The birthdays keep coming, relentlessly as the tides, but Jex Russell ensured that this one was special and different indeed.
This birthday, I was joined by Jex, John Clauser and Tim Durling for a fun Friday afternoon that turned quite epic by the end. Before that surprise unfolded, we took a look at my new shelving and a large chunk at my CD collection. We discussed favourite birthday memories and a movie in its 40th anniversary this year: The Last Starfighter. (This led into a side discussion on Howard the Duck.)
Jen joined us for gifts at the halfway point of the show. She gifted me with two new releases and one deluxe live album. You’ll have to watch the show and see! (Clue: royal rodents and the Phoenix lights.)
As a finale, Jex unveiled his surprise. With the assistance of Tim Durling, it was like an episode of “This Is Your Life”, or a Cameo with all my favourite people. Jex’s presentation included friends both famous and infamous. There was even an acoustic version of the Grab A Stack of Rock theme song performed by Johnny Metal himself. Thank you, John!
Here is Jex’s presentation:
By the end of it, I was flattered and honoured, and maybe my eyes were a little wet. I’m not crying, you’re crying. All my reactions to the kind words and surprise guests are live and unfiltered.
I’m the guy who usually has all the words. I don’t have any this time. If a picture is worth 1000 words, just watch my face.
Thank you everyone for everything. Here’s to another year.
The Jexter Bunny brought an early Easter surprise this year. Unbeknownst to me, Jex Russell and Uncle Meat had conspired to surprise me with Meat’s first live appearance on Grab A Stack of Rock since 2022! The topic: Top Five Albums from our birth years! The presence of Uncle Meat enabled us to do albums from three consecutive decades.
Uncle Meat drew 1969
I had lucky 1972
Jex had a rocking 1985
Additionally, Metal Roger sent in a thrashing guest list covering 1988, while Harrison Kopp submitted a Blaze-heavy list spanning 1998-2000. Because he’s our unicorn.
We looked at a variety of vinyl releases, CDs, and box sets. I brought multiple copies of mine. The genres ran from doomy to thrashy, Beatles to Black Sabbath, soul, progressive rock, and beyond. We had a great discussion on a classic album cover, and went in-depth on a Deep Purple album that was just reissued this week for its 50th anniversary. Meanwhile, I had a nice 40th anniversary edition of that album to show off.
One of my picks from 1972 enabled me to rewind to an old clip from my earliest YouTube days, featuring Uncle Meat. The irony is I picked this clips days ago and certainly not before I knew he was showing up live on the show! Jex really slammed it out of the ball park with this surprise. And Jex knows I don’t really like surprises! Thank you Jex Russell for setting up this epic and surprising reunion. Long overdue. The man who essentially inspired this show to exist in the first place is beloved here, and I will always love him. Thanks for doing this Meat Man.
Finally, Jex…Jex Jex Jex! When I took my headphones off for 30 seconds to change my shirt, you happened to take to a shot at my former chesty co-host from last year’s Good Friday show. Well played, sir. Well played.
Next week is a re-run of the last two Mike and Aaron Go to Toronto trips, with brand new content with Mike and Aaron in the present day. Hope you enjoy this week and next week’s shows!
RECORD STORE TALES #1092: Grab A Stack of Rock (Recap 2) A recap of all our shows to date as we gear up for the first anniversary
It has been a heck of a year…but it has been a year already! Grab A Stack of Rock debuted with no name, on October 28, 2022. It was an impromptu decision to go live, and fortunately Harrison and Uncle Meat were on board. This week, we are celebrating one year of Grab A Stack, with a special list show and special guests. More on that later.
Coming off the biggest show we ever did, Show #10, which has over 1200 views currently, we decided to get nerdy next!
Show #11, Jan 13 2023, saw Rob Daniels, Tim Durling, and Kevin “Buried On Mars” Simister beamed down with Harrison and I to talk Star Trek! It was Kevin’s first time with the new format, and he really brought the Trek. Tim and I were both in uniform, and Harrison had some cool MAD Magazines to show. This was a really fun episode to do, even though that uniform isn’t very comfortable! Soundtracks, books, action figures and much more were shown!
Show #12, Jan 20 2023 was the debut of Dr. Kathryn, and what a debut it was! This was a Karate Kid / Cobra Kai talk, with Rob Daniels and Harrison Kopp. Dr. Kathryn blew everyone away with her expertise on the subject, while showing off some cool stuff including a video from actor Sean Kanan. The stories that night were absolutely incredible. Any fan of Cobra Kai needs to check out this chat!
