strippers

#1092: Grab A Stack of Rock (Recap 3)

RECORD STORE TALES #1092: Grab A Stack of Rock (Recap 3)
A recap of all our shows to date as we gear up for the first anniversary

Recap 1:  Episodes 1-10
Recap 2:  Episodes 11-20

Show #21, May 26 2023 was chock full of guests!  I had more scores from Max the Axe’s Trillion Dollar Treats to show.  John Snow, Tim Durling, Harrison Kopp, Jex Russell, and Dr. Kathryn (via video) all had new stuff, including brand new releases and rarities. This was a cottage show once again, and plenty fun one at that.

Show #22, June 2, 2023, was one we did for ourselves.  My wife Jen has found Lego to be helpful in her healing, and so we have started to buy Lego again.  With that in mind, Harrison, Rob and Dr. Kathryn came on board to show off Lego and toys.  Jen returned as well, with her Spice Girls Lego set!  Dr. Kathryn revealed the secret to identifying Lego blind minifigure packs, though this is now obsolete due to Lego transitioning to boxes.  This show was tremendous fun despite the limited appeal.

Show #23, June 9, 2023 happened at the cottage!  For that reason, my co-host Jex and I decided to do a special list show.  After many comments and requests, the Nigel Tufnel Top Ten lists were back.  With Rob Daniels sending in a list via email, Jex and I counted down the Top 11 Albums to Play at the Cottage! Jex debuted his new moustache for this episode, giving Harrison a run for his money.  “We’re back, baby!” I announced.  This popular show proved that lists were still a viable way to go forward, and they would be critical for the rest of the year.

Show #24, June 16 2023, almost never happened.  Jen had a bad seizure and face-planted on the sidewalk.  Her entire face was black and blue (and not like the rock band).  “The show must go on,” she insisted, and so it did.  A huge thank-you to Aaron and Harrison for carrying the show that night.  Jex Russell did a brief cameo to show off some rarities, but otherwise the topic was one of our most popular historically:  Iron Maiden!  We looked at rarities, vinyl, bootleg CDs, beer and menus!

Jen needed some time to recover.  Her face was a total mess.  The community came together with support and eventually her beautiful face returned to its normal colour.  No broken bones.

Show #25, June 23 2023, was another very special one with a brand new guest.  I wanted to talk about my new favourite band, the Arkells!  What’s an Arkell?  Watch this show and find out.  Live from the cottage, Aaron and I were joined by megafan Nurse Kat.  She saw the band in four different countries 13 times in just 18 months, and has since added many more concerts to her resume. I provided a Nigel Tufnel Top Ten Arkells tracks list. With Kat’s concert footage and fan photos, this was a night to remember.

Show #26, June 24 2023, was the second show in one weekend!  A morning show at that!  Jex Russell joined me to look at a giant box of cassettes that I found in my parents’ basement.  This turned out to be a popular one with the physical media crowd. Inside that box were a number of store-bought cassettes, and ones that I had recorded with home made cover art.  It was a real trip of discovery, and only one cassette was destroyed in the process.

For laughs, we parodied a former cast member at the start of the show.  All in good fun.  Strippers are people too.

Show #27, June 30 2023, we celebrated Canada Day at the cottage with Jex, one day early.  We chose our Nigel Tufnel Top Ten Canadian bands that are little-known outside of Canada.  This turned out to be the most popular non-heels episode we’ve ever done. It is certainly an episode that I am very proud of. The Spoons, Varga, Teenage Head, National Velvet, the Beaches, Kick Axe, and more. This is a show you definitely want to catch up on if you missed it the first time. I even created a graph for it.

After that much activity, I took another break on July 7, but only to gear up for another busy week!  I had a taping with Tim’s Vinyl Confessions on the 8th, with Rob and Jex.  On July 13, I did a show with Grant Arthur on the Stone Gods and Hot Leg for Grant’s Rock Warehaus.

