Zellers

#970: Soundtrack From the Video Historia (with Tim’s Vinyl Confessions)

Part Ten of the Def Leppard Review Series

Original review:  Historia (1988 VHS)

RECORD STORE TALES #970: Soundtrack From the Video Historia

Love is like a bomb (b-bomb b-bomb bomb)…

December 1988: The Zellers flyer.

Zellers was a popular Canadian retailer with a decent music department.  They folded several years ago after a slow decline, but once upon a time, they were a central “anything” store for families all over Canada.  Anything but groceries anyway; Zehrs had that covered.  We’ve talked about Zellers numerous times here, as they were the best store at our local mall.  Whether you were buying toys, a new bike, or school supplies, they had kids covered.  Meanwhile the adults spent time in housewares, clothing, kitchen goods, and automotive.  In the 80s, the era of “Club Z”, Zellers did not suck.  They even had a restaurant in the store.

Zellers’ music department sold both albums and equipment in the same area.  Needed a head demagnetizer or a record cleaning kit?  Batteries, blank tapes, new decks?  All there for us kids to gaze at with wishes in our eyes.  The selection of cassettes had us constantly flip-flip-flipping.  Meanwhile the clerks would be playing music unique to that department, while the rest of the store got Muzak.  I first became exposed to the concept of a single B-Side thanks to somebody there spinning “Ride Into the Sun” by Def Leppard.  I bought a lot of my Judas Priest and Kiss tapes there.  I saw Poison on the shelves at Zellers for the first time.  (I thought Rikki was hot before I learned the terrible truth!)

In fact, because of Zellers and that very single (which had “Hysteria” on the A-side), I began frantically collecting everything Def Leppard that I could find.  Zellers bears 100% responsibility for this story we are about to unfold.

My growing Leppard collection had many gaps, but there was one that I wanted to patch up immediately.  It gnawed at me.  It was “Pour Some Sugar On Me”, the remix with the extended intro used in the music video.  It wasn’t on the album; it wasn’t on the single.  It wasn’t available on any known audio formats.  Radio stations didn’t play it.  The only place you could hear it was on your TV.  I kind of preferred that mix, with the long intro.  It had more vibe.  I remember hanging by the radio hoping to tape it, but was always disappointed when they played the album version.  The best copy I had access to was the 1988 Def Leppard home video, Historia.  It was a comprehensive home video, and had both mixes of “Sugar”.  But I couldn’t make a good taped copy to listen to; all I could do was dub to a cassette in mono.

One day I came home from school, and the Zellers flyer was sitting on the kitchen table.  I flipped to the music section, and there it was:  Soundtrack From the Video Historia.  A brand new Def Leppard release; a “greatest hits” if you will!  They had it for sale on cassette.  I reasoned that it had to have that remix.  If it was the soundtrack to the home video, then it had to have that remix!  I would have wanted it anyway, being a “new” Def Leppard release.  The possibility of the remix changed it from “want” to “must”.

It was kind of odd that none of the rock magazines mentioned this new release.  Nobody talked about it on MuchMusic.  That seemed very unusual for a band of Leppard’s stature.  They were the biggest rock band in the world in 1988.  Why wasn’t this new compilation album mentioned anywhere else?  That was worrying, but on the flipside, once I had it, I’d own a Leppard album that none of my friends had.

Later that week, I trekked to Zellers with my best friend Bob.  I looked in the Def Leppard section, but they didn’t have the soundtrack there.  New releases?  Nothing.  I went up to the counter, and there it was!  Sitting out for store play!

“I’ll take one of those please, Def Leppard Soundtrack From the Video Historia,” I said to the clerk.

“It’s not for sale,” he quashed.  He took it off the counter and put it behind him.  He wouldn’t even let me look at it.

Not for sale?  The hell?  It was right there in the flyer, $8.99 or $9.99 was the going rate back then.  He refused to sell it to me.  It was sitting in front of me under my nose; I could have reached out and grabbed it.  Whatever had happened, it managed to get into the Zellers flyer, but it was promotional only — not for sale.  It was meant only for them to play in store, but not to sell.  I was shit out of luck, and I went home brokenhearted and empty handed.

Now here’s where things get freaky.

That same week, all the way in New Brunswick Canada, Tim Durling (future author of the book Unspooled) saw the same ad in the Zellers flyer.  He got just as excited as I did, but there was one catch.  Living in rural New Brunswick, his closest Zellers store was an hour away.  It was Friday night.

“I pestered my father, ‘we gotta go to Fredericton tonight’,” says Tim.


Tim tells the story.  This happened live on the LeBrain Train Nov 23, 2021!

His disappointment might even have exceeded mine, as he returned home without his precious treasure.

“The poor girl working behind the counter,” he said.  “I was such a little shit.  I said ‘I want this tape right here!'”

Isn’t it incredible that two guys who didn’t know each other had the exact same experience at the same time?  And that we later put two and two together, and realized we had this bizarre experience in common?  It really happened, not a figment of my imagination.  The ad was real, and screwed somebody else’s hopes and dreams too!  But how did it come to be?

We have two theories.  I think it was a simple cock-up, a tape got put in the flyer before they realized it wasn’t for sale.  Tim thinks some jerk did it on purpose!  We will never know.

When Historia was reissued and updated on DVD accompanied by In The Round In Your Face on a single disc, it was revised to include three bonus videos from later in the band’s career.  We will get to that when we arrive at the Euphoria era.

