Stanley Park Mall

#1113: Running Up That Hill

RECORD STORE TALES #1113: Running Up That Hill

By and large, 1998 was a pretty good year for me.  There was a lot going on musically with new albums by Iron Maiden and Van Halen (long awaited) coming out.  In January I moved in with T-Rev, into this little basement apartment.  It was a cool hang.  We both managed record stores, and the apartment was right near mine.   T-Rev had this “comfy couch” that was like kryptonite.  You couldn’t help but surrender to the comfy couch.  There were Christmas lights up all year round, and beaded entranceways.  Movie posters adorned virtually every wall.  He sought to make a place where gals and guys alike would want to come over and hang out.  We were both single.

I had my fully loaded Nintendo 64 and a handful of great games like Goldeneye and Top Gear Rally.  Our place was the place to be on a Friday night.  It was frustrating when T-Rev’s skills exceeded mine in both games, but that’s how it went down!  He was really, really good.  He was working at finishing both games, I was lucky to have made it as far as I did.  Friends of all kinds liked Nintendo 64 night on the comfy couch.  Trevor usually had beer and a bag of chips.

Some time in May that year was a typical gathering at the T-Rev residence.  The place was packed with people he worked with at the Waterloo Inn, including the woman that he would one day marry and is still his wife today!  There was a girl that I was interested in but didn’t return the sentiment, and another girl who had a thing for me but was unreciprocated.  I think the movie they chose to watch that night was Kama Sutra.  I wasn’t into it, and on that night I felt like a third wheel (or ninth wheel perhaps).

I was never very good at talking to girls and today I wonder if I have some kind of actual mental malfunction.  T-Rev would try to help me.  “Don’t quote movies man,” he advised me.  “Nobody gets it when you quote movies.”  I guess my hope was that one day, somebody would get it, and I’d meet a new soul mate.  However I tried to stick to Trevor’s advice and not quote Pulp Fiction lines at girls, hoping they too were fans of Samuel L. Jackson.

I seem to remember hurting my neck while washing my hair in the shower before the party, which was a common weakness of mine.  The girl that was interested in me gave me a neck rub, but it didn’t feel good at all.  I wasn’t able to relax.  I may have two separate parties mixed up here – Kama Sutra and hurting my neck might not have been the same night – but these are the memories coming back about that basement apartment.  One way or the other, at some time in the evening on May, I was feeling disconnected from everyone else.  It was one of those times where I felt alone in a crowded room.  I was lonely sitting there in that apartment with my thoughts, apart from the conversations surrounding me.  I wanted some fresh air, and maybe also some company.

“Anyone wanna go for a walk?  Anyone?  No?”

Everyone was content to stay in.  I put on my shoes and stepped out into the darkness of early evening.

We lived very close to Stanley Park Mall, which in turn is close to my old stomping grounds at St. Daniel School.  In the winter time, the large hill behind the school was popular for tobogganing.  In spring, I thought it might be a good place to catch a good view at the stars and surrounding city.  And so, I crossed River Road, and wandered through the mall parking lot.  Though it is all built over now, once upon a time just an empty field separated the mall parking lot and the hill.

The hill!  That green, steep hill!  Looking at it today, it seems so small but back then it seemed a mountain!  Perhaps the pitter-patter of children has been flattening it over the decades, but then it seemed as tall as the sky.  Located in Midland Park behind the school, it was home to so many childhood adventures.  Technically it was not on school property and sometimes the teachers would get fed up with the kids, and ban the hill from recess activities.  But what fun we had when it was allowed!  Running up that hill, running down, imagining if we caught enough air we could take off and fly!

What would I find on that hill on this night in 1998?  The view would be good at least, I was certain.  There it was in front of me, and so I took off running up just as I did as a little kid!  I may have been alone, but I smiled in glee as I flashed back to the golden carefree years.

Whew…running uphill wasn’t as easy at age 25 as it was at age 10!  But up I went, and upon reaching the summit in that pitch black, I leapt upwards and landed on the bald, grass-free patch at the very top.

“HEY!  WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?” came a startled voice from the darkness.

Apparently, I had interrupted a couple in the middle of coitus! Let’s just say they must have been having a bangin’ good time.

What could I do?  Without a word I just kept running down the opposite side!  As if to say “I meant to do that,” Pee-Wee Herman style, I just kept running.

I eventually made my way around the block, and back to the basement apartment.  That was enough walking for one night.  When I returned and told my story, everyone laughed and the general consensus was that I should have expected it!  I suppose they were right; that spot did have a reputation for make-out central for the teenagers in the early 80s.

That’s what I found when I went running up that hill.  The lesson learned:  never run uphill at night!

 

Record Store Tales #1000: A Tribute

Introduction

1991 was the beginning!  While I was busy furthering my education, the future owner of the Record Store prepared for his grand opening.  The store was in a mall location and had a minimal staff.  It filled a niche in that mall, and managed to survive where other stores did not.  It wasn’t hugely successful, but that was about to change.

In 1994, everything shifted.  The owner brought in a tray of his own CDs to sell used, and they flew off the counter.  “Why not?” he asked himself, and switched to a 50/50 used/new format.  I bought my first used CD from him that July.  It was Kiss My Ass, which was a brand new release.  I paid $12 instead of $19.  Perfect, especially for a CD you didn’t want for every song!  I vowed to shop there loyally.

Later that month, July of 1994, I had the opportunity to keep shopping, but with a discount!  I was hired part-time.  The first used CD I bought as an employee was Rush’s Chronicles.  The sticker price was $20 instead of $34.