Show #28, July 14 2023, was a brand new thing for me and something I had been wanting to do a long time.  For the first time ever, Harrison was host as I took the night off for the first “LeBrainless” episode!  Harrison and Jex Russell tacked their Top Five Alice Cooper albums, a well-overdue list show.  They did a great job without me, and it was a joy for me to just watch Grab A Stack of Rock for a change instead of hosting it.

Show #29, July 21 2023, was back at the cottage!  We had Tim Durling, Grant Arthur, and Aaron KMA on hand to celebrate the birthdays of Harrison and Mike.  I showed off my massive birthday hauls and recent arrivals. I also ran a fun slideshow of old birthday party photos from the 70s to the 90s.  This was the first birthday show since 2021, since by this time in 2022 I had quit live streaming.  A wonderful way to have a birthday party with friends far away.  Tim Durling played guitar for us!  We also unsealed the new Grab A Stack of Rock 7″ picture disc by Tee Bone Erickson, from vinylart.co.  Tee Bone’s first ever music on vinyl!

I took Friday July 28th off to do a super-secret taping with Peter Kerr of Rock Daydream Nation.  This ended up to be our “rock court” episode on Vinnie Vincent, with Reed Little as judge.  A very rewarding show that led to more tapings in the coming months!

I wanted to do something special for Show #30, which I called “The Dumbest Thing You Will See on YouTube.”  Why?

Show #30, Aug 4 2023, featured me breaking the seal for the first time on my Metallica Master of Puppets box set, purchased four years earlier and still sealed. This was something I wanted to do on camera, because it’s not every day that some idiot unseals a box set that goes for up to $1600 online.  We also looked at new arrivals in stickers, vinyl, and Alice Cooper deluxe CDs.  Max the Axe attempted to drop in, but was thwarted by technical issues.  We’ll try again one day.  Perhaps the coolest thing about this episode was showing the brand new Paul Shortino cameo for Grab A Stack!

To be continued…

#1078: Walking and Rocking for Mental and Physical Health

RECORD STORE TALES #1078: Walking and Rocking for Mental and Physical Health
A Tribute to the Arkells

2023 is the summer of my plans going out the window, and having to come up with new ones!  Without naming names and rehashing stories, it was a spring of broken trust turning into a summer of betrayal.  But I had been walking, to lose weight and get some sun.  It was working.  Just because I was devastated didn’t mean I should stop.  Now more than ever I kept pushing forward, honouring the commitments I made to both of us.

Promises were broken but I kept walking.  Every day at lunch, I did four kilometers.  I walked the same route.  I sang songs.  I recorded videos.  At this point, I dove hard into the Arkells.  The High Noon album started it, before I even bought any other Arkells. I needed something Canadian that didn’t remind me of the before-fore times.  I craved something upbeat that wouldn’t bring me down.  I was feeling pop rock, and the Arkells delivered.

Even though the lyrics had nothing to do with my situation, my interpretation of them was somewhat personal.

“Oh you’re just a boy, a little banker boy, everything’s a game and everyone’s your toy.  While everyone was sleepin’, dreaming dumb-ass dreams, you’re praying to gods who’re meaningless to me.  You’re preying on the weak, and those who don’t believe.  Oh, it’s nothin’ but Fake Money…” 

This verse hit me immediately!  I imagined who Max Kerman could have been singing about.  A man with his Christianity, putting money first over anything else.  It seemed to fit.  The lyrics kept hitting.  Track two, “Come to Light”:

“It’s been a tough go lately, I hate choosin’ sides, what we do in the darkness comes to light alright.”

Another line that hit home for me.  For me to tell my story, I would have to shed light on things I had kept quiet.   But I had to choose sides, and the side I chose was my own.

“The words hit me hard, like a one-two punch.”

From the start, I had fear.  When my fears were confirmed to be true, the words hit me hard like a one-two punch.  Others saw through it all along.  I hated to admit they were right.

