I am still getting ready for Record Store Day on April 17 - and the next record store that was very important for me was...
Rockin'
I think I first met Åge, who was the person who started Rockin' at Playtime. If I remember things correctly, he was one of the people running the main floor who actually let me in after they closed on a Friday afternoon so that I could pick up Manowar's newly released Fighting the World in time for our weekly radio show, which I believe might have been called Metal Rendez-Vous at that point (it was originally called Flazz, which is the Norwegian word for dandruff but with more evil spelling than the two S's that should be at the end, then it changed to Metal Rendez-Vous after the Krokus album before it sailed into the sunset as Madhouse after the Anthrax song). the interesting thing about Manowar is that I also decided that it would be nice to have a phone interview with one of their members, so I called up the international phone directory in Norway and wondered if they had a phone number for Joey deMaio. I knew what city he lived in, I believe it was somewhere in New England, and I was ecstatic when the lady on the other end of the line actually gave me his phone number.
I should add at this point that I started working in a local radio station when I was 13, so I would not have been much older than 13 or 14 when I tried this. Anyway, I was very mindful of the time difference, so one day at what I thought was the perfect time, I picked up my parents' old gray rotary phone and dialled what seemed like an endless string of numbers. The phone rang on the other line, with a different sound than I was used to. I was excited beyond words - and then... Someone picked up the phone. The voice on the other end said "Hello?" but it was not the voice I was expecting - rather it was the voice of a woman, and if I were to guess her age, I would guess at least the 50s. I stuttered out that I was calling from Norway - and this was at the time that I was speaking with the much more proper British accent than the American accent I currently mimic as much as I can - and wondered if I could talk to Joey deMaio to see if I could interview him for my local radio station. The lady was very nice in explaining to me that he was at work but that he would be home shortly. However, she was wondering why someone would want to interview her husband? My alarm bells went off and I almost panicked - but I managed to let her know that I wanted to talk about his music. At that point, she was catching on to what was going on, and she said that her husband was not the one in the band. Mortified I apologized for the inconvenience and hung up, trembling both because of my very naive assumption that there only would be one Joey deMaio and because I would have to explain the increased phone bill to my parents without triumphantly talking about the interview I was going to land...
Anyway, Rockin' was established as a record store towards the end of the 1980s when Åge opened a store in Prinsens Gate in Trondheim. It wasn't very big, but it had everything you could ask for in classic rock, hard rock, and the various genres of heavy metal (and please remember that the definition of the different genres has evolved a lot since then). Since my show, which I think by then had been renamed Madhouse, needed new music and the record companies didn't regard my station as important enough to get us very many promos, I needed a way to get new music to play on the radio. We were commercial-free, but we entered into a gentleman's agreement with Åge and Rockin' that we would let our listeners know where we got our records if he would let us borrow an album or two every week. It was absolutely fantastic. I got to listen to so many new artists that way that I wouldn't have found otherwise - and two of the bands I really remember discovering this way were Extreme - whose first album is a brilliant rocker in the Van Halen tradition - and Faith No More, whose The Real Thing album changed the way I looked at music forever. While I'll get back to Faith No More, Extreme warrants a brief interlude with Mutha (Don't wanna go to school today)
Rockin' ended up moving into the back room of a record store chain - Hysj Hysj - on Nordre Gate, and they were still keeping metal alive in Trondheim in the 90s, but my main relationship with the store was when they were in Prinsens Gate. Åge was one of the great guys - I believe he had a deep love for Deep Purple, but he also kept up with the newer music. I always felt welcome in his store as well, and I used to stop by just to look around quite frequently long after my radio show ended in 1990. Rockin' was always a more dingy store, with the smell of old cigarette smoke permeating the room unless it was covered by Åge lighting up a new one.
As I said, Faith No More's The Real Thing really changed the way I looked at music. It is a genre-hopping masterpiece that made me start looking for music that challenged me, music that defied conventions. I have followed Patton's career ever since 1990, and I got to see Mr. Bungle on their Disco Volante tour back in 1996, I believe. FNM toured Europe last year, and I have seen clips from their spectacular performances - I hope I get the chance to see them myself. If not - here is Epic, from The Real Thing. I know it is the single and that everybody knows it, but I simply fail to tire of this song! The first version is live from Brixton Academy, 1990, while they still were able to deal with Big Jim Martin on guitar:
The second version is from their reunion tour last year from the Lowlands festival. Mike Bordin on drums looks exactly the same still - although maybe a little grayer dreads...
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