It has come, and it has gone. It was epic. I will post more details later. For now, enjoy the gallery.
For the record, the #1 song this year was “Gardenia” by Kyuss, and the mix tape features guest appearances from Jeff Woods, Craig Fee, and Stephen Hawking (although I’m pretty sure that last one was fake).
RECORD STORE TALES Part 38: More Wood
As I said before in chapter 14, record store guys have the best parties, ever. In the beginning when things were less corporate, we also had the best staff parties. There were kegs, which automatically meant keg stands. We were outdoors. There was music. There were burgers and dogs and even vegetarian options. One year, a bunch of guys (including our buddy Dave “Homer”), pulled up in a pickup truck with a couch in the back! Fucking perfect! We would go all night, no complaints from the neighbors. This was long before Spoogecakes. This was summer, 1999.
In my humble opinion, the epicenter of these parties was always Tom. He brought the best tunes. He said the most random things (“Frosted Lucky Charms, they’re magically delicious!”) at the most random times. Tom brought the fucking party.
TOM
The triumvirate of Tom, Trev and myself were usually ready to rock out to something a little on the heavier side. Tom brought the Fu Manchu, which was my first exposure to the band. From The Action is Go, he played “Saturn III” on repeat.
Spaceman destroy
Mega asteroid
Certain time and place
Floatin’ up in space
Tom brought the tunes, and Tom brought the chicken wings. Tom used to pull this stunt where he’d eat several wings, bones and all. (Then, he used to put the rest of the bones in a jar and say he would use it to make soup?) Well, it didn’t turn out so well for Tom this time.
Trev was working with this one kid from Egypt who didn’t last long. Boutros was his name. Well, Boutros used to boast that he could eat “anything” no matter how hot. Trevor used to laugh at this, having tasted the terrible delights of the habanero pepper himself. Boutros, despite his boasts, had never heard of this pepper. He had no idea what he was getting himself into with his boasting.
Trevor made a special trip to get one pepper, just for this party. It was a mean looking little thing, like a tiny tomato. He presented it to Smelly. Smelly laughed.
“That little thing? That’s what I’m supposed to be so afraid of? That little thing?”
Boutros was about to insert the whole thing in mouth.
Trevor responded with a chuckle, “Be careful! Don’t have a bite. Just cut off a small slice.”
“Yeah whatever!” he said as a slice was prepared for him.
He ate it. He laughed. He laughed some more.
Then, his eyes grew wide. His mouth squeezed shut as he began crying. He assumed the fetal position. I didn’t see him again for the rest of the night. He never boasted about being able to eat “anything” again.
Enter, Tom. Tom was already well lubricated from generous amounts of cold, frothy beer. He had also already performed his standard party trick: the eating of the chicken bones, much to the delight of us. So, when a very inebriated Tom grabbed what was left of that pepper and bit, we all shouted “NO” at once! After all, chicken bones and habanero cannot feel good coming out the other end!
As far as I know, Tom spent much of the rest of the evening drinking milk in the washroom. I do not know what the next day was like for him. I have never asked. I don’t want to know.
I can’t believe we’re already at Part 30. And we’re just getting started, folks. Stories have been collected, going back a decade.
For Part 30, something of a milestone I guess, we’ll do something special.
SAUSAGEFEST
Much like a secret society, men today speak of Sausagefest in hushed tones.
Earlier, I mentioned Tom and Eric (“Uncle Meat”) and something called Sausagefest (in a previous chapter). What happens at Sausagefest, stays at Sausagefest. Mostly. But here’s what I can tell you.
The heart and core of Sausagefest is the annual Top 100 list. The format has varied slightly over the years, but it remains largely unchanged. They take votes from all attendees, months in advance, of their top 100 song picks that year. They tabulate them, and over two crazy nights in an undisclosed but vast outdoor location, they count them down one by one.