In 1995, the owner opened his second location with a novel 90/10 used/new format.  This format took off, and in 1996 he opened the third location.  He asked me to manage it.  I had been waiting for just such an opportunity.  It was the start of a decade long run for me, managing record stores.  I missed saying goodbye to the original location, but relished having my own full-time management position.  What a ride that was, as you have seen and read!

At the end of ’96, the original location finally closed but moved to Cambridge, utilising the 90/10 format.  It was the end of an era – the era of the original location, which is still fondly remembered by all who worked there.  For Record Store Tales #1000, let’s pay tribute to the original mall location of the Record Store.  Some of the best years and memories of my life.  Very little of this will be new information, for there are only so many stories to tell.  However I hope you find this 1000th chapter interesting and entertaining:  a tribute to the original!

Record Store Tales #1000:  A Tribute

Back when it opened in 1991, it was just nice to have a Record Store at the mall again.  We used to have an A&A Records & Tapes, but they closed in 1990.  There was a period of time where there were no record stores within walking distance, except the Zellers store‘s meagre music section.  Unfortunately the Record Store prices were comparatively high:  $14.99 for a regular priced cassette.  I didn’t know then about things like cost and overhead, but Columbia House was a better option for me.  Still, he managed to keep that store alive.  Some of tapes I purchased there before being hired included Europe’s Prisoners in Paradise, Fight’s War of Worlds, and Mr. Bungle’s self-titled.  That may have been it.  Tapes weren’t cheap.

Then the used CDs came along.  A used disc like Kiss My Ass was cheaper than its cassette counterpart; a no-brainer purchase.  I was very fortunate to get on board the train just as they were taking off with a great idea.  The owner hired me in July of ’94, and T-Rev shortly after in August or September.  The things I saw come in used during my first weeks and months were incredible.  Rare import singles, bootlegs, and lots of out-of-print metal stuff, long before reissues were a “thing”.  I’d frequently have to choose what to buy for myself from paycheque to paycheque.  I’d look up items in our supplier’s catalogue, and buy anything used that was currently deleted.  Stuff like You Can’t Stop Rock ‘N’ Roll by Twisted Sister, or the Brighton Rock albums.

There were a number of CDs we had set aside as store play copies, but only a stack or two.  We could play anything that was in stock used, but if someone bought it, that was that.  Two of the store play albums we played most often in the summer of ’94 were Alice In Chain’s Jar of Flies EP and Stone Temple Pilots’ Purple.  Whenever I hear that Alice In Chains today, I can really feel that whole period again.  Dark, but with a nostalgic glow due to the years.  Once T-Rev and I started working alone, we picked our own music.  If you heard Max Webster blasting from the store, then T-Rev was working.  If you heard Sabbath, it was me.

We had a TV to play MuchMusic, but most often it was on mute while we played CDs in the store.  The boss hated that TV.  I think one of things that bugged him was when a customer asked him, “When did you get that TV?”  It had been there for three years!  I think I may have used it to watch Star Trek once.

I loved closing the store.  You could listen to whatever you wanted.  There was a lot to do though.  Balance the register, do the deposit, take out the trash, vacuum, and file any inventory bags and tags from sold items, so they could be re-ordered.  Each CD we stocked had a copy with a tag or bag on it, with the artist, title, and record company.  These were then filed in a book at the end of the day, and anything put in the book would usually be re-ordered.  That was the nightly routine.  Sometimes I forgot to take out the trash and boy did I get told for it.

T-Rev and I alternated nights.  There were two sets of shifts:  Monday night, Wednesday night, and Friday night.  Or, Tuesday night, Thursday night, and the weekend.  We alternated weeks and it was great.  But we worked alone, and Saturdays could be a grind.

The thing that really slammed us on Saturdays was buying the used CDs.  It was such an important process, because by buying CDs we were controlling our cost of goods.  So it took time and it was all done manually.  Searching physically to see if we had the CD already.  Flip through a book to see if we could find out what it was worth.  Inspect the condition.  Decide on a value.  Keep ’em organized.  It took time, and we had no space.  I remember we had this small counter, with a big cash register, and off to the side were two damaged CD towers that we basically used as an end table to pile more stuff on.

Every Wednesday night was tag check!  We had security tags like most stores, and every Wednesday, we re-taped ones that were coming off.  Speaking of security, let’s not forget Trevor the Security Guard, who got me in shit for killing time talking to me too much.  And the other weirdo security guard who got me into Type O Negative.  Kind of looked like Farva from Super Troopers.

I remember the “regulars”, and lemme tell ya, malls have characters.  There was a licensed restaurant in the same hallway as us, so we had the odd drunk.  It was just something you had to deal with.  If the smell didn’t give it away, the slurred questions did.  There was one lady that was in all the time, buying stuff for her sons.  Or at least, asking “if we had it”.

There was a pizza place and a convenience store, so food was taken care of.  We didn’t have a restroom, which was a good thing, because we didn’t have to worry about customers wanting to use it.  (There was one time a washroom would have come in handy, but only one time.)  Unfortunately there also wasn’t a back room to store things or to eat lunch.  I remember one afternoon, I was eating my slice of pizza on the bench outside the store.  A dad-type guy walked up to me, and said “I can see you’re eating your lunch, and that’s fine, but I’d like to speak with you later about returning a tape.”  I just nodded my head and said “OK”.  Jesus Christ!

T-Rev and I were given a lot of say in what we carried.  We special ordered new stock that we knew the store needed.  Meanwhile, the boss was bringing in bootlegs and Japanese imports.  T-Rev made the signage as mine were deemed too messy.  I often wonder if the owner feels that way about my website as well.  I was not allowed to make any signs!

