Back in the the summer of 1992, I bought my first-ever CD player. I was a cassette kid. I’d begun building my collection through early childhood, which was peppered with birthdays and holidays that yielded new tapes by such 80s faves as Duran Duran, Peter Gabriel, U2, Platinum Blonde, Men at Work, Heart, Def Leppard, Weird Al…But once I hit high school, I’d started to flirt with ‘independent wealth’ as I’d spend my summers working full time, albeit begrudgingly, at the local pickle plant in my hometown of Dunnville, ON. So by ’92, I had a two-tier, 6-drawer cassette chest, plus a few smaller auxiliary cases, all fully stocked, occupying my desk at home. Most items were of the thrash metal variety, having been purchased at Hamilton ON’s various downtown outlets of the day: Record World, Cheapies, Rave and Zapp. Dr. Disc had just opened, but I was not yet aware of it as my friends and I still had our small town kid ‘King St. blinders’ on. We had no clue what might lay even just one block north or south of the main downtown spine. On one of these many weekend tape-shopping trips to the Hammer, I noticed an intriguing offer up for grabs at Cheapies. “Buy any 5 cds and get a Nikon CD player for only $120.00!” I didn’t really know if that was an actual bargain or not…but I didn’t really care, it was attainable. Sold. I’d just have to wait until my next paycheque, ask my folks nicely for the minivan and get my ass back to Cheapies before they all got swiped up. This was gonna happen, I was finally gonna go digital. I wouldn’t have to impatiently fast forward through the filler songs anymore! And my mix tapes for the car would surely sound SO much better! Those two features alone were enough to make me feel like my life was about to change and improve drastically. Very exciting stuff. When the day came, I didn’t have all 5 CDs mentally pre-selected, but there were two titles that I absolutely knew I’d be leaving with, Beastie Boys’ “Check Your Head” and Rheostatics’ “Whale Music”. I’ve already written about the spark of my love affair with the Beasties over here, but now it’s time to explain why I was entirely self-committed to buying a cd by some Toronto band that I had not yet even heard a single note from.

Just a few weeks before this magical day on which I bought that CD player with my own hard earned money and became a man, a few of my friends had attended a Barenaked Ladies concert at the OG Ontario Place Forum, the legendary ‘in the round’ outdoor venue that housed the first rock concert that my brother and I ever saw, the strange animal that was Gowan, back in the summer of 85. My best friend, J, came back from that show raving about the opening band, with nary a mention of BNL’s set. “Mike, they had this band called the Rheostatics opening for them, they were so awesome, totally stole the show.” Hmm, never heard of them, cool name, sounds weird, interesting. I don’t remember if J had much more musical detail in his review but he really wouldn’t let up on how much he dug them, clearly he’d been pleasantly surprised. Being a very tight duo at the time, J and I had fairly similar taste in ‘alternative music’, so I did not take his opinion lightly. So I decided that ‘Whale Music’ would be the ‘blind taste test’ pick in my first batch of cd purchases. A spinning of the musical roulette wheel that would land on ‘Green Sprout’.

When I got home with my new machine and my handful of CDs, I keenly set up the hardware while showing my new wares off to my younger brother Chris, who was particularly pleased that I’d included Suicidal Tendencies’ ‘The Art Of Rebellion’ in this first haul. Chris has never been half the metal head that I am, but he LOVED Suicidal Tendencies. ‘Lights…Camera…Revolution!’ to Chris was as ‘Master of Puppets’ was to me, in that his first listen to it actually changed him a bit. So I started the listening party off with the CDs that I knew I was going to be into, letting the glorious digital high-fidelity fill my room. No more tape hiss, a much wider dynamic range, just a much bigger, clearer sound all around, just like heaven.

For ‘Whale Music’ I would conduct a private listening session over the following afternoon. I needed to be seated at my listening desk with the cd booklet at bay. I was instantly taken aback by said cd booklet. The beautifully intricate painting that adorned the cover was done by one of the band members, Martin Tielli…cool. There were 17 tracks, a benchmark sign of the CD era, albums could now have a running time of over 70 minutes at no additional cost to the consumer, rather than the tight 40 that vinyl and cassettes had been limited to. The booklets’ first page was a very charming little essay of sorts written by ‘Bug Dan Maldanetti’ explaining the title of the album and giving the technical details involving the vast list of guest musicians and the recording itself. The white pages that displayed all of their great lyrics had margins of gold along the top and bottom that actually spanned throughout the booklet, inside and out. Very classy. For such an ‘underground’ Toronto band, the booklet itself was enough to make me look at these guys in that ‘larger than life’ rock star way, straight out of the cellophane. I was fascinated.

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