Beer is consumed. Sausage is eaten. There are no vegetarians at Sausagefest. I have packed Froot Roll Ups in the past but that’s it for me. The rest is all sausage, and succulent marinated lamb for me.
The top 100 list was started by Eric and his buddy Derek back in 1990. It was New Year’s Eve, and he collected a top 100 list and put together the tapes (!) himself. He often had to borrow a CD from somebody to do it, because there was no web. An evening would typically run from 5pm to 3am, solid with tunes and the odd skit in between.
This went on for three years. Much later, in 2002, the concept was reinvented as Sausagefest. The setting was now a pristine scenic valley with a river running through it. Awesome. A generator powers the wall of sound, and there are no neighbors to complain about the noise.
The top 100 is usually epic in scale and scope. You will hear everything from AC/DC to Zappa, as far out as Dixie Dregs, and as local as Helix. You will hear Lightfoot, Cash, Nelson, and Kristofferson. Maiden and Priest are regulars, and the thrash gets positively evil. Mercyful Fate anyone?
The story goes like this: Tom was frustrated one night and blurted out, “We need just an all-guys’ weekend. We can have it up at the farm. Summer weekend No chicks. And it will be called Sausagefest…’cause if you dont have your own personal sausage…you can’t come!”
The “moment of clarity”, as they say, was instant. They both knew they had to do this, and that the music would be the core of it. Only these two guys could have cooked up and executed an idea like this at that moment. The planets were aligned or something. I bet if you knew the exact date that they invented Sausagefest, you would be able to find that a supernova happened that day too.
Again they did it on cassette. Tom’s music collection was massive at that point, about 1500 discs and a growing collection of vinyl. Only these guys had the resources to do it. Finding these songs, on download, at the time? Very difficult.
For the record, the very first #1 at the very first year was “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”! Epic.
So Sausagefest was born, and the first one was a success. Unfortunately I did not attend the first four. In fact I didn’t attend a single one until I had quit the record store. 2006 was my first Sausagefest. For many of them, I simply could not get the weekend off. Everybody wants time off in the summer, and the actual date for Sausagefest wasn’t always known with enough notice.
The other factor in me not going was I was really stuck in a rut at the time with the store. I was paranoid to leave town. There were fuckups literally all the time that needed to be fixed, fires that needed to be put out, that I never felt comfortable leaving. The very last vacation I ever took at the store was 2002. No coincidence.
However once I was free of that fear, I drove up with no tent and just a cooler full of meat, water, and Roll Ups. Actually no, that’s not true! I was told there was no need to bring meat, because there was so much there, it wouldn’t be a problem. So just water and Roll Ups, that first year! I slept in my car.
At night, the music starts and the air guitars come out. But the days have their own traditions.
An Iron Maiden loving guy named Zach brings the lamb. He brings more every year and there is still not enough to satisfy my hunger. It is incredible. Zach is the lamb lord. Some people put it on bread but I just eat it right with the fingers. It’s an incredible meal, every year.
There is always beer and plenty of it. A beer wagon was actually rented for two of the years. Beer is consumed in massive quantities. There is always one guy passed out before the top 100 really even gets going. But that’s OK. Nobody’s driving anywhere. Sean often picks up coffee for the boys in the mornings but that’s about it. We’re in it for the long haul. And I mean long haul. Music is often still playing at 3am.
My problem is I can’t sleep in at all, so I’m up by 7. I’ll grab a book, a beer, and a chair and head down to the river. My first Sausagefest, I was reading Dune. It was incredible reading it in the river with nobody even awake yet.
The toilet is always a highlight. I’m convinced that the boys rented a Porta-Potty for me specifically my first year, to keep me coming back. Because there hasn’t been one since. Why? I don’t know. We could easily collect for it, just like we do beer. But they don’t do it! I’m convinced it’s because part of the Sausagefest experience is shitting in the woods.