The best memories of the Record Store were people, like T-Rev, who remains a friend to this day.  It wasn’t long before we were influencing each others’ purchases.  He recommended The Four Horsemen’s second album, Gettin’ Pretty Good…At Barely Gettin’ By.  I got him into buying singles for the rare B-sides.  It was great working with him.  Then one day I walked in and a big bearded guy was behind the counter.  Tom had entered the picture, and a new era was about to begin.  The founder of Sausagefest had arrived and things were about to get heavy!  Shortly thereafter, Tom threatened to sleep in the store one night when his car doors were frozen shut.  I kind of wish that had happened.

Or how about reconnecting with old school friends at the front counter.  Things like that were rewarding, not to mention the sheer cool factor in working at a Record Store in 1994.  It truly was the dream job!  My collection boomed and I had to start looking at new storage options!  And who was there to design my custom CD tower?  T-Rev!

So here is a tribute to the original record store, all the great memories, and the best years of my working life!  Thank you!

 

 

 

 

#957: Star Wars at the Mall 1981

RECORD STORE TALES #957: Star Wars at the Mall 1981

Cast your minds back to a time before the internet.  Before DVD players.  Before we all had VCRs.  Prior to the advent of on-demand TV.  If you wanted to watch Star Wars…you couldn’t!

There isn’t much more to be said than that.  We had our records, to listen to the soundtracks, and “The Story Of…” discs.  We had novels and comic books.  We had our action figures.  If we wanted to watch Star Wars, we had to use the ol’ imagination and memories.

Given that lots of kids would love to watch Star Wars at any given moment, there was a demand.  And nature decrees that a vacuum must be filled.  I remember that there was a Star Wars play at the mall.  A few actors, maybe six or seven total, wearing budget costumes, and doing the best job they could.  I remember it being really bad, but I found a photograph that indicates it might not have been as terrible as I thought.

We can only guess who the actors were.  Students?  A travelling troupe, adventuring from mall to mall?  All to sell toys!  Kenner was king!  Kids flocked to the toy sections, begging mom for a Bossk figure.  Why not have a Star Wars play to promote it?  Perhaps kids can be the harshest critics and this play wasn’t as terrible as I recall….

We only snapped the one picture; film was expensive.  But the costumes don’t appear all that bad.  Sure, it looks like Chewbacca is wearing a sweater.  I don’t remember Princess Leia having gold trim on her gown.  Is that Old Ben Kenobi on the far left?  It’s a shame we didn’t get a picture of Luke or Han, but Vader’s helmet does not look bad, nor Chewie’s head.  At least not from this angle.  Could we have taken a worse picture?  You have to give Leia some credit for the nailing the hairstyle, and a killer pair of boots!

The wall behind looks like the barriers that go up when a store is being renovated.  You can also see some litter on the ground.  Consensus seems to be that this was Stanley Park Mall, due to the familiar flooring.  

#913: A Walk to the Mall 1988

RECORD STORE TALES #913: A Walk to the Mall 1988

Bob and I went to the mall a lot.  Stanley Park Mall was kind of epicenter of the neighborhood.  Though it didn’t have a record store of the caliber of Sam the Record Man downtown, it had an A&A and a Zellers where you could find all the big releases and a few singles.  It had a grocery store, which meant just about every neighbour bought their supplies at the same place.  The Zellers store stocked anything else you needed.  There was a liquor store.  Two banks.  We didn’t need to go elsewhere very often.

It was a nice short walk.  We used to take a short cut through the apartments at the very end of Secord Ave.  But they fenced up the shortcuts.  Sometimes Bob and I would go that way and jump the fences just out of spite.

“They can’t stop us from going this way,” we said.

We were little assholes sometimes, but we had a good time doing it.

The Little Short Stop was an important store.  That’s where I would buy my rock magazines.  Hit Parader, every single month.  I never missed an issue from some time in 1987 through 1990.  One thing we loved doing was leafing through seeing ads for all the rock albums that were due to come out.  “New Ace Frehley!” I exclaimed upon seeing an ad for Second Sighting.  The ads would often tell you names of the forthcoming singles.  The ad for Open Up and Say…Ahh! by Poison highlighted the track “Good Love” as a song to watch for.  Maybe the marketing for that album changed midway?

I eventually stopped buying Hit Parader, and switched to other mags like Metal Edge.  The reason?  I always suspected there was something up with their interviews.  There was a sameness to them, no matter who was answering.  Then, Sebastian Bach from Skid Row got in some serious trouble when an audience member at a concert threw a bottle at him.  Injured and enraged, he made the incredibly stupid mistake of throwing the bottle back, and hitting an innocent girl instead.  Hit Parader fabricated an interview with Bach where he was quoted as saying “That’s why rock stars have lawyers, man” or something to that effect.  The quote was used against him in court.

Not to deflect blame for the incident away from Bach, but I couldn’t support Hit Parader any more after that.  Not to mention, I was disappointed to realize that many of the rest of their interviews also had to be fake.  I gave away my collection many years ago.

In 1988, however, Hit Parader was my Bible.  That, and WWF Magazine, which was equally fake.  I always left that store with both magazines if I could.  If I couldn’t, the Zehrs store often had the WWF Magazine issues that I needed.  Some pop and chips, and we were all set for Short Stop.

WWF Magazine was devious.  They had the monthly publication, but also many periodical specials, and I had to collect them all.  There was the official Wrestlemania book.  Another one for Summer Slam.  Royal Rumble.  Survivor Series.  My mom used to say that the World Wrestling Federation got a lot of money out of us!  I would also buy the Toronto Sun the day after a major wrestling event.  They had the most complete coverage, often with full colour photos.  I may still have an old Toronto Sun from that time.

Then we were off to browse the music at A&A.  We’d look at the charts and see if any bands we liked were up there.  Maiden’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son was for about a week.  I was pleased when I saw Priest’s Ram It Down on the chart later that year.  We’d shop around, but I rarely had enough money for a new tape.  Bob did — he had a job.

