I currently have a love/hate relationship with it.  It serves as a reminder of two shattered relationships.  There are episodes that I was proud of, that I’ll never re-watch because they are just too painful to me now.

But we fall and we bounce back.  Having Spenny on the May 20 show was a real coup.  It felt like coming back to the kind of stuff we used to do on the LeBrain Train, with heavy prep and research leading to great content.  I hope we can continue to do great shows this summer despite the shakeups and changes of plans.  I hope the wounds with my friends eventually heal.  I hope they are doing well, even if they don’t want to do my show.  I just want them to be well.

Summer’s here and the time is right for Grabbing Stacks of Rock.  Help me out, watch a show and leave a comment.  I can’t keep going without you.  I don’t want to stop.

Mike

Oh!  And kudos to Jex for sneaking in that topless joke on the June 24 cottage show!  That was fucking hilarious, man.

 

#1055: The Long and the Short of It All – Sex Sells (But Fur Sells Better) [MarriedandHeels – Instagram / OnlyFans]

The final word on Married and Heels is DARKNE$$ BE MY FRIEND.

RECORD STORE TALES #1055: Sex Sells (But Fur Sells Better)

Long story “short”:

Recently, Deke started getting decent views on his YouTube Shorts.  I think the idea originated within the Community from Brent Jensen, who likes to make short clips from the highlights of his Thursday Night Record Club videos.  So Deke tried it, and had some success.  Jex Russell said to me, “Hey man, you should try YouTube Shorts too!”

Sounds good!  But how?  I asked Deke, but he’s being kind of a dick, and he advised me to check out some Google tutorials as that could explain it better.  I stumbled through it, and eventually got some videos to work.

I started with a couple shorts.  Like Deke, I chose highlights from the live Grab A Stack of Rock shows.  I chose two to start:  both with my co-host MarriedAndHeels showing off her shoes.  Let’s face it:  even though the videos were not “adult”*, sex still sells and heels are sexy.  I had some moderate success.  I was excited to get a few hundred views on each.  I kept going!  I uploaded an Alice Cooper clip from MuchMusic to my Youtube Shorts, got a couple hundred more views.

Then a MarriedAndHeels video of her lovely Easter manicure went crazy and broke 1800 views!  I knew I was onto something!  A video of her hot T-strap heels got similar views.

I have a tricky problem.  It’s the same problem I have here on WordPress:  No direction.  I started out talking music, but that got stale (and the hits dried up).  I decided to cover toys, games, soda pop, nature, and of course, high heels too.  So there’s no actual direction.  Nothing for a subscriber to latch onto and say “I like this channel”.  But that is my problem, a self-made problem.  I like lots of different content myself, and there’s no point in starting multiple channels.  So this is the bed that I made.

Here’s what I didn’t expect.

It is true that I wanted to exploit heels for views, and it definitely works.  MarriedAndHeels gets five times as many views when she’s on Grab A Stack of Rock than any other guest.  She gets double the views of any rock star I’ve interviewed.  The only guest who ever got more views than her is Martin Popoff.  So, yeah.  I cynically said “Let’s get the Instagram Queen of Heels on the show and see what happens.”  I’ve been wanting to get her on the show since last summer, because I knew she’d be great for views.  People who don’t even care about the heels, enjoy watching us chat.  So that was successful from an artistic point of view.   The numbers are a nice bonus.

But I found something that sells even better than sexy nails and heels.

I uploaded a chipmunk.  That got 2000 views.  I uploaded another.  That got 3000 views.  Then, a raccoon.  2000 more views!

Sex sells – but furry critters sell even more!

Good thing summer is coming!  There will be lots and lots of cottage critters to upload to YouTube Shorts.  I’ve probably made a total of about 10 cents from all these videos, but everything adds up!

YouTube is tricky, and you have to constantly feed it new content or everything dries up.  With the help of several furry friends, this will hopefully be easy to do this summer!

 

* On every MarriedAndHeels short, YouTube flagged them as adult content even though nothing was adult.  I won every review.

MarriedandHeels Youtube Shorts

Lightsaber sound effects

Star Wars sound effects

Wedges

Custom Tjaina heels

T-strap heels

Pink heels & anklet

Brand new Nike’s gifted from me

Full Grab A Stack of Rock Interview Series with MarriedandHeels

#1031: (Regrettably Updated) I Wish They All Could Be California Girls [MarriedandHeels – Instagram & OnlyFans]

REVISION:  I grossly misjudged her character, and the final word on MarriedandHeels is #1072:  Darkness Be My Friend.

The below story will be kept intact with the addendum that I was wrong about everything.  This is a tale about being careful who you trust. 

 

RECORD STORE TALES #1031: I Wish They All Could Be California Girls

2022 has certainly been an interesting year, but aren’t they all?  Let’s look back at the last five:  2018 was the year of cancer.  2019 was the year of taking our summer back.  And everything since then has been a nail-biting rollercoaster of barely hanging on!  Even though the last three years feel like a giant pile-on of same-old-same-old, other things do not.  Friendships for example.  Each friendship is unique.  Each person I collaborate with is unique.  I’m grateful for all of them.  With Harrison, I get to write our amazing series The Adventures of Tee Bone Man — a new thing we began in March of 2022.  With Tee Bone himself we come up with new music and theme songs.  With Uncle Meat, we come up with show ideas.  The list goes on.  I value collaboration as one of the most fun activities that creativity brings to me.