I won’t lie, I love peeing outdoors. I’m not the only one either. In a survey done at work, 3 out of 4 men enjoy peeing outdoors. It’s just a natural expression of the animal side that is a part of nature, or something. That’s what I tell my wife anyway. What did our ancestors do? Pee outside. It’s social. I’ll be at Sausagefest peeing, and another guy will pee next to me, and be like, “Hey man, how’s it going? Good tunes eh?” Anyway, I’m getting off topic again.
There’s a chair with a hole in the seat that you’re supposed to shit in, and the tree next to it has toilet paper hanging from the branch. Personally I don’t want to see someone else’s shit. Just a thing I have, I guess. So I shit in the river. Yes, I shit in the river. The river is fast-flowing, like a toilet, but it’s cold. You turtle right up stepping in. But it’s also like a combo toilet/bidet. You’re clean when you’re all done. And I’ve seen dogs shit in it, so….
The worst thing about Sausagefest is, in fact, the shits. You’re eating nothing but greasy (but delicious!) meat (not Meat!). Every year, it is up early on Sunday morning (always by 6:00 am) on on the road, as fast as possible, to an actual bathroom!
Unfortunately, as stated, what happens at Sausagefest stays at Sausagefest, so I really can’t get too much into the stories. I will say this. It’s something that I look forward to every summer. All of those guys do. We talk about it when we arrive, how this event can be the best weekend of your entire year. It’s also strange how time stands still up at the farm. “Wow, just doing that drive up here, it’s so familiar like I was just here last week.” It happens every year. You get there and it feels like you never really left.
The music, combined with the fellowship, and of course the sweet joy of swimming in the river when it gets hot, makes this almost a spiritual place. A Mecca for those about to rock, so to speak. It is a secret society that I am proud to be a member of.
I keep my copy in my desk
RECORD STORE TALES Part 21: The Book
Way back in the day, Tom had this book; a book of reviews of metal albums. I don’t know where he got it. He had recently acquired it and was perusing album reviews daily. Hanging out one evening, he said to me, “Have you ever heard Gillan?”
I said, “Gillan, as in Ian Gillan’s band?”
“Yeah,” responded Tom.
“No,” I said.
“You’re going to have to find some. This book gives him consistent 10 star ratings. There are some pretty cool song titles man, like ‘I’ll Rip Your Spine Out’.”
Cool! So “The Book“ (as it came to be known) made the rounds. T-Rev borrowed it for a couple weeks and explored the Max Webster and Kim Mitchell ratings. Trevor enjoy the reviews of the writer, one Martin Popoff. He commented to me, “This guy is pretty bang-on for most of them, but you have to read the Def Leppard and Rik Emmett reviews…hilarious, man.”
Trevor was right! Ipso Facto by Rik Emmett was rated a 0/10, with a single sentence review: “Man, don’t get me started.” The book was hilarious and informative at the same time. We all found it entertaining as well as useful.
When the book came around to me, I was really curious about this band called Budgie. New fave band! Eventually, I returned the book to Tom who passed it on to someone else, probably Uncle Meat. Certain things always stuck in my head. According to Popoff, I clearly needed more Thin Lizzy, so I began rectifying that with a box set. He didn’t think much of Kiss, but I could understand this given his criteria, even if I disagreed.
I wished I owned a copy, and a year later I found one downtown at Encore Records, second hand. Then a weird coincidence happened. Just as I was craving another read, and was preparing to go downtown and buy a copy of Riff Kills Man, a regular customer of mine gave me his copy. I don’t remember too much about this guy, except that he sold more than he bought. He sold a lot of hard-to-find goth and punk stuff, and he always wore a jean jacket, and he strangely always smelled like fried eggs. Since I can’t remember his name, I’ll call him Fried Eggs Man.
So Fried Eggs Man had been talking to me about the book, and passed it onto me free of charge. I thought that was really cool of him. The book too smells of fried eggs, and was coming apart. I used Bounce dryer sheets to help out with the smell, and I painstakingly glued the pages back in with Elmer’s white glue. I had to do some cover repair work as well, but the book is solid as a rock and has served me well for probably a decade and a half by now.
