vinyl

Saturday Live Stream: 6:00 PM E.S.T – Favourite Vinyl & Free Discussion

YOU SPEAK, WE LISTEN!

Someone last week requested that I cover my favourite vinyl on the next live stream.  At the same time, I received some feedback that going back to a discussion format like the early streams might be fun.  I’ve decided to do a bit of both.

For today’s live stream, starting at 6:00 PM E.S.T., I’ll be talking about some of my favourite records.  Why are they some of my favourites?  We’ll get into that and more.  But we’ll start with some free discussion about whatever you want.  How are you holding up now, two months into this crisis?

I read an interesting comment about new music during the crisis.  “I’d prefer not to get any new albums at this time,” went one comment, “because I don’t want to always associate that music with this time.”

Let’s talk about this and more tonight at 6:00 PM Eastern Standard Time.  Facebook:  Michael Ladano

VIDEO: Kathryn Ladano album release – live performance of “Flow”

Enjoy music just a little different from the norm?  Here are Kathryn Ladano and opening act, combining members of Harp+ and Seagram Synth Ensemble at the TWH Social After Dark Space January 11 2020.  My Samsung couldn’t get a good image in the dark, but the audio is decent in full stereo.  Enjoy the track “Flow” from the new album Masked and clips from other tracks on the disc!

The synthscape of the opening act was quite awesome.  Now, I don’t normally drink, but I was with Max the Axe.  Before long I had a rum and Coke in me and I was taken on this wild synthesizer trip through the cosmos!  For roughly 30 minutes, a stream of music emanated through the room, like a slideshow of NASA photos from the 1960s.  Can’t wait to hear the Seagram Synth Ensemble’s album which was for sale and now in my collection.

Kathryn Ladano played interpretations of music from her album Masked.  “Interpretations” because the music is improvised and never the same twice, they just follow the same rough blueprints.  “It’s better live” whispered Max (you can hear this in the video), and Dr. Ladano agreed.

Great show, great venue, try and catch them live!

 

#801: Dinking Your Records

GETTING MORE TALE #801: Dinking Your Records

Let’s say you have a stack of new and old 45 rpm singles to play, but only an old Wurlitzer jukebox to play them in.  You might run into some problems if you don’t have the right records.  You know how some singles have the large holes and some do not?

Back in the 1940s, RCA were 100% behind their new 45 rpm record format.  They had a system where you had a stack of up to 10 records on a thick spindle.  One would automatically drop as the previous record finished.  When all 10 songs had played, you just flip the entire stack over and play the other sides.  That’s why singles have an upraised ridge around the center; so their playing surfaces never touch when stacked.  The larger spindle size made for tougher, longer lasting records and players since that auto-changing could be pretty rough on the 45s!  Through trial and error, RCA learned that the smaller standard holes would eventually deform if their mechanism were to use it.

The two hole sizes on records today are the remnants of an ancient format war.  The now standard small spindle won out, but many jukeboxes still used the larger spindle.  So what happens if you have a jukebox but not the right kind of record?  You dink ’em!

I’m not talking dirty here.  The term for cutting out a larger hole in your singles is called “dinking”.  We won’t speculate why.

If you need to dink a large number of records, or if you simply need it done right, there are actually record dinking services out there.  You send them your records, and they will use proper machinery to cut the holes perfectly.  If you’re braver, you can try dinking your records at home.  You can buy a couple different devices to do this.  One looks like your old school compass.  You simply etch a new hole by cutting around and round.  The other is a little device that you attach to the center of your record and tighten, and tighten, and tighten until it cuts through.

Neither device is perfect and both require you to do some serious handling of your precious vinyl.  It also requires practice to get the hole just right.  If it’s a little off-center, you’ll notice when you play it.

Watch the informative video below by Youtuber Mat aka Techmoan. Notice that he purchased a stack of worthless records from Ebay to pull this stunt. (New Kids on the Blech!)  Is this something you’d be willing to try yourself?

Granted, the number of working vintage Wurlitzer jukeboxes out there is dwindling, but if you had one, I’m sure you’d be well familiar with dinking services at this point!

