I’m desperately trying to finish writing my 6th book. It should have been released in December but things like re-launching my record label have had me in meetings for the better part of 4 months. The new book should actually be my seventh, but that book – ‘Sunny Days – The Skip Prokop Story’ – is taking a very long time to transcribe and edit though we do expect it to be completed in coming months.
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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.
As much as it’s a sappy platitude from the late music legend Andrew Gold, there’s no other way of saying thanks to those who have stuck by me year after year. I have over 2800 ‘friends’ on my Facebook profile. This isn’t a boast. It’s a matter of fact and it’s not to point out the quantity. I’m the rare exception in social media who actually knows most of the people I’ve friended.
CHAPTER 1 – We’re Moving Targetz…and You’re Sitting Ducks
April will be the 30th anniversary of the formation of my second “successful” band MOVING TARGETZ. Technically, the band already existed before I insinuated myself into the line-up. I merely co-opted the players and renamed them. The story you’re about to read is true. 
The names have not been changed because people really like to see their name in print. It’s what musicians live for if not for the monetary pittance.
Apparently, it was Canada Music Week this week. As you read this there are dozens of bands taking the stage all around Toronto hoping to attract the attention of the music industry. Sadly, music industry people don’t go to bars featuring virtual unknowns at 1AM on a Monday thru any-day-of-the-week. They’re at the lounge in the Marriott Downtown Eaton’s Centre Hotel trolling for a gig and/or drowning their sorrows in what continues to be the capsizing of the S.S. Musonic.
LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE – THE SEQUEL
For 26 months starting in May 1980 until July 1982 I was the guitarist in a punk band called The Swindle in its early incarnation and Swindled as its pro-forma public visage. We played more than 60 shows and released one 7” single that went unnoticed (at the time) before hitting a massive brick wall of self-doubt.
On August 4, 1982 bassist Tim James quit the band with the hope that myself and drummer Jay Clarke would follow him to the Darkside. Instead, Jay and I stood with singer Ivan Judd.
IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME
20/20 Hindsight is like an alternate universe window into the past. With the benefit of maturity, context and distance of time you can envision a different out come for what seemed like a smashing idea at the moment it was conceived and executed.
My band, Swindled, was at the end of a long creative streak and exhausting performance schedule. It had been a year of writing, gigging and recording and we were burnt out. Our drummer, Jay Clarke, was giving us the subliminal message that he was tired of the grind. Following the release of our independent 7” single he celebrated this milestone by heading to Florida for a vacation. Tim James (bass), Ivan Judd (vocals) and I (guitar) were sitting around, idly, trying to figure out what to do next.
THE TURNING PIT AND THE PENDULUM
For Swindled, 1982 came in like a lamb and not a lion. Performing the day after New Year’s Eve is not something I’d recommend to anyone. The Turning Point was hard to populate on the best of occasions, but we’d only played there a few days earlier and couldn’t muster up any of our own regular friends and family – most being at home nursing hangovers which is where me, Tim James, Ivan Judd and Jay Clarke should have been as well. We were saddled alongside two relatively green acts called The Truth Blues Band and Best By. I recall nothing about either act. The only memorable part of the show was the debut of our newest tune called ‘Hymn #84’.
Bullseye Records of Canada