But browse we did, usually looking for Kiss tapes that we had never seen in stock before.  Or Europe.  Or Ozzy.  Whitesnake, Cinderella, AC/DC, Def Leppard, all of our favourites.  Cassettes were like crack to us.  We were always searching.  Something “rare” would be a must-buy.

Bob would often save his money and buy five tapes at a time.  He took chances on stuff I never heard of, like Fifth Angel.  He would caution me and make sure I was making the right purchase.  He was somewhat surprised when I got into Bon Jovi and decided I wanted to buy Slippery When Wet.  He wasn’t really into them that much.  “Are you sure that’s what you want?” he asked me one night at the Zellers store.  I was sure.

“Have you ever seen this one before?” we would ask each other.  The Bon Jovi cassette single “Wanted: Dead or Alive” was one I had my eyes on for several months at that A&A store.  You just did not see it very often, so when I had the money, I grabbed it.  It was worth it for the incredible acoustic version of the song.  Bob didn’t buy singles as often.  He valued a full length for his money, but he made exceptions for bands like Iron Maiden.  You couldn’t find Maiden singles at A&A though.  You had to go to Sam’s for those.  Bob wold trek there on his bike.  Fortunately he sold his Maiden singles collection to me when he did finally let them go.

One of the most distinctive features of the old Stanley Park Mall that people remember is that it was shaped like a big “O”; like an oval.  We would walk around and around.  Just talking, looking at the magazines I had purchased.  Or the tapes he just bought.  Discussing everything going on in music, in the neighbourhood and at school.  Because the mall was such a central location for so many people, we’d always run into schoolmates or neighbours.  Sometimes a girl that I liked, but I never had the courage to talk to any.

The mall has changed so much and the “O” is gone.  All the good stuff is gone.  A harsh reminder of the passage of time.  But I can still retrace my steps.

Bob was a fast walker but I could keep up.  You didn’t waste a lot of time on your way home from the mall.  You wanted to get down to business of listening to the new music, or reading the new magazines.  That was a special kind of Saturday in old ’88.

 

#803: The Grocery Gang

A sequel to Get a Haircut and Get a Real Job

GETTING MORE TALE #803: The Grocery Gang

I started working at the grocery store in fall 1989.  While it was nice finally having a real job, it was immediately disruptive to my life.  I worked every Thursday, which meant that I was missing at least one Pepsi Power Hour every week.  If I pulled a Tuesday shift too, no Power Hours at all!  I had barely missed an episode in four years.  Now I was missing more than half of them.

That was a monumental shift.  I prided myself in keeping my fingers on the pulse of hard rock and heavy metal.  Keeping up with school work wasn’t hard.  Keeping up with music was!  I felt so out of touch with whatever the latest singles and new releases were.  The Power Hour was my main metal lifeline!

When a door closes, another opens.

I might have been missing the Power Hours* but like a see-saw, music swung back into balance.  Every work place introduces you to new people and new music.  The grocery store was like that as well, but those guys liked heavier music than I had been listening to at home.  Specifically I remember Metallica, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin.  Those guys were not interested in Bon Jovi or Motley Crue, two groups I was really hot for in 1989.

There were three places I could be assigned to work at the grocery store:  Packing, parcel pickup, or cart collection.  That was the order of prestige involved.  Cart collection was considered the best assignment because you’d be out in the parking lot with a buddy collecting carts with no supervision.  It was a big parking lot so you could get lost and buy a soda at the convenience store for a minute or two on a regular day.  Parcel pickup was also cool because they had a tape deck down there you could listen to.  It was on that tape deck I heard a lot of my early Sabbath, Zeppelin and Metallica.  I wasn’t sure about Zeppelin yet.  They were telling me about this song “Moby Dick” that was a 10 minute long drum solo.**  And those guys didn’t care about Peter Criss’ drum work on “100,000” years.

I started absorbing the music.  There was one guy a few years older than me, Scott Gunning.  I went to school with his brother Todd.  I credit Scott for getting me into early Sabbath.  All I had was Born Again and Paranoid.  I’d never heard “Sweet Leaf”, “Black Sabbath”, “The Wizard”, “Supernaut”, “Changes” or anything else.  I decided to buy We Sold Our Soul for Rock ‘N’ Roll and it quickly because a favourite.   Bob Schipper also worked at the grocery store, in the bakery.  He was already over early Sabbath and seemed bemused that I had bought it.  He much preferred solo Ozzy.  But I was really into the Sabbath, much more than I expected.  “Sweet Leaf” took over during the spring of 1990.

As discussed in Getting More Tale #709: The Stuff, I had no idea what “Sweet Leaf” was actually about.  I also don’t know if Scott Gunning though I’d gone drug mad, so much did I love “Sweet Leaf”.  But there I was in the parking lot, collecting carts, and singing “I love you, sweet leaf”.

Packing groceries indoors was the usual job, however.  It was a rare treat to be on carts.  Indoors, all the packers raced to pack for the young cute cashiers.  There were only a couple of them.  Kathleen Fitzpatrick, with her jet black hair, was the newest and most popular.  She was really nice.  She’d drive me home in the winter so I didn’t have to walk.  But other guys with more seniority would make me go pack somewhere else with the older ladies.

In fact, one guy had only about six months seniority on me, but he sure used it.  He kicked me off Kathleen’s lane more than once!  The funny thing about this guy is that his older brother would later be the owner at the Record Store.  I would regale the Big Boss Man of the times his brother kicked me off any cute girl’s lane.

