End of another era

So on Monday I was downtown getting my haircut. (This woman took an hour to cut my hair, showered me with baby powder at one point, and even cut her fingers on the scissors. But this is not that story.)

Anyway. Afterwards, I walked in to Sam the Record Man, which is, alas, closing its doors for good at the end of the month. I've been going there as long as I can remember going downtown, and have bought probably most of the cassettes that are sitting in a box somewhere, because after the advent of CDs you realized that listening to tapes is such a pain in the ass, so you don't do it anymore. Now CDs are the new pain in the ass - everything's online now anyway.

So I walked in, likely for the last time, and poked around. They've thinned stuff out a bit, but there's the makings of a great sale there. There's a bunch of 99 cent bins - if you need a copy of The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart they've got about 50 of them - but it was an interesting piece of nostalgia to walk around in there. I miss the smell of the vinyl. Once record shops ceased being, well, record shops, they lost a lot of their charm. The sound that those plastic security cases that held tapes or CDs slapping against each other wasn't the same, either.

Sam's was also more of a Canadian institution. Once upon a time there were a couple hundred locations across the country. When I was younger there was one in my neighborhood, near Bloor and Jane. A friend of mine worked there at the time, in an era when the top 30 singles would still be represented by an ordered stack of 45s. There was a community feel to Sam's too - at this location, Trevor was generally the one who got the task of hand lettering little signs for the Top 30, usually with really awful, like Evil Dead awful, puns. One in particular that has always stayed in my mind was for a Paula Abdul song. Trevor drew a little sketch of the CN Tower, and the caption, "The CN Tower goes Straight Up". With any luck, this will be the only mention of Paula Abdul ever in this blog.

There will still be 2 independent Sam's locations left, holdovers from the old franchise days, in Sarnia and Belleville, I think. But losing the flagship store on Yonge Street will be a loss for Toronto, certainly. Those neon records were one of my earliest memories of Toronto, from a 1980 vacation with my parents the year before we moved here. We Stayed at a hotel a couple of blocks away, and our hotel room faced that way. At night I'd sit by the window for ages and watch the flashing lights simulate spinning. They were awesome. A note on the Spacing wire suggests that the sign will not be saved with the building, but will instead be auctioned off with the rest of the leftovers.

So. I browsed around for a while, but there wasn't much that was screaming out at me to liberate it from the shop, but I did pick up this:

Blue Peter's old albums have been remastered and are finally available on CD for the first time. Sam's is selling them for $5.99 each, or all 3 releases for $14.99, I think. I picked up Radio Silence, which comes with the ep Test Patterns For Living and a live track from 1983. It's incredible how well this stuff has held up. Video Verite in paticular kicks, and the title song as well. One of the pre-eminent Canadian New Wave bands of the late 70's early 80's, Blue Peter reassembled for a reunion gig in November that I was fortunate enough to attend, and rumor has it that there will be another in Toronto, maybe later this summer, or in the autumn. If hear anything definitive, I will pass it on asap.


In the meantime, you can get your Blue Peter fix at their site or their MySpace page. The former includes some video and a whole bunch of audio clips from back in the day.

And, to get you started, I'll pass this on to you:



Don't Walk Past was probably their biggest hit back in the day, and this is unfortunately a poor recording of it's video. Watch it more clearly on the band's site. And go down to Sam's before it closes for good - and while you're at pick up some Blue Peter why don't you.

Coming soon: the threatened Linda Ronstadt post.