SLASH PUPPET – No Strings Attached (2007 Sun City Records)
Slash Puppet were one of the biggest names of the burgeoning Toronto rock scene of the early 1990’s. Unfortunately, unlike their competition Sven Gali and I Mother Earth, they never got signed to a major label. They did, however, manage to sell out 2500 copies of their first recording, The Demo, an independent cassette, via mail order. They were the darlings of M.E.A.T Magazine and appeared on MuchMusic’s Power Hour. Slash Puppet signed a management deal with Ray Danniels and SRO (Rush) who later also handled Van Halen, King’s X, and Extreme.
I was one of the 2500 people who ordered The Demo. Every mail order was accompanied by a glossy 8 1/2 x 11 autographed photo. I still have mine, this is especially treasured since their talented lead guitarist, Lou Garscadden, passed away in 2001. Today, lead vocalist Mif (originally billed as “Tony Terrance Dartanian”, for some weird reason) is a successful actor. That’s him as the mob boss in Norm McDonald’s hilarious Dirty Work, billed under his real name, Anthony J. Mifsud!
Incredibly, for a band that never put out a major label release and split in 1994, Australia’s Sun City Records reissued The Demo on CD in 2007, as No Strings Attached. A well-assembled package, it features liner notes, lyrics, and loads of photos.
This ass-kicker starts with a bang: “Slow Down”. This was the first video, and it even made a return appearance (in slightly remixed form) on the second Slash Puppet release, a self-titled EP. “Slow Down” is an infectious hard rocker, a tougher and faster Faster Pussycat with a way, way raspier singer. It has more integrity than most of the Sunset Strip of the time combined. And this was from the bad bad streets of Mississauga!
The extremely catchy ‘Squeeze It In” follows, a mid-tempo groover, and my personal favourite song. This one just drips sleaze with a knack for gritty melody. Up next is “Hard On Love”. It’s another concoction of raspy lead vocals, catchy backing gang vocals, and pure sex. It’s twice as hard as anything Hollywood was producing at the time. “Bad Girls”, which closed side one of the original cassette, is about the only misstep. While the song is another adrenaline-filled sex romp, the chorus lacks punch.
It’s here that I think the CD edition of No Strings Attached differs from The Demo. If memory serves correctly, side two began with “Overload” and closed with “Turn It On”. On the CD, the track order seems switched. Unfortunately, my original cassette copy is now lost.
Regardless, “Turn It On” is fast paced, raspy and built for sex. It’s not an upper-echelon song, it’s more similar to “Bad Girls”, the chorus is a bit thin. The band compensates with the excellent “Evil Woman”. Great chorus, great hooks, and it sounds great in the car. It also has a cool dual guitar solo by Lou Garscadden and Frank “Bart” Bartoletti, proving these guys had the chops.
The dark and slower-paced “Some Kind O’ Lady” provides some variety on an album that is otherwise very party-oriented. This killer tune was always one of my favourites. It has some killer soloing and a great riff. The verses kind of remind me of a Testament ballad like “Return To Serenity”, but before Testament even wrote that song. Maybe it’s the grit in Mif’s voice that reminds me of Chuck Billy.
“Overload” closes the CD on an upbeat note. It has a fast, playful riff, sleazy lyrics and plenty of grit. It’s totally headbang-worthy. And with that, the CD ends, listener exhausted by half an hour of pure heavy glam rock!
The production values for this album are not the greatest. Keep in mind this was originally a self-financed demo tape, never meant for wide release, and never intended for CD. The guitar solos are often buried, and the backing vocals sound a bit thin. What does come across is the grit of Mif, an underrated singer and frontman (by all contemporary accounts).
As mentioned, Slash Puppet returned with an EP later (released by indi Fringe), amped up, better sounding and more mature without losing an ounce of their street-tough sensibilities. Look for a review of that ultra-rarity in a future edition of mikeladano.com!
A treat for you boys & girls today! A guest shot, a vintage concert review, and a significant one at that. Remember when Metallica was just an opening act for mediocre bands? Meat does. And he’s back to tell you the story. Enjoy the first guest shot of 2013, by Meat!