Since the grocery store was located in the local mall (the same one the Record Store would later occupy) I could go music shopping at the Zellers before my shift.  It was there I bought the compilation Stairway to Heaven/Highway to Hell, loaded to the gills with metal rarities like Ozzy doing “Purple Haze”, the only studio recording of that lineup with Geezer Butler on bass.  I still have that.  I also still have my copy of Back for the Attack by Dokken, that I paid a co-worker $10 for, because he was tired of it.

I left that job in the summer of 1990 with lots of cash and new music in my back pocket.  I was off to new adventures including a week in Alberta that also featured a ton of new music.  The grocery store was good to me but I never went back.  I wanted to focus on getting into the school I liked most (which I did) but I also got my Pepsi Power Hour back for another year.  (It was replaced by the inferior Power 30 in ’91.)   Still I met some great friends there like Scott, and, oh I almost forgot, bought my first Flying V guitar from a guy that worked in the bakery too!  I can’t deny that the grocery store had an unexpected but indelible effect on my musical history.

 

* No, I didn’t set my VCR to record the shows.  When I usually taped the Power Hour, I sat there with my finger on the record button, ready to grab every video I wanted.  I didn’t record entire shows.  I didn’t have a way of transferring one tape to another.  I preferred missing the show entirely, to recording it and not being able to keep the videos I wanted for my collection.  I’ve always been picky that way.  The result is the VHS Archives that you enjoyed in 2019.  

** Live version.

 

#783: Take A Look at this Photograph

GETTING MORE TALE #783:  Take A Look at this Photograph

One day in mid ’95, Tom Morwood brought a camera to work at ye olde Record Store.  It was the earliest of days, and I was still working at the original mall store.  “What are you taking pictures in this place for?”  He snapped one of me flashing the devil horns behind the counter.  “Just for the memories man,” he answered.  I’m glad he did it.

He dug up that very same old photo recently, and a like a rush of blood, suddenly memories flooded my brain.  I barely recognised myself, but the store?   I’ll never forget it.  Let’s have a look at the anatomy of this picture and dissect it for details!

Detail #1: Handmade signage!

Before we went corporate, most of the signage was hand made.  Most was done by T-Rev, though “DJ Donny D” helped.  “NOW PLAYING”, “CD CASES”, “RAP/DANCE”.  It looks totally ghetto, like a real record store.  None of this professionally printed generic signage like today.  Now all the stores have to look exactly the same, like a chain.  Back then we could be artistic and do what we wanted.  The boss didn’t think I was very good at making signs so he let T-Rev do the majority.  He was probably right, though it wasn’t for lack of effort, just ability.  And it looks like an actual cool record store.  Not a video arcade or whatever they’re trying to be today.

There’s one sign that isn’t hand made, and that’s the “no smoking” sticker at the cash register!  Can you imagine needing that sticker in a store today?  Also:  cash register!  The first and last one I ever used.  Everything was done on computers after this store closed.

Detail #2:  The fuck is up with ma hair?

It looks black.  It was not black.  I dyed my hair dark once in 2000, but this picture is not from 2000 (as we’ll get to).  It must just be the lighting.  That’s definitely me though.  You can just make out my mullet.  I loved that Laurier sweatshirt!  I’m guessing it’s not summer; it must be a colder month or I wouldn’t be wearing a sweatshirt.  I’m assuming here, but I look really goofy and totally uncool.

Detail #3:  The front racks.

On the top left of the photo you can clearly make out CD and cassette copies of REM’s Monster.  That dates this photo to sometime in 1995.  The album came out in ’94 but Tom wasn’t hired until ’95.  There’s no way it was still front racked all the way into 1996, so it has to be ’95.  I can’t make out the other titles on the front rack.  You can see the plastic security cases that we kept the CDs and tapes in.  Anti-theft devices were not cheap, by the way, but a future chapter called “A Case For Security” will get into this in more detail.

Detail #4:  The magazines.

We used to sell Rolling Stone and Spin.  Funny enough, here we have them displayed in a rack for Vibe magazine!  We stopped carrying Vibe in 1994 but kept using the rack.

Detail #5:  The mirror.

If you glance over to the far right, you can see a vertical line in the wall slats.  That’s actually a corner; the back wall was a mirror.  As told in Getting More Tale #409, it fooled some people.  One day an elderly gentleman asked me if “that section back there is closed to cripples and old men?”  Nope, it’s just a mirror, not a secret room!  We must have kept it pretty clean if we fooled him!

Detail #6:  The CD cases.

Notice there are no clear CD cases there?  Just the ones with the black spines?  We didn’t carry clear cases.  If memory serves, our supplier didn’t carry them until a year or two later.  That meant clear cases were a rare treasured commodity to us.  I have a few memories of needing clear trays to replace broken ones, but not having any lying around.  We had to conserve them.

Detail #7:  Overstock.

See all those CDs behind me?  Those are overstock – additional copies of stuff that was already on display on the racks.  Generally these were titles that were not moving, and I can absolutely guarantee that there are multiple copies Motley Crue ’94 and David Lee Roth’s Your Filthy Little Mouth in this picture.

Detail #8:  Happiness.

Don’t let the metal faced scowl fool you.  This was my happy place.  I don’t care what ex-bosses and regional managers thought.  That store was special.  One of the bosses used to tell me that my nostalgia for the old store was warped by rose-coloured glasses.  I disagree.  Look at this picture.  It’s one guy working in a cramped little music store.  There is nobody looking over my shoulder, no “suits” wheeling and dealing.  We were free to make that store as cool as possible.  We could listen to music of our choosing with few but sensible limits.  Nothing like the spiteful “No Kiss” rule of later years.  (Although you can see here I didn’t display anything under the “Now Playing” sign.  I didn’t like the way the alligator clip could scuff up a case.)  We were responsible for cashing out, doing the bank deposit, and closing up.

