star trek

Part 167: Top Five Discs that Got Us in Shit at the The Beat Goes On

RECORD STORE TALES Part 167:

Top Five Discs that Got Us in Shit at the The Beat Goes On

featuring Uncle Meat

Part 121: Movies

RECORD STORE TALES PART 121:  MOVIES

 As a movie buff I was glad when one of our stores decided to carry VHS tapes!  My movie collection grew massively at the time.  I had access to lots of cool items, in widescreen format.  I bought virtually everything that we saw come in, if it was in widescreen format.  The staff, T-Rev in particular, knew to keep an eye out for widescreen movies for me.  This opened up a whole new retail world for us, for now we had customers that were not interested in music at all, just movies.  Of course movie knowledge now came into play, especially when customers would ask a question like, “Do you have that John Wayne movie where he’s after the outlaw guys?”

In 1998 or 1999, I bought my first DVD player.  We started carrying DVDs at that time as well.  That was exciting too.   A lot of people had been asking about them.

When they were still big, you could expect to pay $8.99 to $11.99 for a used VHS tape.  $5.99 if it was a cheapie bin special.  For DVDs, you might expect to pay $16.99 to $19.99 for a used one.  That was in the beginning, prices dropped quickly and within five years, DVDs were almost as cheap as CDs!  We even had laserdiscs, on the rare occasion that they came in.  They were giant.  If you don’t remember what I’m talking about, here’s a size comparison to a CD.

We learned right away though that handling DVDs was not the same as handling CDs!  Maybe the plastic they were made of was softer, because they scratched so much more easily than a CD, and the scratches were so much harder to remove.  This trouble was doubled with the 2-sided DVD discs.

Fixing a scratched double sided DVD was very, very difficult.  You could spend 5 minutes buffing the scratches out of one side, only to find that handling the disc put more scratches in the other side.  They were very tricky, and a lot of the DVD discs that we sold in the early days looked terrible, for that reason.  They would work fine on most players (most), but looked cloudy and streaky.  And a lot of our DVD customers were really, really picky.

Eventually the 2-sided discs became a lot less common.  In the meantime, we had to set up display spaces for DVDs, figured out how to store the discs themselves behind the counter without damaging them, and so on.  Even slight handling or dust could create problems.  Dusting the DVDs could often make them look worse, as the wiping left slight but visible scratches.

At first the selection was pretty poor.  Sony were giving away a number of titles for free with their players, so we had a lot of copies of Sphere, and The Negotiator.  Trade-ins started after a few months.  We started seeing box sets, before they were really common, Criterion Editions, all kinds of stuff.  It happened quick, our stock grew and grew….

…And so did my own personal collection!  Ain’t it the way?

Continued in Part 284:  The Impact of Movies

MOVIE REVIEW: KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park (aka: KISS in Attack of the Phantoms)

You know what I forgot to review? KISS Meets the Phantom! So, belatedly: Part 29 of my series of Kiss reviews, leading up to the release of Monster!

“I will destroy you!  All of you!  You, Kiss, will be my instrument!”

KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park (NBC, 1978)

Context:  In 1978 Kiss were arguably the biggest band in the world.  Like the Beatles before them, they sought to conquer movies as they prepared to do their solo albums.  They did it…much less successfully than the Beatles.

I’ll try not to shoot ducks in a barrel here.  This made for TV movie is now available in its superior international version on the KISStory II DVD set.  It’s marginally better than the version we’ve had to endure here.  It had more Kiss music (17 songs) and a different cut to the film.

However if you want campiness at its 1970’s worst, watch the regular version.  Bad acting, no budget, bad dubbing (even Peter Criss was dubbed, by Michael Bell!), hell the special effects from the 1967 season of Star Trek are vastly, incalculably superior.  The familiar North American version excises much of Kiss’ original music and replaces it with disco funk!  Chicka-chicka-chicka guitars and hilarious horns.  Oh, and on top of it, Ace has hardly any lines beyond “Ack”!

Phantom stars classic Bond villain Anthony Zerbe as the insane Abner Devereaux, the mastermind behind the amusement park’s “amazing” robots!  (Incidentally that’s two actors who later appeared in Star Trek:  Bell and Zerbe.)  And of course Gene, Paul, Ace and Peter headline as well, even though they don’t even appear in the movie for what seems like an hour.

Plot?  Fuck it.  Who cares.  Madman in theme park is insanely jealous of Kiss.  Kiss have super powers.  Madman sends robots after them.  The end.

The movie is notable on the positive side for some exclusive music:  An acoustic version of “Beth”, and something called “Rip and Destroy” which was “Hotter Than Hell” with new (evil) lyrics.  I don’t know who plays the guitar on “Beth”, but it’s not someone from Kiss.  Paul mimes it in the video.  “Rip And Destroy” basically consists of one verse and one chorus repeated ad nauseum.  Having said that, fans have been begging for years for an official release of these songs.  Maybe on a future box set?  That would be cool.

For the film, 1/5 stars.

Part 86: Captain Gold Shirt

One time, we almost got sued for wrecking some guy’s golden shirt.