W.A.S.P. w/ METALLICA and ARMORED SAINT – January 19, 1985
By Meat
I was lucky at a young age to have the opportunity to see some great concerts. The first concert of my life was at The Center in the Square in Kitchener, Ontario. It was The Monks (remember “Drugs in my Pocket”?) and I went with my childhood friend, Scott Hunter, and his mother. I also saw the almighty Black Sabbath play the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium, three days before my 12th birthday, on the Mob Rules tour on November 19, 1981. I saw Triumph on the Allied Forces tour play the Center in the Square, with my father not long after that. But really my early concert experiences were mostly, and most memorably, with the aforementioned Scott Hunter. I believe it was his uncle who had connections with a concert promotion at the time called CPI. He would leave free tickets at Will Call for us at Maple Leaf Gardens or wherever the show was. We saw the last Kiss tour with makeup at the time (Creatures of the Night tour) on January 14, 1983 with The Headpins opening. Also saw the first ever Kiss tour without makeup (Lick it Up tour) on March 15, 1984 with Accept as the opening act. As well as Motley Crue on the Shout at the Devil tour on June 10, 1984, at what is now the Ricoh Coliseum, also with Accept as support. Many of these shows are quite memorable and monumental, but none so much as the first time I saw Metallica live.
I remember the first time Scott and I heard Metallica. We would have a sleepover at his place every Friday night specifically because Toronto radio station Q107 had their “Midnight Metal Hour” on that night. We would have first heard Metallica (“Seek and Destroy”) either late 1982 or early 1983, before Kill ‘Em All was even released. Obviously it was an instant shot of Metal Up Our Ass! Kill ‘Em All was released on vinyl and cassette on July 25, 1983. I specifically remember (but not exactly when) walking into a record store downtown Kitchener called Records on Wheels and buying that album, Anthrax’s Fistful of Metal and Van Halen’s 1984 on vinyl, all during the same visit. I also remember buying Metallica’s second album, Ride the Lightning, the day it was released. Thanks to the World Wide Web, I know now that date was July 27, 1984. Starting grade ten that September, I was pushing Metallica on anyone that would be open to it at my high school. There were a very select few of us who were die-hards and would have Sony Walkmans stuck to our heads at every opportunity possible. Now I cannot recall if we got free tickets for this particular show, but I do remember how pumped I was when I knew I was gonna see Metallica live.
The bill was as follows: Armored Saint (with Anthrax’s John Bush on vocals), Metallica and W.A.S.P. Yes you read that right. Metallica was opening up for W.A.S.P. I do know that further along on the tour, Metallica and W.A.S.P. would trade headlining sets due to the obvious buzz around Metallica at the time. Here is a picture of an actual ticket stub of this show. Note the price ($15.00) and Armored Saint being spelled wrong on the ticket.
One thing I will add before I go on. Of all the concerts and bands I have seen multiple times live, it is kinda strange I only saw Metallica live twice ever. One of the reasons for this is quite obviously that after their album Load (otherwise known as Mighty Load of Shit), I never really had a great interest in seeing the band live again. But it is worthwhile noting that I have seen Metallica live twice and BOTH TIMES they were opening for someone else. (The second time being the strange bill of The Black Crowes / Warrant / Metallica / Aerosmith on June 29, 1990 at CNE Exhibition Stadium in Toronto) Again, note the ticket price for this. This was before The Eagles ruined ticket prices for all acts with the ridiculous prices for their shows. To quote “The Dude” I hate the fuckin’ Eagles.
So there we were, January 19th 1985 standing in line in front of the late great Toronto concert venue named The Concert Hall. It was freezing cold out, and windy too. So since this was a General Admission event, standing in line braving at least -15 Celsius weather, you can imagine how cold and bitchy people were. I recall the rush of metalheads being ushered quickly into the venue. The second I got in there I went straight for the merch booth and bought a Ride the Lightning tour shirt for me and a high school friend named Joe DeLeo. After that, like seemingly everybody, I had to take a wicked piss. After doing that, I was horrified when I tried to zip my probably really tight jeans back up, and couldn’t because my hands were numb from the cold. My embarrassed horror turned to laughter as I turned my head to see dozens of much older and much larger long-haired headbangers all having the same problem. Only in Canada I guess eh?
Sometime later, Armored Saint took the stage. I remember them being great and how loud it was in there. They were received well and that venue was filling up. While enjoying their set my buddy Scott gets my attention and points to the much-shorter person beside me. Immediately I recognized him as Russell Dwarf from the Toronto band Killer Dwarfs. Their name was very apropos considering this band consisted of nothing but short dudes with long hair. I can only imagine how this band got together. Wonder if an ad went out that said. “Metal musicians needed. Must not be over 5 foot 6 inches tall and have long hair”. I loved that first album. If you don’t know of them, here is their first single and video.