Most record collectors doubtlessly have singles with both size holes.  We’ve been putting those little plastic “spiders” or spacers in the middle without thinking too hard about it.  Sure beats dinking around doesn’t it?

REVIEW: Ghost – “Kiss the Go-Goat” (2019 single)

GHOST – “Kiss the Go-Goat” (2019 Loma Vista 7″ single)

Ghost began as a gothic, Satanic metal experiment.  They grew to include more pop and more humour, and while it hasn’t all been good, most of it has.  In 2019, Papa Nihil and his merry band of Nameless Ghouls have returned with the kitschy single “Kiss the Go-Goat” / “Mary on a Cross”.  It’s not much of a departure from their last album, the excellent Prequelle.

Look at the subtitle on the A-side of the label.  “The long-lost remastered 1969 single.”  That Ghost humour again.

“Kiss the Go-Goat” has a driving organ/guitar riff that is the kind of stuff recent Ghost glory has been based on.  The corny chorus of “Satan, Lucifer…” is far removed from the old orthodox days of “Satan Prayer” and ante-nicean creeds.  But it rocks, solidly and without embarrassment.  A track this good could easily have been on Prequelle.  “Mary on a Cross” doesn’t have the same impact, but is not an also-ran.  It’s a little darker but the recurring organ part is perfectly piquant.

If not for the worrisome possibility (probability?) that these two songs will show up on some kind of future deluxe edition, this single would be an absolute must for all boys & girls, far & wide.  In fact, it has shown up on a very very expensive edition of called Prequelle Exalted, in a disc called Seven Inches of Satanic Panic.  Unless you plan on spending that kind of dough, maybe buying this single is a good option after all.

4/5 stars

 

REVIEW: Alice Cooper – The Breadcrumbs EP (2019)

ALICE COOPER – The Breadcrumbs EP (2019 Edel)

Alice Cooper wanted to do a Detroit garage rock record and pay homage to his roots.  And so we have The Breadcrumbs EP, six tracks of stripped down goodness, ironically produced by Bob Ezrin.  The 10″ vinyl is limited to 20,000 copies.  Somehow, by the grace of the black widow, we scored #48!

For these special songs, Alice is backed by the MC5’s Wayne Kramer, bassist Paul Randolph, Grand Funk’s Railroad Mark Farner, and Detroit Wheel Johnny “Bee” Badanjek. A remake of Alice Cooper’s “Detroit City” (from The Eyes of Alice Cooper) is an appropriate starting point:

Me and Iggy were giggin’ with Ziggy and kickin’ with the MC5,
Ted and Seger were burnin’ with fever,
and let the Silver Bullets fly,
The Kid was in his crib, Shady wore a bib,
and the posse wasn’t even alive.

That’s some rock and roll poetry right there.  Not one of Alice’s finest songs but worthy of a second chance.  Then “Go Man Go” is a new original composition co-written by Wayne Kramer.  It’s punk rock Alice, as authentic as the bands he’s paying tribute to.  Bob Seger’s “East Side Story” closes the side on a steady groove, right out of Hendrix’s version of “Gloria”.

A really funky “Your Mama Won’t Like Me” (Suzi Quatro) is the centrepiece of the EP.  Horns blastin’, Alice hasn’t been this funky since his dance-oriented Alice Cooper Goes to Hell in 1976.  “Devil With a Blue Dress On” (Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels) is the soulful side that Alice occasionally shows.  It’s merged with “Chains of Love” (J.J. Barnes) which pulls everything back to rock.  Finally “Sister Anne” by the MC5 puts the snot on the nose and the grime in the rock.  Kramer’s simply awesome riff is perfectly complemented by Cooper.

If copies are still available, get one.  Cooper fans will love the change of pace, while rock and rollers will adore the authenticity.