So I walked, and I sang the words.  I soothed my own soul, kilometer after kilometer, while leaning on my true friends.  I wore out that record.  I needed more.  I asked around, and bought Michigan Left and Morning Report.  The unending positive feeling of the melodies kept me going, even as my walking route became overly familiar and monotonous.  I needed more Arkells.  In time, my new purchases began to resonate as much as High Noon had on my walks.  “Does he hit you?” asked Max Kerman in “Coffee”, and I wondered that myself.

Suddenly, several lyrics from the song “Hung Up” jumped out at me!

“Motherfuckers keep me guessing, they’re holding onto their job.  They don’t know what they’re protecting, and actin’ like they got robbed.”

That felt true.  That felt very true.

But this was the bit that really applied to my life:

“You got no love (no!), you got no compassion (no!), you fuck up my day, you fuck up my night.  So I’ll be outside, back in the alley, I’ll be takin’ a piss on your door.  ‘Cause it’s these gatekeepers who’re keeping me out, let me in!  Who made you the president, well fucker?”

I leapt out of my seat when I first heard that chorus about the “gatekeepers”!  In a sense, with my shitposting, that was me outside back in the alley, taking a piss on their door…the lyrics just worked!

So I walked, and I walked, and I walked.  I sweated, I lost weight and I felt better doing it.  Sometimes I recorded messages, messages that I never sent.  Messages with varying themes.  Some were intended as goodbyes, others as re-opening doors.  In the end, I probably recorded 100 messages that I never sent.

But now…

Now I’m feeling a lot better, but the memories of those walks…the pain…the messages never sent…they all come back to me when I’m on my route.  I work in an industrial area, and there aren’t a lot of great places to walk.  But I need to get back on the saddle and keep it going.  I need to change my scenery and put the past behind me for good.  I’m physically in much better shape now.  I’m mentally rising above it.  But I can’t rest on my laurels.

I need to keep at it.  Summer is not over yet.  I need to get back to it.  The Arkells served their purpose.  They got me this far.  I need new music, new bands and especially a new route.  Every time I pass certain landmarks, I think to myself, “I remember recording this message here…” and I don’t want those reminders.  I want to keep walking, forwards!

We don’t give up and we don’t give in.

Thank you to my true friends who keep me rocking.

 

 

 

 

 

She knew what she did was wrong. She knew we could have just talked.

#1066: The Road to 25 – Grab A Stack of Drama [MarriedandHeels]

The final word on Married and Heels is DARKNE$$ BE MY FRIEND.

RECORD STORE TALES #1066: The Road to 25 – Grab A Stack of Drama

What a strange trip it’s been!

This week, we are celebrating 25 episodes of Grab A Stack of Rock.  There were times I didn’t think we would even make it this far.  Some history:

I killed the LeBrain Train after the July 15 2022 episode, a Mystique movie interview with Marco D’Auria and special guest Martin Popoff.  I was tired.  It was the third inteview in three weeks and views were down, down, down.  An argument in June with one of my former co-hosts cemented my decision to kill the show.  It wasn’t worth the drama it was causing to me.

One door closes and another opens.  Two weeks later I met the California Girl, and like a breath of fresh air, I began plotting how to do an interview with her on my show.  She had hit 200,000 followers herself on Instagram, just launched an OnlyFans, and I thought why not.  I liked her content, but we were friends.  I really bonded with her.  She needed time to work herself up to it, and I let her take that time.

Meanwhile, my former co-host had an idea for a future show, and said “why don’t you just grab some stacks of rock and show them off?  That could be a show.”

On October 28 2022, for the first time since July 15, I asked Harrison if he’d be up to doing a show that night.  He said yes, and Grab A Stack of Rock was born.  We didn’t announce anything.  We just went live with no preparation, and it went well.  By the following week, November 4, we had a name and a theme song:  Grab A Stack of Rock!

The show rolled on, and we brought back some of our favourite guests to help out:  Aaron KMA, Tim Durling, John T. Snow, Robert Daniels and Marco D’Auria were among our first guests.  But I was having trouble booking the same co-host who conceived of grabbing stacks of rock in the first place.  Drama, unfortunately, would mark the show from that point forward.