It was time for the Mighty Metallica. They started out with the first track off Ride The Lightning, the classic riff-monster “Fight Fire With Fire”. At this point I was probably about mid-way to the stage in a sea of metalheads. This was before the days of the “moshpit”. This was more of a Hair Swarm packed with long-haired sardines covered in denim and leather. It would have been about half-way through the show that I wormed my way to the front of the stage. This was no easy task as I am sure you can imagine, however being only 15 and much smaller than the masses (with the exception of the Killer Dwarfs of course), there I was literally feet from what would become the best-selling metal band of all-time. This brings me to a memory I will cherish forever. The seemingly monstrous Cliff Burton was right in front of me. I reached out and had in my hand, the bottom leg of his ragged bell-bottom jeans. He tried to kick me in the face, and thankfully missed. Can’t blame him either for trying to kick my head off, and honestly it was the first thing I thought of when said legend died in a bus accident a year and a half later in Sweden on September 27, 1986. R.I.P. Clifford Lee Burton. Check out this YouTube audio clip I found of Metallica playing “Seek and Destroy” from this exact show. Gotta love YouTube.
Check out this set list of the show the next night in Buffalo at some place called the Salty Dog Saloon. (I couldn’t find the Toronto set list online but I am sure it is identical)
“Fight Fire With Fire”
“Ride the Lightning”
“Phantom Lord”
“(Anethesia) Pulling Teeth”
“For Whom the Bell Tolls”
“No Remorse”
“The Call of Ktulu”
“Seek & Destroy”
“Whiplash”
Encores:
“Creeping Death”
Guitar solo
“Am I Evil?”
“Motorbreath”
Which brings me to winding down this novel of a concert review. How could W.A.S.P. possibly follow Metallica? Well, I do remember chants of “you suck”. I remember that the front was nowhere near as packed as it was for Metallica. Maybe Blackie thought he could follow them by drinking fake blood out of a skull (which he did). Here is a quote from Mr. Blackie Lawless comparing separate tours with both Slayer and Metallica and musing about this particular tour.
Blackie: I’ll tell you what was worse – us and Metallica. It was our first or second U.S. tour. It was us, Metallica, and Armored Saint. When they (Slayer) went out with us, they were still an up n’ coming band, didn’t have a lot of fans, so there was a pocket of division every night. With Metallica, I kid you not, it was like an invisible line was drawn right down the middle of the room, and half was theirs and half was ours. It didn’t matter what we were doing on stage. It looked like two opposing armies. Sometimes we just stopped what we were doing and watched. It was a war.
I realize that the merit of music is subjective and it is all in the Ear Of The Beholder. But lets face it. W.A.S.P. really does kinda suck. Some good moments but really not much to speak of. During their set myself and others that with us were just kind of mulling about as most others were really. It was during this time that a guy we were with named Kevin B. (nicknamed Little Dude) said that he saw Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson leaving out a side door during their set. Now to give some perspective on this, this person was a known bull-shitter. None of us believed him. True story: Kevin years later had trans-gender surgery and now is known as Treva. But anyways, we shrugged this off as yet another lie from Little Dude. It was months later reading a Blackie Lawless interview in Circus magazine that I read this quote. “Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson were actually at one of our shows in Toronto last year…. But they were not there to see us.” A classic example of the Little Dude who cried wolf.
So here we are, the tail end of 2012. While I’m sure you’re just starting to get your drink on, we here at LeBrain’s Blog are tirelessly bringing you the rock even into the wee final hours. This is the time, traditionally, when we look at the past year!
We used to do Top Five of the Year lists at the record store, when we used to have our newsletter. Unfortunately I don’t have copies of any of those newsletters, not a one, which is a real shame since I poured my heart and soul into them as much as anybody else at the store. It would have been fun to look back 15 years and see what my top five of 1997 was. I do know for certain two albums that were on it: Accident of Birth by Bruce Dickinson, and The Colour and the Shape by Foo Fighters! The rest have been lost to the dusts of time.