Show #13, Jan 27 2023 was a brainchild of Tim Durling: Reissue record labels! You know that Tim is a format head, and one of his passions is comparing different printings of albums. Many record labels make their fortunes on reissues. Rock Candy, La-La-Land, Sony Legacy, and so on. We took a good look at some cool things from our collections. Rob Daniels and Harrison Kopp were on hand once again!
Show #14, Feb 3 2023 was MarriedandHeels episode 2.
I took a couple weeks off, but did some informal mini-episodes (un-numbered) while I rested and recuperated after several weeks without a break.
Feb 11 2023 featuring the debut of Jen on Grab A Stack of Rock! I wanted to get her more involved within her abilities. She can’t look at a screen for very long without feeling some effects from it. In this short episode, we unboxed my Marvel Legends T’Challa (Black Panther) figure, just for fun. Jen was a natural! This was a test stream to see how it would work with two of us on one computer, and it worked great!
Feb 19 2023 was another fun mini-episode. I had just received the excellent cassette, Landings, by Grace Scheele. An instrumental concept cassette (cassette!) about the moon landing, Grace hand-packaged each one in aluminium foil. I had to unbox it live, and I had to have her on hand when I did it. Thanks for coming to hang with me, Grace! People, check out this episode and see what love and care looks like when it goes into a physical product.
Show #15, Feb 24 2023 was monumentally important, for it featured a new guest that would have a huge impact on Grab A Stack of Rock. This was the foreshadowing of a new era, because Jex Russell (or the “Friendly Frenchman” as I called him back then) came on board for the first time. Nice to meet ya! We had John T. Snow back on, for the first time since 2022. Tim and Harrison also returned for this musical gathering of fans.
Show #16, March 3 2023 was MarriedandHeels episode 3, with Harrison Kopp.
March 10…now, that was a night. I had my guests lined up. Jex and Harrison were coming back to do a test stream. Streamyard added a new feature, allowing guests to stream the show to their own social media. About 30 minutes before showtime, I barfed. 10 minutes later, I barfed again and cancelled the show! I barfed seven more times that night and drank about four large things of Gatorade.
Show #16.5, March 24 2023, was not an official episode. We did the test stream, successfully! John Snow, Rob Daniels, Jex Russell and MarriedandHeels joined in. We unboxed some Japanese imports, and we covered Whitesnake, Bon Jovi, Kiss, Star Wars, and more. Most importantly, we successfully streamed to the guys’ Facebook pages for the first time.
March 31 was a week off. Why? Because apparently when we went live on March 24, I had Covid! You certainly could not tell! Watch that episode and tell me if I look like a guy with Covid. The following morning, I felt tired and scratchy, so I tested myself. Yep: positive! While I never really got sick (just tired), Jen sure got it bad. I was negative the following week, and back at work.
Show #17, April 7 2023, was the final MarriedandHeels episode, with Jex Russell.
Though her shows were excellent for views, I didn’t pick up new readers or viewers. It was a failed experiment, like putting a big round peg in a little square hole. At least I tried.
I took April 14 off so I could do an excellent discussion on the Neurotic Outsiders, with Grant Arthur, on his show Grant’s Rock Warehouse. We also opened the cottage that weekend, meaning the first ever front porch shows on Grab A Stack of Rock were about to happen! Following this, we took April 21 off.
Show #18, April 28 2023 was the cottage show I had been waiting all year to do! It was another simple one: new arrivals. Kevin the Mars Man was back, as was John T. Snow and Harrison Kopp. Thankfully those guys carried the show, because I was checked out that night. And everything came to a head the following Friday.
Show #19, May 5 2023, was supposed to be Metallica with Kevin, Tim and Harrison. I was going to show off my Black box, but the show was cancelled last minute when drama finally exploded into its inevitable conclusion. The “heels era” was over, and we were about to get serious about music.
Show #19, May 12 2023, was the first of the new era! New life was breathed into the show on this day. My planned co-host (see above) crapped out and didn’t show up, but thankfully Jex Russell did! I also invited Grace Scheele back on, because we did a demo of her cassette! I had a whole box full of treasures that I picked up from Max the Axe’s garage sale, including a Kenwood tape deck. Grace’s cassette sounded awesome on it. Additionally, this was a test of a new time slot: 3:00 PM on Friday afternoons in the summer. To my utter disbelief, views were high! The show went on for two whole hours, as I spun classic Max the Axe videos. It was a fantastic show, and the time slot worked. I was worried I could not get enough viewers on Friday afternoons. I was wrong…very gladly wrong! From this point forward, most cottage shows would be in the afternoon, and Jex would co-host them. I called it the “no more heels tour of 2023”, and it was off to a hell of a start. We even had a chipmunk sighting on camera!