Sure, it was a little like working in caveman times to a certain degree.  We had no computer, just a gnarly old cash register.  If you look behind me, under the overstock shelves you can see boxes full of clear plastic baggies.  Each one had a CD inside.  If somebody wanted to know if we had a used CD in stock, we’d flip through the baggies which were in alphabetical order.  Not an exact science but we got the job done.

As the store got bigger, we became more sophisticated, had more buying power, and better stock as a result.  Yet it’s the original store that I’m nostalgic for, not the second or third one with the larger floor space and computerized inventory.  Those stores had their own perks and problems, but they didn’t have as much personality.  Some may disagree.  This isn’t a critique on the owner, either.  He had to do what he had to do in order to grow, put bread on his table, and follow his own dreams.  We understand.  He had a vision and it led him to success.  Together as a tight team, we ran a pretty cool music store.  We all contributed ideas and our talents, and did the best with what we had.  The fact that so many people tell me they have fond memories of that store means it couldn’t have been all that bad.

When I look at this photograph all I see are good memories.  Thanks for the foresight, Tom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

#720: Domo Arigato

Join me for some   for the rest of this week!

GETTING MORE TALE #720: Domo Arigato

It was grade 5, and Allan Runstedtler was to blame for my first rock and roll album.

At school, I played a tape I made with three songs on it.  It was a clear blue 120 minute Scotch cassette.  “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” by AC/DC was first, followed by “The Mighty Quinn” by Manfred Mann.  The third might have been “Ooby Dooby” by Roy Orbison.  AC/DC was my favourite because of the chorus.  “He sounds like he has a frog in his throat!” I squealed.  We just referred to Bon Scott (we didn’t know his name) as “the guy with the frog in his throat”.  I thought the song was hilarious, and that went double for “Big Balls” since it had “Balls” in the title.

“You have to hear ‘Mr. Roboto’,” said Allan.  “It’s by a group called Styx.  But it’s not spelled like ‘sticks’.  It’s spelled S-T-Y-X.”

Cool!

I went to his house one afternoon with my trusty Fisher-Price mono tape deck.  That thing was built like a tank.  Wherever it is, it probably still works beautifully.  Allan had the Styx LP, Kilroy Was Here, featuring “Mr. Roboto” as the lead track.  He explained the concept of the story to me:  a futuristic world where rock music was outlawed.  We familiarized ourselves with the characters.  Kilroy, the protagonist, was played by someone named Dennis DeYoung.  Jonathan Chance, the secondary hero character, was Tommy Shaw.  Meanwhile the evil Dr. Righteous was portrayed by the sinister looking James Young.  We scanned the album credits and figured out who sang each song.  (The Panozzo brothers were Lt. Vanish and Col. Hyde, but we couldn’t figure out their roles in the story.)  The LP came in a deluxe gatefold, with full lyrics and pictures from the video (which we had never seen).  On the cover were the masks of two “Robotos” that reminded me of the centurions from the movie The Black Hole.

Since that time, I learned that Kilroy was a Dennis project and the other guys weren’t too happy with it.  As kids in the moment, the whole thing seemed custom built for us!  The music was (mostly) good (I’ll get to that) and there were robots and heroes and good vs. evil.  There was a story to follow along.  There was production value in the packaging.  This wasn’t just stupid rock music to us.  It seemed part of something much bigger.  At Allan’s house, I recorded the album on my tape deck, open air style.  We quietly crept upstairs while the LP side played so we wouldn’t ruin the recording with noise.  When we heard the music stop, we went back down and flipped the record.  Tiptoeing back upstairs to the sound of “Heavy Metal Poisoning” is a one-of-a-kind memory.

We poured over the liner notes.  I observed, “It’s weird that Dr. Righteous is against heavy metal music, but he’s fighting back using a heavy metal song.” The hypocrisy was not lost on Allan and I.  “Heavy Metal Poisoning” was Dr. Righteous’ message to the kids of future America.

What the devil’s goin’ on,
Why don’t you turn that music down,
You’re going deaf and that’s for sure,
But all you do is scream for more.

It was the heaviest song on the album, and at that point probably the heaviest music I ever heard in my life!   And I had a good point.  Dr. Righteous was clearly against heavy metal music, but here he was presenting his message in a heavy rock song!

I brought the tape home.  I was so excited to have some music of my own.  “I can’t wait to play my new tape for Grandma,” I said to my mom for reasons completely unknown to me.

“I’m sure she’ll be thrilled,” mom deadpanned.

Even at that age, a taped copy wasn’t good enough.  I had to get the album.  The pictures, the lyrics, the liner notes…it was all necessary.  Mom took me to Zellers at the mall where I purchased my own copy, and my very first rock album.  It sat in my collection next to my beloved John Williams soundtracks.  After all, Kilroy Was Here is a soundtrack of sorts!  Only this time, the movie was in our imaginations.  Allan and I used to discuss what that movie would be like.

I memorized every word to “Mr. Roboto”, not to mention every “ooh” and “ahh”.  I sat in the basement and wrote them out on paper.  I also figured out that I didn’t like every song equally.  Allan and I were pretty much on the same page as to the good/bad songs.

My list of the “good” songs, in order from best on down:

  1. “Mr. Roboto”
  2. “Don’t Let It End (Reprise)”
  3. “Double Life”
  4. “High Time”
  5. “Cold War”
  6. “Heavy Metal Poisoning”

I never listened to any of the ballads.  We were simply not interested.  “Don’t Let It End” was nothing like the reprise version, which was essentially “Mr. Roboto” over again!  In my kid-sphere, I was oblivious to the fact that in the larger world, “Don’t Let It End” was a hit.  I just didn’t care.  Couldn’t have told you how “Haven’t We Been Here Before” or “Just Get Through This Night” went if you paid me.  For Allan and I, Kilroy Was Here just had six songs.  Well, five songs and a reprise.