3.5/5 stars

REVIEW: Kathryn Ladano – Masked (2019 vinyl)

KATHRYN LADANO – Masked (2019 vinyl version – test pressing)

The new Dr. Kathryn Ladano album Masked will be out soon, and we just got our (very neat and clean) hands on a pristine test pressing of the vinyl LP.  We don’t have the sleeve, liner notes or CD bonus tracks.  However we can say, without any of the extras, that this is a remarkable sounding album.

You can hear Dr. Kathryn breathing, and you can hear the click of the key pads.  The album is completely solo improvisations.  What you hear is what was played in the moment, in the studio.  The fact you can hear the keys and the breathing makes it a very physical sounding album.

Isotope records did an excellent job with the actual cutting of the vinyl.  It will be interesting to hear a comparison with the eventual CD version (which will come with two more songs).  The bass clarinet is a diverse instrument, and it’s possible you won’t even know you’re listening to a wind instrument at times.  There are moments of dissonance that sound like an electric guitar.  Others sound like a broken theremin, Jason Voorhees, or a dog growling!  The second track is absolutely mental.  Ladano also goes full “Van Halen” with speed and frenzy in certain passages.  However it’s all executed with complete control and mastery of the instrument, and you can hear this.

The rich tones of the bass clarinet are evident in the more melodic material, which some listeners might find easier to digest.  The rhythms you can create with the bass clarinet are also pretty riveting.  Each track is different, which is good when you’re listening to instrumental music that is so far out in left field.  This album goes from left to right and all over the place, but rarely hangs around the middle.

As a whole, Masked plays out like the soundtrack to a science fiction film.  Something like THX-1138 or Blade Runner: 2049.  The only difference is that this is entirely performed on one acoustic instrument.  It sure sounds like many, though, because it’s hard to believe a woodwind can make this much noize.

4.5/5 stars

Here’s an interview with Dr. Kathryn by Ambush Schnauzer Paparazzi. She discusses the new album and artwork below.

#770: Encore!

GETTING MORE TALE #770: Encore!

I’ve been avoiding downtown Kitchener for the last couple years.  All that construction (five years’ worth) installing our new light-rail transit system…it’s been hellacious.  But that construction is now over, and the LRT train (called the ION) is running every 15 minutes.  Only two years behind schedule!  And guess where one of the stops is?  Right by legendary record store Encore Records.  Perfect!  No need to worry about parking.

Mrs. LeBrain and I hopped on a bus to the mall, and a few minutes later the train pulled in.  Using the free Wi-fi, I live-streamed myself making goofy faces on our new train.  The ride was quiet and fast since it only stopped a handful of times.  These new trains are lovely!  Now that they are finally running, I can see that the headaches will be worth it.  Clean and quick – I’d use the ION again.  It’s a shame but there are still people who hate the train so much that they would actually like to spend taxpayer money on ripping up the tracks!  What a waste that would be.  Let’s give this LRT a fair shake.

We disembarked the train at the City Hall stop, only a brief walk from Encore.  Not only was this my first ride on the train, but also my first visit to Encore since they moved from their old Queen St. location.  The new store, though not wheelchair accessible, seemed bigger and cleaner.  Old pal Al “The” King was there, happily still slinging the rock for us patrons.

We chatted a bit.  Al really enjoyed working at Encore.  There was a guy that I trained at my old Record Store about 15 years ago.  He left shortly after to work at Encore, and he’s still there!  When you find a place you enjoy working, I guess you stay!

Time to go look at music….

It didn’t take long for me to exceed my budget for the day.  First snag was from the new release rack:  The Beaches’ excellent new EP The Professional, $9.99.  A great recording; it will be getting a few spins this summer.  Next:  the used CD racks.  Plenty of stock as usual.  I came looking for old Styx, but there was no used Styx that I needed.  Instead I grabbed three Scorpions remasters:  World Wide Live (with DVD), Savage Amusement (with DVD), and Animal Magnetism.  $20 each.

Whoops!  I already owned Animal Magnetism.  No big deal; looks like some lucky person will be getting a free copy from me.  I really have to keep track of reissues better.  This is happening more and more frequently as my collection grows.