In 2022, I unexpectedly met a new collaborator and together we’ve started to explore some fun creative chemistry.  Without repeating myself too much, music fans often have a knack for finding each other, and so California Girl and I crossed paths for the first time this year.  The fact that she liked the kind of content I was producing was a surprise to me.  On the surface, she didn’t look like my typical target audience (usually obsessive-compulsive music geeks with a side collection of stuff that isn’t to be played, just admired with the eyes).  I suppose one of the first things I learned from California Girl was not to judge books by their covers.  She might not collect physical music like a lot of us, but she’s passionate enough about the rock to name pretty much every pet in her household after musicians.  Good musicians.  Trust me, she doesn’t own a dog named Ed Sheeran or anything like that.  But you did meet her kitten Fleetwood on the Grab a Stack of Rock show a few weeks ago, when she offered up some heartfelt words for the dearly missed Christine McVie.

I will tell you this.  Though she loves classic rock, her kryptonite is Deep Purple.  Just can’t get into Purple!

She even likes Lego.  I used to think we were cool here in Kitchener, because we have a Lego store up in St. Jacobs.  Well, she has Legoland!

We are mutual fans.  She likes my writing, and I like what she does!  I’ve never met an Instagram model with 200,000 followers before.  Jen and I are both fans.  We love her fashion sense, her incredible collection of shoes, and her sense of humour.  It’s such an unlikely thing on the surface, but she’s more than just a hot pair of legs in sexy heels.  We are both collectors, and though we collect different things, the passion for it is identical.

We share similar values especially when it comes to things like family, bullying, and kindness.  As we talked, we realized we had a lot more in common than just bands and shows that we liked.  There were some life experiences that we shared, and that plus the timing of the whole thing just ended up leading to friendship.  I was anticipating some upcoming hardships.  I’ve been open about my seasonal depression, but on top of that I was dealing with the impending dread of dental surgery.  Dread which wound up being justified, but that’s not important to this story.  I needed support and not the kind of support I was getting from other friends.  Which is not a slight against other friends — I have learned that each friendship has its own unique qualities and strengths.  When it came to my dental surgery, I was getting a lot of “You’ll be fine!” messages, which I was after a spell, but wasn’t the kind of support I was really seeking.  I was really looking for more understanding about my anxieties and why I was feeling the way I was.  I got that support from California Girl.  She was there for me (virtually speaking) through the whole thing, from the weeks building up, to the incredibly difficult recovery period.

That support led to our first public collaboration, which was a song selection during my “Teeth Week” posts.  But that was not our first actual collaboration.  Together we began writing the Adventures of Edie Van Heelin’.  This character, based on a superhero version of her (sound familiar?) became quite fun for us to invent.  The first chapter involved me meeting her, rocking a club as lead guitar player of the all-female Van Halen tribute band Van Heelin’.  We had an (unreleased) adventure with aliens and Tommy Lee, and eventually we came up with one story that was good enough for public consumption.  And it was a blast to do.  And more is coming.

Here’s one funny thing about my collaborators.  With Harrison on the other side of the world, we have a narrow window of time to work together, with only the few hours before either of us are going to bed.  If I come up with a load of ideas mid-day, I have to wait until Harrison wakes up before he’ll be able to read them.  With California Girl there’s a similar situation.  We’re both early risers, but I’ve got a three hour head start.  Oftentimes I’ll have written a first draft before she’s had her morning tea.

Speaking of tea, it is true that I need more positive influences in my life.  California Girl is definitely a positive influence.  Not only is she able to see things from perspectives I hadn’t considered, but she’s slowly getting me to try to cut down the coffee and soda pop.  So tea and flavoured water have been coming back into my life.

I’ll tell you a secret.  When we first started talking, I’d try to impress her.  I’d send her pictures of me writing away on the front porch of the cottage on a Friday morning.  “Check out my beautiful scenery and squirrels,” that kind of shtick.  Little did I know that California has beauty rivalling my cottage hideaway.  But she loved the pictures and videos anyway, especially the squirrels.  Here I am showing off our huge Canadian black squirrels, but meanwhile, her morning run has peacocks on it.  Peacocks!   Just standing around in the middle of the sidewalk!  I’ve never seen a peacock outside a zoo!

Sending her these cottage photos gave me an idea.  Since I hated winter so much, maybe I could send her photos and videos of our winters here in Canada, and get her reaction.  That oughta be fun.

Except there’s been hardly any snow this winter!  She’s had more snow so far on her mountain road trips!  Last week she sent me a message.  “You know, I’m starting to wonder if you actually are from Canada.”  I had to laugh.

In 2023 I look forward to collaborating further and finding out what else we can cook up.  There will be more Adventures of Edie Van Heelin’, including crossovers.  There will be more “Ask Harrison” questions for the live shows.  There will be more Lego art.   As much as I’ve learned to expect life dealing out surprises, this has been one surprise that I sure didn’t see coming.  I never expected an Instagram influencer with over 200,000 followers would be a fan of mine, and a collaborator, and a friend.  That has been one pretty cool surprise.  I’m still a little starstruck to be honest, but I shouldn’t be.

Can’t wait to see what 2023 brings.  Happy New Year to the California Girl!

Too bad she was never totally honest with me about the true nature of our friendship.  Pay, or nothing!  I have ejected this negative influence from my life.  I have never been so terribly wrong about a person before.