Sad to say, but I temporarily “outgrew” Styx.  The “moment of clarity” was when I first heard Iron Maiden.  I tuned into heavy metal exclusively at that point, and discarded my old music.  (Which wasn’t much — just some soundtracks and a Springsteen tape.)  I remember playing the Styx album during the start of the heavy metal years, and it was suddenly too soft and pop for me.  I lost the record at some point, either in a move or at a garage sale.  I didn’t hear Kilroy again until a friend picked up a copy for me in Toronto, on CD.  I was 32.

Guess what!  I don’t mind the ballads anymore.  “Just Get Through This Night”, in particular, is outstanding.

To Allan I would like to say:  domo arigato, for getting me into Styx!

#715: The Lost Chapters – “The First Year”

These paragraphs were chopped from Record Store Tales Part 6:  The Record Store, Year 1.  I dunno why.

 

GETTING MORE TALE #715: The Lost Chapters – “The First Year”

Ever seen High Fidelity with John Cusack?  When Cusack says, “I hired these guys to come in three days a week, and they started coming in every day.  There’s nothing I can do to stop it.”  That was us.  That me and T-Rev.  The boss man hired on Trev in the fall, two months after I started.  We worked opposite nights and opposite weekends.  We were like ships passing in the night.  We never would have gotten to be such tight friends if we didn’t keep coming into the store every freaking day!

See, as used CD store, we got in new inventory every day.  We were getting in cool shit.  I was just beginning to transfer my music collection over from cassette to CD, so I just started to upgrade and buy up old back catalogue.  I snagged You Can’t Stop Rock And Roll by Twisted Sister that year, which was a big deal to me because it was deleted at the time.  I got some Dio CDs that I never had before.  I began collecting Rush in earnest.  We had rarities too.  I got a split King’s X / Faith No More live bootleg called Kings of the Absurb which is pretty damn good.  I really got quite a few CD singles at that time too.  A few previously unknown Faith No More singles dropped into my lap.  It was crucial to come in frequently.  If you didn’t, you might miss something you were looking for.  Or something you didn’t know you were looking for.

After two months of shadowing the owner, I was working solo and loving it.  I got to pick my own music every night, within reason.  There were obscure rules.  Judas Priest was out, but Soundgarden was OK.  Anything that was a new charting release was considered OK for store play.  We were allowed to open anything to play it, as long as we didn’t abuse that.  For the first while we were even allowed to bring music from home.

That ended when I brought in a bunch of recent purchases to listen to one morning.  They included an indi band from Toronto, called Feel, formerly known as Russian Blue.  The sound was vital, and the early 90s buzz was that Toronto was going to be the next Seattle.  I was all over these bands, like Slash Puppet, Russian Blue, Attitude (later Jesus Chris), Gypsy Jayne, and the rest.

[An aside:  I caught a little flak when I took in a used copy of Slash Puppet.  “This is an indi band,” the boss complained.  “It’ll sell,” I defended myself.  “Trust me I know this band.”  I knew half a dozen customers by name that I could recommend it to.  I sold it to the first of those guys to come in, this insurance guy named Tony who loved 80s rock.  He bought it after one listen.]

The day I had my personal Feel This CD in the store player, a customer noticed it.  He thought it was cool, wanted it, and asked how much.  I had to tell him it was my own personal copy, and no I couldn’t order it in because it was an indi band.  He would have to write to the band to get a copy, and I wrote down the information inside the CD for him.

The boss thought this was kind of a silly situation, and rightfully so.  Why play music we weren’t selling and were not able to sell?  This was a store.  So that ended.  No more bringing music from home.  I guess I’m the guy who ruined it for generations of Record Store employees to come.

 

#697: Kiss My Ass

GETTING MORE TALE #697: Kiss My Ass

Spring, 1994.

An unemployed 21 year old student not-yet-named LeBrain was having a particularly lazy summer.  In a year I would graduate.  I didn’t have a lot of spending money.

There was a CD store at the mall.  The owner was a friend of my dad’s.  It was within walking distance.  I wandered in once or twice a week.  but their prices were too high.  They had a “buy 10 get 1 free card”, and I’d redeemed one of those (for cassettes) already, but in general I couldn’t afford to buy things there.  Most of my music was coming from Columbia House.

July rolled around, but I hadn’t been to the mall in a while.  There was a bunch of new stuff I was curious about.  David Lee Roth had an album out, and the new Soundgarden was supposed to be incredible.  Kim Mitchell had something new, and there were a bunch of 1993 albums I still wanted.  I took a walk to the mall.

Something was different at the CD store.  Where there were once these red wire clearance bins, there was now a display of…used CDs!?  Quality guaranteed?!  Woah!  I could afford these!

I saw it immediately:  a brand new release sitting there used for $11.99.  Kiss My Ass.  It was only out for about two weeks!  I didn’t care why it was there, it was MINE!  I hated spending full CD prices on a “various artists” album.  In general I’d only get three tracks per album that I wanted.  I preferred to buy stuff like that on cassette, just so I wasn’t paying 20 bucks or more for three songs.  Twelve bucks for Kiss My Ass?  Stop twisting my arm!

I remarked to the owner how excited I was to get this brand new album at such a great price!  He told me they just started selling used CDs.  I learned later the now-legendary story:  it started with about 10 CDs that he brought in from home to sell.  People wanted more, and so he began buying and selling.  So far, it was working well.  He had a few hundred on display, and there were already some great titles in there!

I ran home excited about my score.  The three tracks I was interested in were Lenny Kravitz, Extreme, and Shandi’s Addiction.  I got my required three songs.  Over time, the rest began to appeal more, but I mostly played those three.  When I learned that Kiss themselves played on the Garth Brooks song, I upped it to four.