California Girl made her debut appearance on the November 25 show for our “Ask Harrison” segment.  Reception to her debut was confused.  Who was this girl in the short skirt and fishnets, and why?  But I was determined to bring her in as the newest member of our crew.  She expressed interest in being my new “guy in the window”, a concept I wanted to steal from the Tom Green Show.  He had a guy, Phil, who just drank coffee in a window and laughed.  Chris Sarre didn’t want to be that, but California Girl thought it would be fun, so I kept including her, week after week, with “Ask Harrison” until she was ready for her real life debut.  We finally did that with a pre-taped episode on January 3.  It was our 10th Grab A Stack of Rock episode, and most popular to date with over 1000 views.  She was ready to go live next time.  A huge triumph, but little did I know that everything would change in just a few short months.

On January 20 we did another popular show, Dr. Kathryn’s debut, with the Karate Kid.  Apparently, our karate was a joke, because afterwards I had a final fight with the former co-host who came up with this concept in the first place, and I ejected him from the show permanently.  To put it simply, it wasn’t working anymore, professionally or personally.  We did not have the same goals or ideas.  Ending the friendship was difficult, but not as hard as the argument I had with him the previous summer.  This was more like anticlimax.

I started cancelling shows due to stress and illness.  February 17 was cancelled after my grandmother and other family members got sick.  March 17 was cancelled due to illness.  We tried again on March 24, which almost got cancelled as well.  I actually had Covid!  California Girl showed up for a surprise cameo that night, but unfortunately, she and I were soon to be heading in different directions.  She was now comfortable enough to do her own mature-themed live streams on OnlyFans.

The final show of April was almost cancelled due to more last-minute drama.  I haven’t discussed this part publicly yet, but I am ready to now.  On her own live stream, California Girl began going topless April 28.  This was a line I was unwilling to cross with someone I considered a friend, and so I declined to watch.  I don’t think she understood this.  I’d seen her in lingerie, so what’s a little less material?  Enough to bring me out of my comfort zone.  Things got tense in the following days, though we did schedule her next show for May 12.   Before we could even get there, I failed to show up for my Cinco de Mayo Metallica show, as my friendship with California Girl finally erupted into an inevitable argument only minutes before the show was scheduled.  Once again she had gone topless that day, and once again, she suggested I watch.  I told her I’d never seen a friend of mine topless before and I wanted to talk about it, which she refused to do.  Though I tried, our friendship will never recover from this massive fight.  I was absolutely shattered by her cold heart.

California Girl was already scheduled for a special cottage Grab A Stack the afternoon of May 12.  She chose not to join me in the fallout of that fight.  I was prepared to do a solo show, but thankfully Jex Russell and Grace Scheele helped make it one of our best shows to date.

On May 16, after waiting almost 24 hours for an answer, California Girl declined to participate in a future unboxing episode to show off the Lego minifigure that Harrison custom made-to-order for her.  It was the first time she ever flat-out declined.  Even though it was only four days after our scheduled appearance, she said she was “a little busy”, and the future uncertain.  Her message lacked specifics and I was forced to read between the lines, so I considered this her resignation from the show.  My heart was broken, again.  As an added kick in the teeth, I keep getting regular hits from “social media girls forums” looking for her nude pictures.  Just a reminder of the subject that triggered everything falling apart in the first place.  But one door closes…and another opens.  California Girl may have elected not to spend her summer at the cottage with me Grabbing Stacks of Rock, but other friends have stepped up.

The hardest show to date was June 16, the day that Jen had a seizure, did a faceplant, and insisted that the show must go on.  I’m glad she did.  I’ve cancelled enough shows.  I haven’t missed a show since May 5, though a break is overdue.  I don’t want to burn out like I did after over two years of LeBrain Train.

As summer hits, I don’t know where this show is going.  I know that guys like Harrison and Jex are willing to step up any time they can.  I’ve lost two of my closest friends in six months, and this fucking show always seems to be connected.  I currently have a love/hate relationship with it.  It serves as a reminder of two shattered relationships.  There are episodes that I was proud of, that I’ll never re-watch because they are just too painful to me now.