MARTIN POPOFF – Riff Kills Man! (1993 Power Chord Press, Toronto Ontario)
Martin Popoff, a writer for BW&BK magazine, is simply one of the most knowledgeable metal fans out there. His record collection sounds like it’s to die for. Riff Kills Man! is his first book, but today, he has an extensive bibliography of books that I consider among the best sources of rock information out there. In fact, LeBrain himself relies heavily on Popoff’s teachings, and I will admit to consciously emulating him in my earlier reviews.
Riff Kills Man!, later supplanted by his more up to date and complete Collector’s Guides, is an album-by-album review of virtually every major metal record from its inception to 1992, all stuff which belonged to Popoff’s personal collection. He covers subgenres such as punk metal and grunge, and bands so obscure that you may never be able to find their albums. Rated from 1 to 10, with strict rules for rating, Riff Kills Man! gives you a great place to start when looking for something “new” to listen to. If it wasn’t for all the 9 and 10 star reviews in this book, I may never have started listening to Budgie, or Thin Lizzy, or Diamond Head.
His rating system is fairly complex, but for the most part, as objective as possible. I don’t necessarily agree with all of the author’s opinions. For example, Popoff really dislikes a lot of pop rock and gives both Adrenalize and Hysteria by Def Leppard a big fat 0. “An offensive kick in the head from the rock n’ roll bored room,” writes Popoff. You may agree, but for me Hysteria is a classic record. Regardless, he makes valid points that even the most staunch fan such as myself have to grudgingly agree with.
Popoff also tends to dislike live albums with meandering jams like many old Deep Purple recordings. He generally focuses on studio albums, avoiding most EPs and complitions. So if you’re looking for complete reviews of, say, the numerous Thin Lizzy EPs, live releases and compilations, look elsewhere.
Martin ends the book with several lists and indexes: Top desert island albums, top guitar players, vocalists, producers, you name it. He also has a lot of unique categories all his own, such as best showman, best comeback, most consistent band, etc. AC/DC are ranked as his #1 band in the category of worst album covers!
That aside, Riff Kills Man! was, for me, an essential and often hilarious piece of reading. Pick it up, and then move forward for some of Popoff’s more complete and more specialized books. I keep mine in my desk at work at all times!
DISCLAIMER – Although it can be found used, this book is out of print. I spoke to Martin Popoff once about this book, and he told me he finds it a bit embarrassing today. I still think it’s awesome.
5/5 stars
Also recommended by Popoff: His books on Sabbath, Rush, Rainbow, and Priest are definitive. The best books on the market for those bands.
Yours Truly
Everybody always wanted to know how awesome it was to work in a record store. They all had this Empire Records idea of it when the truth is much closer to High Fidelity. I kind of considered myself a combination of the John Cusack and Jack Black characters. I ran the place like Cusack, but I was a Jack Black-like smartass. Black played a character named Barry. You know that scene where the guy in the suit is looking for the song, “I Just Called To Say I Love You”?
I never quite went that far, but I was always fond of the subtle insults. I was also known for being stubbornly obtuse. Like for example, the guy who couldn’t pronounce “Triumph”. I knew very well what band he was looking for, but he kept saying, “Tramp”. He didn’t know how to spell it either. Just the very idea that he couldn’t spell nor pronounce the word “triumph”…how could I not have fun with that guy? I eventually sold him The Sport of Kings, when I felt like he’d earned it.
Spelling was an issue in this part of town. We had a lookup terminal where you could search for inventory on your own. The best question I ever got at that terminal was, “Mike, how do you spell ‘metal’? I don’t spell so good.”
In short, stuff grinds your gears just like it does at anybody’s job. There are times when you saw a number on call display and just did not want to answer. Just like any job. Annoying callers, annoying customers, lazy customers who made you do absolutely everything for them, including pick what they want to buy!
