GWNtertainment #28 by Jaimie Vernon

Lots of new music this week as post-summer tuneage is in full swing. Just ask Drake who now occupies half of the Top10 on the Billboard magazine charts. It’s also drawn battle lines between old pop music fans and new because Drake’s positioning on the charts breaks a handful of records previously set by The Beatles. Vitriol has been flying around social media dismissing Drake and his accomplishments. GWN celebrates any Canadian artist who has managed to raise the ire of a generation of music lovers who refuse to acknowledge that time has passed, and that a new generation also makes music that people love. We are here three times a month extolling the virtues of those new artists and that new music. Other music exists in the same universe as The Beatles…resistance is fertile.

2020 YEAR-END MUSIC ROUND-UP by Jaimie Vernon

We’re on the final lap of 2020 as we hold our collective breaths anticipating/dreading the upcoming year. Despite the inability to see live music as frequently as many of us would have wanted this year, musicians did what they could to keep cranking out great music to take our minds off of the crap going on in the world. Without further ado here’s the rest of the Christmas tracks and a smattering of new original tunes piling up in my in-box.

Roxanne Tellier – Grant Fullerton … King of the Road

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.

JAIMIE VERNON – TO PRESERVE AND PROTECT

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.

JAIMIE VERNON – THE BOOK GOES ON

I’m desperately trying to finish writing my 6^th 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.

JAIMIE VERNON – THE FERGUS CONVERGENCE

I first met Fergus Hambleton in person while I was performing with my trio, Graye featuring Todd Miller and Lawrie Ingles, at a small club on Yonge Street in Toronto called Rocky Raccoons. It was a mid-week jam night and we were going to do a few songs when I looked up and Fergus was sitting in the front row taking in what can only be described as a “loose” performance of one of my original songs.

JAIMIE VERNON – TAKIN’ CARE OF BACHMAN (PART 1)

Excerpted from the forthcoming book “Bullsography: The Bullseye Records Story 1985-2010”

JAIMIE VERNON – THE ORIGIN OF SONG

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.

JAIMIE VERNON – THANK YOU FOR BEING A FRIEND

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.

JAIMIE VERNON – IT’S NOT ME, IT’S YOU

I’m at a crossroads, dear reader. My last few blogs have been a trip down memory lane. Not because I particularly wanted to revisit the well warn path of my mind’s eye…but because you wanted me to.