We had this annoying sidewalk sign.  Everybody hated it.  When the wind caught hold of it, it would always fall over, if not go for a short jog.  Some days I didn’t bother putting it out, I hated it so much.

I never hated it more, however, than the day that idiot in the golden shirt walked past.  Our sign took up half the sidewalk (another reason I hated it) and this idiot wasn’t looking where he was going and sideswiped it.  I knew right away because I heard the sign crash.  I looked outside and I saw this guy stumbling next to the downed sidewalk sign.

“Oh shit.” I concluded.

One of the girls immediately ran out to see if the guy was OK.  Yeah, he was fine.  Not a scratch.  But his golden shirt was torn!  Oh my God!

He threatened to sue!  He wanted the owners name and contact information!  We provided the requested data.

“You’re going to get a call from my lawyer about this, you wait and see,” said Captain Gold Shirt.

Pffftr.  Gold shirt?  Who do you think you are, James T. Kirk or something?

REVIEW: Black Sabbath – Seventh Star (deluxe edition)

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BLACK SABBATH featuring TONY IOMMI – Seventh Star (2011 deluxe edition)

The only Black Sabbath album with Glenn Hughes on vocals. The only one released under the somewhat silly name “Black Sabbath Featuring Tony Iommi”. The first one to feature no original members except Tony himself, with Geezer and Bill departing after the disasterous hiring of a new singer named Dave “Donut” Donato, a male model. That bore no fruit, and Iommi instead toiled away on what he intended to be his first solo album….

Finally, Seventh Star has been given the Deluxe Edition treatment. I’ve been waiting for some kind of official release of the music video remix of “No Stranger To Love” for 25 years. Finally it is available on this Deluxe Edition, along with a pretty good live show featuring the late Ray Gillen on vocals. I already have a Ray show on bootleg (a very common one called The Ray Gillen Years) but this is a completely different show, with a different setlist.

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Seventh Star as an album probably never should have been released under the Black Sabbath name. It’s truly a solo album that Warner Bros didn’t want to release as a Tony Iommi album. So here it is, an official Sabbath album. If that didn’t occur, would Sabbath as an entity even have continued in the 1980’s? I doubt it. Sabbath here consisted of:

Tony Iommi – guitars
Glenn Hughes – lead vocals
Dave “The Beast” Spitz – bass  (*brother of Dan)
Eric Singer – drums
Geoff Nicholls – keyboards

Only Iommi and Nicholls remain from previous Sabbath lineups. You know Glenn Hughes of course from his soulful wail in Deep Purple, and Eric Singer from his later work in Kiss. Here, the five musicians coalesce into a more commercial version of Black Sabbath. The hard hitting riffs are still there, the frenetic solos, the mystical lyrics, the pounding drums. Yet these songs are more melodic. Glenn infuses them with a soulful touch never heard before on a Sabbath album. Whether that is to your taste, only you can decide. Personally I love almost every song on this album. I find the standouts to be “In For The Kill”, “Seventh Star”, “Angry Heart”, and “No Stranger To Love”. Only “Heart Like A Wheel” bores me, a slow blues that doesn’t really go anywhere.

As mentioned, the video version of “No Stranger” is included, which I have never found anywhere else. For years I had it on VHS and I thought there were female backing vocals. This remaster reveals that it’s actually Glenn — I could never hear them clearly enough before to discern this.

The remastering on this CD is quite excellent. The drums have a fullness that wasn’t there before. The guitar absolutely sizzles. The liner notes are nothing new, just recycled from a previous edition of the CD, as are the included photos.

The bonus live show with Ray Gillen on vocals exists due to Glenn’s vocal and drug problems.  Ray Gillen was hired when it was clear that Hughes was in no shape to tour.  This CD reveals that Ray was really trying to be Ronnie James Dio. Personally I find Ray’s renditions of the Sabbath classics to be very overwrought, especially on “Black Sabbath”. Only two songs from Seventh Star are played. (You can get Ray’s version of “Heart Like A Wheel” on the Ray Gillen Years bootleg, as well as “Sweet Leaf”.)

While Ray’s tenure in Black Sabbath was brief, it was still important historically.  Ray did one tour and recorded an album.  There are some singers in Sabbath’s history that are not documented at all.  (One TV broadcast exists with Dave Walker singing “Junior’s Eyes”, and there’s a demo of Dave Donato singing an early version of “The Shining” called “No Way Out”.)   This live show, while not stellar, is an important piece of the Sabbath puzzle. It is the first (but not final!) official release of any Ray Gillen material with Sabbath.  The sound quality is slightly better than bootleg which is fine by me.

This remaster is not for Sabbath snobs. You know the kind. “Sabbath suck without Ozzy!” or “Dio is the best!” Sabbath’s history is far longer and richer than that, and there’s room for all kinds. Just one question:   Is Headless Cross going to get the deluxe treatment too?…may as well wish for the moon!

4/5 stars

Yup…that’s Star Trek TNG’s Denise Crosby in the “No Stranger To Love” video!

NOTE: If you like this album, Hughes and Iommi hooked up twice more: On the Iommi solo albums The DEP Sessions, and Fused.