About a week later, my dad came home from work and instructed me to go to the mall the following morning.  The owner of the CD store wanted to talk to me.

What?

“He’s interested in hiring you,” said my mom.

“Nah,” I answered.  “I ordered a Japanese version of Kiss Alive III.  I bet that came in.”

“Just go to the mall and talk to him,” they both said, and so I put on some nice(r) clothes for what was in effect an interview.  I wore cowboy boots because I didn’t have anything else but sneakers.  He already knew me as a customer, and trusted my dad as well.  We just chatted for a bit.  He told me that his employee Craig would be leaving for school at the end of the summer, and he needed a replacement.  There were only the two of them, so it was actually a bigger deal than just “working at a CD store”.  Craig opened, closed, did bank deposits, and everything else that needed doing, and eventually so would I!

He told me the job was a lot of fun, but also a lot of work.  Sure, sure, stop twisting my arm!

Therefore, the CD copy of Kiss My Ass (that I still own today) is the very first used CD I bought at the store I would eventually work, and also the last one that I bought before actually being hired!  And he was right about the job.  It was hard work, and it was fun.  When I began working there, I used to show up about 30 minutes early just to flip through all the new arrivals.  If something jumped out at me, I’d put it in the front row.  If something was priced too low, I’d tell him.   “This is really rare”.  I impressed him by knowing the details of who was in what bands, and their different side projects.  I told him I learned this stuff by reading the Columbia House catalogue every month.

What an awesome time to work!  The used CDs were on the ground floor.  Soon they’d be 99% of what we did.  I was there for many releases of what are now classic albums.  I’m really proud to have been there for those times, even if not everybody gets that.  It was work and it was fun.  Not everybody gets to have a job they can be passionate about.  When I was there at the beginning, putting in 200% every day, it was simply an amazing time to be alive.

 

 

#649: Denizens of “The Mall”

GETTING MORE TALE #649: Denizens of “The Mall”

Every mall has its questionable denizens.  I’m not talking about mall rats or bargain hunters.  I mean the people that are there every single day, not doing much of anything, just…being.

Stanley Park Mall in Kitchener, where I spent most of my childhood and early work life, had plenty of characters.

One of the first I was aware of was named “Butts”.  Nobody knew his real name, but he earned the nickname Butts by fishing cigarette butts out of ashtrays.  He was there frequently, and if not he was mining the ashtrays at Fairview Mall instead.  We left him alone, but one kid from school named Kevin Kirby decided to make fun of Butts one day.  Butts responded with a flurry of F-bombs.  It all seemed rather sad to me and not at all funny.  A kid making fun of this guy, and him telling a little kid to fuck off?  Why not just leave him alone?  I’m sure Butts was made fun of regularly, but Kirby was generally a dick.  (Any time he teamed up with me on a school project I did all the work and he coasted off my grade.)

Sue came along a little later.  She was in a bad car accident and was in a walker.  She really liked the Record Store I worked in, and had a bit of a crush on the owner.  We didn’t actually know about the crush until she gave him a Valentine’s Day card.  She used to park her walker at the front counter and talk to him for hours.  We didn’t assume that meant she had a crush, because there were lots of lonely people in the mall who just liked to talk.  It was one of the drawbacks of working there.  One day before leaving she gave him a card, and the owner didn’t realise it was a valentine.  He opened it in front of us, and we all saw it.  He was super embarrassed and really tried to avoid Sue after that.  I witnessed him taking a huge dive behind the counter to avoid her when she strolled by!  And that wasn’t an isolated incident.  I learned from it – I took a few dives behind the counter myself over the years.

The last regular denizen to discuss was the saddest and I don’t know what happened to him.  He was known as Johnny Walker.  Like Butts, nobody knew his real name although his first name may actually have been John.  They called him Johnny Walker because he would walk around the mall all day, every day.  The mall was like a big rectangle, and he would complete numerous circuits through the day.  He talked to himself as he did, mumbling away as he walked.  If you overheard him, it would sound like a normal conversation but with just one person talking.

I’ve been trying to find out what happened to Johnny Walker but nobody seems to know.  People at the mall said he was rich and didn’t work or need to work.  Maybe it was an inheritance.  Maybe an insurance claim.  Nobody knew.  His clothes weren’t ratty and he was clean shaven, but there was clearly something wrong with him.  It was no act.

The general rule of thumb was “just ignore him”.  Sometimes kids would make fun of him and he’d get loud and violent.  He’d been kicked out of the mall a few times after a violent or loud spell.  Then he’d go to a different mall to walk around, before finally returning to Stanley Park again.  He was never gone too long.

As told in Record Store Tales Part 6, I only dealt with Johnny Walker once at the Record Store.  He strolled in, talking to himself.  I took a deep breath and hoped nothing would set him off.  He walked, talked, and picked out a tape.  He came up to the counter and immediately stopped talking to himself.  I sold him the tape, gave him his change, and he walked out again, sharply resuming his conversation with himself.

All I really know about Johnny Walker is that at one point, he listened to tapes.

I hated seeing highschool mallrat kids following him around and shouting at him to “shut up”.  If Johnny got loud and violent, I have a feeling the kids were the root cause most of the time.  I’m sure they thought it was hilarious to harass this obviously damaged person.  But he was still a person, a human being.  Although it was sometimes startling to see someone walking around talking to themselves, it would have been nice if parents taught their kids a little respect.  We don’t know anybody’s secret battles.  Walker minded his own business any time I was present.

If anyone knows what happened to Butts, Sue, or Johnny Walker please drop us a line or leave a comment.  I hope they are all doing better.