Hey, if any of you guys are still speaking to me and have copies of the newsletter, lemme know eh? ;)
Back to the present for a moment:
What can I say about 2012? Before I even thought about doing my own blog, events were in motion that pushed me in that direction. My good buddy Craig Fee invited me down to 107.5 Dave FM for an entire week — Stump LeBrain Week! I spent a week on the air, with listeners trying to stump me. There were even a couple LeBrain Weeks and an entire month of LeBrainuary, where every single day’s 4 O’clock 4 Play quizzes were mined from my own brain’s knowledge. It was a blast, and left me hungry for more.
I’d always been writing Record Store Tales. The oldest ones were at least a decade old on my hard drive, but I had no idea what to do with them. I’d also been writing reviews — well over 800 of them on file before I launched — that very few people had seen. Craig said to me, “LeBrain, you need to get blogging this stuff. Write something every day. If you build it, they will come.”
So that’s what I did, and I thank you for reading.
Back to the Record Store Tales:
I published Part 1 on March 9 2012, the beginning of the story, called Run to the Hills. It was about the very first time I heard Iron Maiden, a date I’ll never forget. And thus LeBrain’s Blog and Record Store Tales were launched.
Some highlights from the early months that you may have missed if you’re fairly new here:
You know this was gonna happen. Aside from the fact that I’m the biggest Kiss fan around, it’s a fucking great record. Read LeBrain’s review of Monster here.
Runner up: Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson – TAAB2 Thick As A Brick 2.
This one goes out to Rich from KamerTunesBlog, a great, informed site that you should check out.
I got the other two Sectors for Christmas, but this is an older review.
RUSH – Sector 2 (2011 box set, 5 CD + 1 DVD)
Damn you Rush. Damn you!
If it wasn’t for the fact that I liked their past 5.1 mixes so much, I wouldn’t have bought each of these albums again in this box set. And the fact that only one album (A Farewell To Kings) has been mixed in 5.1 really grinds my gears. Because you know more is coming. 2112, recently released as a part of Sector 1, in normal stereo, is now coming again in 5.1. It’s obvious Rush are going to continue to issue 5.1 mixes of their albums, in seemingly random order, which will probably make these box sets completely redundant in the future.
Rich Chycki did the 5.1 mix once again, and once again, it’s a pleasure to listen to. In particular I found “Cygnus X-1” to really benefit from the treatment. The swirly opening section made me feel as if I too was aboard the Rocinante, wheeling through the galaxies. The album sounds three dimensional, clear, shimmery. I’m very happy with the 5.1 mix.
Farewell is included on a standard stereo remastered CD, and also in stereo on the DVD. I have read online that there are flaws with the stereo mix of this DVD but I’ve never played it. I’m not that much of an audiophile that I would really care to, when I already have a CD.
The other CD’s included in the set, aside from A Farewell To Kings, are:
Hemispheres
Permanent Waves
Moving Pictures
Exit…Stage Left
…all of which I have now bought more than once. In Moving Pictures‘ case, three times now, since they just issued that as a deluxe edition with a 5.1 surround blu-ray last year! (Reviewed here.) Bastards.
I’m not going to review each individual album in this set. That comprehensive task would require separate blog entries of their own. They’re all great, of course. Some (Moving Pictures) more so than others (Hemispheres) in my own personal opinion. And of course, within this box set you will get such classics as “Closer To The Heart”, “The Trees”, “The Spirit of Radio”, “Freewill”, “YYZ”, “Limelight”, and “Vital Signs”. In addition there are plenty of brilliant album tracks like “La Villa Strangiato” and “Natural Science”.
The box itself is attractive enough, and if you’re sucked into buying all three, then they all fit together on your shelf as one handsome library. But you already own some of these albums, if not all, don’t you? The bait is that 5.1 mix of Farewell. And it pisses me off that Rush would treat their fans in that way. Why not just remaster and re-release these albums on their own and in a box set?
The individual album packaging is nice enough too, mini record sleeve reproductions, with a nice booklet with lyrics and liner notes for the whole shebang, all taken from the albums. As far as the booklet goes, there’s no exclusive essays or other content that is new to me.
And as for the new remastering? I can’t tell the difference between this and the 1997 remasters. I can’t. Sorry. I’m sure an audiophile would call me an idiot for saying so.