May 17, 2023 happened when I received the new Van Halen Right here, right now live album on vinyl. I had taken the afternoon off work, and I thought, why not go live? Dare I say why not? It was a mini-episode unboxing, and it too was a success despite the fact that most of you should have been working!
Show #20, May 19 2023, was another first for the show: our first star interview! Spencer “Spenny” Rice of Kenny Vs. Spenny fame agreed to talk wresting, and talk we did! Co-host Marco D’Auria really rocked this one, with his encyclopedic knowledge of so many eras of wresting. Spenny may have been the star, but Marco was the star! All I could do was sit back and enjoy! Thank you Spencer Rice for doing this, and thank you Marco for killing it. It was an honour for me to share the screen with you.
RECORD STORE TALES #1066: Sausagefest Intro by Jeff Woods
Jeff Woods is a radio personality known for The Legends of Classic Rock, and the Records and Rockstars Podcast. Mr. Woods was kind enough to record a sketch for our Sausagefesting adventures, and you won’t believe what the guys got him to say.
Three cheers for Jeff Woods, a good sport and a great human.
Marco, Tim and I had a blast taking a deep dive into Kiss’ Creatures of the Night album, box set, and tour! Marco presented a collection of four Kiss bootlegs from the Creatures era. Tim brought the vinyl and cassettes. He even had a related 8-track tape. I dove deep into the Kiss box set: the book, the goodies, the music, the stories and the packaging! (For those asking me for a box set review, this is pretty much it!) Additionally, Uncle Meat stopped by with his memories of seeing the Creatures tour at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. Finally, “Ask Harrison” returned with two of the best questions for my Aussie co-host yet. Harrison doesn’t have much in the way of Kiss but did present some interesting stuff in terms of Slade, Deep Purple, Def Leppard, and more.
“Ask Harrison” questions this time were asked by Lana (via Tee Bone) and our newest castmember, an actual Instagram influencer with 200,000 followers who discovered our Led Zeppelin list episode earlier this year, became a fan, and wanted to be a part of our little show herself! Please give her a big welcome.
Next week I’ll be doing a taping with Grant Arthur from Grant’s Rock Warehaus, but we’ll be back again soon. Thanks for watching!
GRAB A STACK OF ROCK With Mike and the Mad Metal Man
Episode 1: Dio – Dreamers Never Die review with Uncle Meat
As I was leaving for work on Friday morning, I thought to myself, “You know, I wonder if Harrison or anybody would feel like going live tonight. Just shoot the shit for an hour. It might be a fun way to be social on a Friday night and it only has to be an hour.”
I messaged Harrison in Australia just as he was tucking in for the night, and he graciously agreed to get up early and join me for an impromptu live stream. Setting his alarm clock, Harrison prepared for our first live show since July!
The MVP tonight was Kevin from Canadian Grooves for going superdeeeeeep with his Tenacious D picks! “I am not worthy!” said Meat. Indeed Kevin did dig deep into the obscure for his excellent list. Between the three of us, you will find a terrific balance of deep cuts and mainstream hits. All of which, you should check out!
Thank you boys for a great show tonight! If all goes according to plan I’ll be going live again next Friday for another Show & Tell episode!
The LeBrain Train: 2000 Words or More with Mike & Friends
Episode 110 – Nigel Tufnel Top Ten-acious D Tracks
This is just a “tribute”! Well, no, not really. But it will be great fun regardless. Thank Uncle Meat, as he arranged this week’s episode and guest himself. Tonight, Meat and Kevin from Canadian Grooves are joining me to talk about the notoriously tenacious comedy-rock duo of Jack Black and Kyle Gass. The greatest band in the world? Perhaps — which is why we’re doing Top 11 lists of this band’s greatest songs.
The duo met in 1986 and started playing gigs 1994, with their name a reference to the basketball term “tenacious defence”. Their demo led to the short lived TV series, befriending Dave Grohl, and eventually their debut album in 2001. It’s been pure legend since!
Sourcing tunes from their four albums, many singles, HBO TV show and more, you can count of lots of laughs tonight. As usual, you’ll want to catch this live!
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