St. Jacobs

#1137: A Little South of Sanity: What I’ve Been Up To…In Photos

RECORD STORE TALES #1137: A Little South of Sanity: What I’ve Been Up To…In Photos

Madness reigned.

As you may be aware from the last cottage video, disaster struck when we returned home on June 23.  My old shelves, which I’ve had over 40 years, finally fell apart, and a few hundred of my precious CDs hit the ground.  Some were damaged, some just have broken cases.  This was a pretty traumatic experience for a collector.  After considering quitting the hobby for good (more grief than it’s worth?), and wasting time and money with a carpenter, I decided to rip my music room apart and see what I could do.

I moved everything around to make space, and then got to work.  I chose a couple bookshelves on Amazon.  They’re not ideal for CDs, but the music is off the floor now.  Shelves are better than floors, even if the discs are in stacks and not rows.  The two shelves I chose can hold 350 lbs each.  More than enough.  They arrived on Saturday.  In the time it took to listen to all of Aerosmith’s double live A Little South of Sanity, Jen and I had the shelves built.

A Little South of Sanity more than describes the week I had, mental health-wise.  I told people I was done with physical music, and therefore the show and site would be ending.  I’d move on to drone videos.  I really was ready to sell it all.  Looking at my damaged Metallica Live Sh*t box set, which was mint when I bought it in 1997, was heartbreaking.

The new bookshelves were so surprisingly easy to put together (even we could do it!), that I ordered a third to replace an old ugly wooden unit.  Then, I began sorting.  I’m maybe halfway through putting everything back in alphabetical order.  The discs used to be scattered through three rooms.  Now I’ve got it down to two!  In the end, there will be two CD towers, three of these new bookcases, and a few shelves for box sets.

It’s a work in progress.  On Sunday, I spent six hours filing.  It felt amazing to see my entire Iron Maiden collection in one place again (excluding box sets and abnormal sized boxes).  Soon, all my Deep Purple, Marillion, Aerosmith and Kiss will join them.  It’s a long process hindered by a shortage of space, but it’s coming together.

By Saturday, my mental health was good enough that Jen and I went out to the Farmer’s Market for the first time together since her dad was alive.  We stocked up on schnitzel, sweets and cheese curds, but the main reason we went was actually quite epic, and relevant.  We met, in person, the incredible Nurse Kat.  She is the first Grab A Stack of Rock guest that I didn’t know previously, that I have now met in person.  And she too had great success, finding lilies to replace the ones eaten by a rabbit.  In happy coincidence, both she and Jen were decked out in AC/DC gear.  So it was success all around!

I will say with cautious optimism that this summer is looking up.  Wish me luck and hope that nothing got permanently destroyed in my music avalanche of 2024!

 

 

 

#641: Farmer’s Market Tapes

GETTING MORE TALE returns! You have spoken — you like the series and you like the numbering system.  Therefore we aren’t changing a thing.  Here’s chapter 641!

GETTING MORE TALE #641: Farmer’s Market Tapes

Much of my highschool downtime was spent trying to build a complete Judas Priest collection.  While I was still in grade school, my first Priest was Screaming for Vengeance in 1985.  Defenders of the Faith was taped off my buddy Bob.  Then came highschool.  I bought Turbo at Zellers in 1986.  It was followed Priest…Live! in 1987, cementing my love for the band, for real.  Collecting began in earnest.

The local Zellers store always had a number of Priest tapes in stock.  Adding British Steel, Point of Entry, and Hell Bent for Leather to the collection was just a matter of time and allowance money.  Anything before Hell Bent was much harder to find, at least on tape, which was my format in the 80s.

We are fortunate in Kitchener to have two excellent farmer’s markets.  The one downtown is cool, but just a little to the north is the big one in St. Jacobs.  In the summer, my mom would take my sister and I to the market.  Sometimes Grandma would come with us.  You could buy anything at the St. Jacobs market.  There have always been music dealers with tables there.

July of 1989, I thought I struck rock solid gold at the market.  One vendor had a bunch of Priest I’d never seen on tape before, ever.  Tapes were $8 each, no tax.

Sad Wings of Destiny and The Best of Judas Priest came home with me that day.  I didn’t really know any of the songs, except one:  “Rocka Rolla”.  Earlier that summer, I bought the Rocka Rolla album on vinyl from Sam the Record Man, figuring I’d never find the tape.  The market had Rocka Rolla on tape, and then some!  For good measure, I also bought Unleashed in the East that day.

It was wonderful being inundated with fresh Priest.  So many tunes I’d never heard before!  “The Ripper” and “Victim of Changes” immediately blew me away.  “Diamonds and Rust” kicked my ass some more.  But something was wrong with two of the tapes.

Sad Wings and Best Of were both originally released on Gull records, and then reissued and reissued and reissued again, often very cheaply.  The two farmer’s market cassettes had very nicely printed cover art, but the tapes were utter garbage.  They were so shitty that there was only music in one channel.  The left side was fine, but there was nothing but a faint echo on the right.  Unleashed in the East, released on CBS, was fine.  Sad Wings and Best Of were awful.  After a few listens, I just couldn’t take it anymore.  It was heartbreaking because I was enjoying the songs, but listening to those tapes was horrendous.  I eventually replaced them with better copies, and stuck the cover art to a school binder.

Buyer beware!  Tapes and their quality issues are no longer really a problem today, but if you’ve never heard of the issuing label, you might want to do your research.