I probably won’t buy Sectors 1 and 3, not unless the prices drop dramatically. I was able to re-gift my original Rush remasters off to other people, which is one way of dealing with the duplicates, but I’m not going to be getting rid of my deluxe Moving Pictures, since it has the blu-ray and a David Fricke essay. So I’ve got two copies of that, and people who collect 5.1 mixes and have Sector 1 will end up with two copies of 2112. Nice eh?
I have 31 discs of music to listen to now. And a whole lotta other goodies. Here we go!
First up – books. Peter Criss’ Makeup To Breakup, and the latest from Ripley’s Believe It or Not and Guiness’ Book of World Records. I’ve leafed through Peter’s book — all he seems to do is bitch about Paul and Gene. Review will come.
Next, Queen. A total of 8 discs of awesome remastered Queen to listen to: The Miracle, Jazz, A Night at the Opera, and Live Killers!
Next up, Rush. 6 discs in each of these two Sector box sets, including 2 DVD’s in 5.1 surround, plus 2 discs of 2112. Awesome. (I already have Sector 2 and have a review of that coming in the next few days.)
And the rest: The 4 disc Cult Love Omnibus Edition. Thin Lizzy’s Life Live (2 discs), Jon Lord’s Concerto for Group and Orchestra, and the new Rage Against The Machine XX edition (2 discs plus a DVD).
But that’s not all. Check out this Kiss lunchbox, these movies and vintage G1 Transformers 1988 “Bugly” action figure.
Lastly my folks got me this neat Joby camera tripod. This is going to come in handy when I make my next Transformers stop motion animated movie. I did a brief 15 second screen test — check that out too!
Hope your Christmas was filled with happiness, love, joy, and rock!
Good day, eh? This will be the last post before Christmas! LeBrain’s Blog will be taking a rare break for Christmas. We’ll be back soon, so don’t worry eh?
I would like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and happy holiday whether you celebrate it or not, but most importantly a safe holiday. Be careful on those roads.
And now for Christmas, I leave you with a very special review. Enjoy!
BOB & DOUG McKENZIE – Great White North (1981)
Cooooo, loo coo coo, coo coo coo coo!
Merry Christmas, eh? All Canadians (aka, “Hosers” for my international readers) celebrate Christmas every year with the classic tune, “Twelve Days of Christmas” by our national treasures, Bob & Doug McKenzie. A sample lyric?
On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
5 GOLDEN TOQUES!,
4 pounds of back bacon,
3 french toast,
2 turtlenecks,
and a beer, in a tree.
Twisted Sister, eat your hearts out. This is the best version (ever!) of this Christmas classic. All Hosers should know the words off by heart, just as well as they know “Oh Canada”.
This Christmas classic can be found on Bob & Doug’s album, Great White North. A spin-off from their successful SCTV segment, Kanadian Korner, it wasn’t long before somebody at Anthem records thought the boys should make an album, eh? Basically half an hour of rambling about back bacon, smokes, donuts and beer, it’s not much of an album. Bummer. It doesn’t sound like it was scripted. It’s hard to stay tuned in for the entire length, although it did somehow go to #1 in Canada. Much of the album is taken up by welcoming to the listener to different segments, and the boys fighting over what in fact they should be talking about.
One of the funnier segments is regarding “Elron McKenzie” and his church. The sermon that day was about not killing bugs. The sermon was a big success, even though people had to drive through 8 feet of snow, eh.
Disappointing was “Black Hole” which features a backwards message. Using the magic of Audacity, I did play the segment backwards. I was hoping for something a little more mindblowing, like a recipe for the perfect donut or back bacon sandwich, but no such luck.
All of this is offset not only by the Christmas tune, but perhaps one of the greatest songs in Canadian history: “Take Off”.
“Take Off” features lead vocals by Geddy Lee, of Canada’s Rush. Geddy did the single for the princely sum of ten bucks. This song is not only a must for all Hosers, but all Rush fans worldwide. The incredible lead vocal may blow your speakers. As Geddy himself says on the track, “I’m a professional, eh?”
Cassettes Part IV – LeBrain’s Tapes (What Remains)
I used to have a lot of tapes. So many, that T-Rev converted my closet doors to shelving, just to store my numerous cassettes! It was quite a feat of engineering on his part.
If you’ve read the otherthreeparts of this series on cassettes, then you’ve already seen some of the awesome artwork that T-Rev used to come up with for his tapes. Doing those articles got me nostalgic, but very few of my own tapes remained. A year or two before I met Mrs. LeBrain, I briefly dated this one girl who was getting into hair metal. I had succeeded in replacing most of my tapes on CD (although still incomplete; I need a copy of Live Fast, Die Fast by Wolfsbane, and Phenomenon 1). All my tapes were redundant, and I gave her boxes and boxes full of them.