 

Previous:  

  1. The Early Years Disc One – On Through the Night 
  2. The Early Years Disc Two – High N’ Dry
  3. The Early Years Disc Three – When The Walls Came Tumbling Down: Live at the New Theater Oxford – 1980
  4. The Early Years Disc Four – Too Many Jitterbugs – EP, singles & unreleased
  5. The Early Years Disc 5 – Raw – Early BBC Recordings 
  6. The Early Years 79-81 (Summary)
  7. Pyromania
  8. Pyromania Live – L.A. Forum, 11 September 1983
  9. Hysteria

Next:  

 11. Live:  In The Round In Your Face DVD

#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.

 

#593: Talk Dirty to Me

GETTING MORE TALE #593: Talk Dirty to Me

The closest “record store” when I was a young kid wasn’t a “record store” at all.  It was a now-defunct department store called Zellers.  Located at Stanley Park Mall, they were a mere 10 minute walk from home.  If we were looking for new tapes to listen to, Zellers would be the natural first stop.  It was a bit of a needle in a haystack situation because I didn’t know the names of a lot of bands or albums.  For example, there was a cool band from Japan on MuchMusic.  They had a killer heavy metal track called “Crazy Nights”, but I couldn’t remember the name of the band.  I scoured the racks at Zellers until I found what I assumed was the right group:  “Wang Chung”.  Never mind that “Wang Chung” doesn’t actually sound like a Japanese name, but what did I know at that age?  I definitely didn’t know that the name of the band was Loudness, and the album I was looking for was called Thunder In the East!  It’s a good thing I figured that out before putting Wang Chung on my Christmas list.

Bob and I spent a lot of time browsing records at Zellers just out of convenience of location.  It was there that I first saw the band known as Poison.  “They look like girls don’t they?” said Bob.  “Yeah,” I responded, secretly deciding that Rikki Rockett was the hottest.  But they were men!  That first Poison album cover turned me off the band for a time.  I considered them a sub-Motley Crue.

What finally turned me on to Poison was actually a highschool Battle of the Bands.  It seemed every highschool band learned “Talk Dirty to Me” in 1987.  The track had a vaguely old-timey rock and roll feel and that appealed to me.  It was like old Kiss.

I gradually got into Poison, by taping their videos off MuchMusic.  It is quite possible that their videos were the most action packed of the era.  They were highly choreographed, but so much fun.  There is no shame in admitting that when Bob and I got our first guitars, we were more interested in doing stage moves than playing.  Poison (and also Cinderella) were the prototypes for many of our moves.  A few guitars hit a few ceilings because of Poison.  I had to have a faux-snakeskin guitar strap, with strap locks, of course, for those over-the-shoulder-throws.

The Poison video I liked the best was a ballad called “I Won’t Forget You”.  It was tour footage from the stage and off, and it was less choreographed.  It had a guest shot by none other than Paul Stanley!  If Paul appeared on stage with Poison, then they had to be good.  Right?

It was obvious from their videos that Poison were a flashy band, bent on entertainment or death.  My musical perception wasn’t strong enough to detect that the band weren’t the greatest musicians, but they did have good songs to my ears.  Every video they made was fun and catchy as hell.  Poison were pretty easy to get into, and they were everywhere.

I didn’t buy the first album Look What the Cat Dragged In for a while, but I got the second one, Open Up and Say Ahh! for a school project.  As recalled in Getting More Tale #455: How to Make a Music Video, Bob and I decided to make our own video for “Nothin’ But A Good Time” for the school video awards.  My dad paid for the tape and it was used for the backing music.

The music video turned out great, and one day I hope to transfer it to a format you can upload to Youtube.

I’m not sure how many kids back then could have claimed they used Poison for a school project, but we did and we kicked that project’s ass!  Add Poison to the list of bands I used for school presentations and essays, including Iron Maiden, Queensryche and Judas Priest.  Poison’s music might have been vacuous, but they served their purpose.  Even today, I still get those feelings that say “I Want Action”!  Poison are intertwined with my childhood, permanently, and that’s not a terrible thing.

Part 162: “Is it out in Toronto?”

RECORD STORE TALES Part 162:  “Is it out in Toronto?”

I guess this is one of those weird urban myths.  Growing up in Kitchener in the 1980’s, some people used to think we got new releases later than big urban areas like Toronto.  I can distinctly remember childhood friends of mine having this discussion with me.  Just swap out the names of the bands depending on the person.

Me:  “I saw the new Judas Priest video today.  It was awesome.  I can’t wait for the album.”

Friend:  “It’s not out yet?”

Me: “No, I asked at A&A Records and it’s out in about a month.”

Friend:  “Yeah, but that’s here.  I bet it’s already out in Toronto.  Toronto gets everything first.”

I thought maybe that was just an isolated myth, relegated to our group of friends in the Stanley Park part of town.  We didn’t have much in the way of record stores within walking distance.  There was a Zellers (no longer there, now a Walmart), and later on the aforementioned A&A Records and Tapes.  When all we had was Zellers, you could imagine they might not order the new Judas Priest on the day of release.  It wasn’t their thing.

When I was working at the record store many years later, I discovered this urban myth did indeed perpetuate among different groups all over town!  I had heard more than once, “It’s gotta be out in Toronto, right?”

For example, in May 1996, I did have this exact conversation:

Customer:  “Do you have the new Tragically Hip?”

Me:  “No, it comes out on Tuesday though.  Do you want me to reserve you a copy?”

Customer:  “Tuesday?  That’s just here though, right?  Toronto would already have it, right?  I’m going to try in Toronto on Saturday.”

No!  Why would Toronto already have it?  This wasn’t the 1800’s, delivering parcels on horseback!  I don’t get where that idea started, but it did exist, and let this article be a remembrance of an earlier age of CD ignorance!