In 1967, the Song of the Year was “Canada” by The Young Canada Singers. I was a geeky, gawky Montreal teen with cats eye glasses and a bad perm. My season’s pass to Expo 67 made me feel like a citizen of the world.
But in Toronto, another kind of world was coming together; one of young, talented musicians who’d flocked to Yorkville to find fame, if not fortune.
Grant Fullerton was one of them.
Through a generous offering by not one, but two friends (thanks Stacey and Danielle!), my wife and I got to see the solo return of Canadian singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Lawrence “But You Can Call Me Larry” Gowan this past week at the Empire Theatre in Belleville to a sold out crowd.
Long before I considered myself a profession record label weasel I worked in a government bunker as a data librarian. My job title was Records Management Assistant and my duties included archiving government documents, maps, tax records and all matter of ephemera – including name tags from VIPs who visited City Hall and ribbon cutting scissors from shopping mall openings attended by our politicians.
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It’s Tuesday night, November 17. My renovations are nearing completion, the house is dead quiet as I sit here, stretched out on the couch, looking around at this home we lived in together for 18 years. Remembering all the wonderful celebrations, dinners, Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners, TV watching, companionable “book reading”, and just quietly being, soaking up each other’s presence.
Those who’ve known me a long time – including the pre-curmudgeon me in the days before the intertoobs – can attest to my unapologetic, jingoistic rah-rah All Canadian mantra. I love my country. I love my music. But despite my seemingly anti-‘Merika crusade dating back to Ronnie’s Rocket Regalias in the early 1980s, I do love my American pop music.
They were Jesse Dee & Jacquie B when I first heard them— two waifs supposedly in the outbacks of the Yukon surviving by hunting and survival skills, living off the land, playing bars for beer. They ate raw meat, sometimes frozen if there was no way to thaw it (there evidently isn’t, on the whole), but skirted moose and squirrel out of respect.
24 hours ago a crowdfunding campaign to bring my old record label, Bullseye, back from the dead ended successfully with over $20,000 in donations from people who passionately believe in not only me and the label but music in general. I’m overwhelmed by the generosity and well wishes. I am truly humbled.
That would be Bullseye Records, Canada for those unaware, a label pieced together by DBAWIS‘s own Jaimie Vernon and friends— a record company caught in the digital tsunami which wiped out more than one music concern. In fact, if you define being wiped out as being wiped out, you could probably number them in triple digits, many being “absorbed” by major labels if they could find anything worth adding to their already bloated catalogues. I will tell you upfront that it is a tale of both success and crushing defeat, of both business and personal failure— not that it could have been avoided. When the music business started crumbling, it took with it most everything in its path. If you subscribe to the business as it was. If your yardstick was measured by the same standards the major labels had set up and followed for decades. Jaimie and his company took a beating, no doubt, but he is not down and out by a long shot. He has just, shall we say, been regrouping.
Excerpted from the forthcoming book “Bullsography: The Bullseye Records Story 1985-2010”
Songwriters are a gifted breed. They’re poets that think in three dimensions. It isn’t enough to be able to put pen to paper and Chaucer their ideas onto papyrus. They have to lift those words from this black and white template and insert them into music from which a melody rises and falls.
Bullseye Records of Canada