You had sales quotas just like any day job. You had responsibilities to get done. If they weren’t done, you can’t just say “we were really busy” if your sales numbers weren’t big. And you had to do things accurately. In any environment where you buy and sell used goods, you had to be sure of what you were buying and what you were paying for it. This is made just as difficult in a music store as anywhere else, due to the multiple versions, reissues, special editions, and imports of a CD that determine just what it’s worth. You could go from offering $2 to $20 for a single album, the exact same title, just a different version thereof.
Same album different versions, and none of these are even the standard version. How would you price them?
And customers really hated being told their discs were “too scratched to re-sell.” They really hated that one.
You got to listen to tunes all day, that was true. That is something that I thankfully still do today, thanks to the radio. I actually prefer the radio to choosing store play discs. You were so tightly constrained by various rules, which narrowed the scope. I actually loathed picking store play discs. If I was working to someone else, I often just said, “You pick, I’ll pick something later.”
Lo and behold, I still have a copy of the store play rules! I’m a packrat. I keep everything.
Jazz, soul, indy, and oldies were encouraged. Hard rock was especially discouraged.
Of course we broke the rules. If I knew there was no chance of getting caught, I’d bring in my own discs from home all the time. The best shift I ever had, I played all 5 discs of the Kiss box set, in a row! I played lots of shit with swearing, all the time. It wasn’t intentional of course, it’s just that sometimes a great album has swearing on it, and I like to listen to great albums. Sinatra at the Sands, for example.
We sold Sinatra at the Sands in minutes, by the way…by playing it instore.
I played Dio all the time when I could get away with it, even though he was strictly off limits.
I remember Tom walking in, during Holy Diver.
“Wow. That’s ballsy man,” he said.
I played Spinal Tap once, but one of my buddies got written up for doing the same thing. Seriously. That time I was playing Spinal Tap, there was this guy seriously rocking out to it. He didn’t look like a fan though. He walked up to me and said, “Sounds like you got some Sons of Freedom going on here!” Oops!
And I played heavy stuff too. I know I played Maiden in the store, any night I could. (Astute readers will recall that Maiden is where we started. Go back to Part 1 if you haven’t.) I remember two little kids laughing at Bruce Dickinson’s shrieking during a live take of “Fear of the Dark”. But, I also remember lots of cool kids in Kiss shirts, buying their first rock albums, and it was cool corrupting those kids.
So what did I have to complain about? Well, I only played those albums when I could get away with it. Which wasn’t often. There was usually someone in there store who could give you shit for it.
So you’d have to put up with the following: Much Dance xx, Big Shiny Tunes, TLC, Christmas music all day while seasonal, Dave Matthews band, Linkin Park, plenty of new country, and whatever was the flavour of the month at the time. There’s a reason I know entire albums inside and out by shitty band like The Dandy fucking Warhols. I could tell you every fucking song on the first two Coldplay CDs. I had the unfortunate fate of having to listen to the self titled album by Blur every fucking day for a month. There are bands that I legitimately like, such as Oasis and Kula Shaker, that I rarely play at home anymore because I have heard them so many Goddamn times. It sucks when you can’t stand music you actually like.
The record store will do that if you spend too many years there, and I spent too many years there. Gratefully, I love music again.
The worst thing about the record store though were the cliques, and from what I’ve heard, many record store were like this. You either fit in or you didn’t, and I definitely did not fit in. They were all into the latest indy rock bands, and all wore sunglasses. I’ve never been a sunglasses kind of guy. Indoors, I think they’re just pretentious. I tried, oh but I did try. I went to their shitty bars and drank and pretended to have a good time, but I just couldn’t pretend that I liked the Dandy fucking Warhols.
But, if I didn’t experience all that, I guess I wouldn’t be LeBrain!
mikeladano.com 