God knows where those tapes are now. I doubt she took them back home to Thunder Bay when it was all over, they probably ended up in a landfill. No big loss really, the only shame of it is that, like T-Rev, I used to make a lot of my own custom artwork.
Mrs. LeBrain and I were visiting her mom yesterday, and I found some of my old Beatles tapes that I had made, at her place! Her dad drove a delivery van with nothing but a tape deck inside. He was more than happy to receive my old Beatles tapes, and he loved them. And there they were, still at the house, complete with my computer generated J-cards. Nothing elaborate, although I did paste the cover for Abbey Road onto that tape.
This inspired me to dig through some boxes here, and see if I had any of my own tapes left. Surely there must be something here, with some of my own custom cover art! There was just a handful left, stuff that I wouldn’t have parted with at the time, and lo and behold, there was my old artwork. These sure brought back memories!
Back in the early record store days, cassette was my primary medium. They were portable, you could leave them in the car and not worry about them getting banged up, so I recorded everything onto cassette. It wasn’t until I had left the record store in 2006 that I got my first car with a CD deck. Before then, I had one of those adapter kits to play a discman in the car, but it sounded shite. I was glad to find the following treasures tucked away in a box!
Ahh, Spinal Tap. A Spinal Tap Reunion was recorded from a 1992 TV special. Unavailable on DVD today, as far as I know. That’s a shame.
I bought Grande Rock by The Hellacopters on vinyl, to get that bonus track “Angel Dust”. Or, more accurately, one of my record store compatriots got it for me at Orange Monkey Music in Waterloo. I dutifully recorded it to cassette without making elaborate packaging, but I did put some effort into the cassette spine.
You Fat Bastards by Faith No More was the full show that was released on CD in truncated form on the Live at the Brixton Academy CD. This was from a VHS release.
Guns N’ Roses did a couple cool TV specials. I recorded Live at the Ritz off T-Rev, who stuck on some demos for bonus tracks. The cover was made by adapting an old Appetite For Destruction J-card. I think this turned out pretty cool. Invade Paris! was a TV special from 1992.
These two Maiden tapes were from VHS releases. It’s a shame that Raising Hell was never released on a CD. Here’s hoping the band will put that out on a future box set. It was Bruce’s “final” show. I just edited out the crap sections with “magician” Simon Drake. Maiden England is also taken from VHS, but this is the full show. The CD release omitted two songs: “Can I Play With Madness”, and “Hallowed Be Thy Name”. My cassette didn’t! I thought my J-card for Maiden England turned out pretty cool, using an old Seventh Son cover as its basis.
Unfortunately, this is all that remains of my old cassette art. I did some much more elaborate things, which Thunder Bay Girl probably tossed out. One was for Savatage’s Dead Winter Dead. When I recorded that one to cassette, I actually painted the gargoyle onto a J-card. Wish I kept that one. Rush’s Test For Echo may have been the most elaborate one I’ve done. Using some old cardboard and a full-page ad for the album, I created my own digipack for that cassette. It would be nice to still have. Ahh well.
It seems funny, in today’s age of mp3 files and players, that a format as crappy as cassette was anyone’s main format. But there you go. Before I could play CD’s in the car, they were the best way to bring music with me. I’ve always believed a music collection was for showing off as much as listening to, plus I enjoyed making the artwork. I’m glad some still survives today!
TRAILER PARK BOYS Xmas Special (Conky Puppet, Dope and Liquor Editions)
Upon first release in 2004, I bought the Trailer Park Boys Xmas Special. It was a compulsory purchase. This excellent show, one of the funniest on TV, had yet to issue the special as a part of a box set. Plus it came with a Conky puppet! Fans of the show know Conky to be the evil but hilarious puppet who has a tendency to take over Bubbles’ brain. Surely, “Conky” is one of the two best episodes of the show. The other would be “Closer to the Heart” featuring Alex Lifeson.
See the video to check out LeBrain’s Conky puppet!
I remember Tom used to put the Conky puppet on top of his Christmas tree!
Then, in 2006, I found the reissued “Dope and Liquor Edition” at a store for $5, and re-bought it, even though I already own the version that came with the Conky puppet. Why?