I still wanted some more classic Styx.  I’ve been playing my Styx albums repeatedly.  I needed some more classics to throw in the shuffle, so I moved on to the new CD racks.  There I picked up Pieces of Eight and Crystal Ball.  $9.99 each.  One by one and I’ll get them all.

Continuing through the racks of new stock, I spied two Kick Axe remasters by Rock Candy.  I’ve wanted both these albums for a long time:  Vices and Welcome to the Club, $22.99 each.  I’ve spun through both twice and was impressed with both the music and liner notes.  What an underrated singer George Criston is.  This sparked more Kick Axe purchases later on Discogs and Amazon.  The third album, Rock the World, is coming in the form of another Rock Candy remaster.  And thanks to the excellent liner notes inside Vices, I also tracked down some early Kick Axe on Discogs.  Debut single “Week-End Ride” / “One More Time” from 1981 is inbound!  Also coming, from the same year, is a compilation LP called Playboy Street Rock.  Kick Axe have a live track on that called “Reality is the Nightmare”.  It’s going to be cool hearing those early songs, which had a different singer.

It’s funny about Kick Axe.  One of the first buttons I ever bought for my jacket was Vices.  It only took close to 40 years to finally get the album.

Finally we closed the Encore trip with some vinyl.  A lovely reissue of Alice Cooper’s Zipper Catches Skin, on clear “black smoke” vinyl.  It looks and sounds great, and now I finally have all the Alice Cooper studio albums.

We bid farewell to Al and headed home again on the ION.  Now that the train is up and running, I do believe I’ll be making Encore a fairly regular weekend stop.

5/5 stars

 

 

REVIEW: Vinyl Disc – a CD and a record all in one

VINYL DISC

If you love physical media (and chances are that you do or you wouldn’t be reading this) then you probably love it in all its myriad shapes and forms. Let’s be honest, when it comes to sheer varieties, there are far more weird vinyls out there than CDs. Picture discs, shaped discs, discs with liquid or actual objects inside the record, odd speeds, colours, thicknesses…you can take the vinyl LP in so many different directions. When you mess around with the CD format (shaped discs, enhanced discs, CD/DVD DualDiscs) you often end up with a product that won’t play in all players. Vinyl tends to be good to go for whatever turntable you have, though you will need a manual over an automatic when it comes to the Vinyl Disc.  That’s because it’s a 5″ disc, not a 7″, so you want to make sure you drop the arm on the media and not the platter.

When it comes to odd formats, Youtuber Techmoan (or Mat if you’re not into handles) is the expert.  When I saw his video on the subject, I knew I wanted to get a Vinyl Disc just for the novelty value.  This is a CD that has normal CD content on one side, but a groove on the other.  This groove can be played on a record player, revealing a bonus track.  I wondered if any bands I liked had ever released one.

It turns out, one had:  The Hellacopters, who are vinyl-mad in the first place.  I have a couple albums of theirs with vinyl-only bonus tracks.  I didn’t own the album Head Off, so I went to Discogs and got the Vinyl Disc version.

In his video, Techmoan complained of the poor sound quality on the vinyl side of the CD.  My copy of Head Off was factory sealed, but still suffers from pops.  Perhaps I should not have played the CD side first.  The vinyl side could have picked up dust from inside my computer.  I played the vinyl side twice, the second time after a light cleaning.  Both times there were loud, distracting pops.  You can see them clearly in Audacity.

The sound quality was never going to be as good as a real record, not with those grooves packed so tight.  And how deep can they actually be?  Of course it has to play at 33 1/3 RPM.  While it’s not as bad a flexi-disc quality, don’t expect much better performance than that.  It’s flat and indistinct.

You also end up with inner groove distortion over the entire song, simply because a Vinyl Disc is basically all inner groove.  Look at the pictures below.  The entire disc is well within the runout groove on an LP, being just a little larger than the label.  It’s darned close on a standard 45.  Point is, compared to real vinyl, this disc is tiny, and that has consequences.