But we fall and we bounce back.  Having Spenny on the May 20 show was a real coup.  It felt like coming back to the kind of stuff we used to do on the LeBrain Train, with heavy prep and research leading to great content.  I hope we can continue to do great shows this summer despite the shakeups and changes of plans.  I hope the wounds with my friends eventually heal.  I hope they are doing well, even if they don’t want to do my show.  I just want them to be well.

Summer’s here and the time is right for Grabbing Stacks of Rock.  Help me out, watch a show and leave a comment.  I can’t keep going without you.  I don’t want to stop.

Mike

Oh!  And kudos to Jex for sneaking in that topless joke on the June 24 cottage show!  That was fucking hilarious, man.

 

Landing(s) Some Trillion Dollar Treats with Jex, Grace Scheele and Mr. Chipmunk – MarriedandHeels no-show with Schadenfreude for dessert!

A wise man once said, “Life is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you’re gonna get.”  MarriedandHeels declined to participate for her scheduled time slot.  I booked this afternoon off for her.  So, this week’s box of chocolates includes some sweet surprise guests!  Jex Russell co-hosted, and harpist Grace Scheele dropped by for a bit to talk about her cassette tape Landings.  The end result is one of my favourite shows!  Top ten?

Max the Axe’s garage sale scores were the main focus of the show, with a second on cottage stories and musical memories.  We told the previously unrevealed tale of Max’s carbon monoxide detector collection.  We tributed the man himself with song after song, going over two hours!

Best of all:  a first.  A chipmunk visiting the show, captured on camera, live.  Twice.

Addendum: Here’s the funny thing.  MarriedandHeels was still welcome to appear on this show, and declined to show up.  Why?  Because she scheduled her own stripshow at the same time on OnlyFans.  However, the gods disapproved, and she failed due to technical issues!  She could have joined me, but karma and the universe worked together to spite her.   Oh well!  Hope she enjoyed her day at home alone, not making any money or having any fun with us.

Life is like a box of chocolates indeed!  I say, eat on.  The No More Heels tour of 2023 begins!  

WTF SEARCH TERMS: “Runny James Dio”

WTF SEARCH TERMS Part II: “Runny James Dio”

Welcome to the second installment of WTF Search Terms.  If you missed the first one, click here.  If you didn’t, then remember these two things:

1. Each of these are real search terms, typed in by real people on a search engine like Google.

2. Somehow, each of these search terms led them to ME!

So here’s 10 more for this installment!

  • A week isn’t a week unless I get hits from people looking for stuff like this.  I’m still assuming that people don’t know how to spell the word “lesbian”.

lebrain sex

lebrani nude 1

  • Here’s a good one:

why is here i go again not on reissue of slide it in

Because it’s not on Slide It In.  It’s on 1987, sillypants.

  • This guy can’t spell the singer’s name, nor the name of the site he’s looking for.

you too runny james dio neon nights

  • Here’s a selection that led people to some of my Kiss reviews:

just how bad is peter criss’ ’78 solo album?

was peter criss’ ’78 solo album really that bad

why did paul feel unwanted and alone in the carnival

patty stanley stripper

jean simmons with a moustache

  • And finally, if this guy had his way, we’d all be speaking Anglesh:

hmv dvd prices iron maiden maiden anglend

See you next time for more WTFs!

Anglend

Part 49: Strippers

You could always tell the strippers when they walked in (especially in Cambridge).  You could especially tell when they talked.   They all had that Smoker’s Voice…you know the one?  The one that makes them sound like the Bouvier sisters?  And they all had skin the colour and texture of my jacket.

Anyway, they’d call you “hun”, or “love” or whatever. As in, would you like a bag? “No, thanks hun.”

Then they’d laugh…a big barrel “HAAA HA HA HA!” laugh, buy some dance music shit for their show, and be out the door.   They’d be back every month or so to buy updated music for their acts, and they’d tell you that’s what they were buying it for.

Man, I miss the old days!