1. Because I’m crazy like that and I love TPB.
2. Because it was cheap enough to warrant the second purchase.
3. Because the previously unreleased (on DVD) “Trailer Park Boys 101” special as hosted by Alex Lifeson was worth it to me.
This double-length episode (actually titled, “Dear Santa Claus, Go Fuck Yourself”) on its own is one of the best the series ever produced. Taking place in 1997, well before the fictional adventures of Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles were documented, this episode reveals a lot of Trailer Park Boys backstory and delivers a lot of laughs.
Ricky is bailed out of jail on Christmas Eve to help Julian with his present stealing racket. Ricky’s unhappy because Christmas is the best time to be in jail (“12 days of partying,” Ricky says). It doesn’t take long for Mr. Lahey to get wise to the theft scheme, and with his new friend Randall in tow, he promptly gets back on the liquor. In the meantime, sidekicks Jamie and Tyrone discover rap music and marijuana, while Ricky and Julian use “nerds” Corey and Trevor to help steal Christmas trees.
Some of the funniest dialogue in the show’s history was right here in the Christmas special. Ricky mistaking God for Santa Claus is priceless (if you’re not offended).
Ricky: Dad, I write letters every year, you know that. I mean, I’m sending a letter off to the big guy tomorrow. So, it’s taken care of. Done. No problem.
Ray: Huh?
Ricky: The letters… You and Mom got me to write them every year at Christmas. I’m sending one off tomorrow again.
Ray: To Santa Claus, Rick?!
Ricky: Yeah, the big guy.
Bubbles: The big guy?! The big guy? That’s God, Ricky.
Ricky: Yeah, God. That’s what I said. Santa.
Ray: Ricky, come on, you know Santa and God aren’t the same guy, right?
Ricky: Dad, you didn’t know that? I mean, think about it! How would he get around the world in one night? Of course he’s the same person. Right, Bubs?
Bubbles: No, Ricky. Santa and God, that’s two different things.
Ricky: What? Oh my fuck! You know, I did maybe think that I fucked that up. I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t want to say anything just in case Santa was God. Like, it would obviously, probably, wouldn’t it piss him off that I got that mixed up like that?
By the time you get to his big speech at the end, (“Christmas is about getting drunk and stoned with your family!”) you’ll be howling.
Like I said, this is hilarious if you’re not easily offended. If you are, I would advise you to stay far away from everything Trailer Park Boys. If you enjoy well delivered, largely improvised dialogue performed by the east coast’s favourites, then dig in for some Christmas dinner.
The special features here are the typical TPB fare. Alternate takes, extended takes, bloopers, and so on abound, making this worth your coin. As I mentioned before, to make up for the lack of the Conky puppet, the Dope and Liquor Edition has the Alex Lifeson documentary. As a Rush and TPB fan, this was worth the re-buy for me. You also get a preview for the first TPB movie, although this is well out of date now.
Merry Christmas, make sure mom is nowhere around when you watch this!
NEIL PEART – “The Hockey Theme” (2010 single, iTunes)
For my international friends and readers, you’re just going to have to take my word for it that this little tune is one of the most iconic pieces of music in our nation’s great history. Mike Myers called it “Canada’s second anthem”. If you’re home on a Saturday night, it’s a given that any true hoser is watching Hockey Night In Canada. That theme song was the anthem that said, “Alright fans, go get your beer and your jerseys, the action starts now.”
I won’t get into the details of why this song isn’t the theme to Hockey Night In Canada anymore, but the song was picked up by another network, and it still kicks off hockey games every week — just not on Hockey Night in Canada.
In 2010, Neil Peart did a drum and horns version of the theme song, and put it up for sale on iTunes. People bitched that they had to pay $1.29 for a song that was barely over a minute long. All I can say to those people is, don’t buy it. It you’re really huffing and puffing about paying $1.29 for a simply incredible piece of music by the world’s greatest drummer, then it is possible that you may in fact have no soul.
If you’re familiar with Neil’s work on the Burning For Buddy albums, then you already know that he tends to really kick traditional arrangements in the nuts. And that’s what he does here. He turns “The Hockey Theme” into a stomping, fill-laden anthem that is perfect for kicking off just about any mix CD that you have in mind.
Now, if we could only get an actual hockey season happening this year, we’d be talkin’!
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