Distortion and noise matters less with a band like the Hellacopters.  A little inner groove distortion sounds OK on them, but not for other groups.  So, the vinyl side of the Vinyl Disc is a novelty.  Serious record fanatics are not going to want to listen to it, because it won’t be up to par for them.

What about the CD side?  No issues whatsoever.  It plays exactly like it should, with no side effects that sometimes plague non-standard CDs.  In this case, the album is only 36 minutes long, which I am sure will have many people asking “then why bother with putting another song on the other side?  Why not put them all together on the CD side?”

A very good question.

Look, this type of CD was launched in 2007 and only lasted about a year.  There was a reason it didn’t catch on, and you can hear that reason.  For 99% of the population, all they would have needed was all the songs on the CD.  It’s the 1% of us nutters that love weird stuff like this.  There is a very, very low number of people who sit up at night thinking, “Would it possible to play a CD on a record player if it had grooves?”  But I promise you, we exist, and our questions have been answered.

Yes, it’s possible.

But no, there really isn’t a good reason to want to do it.  Oh, I suppose if you had an album that was just over 80 minutes, and you needed to leave a song off (like Extreme did), you could have put it all on one Vinyl Disc.  But for far less cost, you also could have just included two CDs.

The vinyl disc comes with a little spacer, like a foam donut, so the larger CD hole will fit nicely on a record player.  This ensures nice smooth play.

Whoever it was that figured out how to marry a CD to a record, they are unsung geniuses. They answered the questions of insomniac format-heads worldwide, and they got it to work.

Just because it doesn’t work particularly well doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it.


REVIEW: Helix – Icon (2018)

HELIX – Icon (2018 Universal vinyl)

New Helix vinyl?  Yes please.

The Icon series of compilations used to be a budget CD line that you could pick up for $5 or under.  Now, you can even get ’em on vinyl.  Buy ’em direct from Helix mainman Brian Vollmer and he’ll sign it for you.  This copy is signed by all five current Helix members, including a pre-injury Fritz Hinz.

As far as Helix compilations go, you can’t do much with just 11 tracks.  Even so, Icon has some surprises and plenty of pleasers.  There’s also enough difference from 2016’s compilation Rock It Science to justify it.  Opening with the one-two punch of “Rock You” and “Heavy Metal Love”, Helix top loaded this thing with their best known songs.  Perfect for the newcomer, or just a great party.

From there it’s “The Dirty Dog”, a long time Helix concert favourite.  This is followed in quick succession by some great singles:  “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'”, “Wild in the Streets” and the dark ballad “Deep Cuts the Knife”.  All three songs are considered to be Helix classics.  “Deep Cuts the Knife”, written by guitarist Paul Hackman, is a particularly powerful ballad.  The entire first side is from the Capitol Records years, featuring the best known Helix lineup:  Vollmer, Hinz, Hackman, Brent Doerner and Daryl Gray.

Side two has a different flavour.  Only the hit “The Kids are All Shakin'” originates in the 1980s.  This top Helix pop rock track is followed by the Helix of the 90s and today.  “Good to the Last Drop” is another ballad, but much brighter than “Deep Cuts the Knife”.  This is the original album mix, with minimal keyboards.  Then it’s “Runnin’ Wild in the 21st Century”, kicking your teeth in at lightspeed.  The last two songs feature some help from guitarist extraordinaire Sean Kelly.  A razor sharp “Even Jesus Wasn’t Loved in His Home Town” comes from 2014’s excellent Bastard of the Blues.  The aggressive rocker is based on the fact that Helix can’t even their new songs played on the radio in their home town of Kitchener, Ontario.  Finally, the 2016 single “Gene Simmons Says (Rock Is Dead)” tells the demon where it’s at!  Maybe Helix don’t get radio play in Canada but rock ain’t dead — not if Vollmer and Co. have anything to say about it!

When it comes to Helix compilations, they are so numerous that you can really take your pick.  If you really care about the band, then just buy ’em direct from Vollmer at Planet Helix.  There are loads to choose from, but only this one was ever made on vinyl.  Or, you can just go CD!  Either way, support the boys if you’re gonna buy some Helix.

4/5 stars