Tag Archives: Island Records Canada

The Officials’ Story ► Throwback Thursday

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Officials’ 4 song EP with artwork by Barbara Klunder

This Thursday we’re going to throw it all the way back to 1989, when I was managing Officials, a Worldbeat band in Toronto that had a lot of promise. 

It was my 3rd — and my very last — time managing a band, a thankless task if there ever was one. However, I was a fan of every band I managed. It was never about making money, although it was hoped that that would be the eventual outcome.

The first band I ever managed was Ishan People, Toronto’s first Roots Reggae band. I tell that story in greater detail in You Made Me So Very Happy ► My Days With David Clayton-Thomas. However, Ishan People (later Ishan Band) recorded 2 LPs before Canadian Immigration discovered that not everyone in the band had all their documents. The band broke up as some members were deported. Too bad. They were great.

The second band I managed was Drastic Measures. They should have done much better. However, DM was performing Art/Pop Rock when all anyone wanted to hear was Punk. Clever music was simply not breaking through the noise back then.



An unironic cover of the classic Bing Crosby
tune with Nash the Slash on overdubbed violins.

How is that going to break through The Angry Punk Scene? It was all uphill.

The band fired me after their record producer convinced them they no longer needed a manager because they had a album release. No. Really. I always suspected that he had hoped to manage the band himself, but that never happened. Managerless, Drastic Measures never did break through the noise.

Then in ’89 it was Officials. I originally met leader/drummer Roy Garrick when we both worked as waiters in the same restaurant. Somehow he learned that I had managed bands previously and asked me to listen to Officials to see if I wanted to manage them.

The band set up in a small, sweltering basement near Bathurst and Vaughan. The room was so small it barely contained the band and their equipment. There was nowhere to move. Under these static conditions Officials performed an entire, blistering set for me as the only audience member.

I was blown away. They were easily better than any of the bands I was seeing in Toronto clubs at the time. Officials blended various musical genres. The band members were from many different parts of the globe, making them a true World Beat band. I couldn’t wait to offer my services as manager.

For bonus points, on guitar and vocals was Del Richardson from Osibisa, whose LPs I had promoted years earlier when I worked for Island Records Canada.

So, we set about putting together a master plan. Aside from gigging as often as humanly possible for as much, or little, money as I could squeeze out of the club owners, that included rolling all profits into recording a 4 song 12″ EP as a demo record to use to get signed to a bigger label.

We were grateful to get all these column inches in The Star

One of the jobs of Manager is stroking the media, trying to get them out to gigs or to review the EP. Or, in this case, both.

Yesterday, while going through my analog file cabinet, I came across a letter I sent to The Toronto Star’s Craig MacInnes, promoting the hell out of the band. [SYNCHRONICITY ALERT: Recently MacInnes and I became facefriends through a mutual face-to-face-friend.]

This came at a transitional period for the band because there had been a recent change in personnel. Consequently, the band bio that I had spent several weeks writing was no longer operative. MacInnes was asking me for biographical info on the new band members in anticipation of an upcoming interview with Garrick.

My reply began:

Firstly, I’d like to thank you for your continued interest and support of OFFICIALS. Secondly, I’d like to apologize for the rushed nature of this information. We were in the process of preparing a new biography. This request just made me do it all the sooner.

Every review was a feather in my cap

After describing the new members, I ended the letter with as many strokes as I thought I could give MacInnes — without him thinking I was trying to kiss his ass for a good review — ending with one last plug for my clients:

Well, Craig, that’s about it. 

Nobody knows how hard it is for new independent bands starting out like you do. You must hear hundreds of stories like this. It’s good to know you are out there supporting the up and coming bands.

I’ve been working with OFFICIALS for a year now. I managed ISHAN PEOPLE (Canada’s first Reggae band) as well as DRASTIC MEASURES (an early Queen Street W. Art/Rock band). Neither had the staying power and the chance to make it that OFFICIALS do. Unlike other bands working in town now, OFFICIALS are truly a WorldBeat band honestly synthesizing many different rhythms into what we call OFFICIALS’ Style. Conventions are unimportant; what’s important is what works and what sounds good and positive lyrics and a dancable [sic] beat. Nothing else enters into it. But, don’t take my word for it. Come down to the Diamond Club and hear us. I know you’ll like the band. 

Thank you for all your time and trouble on our behalf.

The letter led to a phone interview published 3 days later (see above), so I guess it did the trick.

What I find highly amusing in retrospect is that MacInnes begins with his amazement that Roy Garrick has a car phone at a time when The Brick was the new cell phone technology. Now, 27 years later, most of us carry a phone in our pocket.

All good things must come to an end. My tenure with Officials ended spectacularly: I quit after the band held back money owed to me following an extremely well-paying 2-week gig in the Caribbean.

The agreement we had was not the standard manager/band contract. As opposed to a percentage, we split the proceeds equally (after expenses), which gave me a smaller percentage than I would have as a manager. However, it gave us all equal incentive to take it all to the next level.

When I quit I naturally had all of the band’s files, including distribution contracts, band bios, glossies, and all the promo material, in my analog file cabinet. I became THAT asshole: I refused to turn it over to the band unless they paid the money owed to me from previous gigs. We settled on $2500 and the band signed a promissory note for the money. It has never been paid. It was also one of the documents I discovered yesterday.

A few years back I created a video from one of Officials’ songs. I hope you like it, but I guess I don’t really care all that much.

Peter Townshend, Meher Baba, and Me ► Throwback Thursday

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Kathy Hahn took this pic around the time I met Pete Townshend

When I first started my writing career, some 40+ years ago, it was to write about the music industry.

A college friend and I started up a small music publication called Zoundz (with a backwards zedd on the end). It was the first music rag of its kind in Toronto, a FREE publication that coud be scored at the cash register of every record store in Toronto, including the big 2: Sam The Record Man and A&A Records, located next door to Sam’s.

Later I started writing for Cheap Thrills, the house organ of Concert Productions International (CPI). It was the biggest concert promoter in the city because it had a lock on Maple Leaf Gardens, the biggest venue in the city.

For both publications I wrote album reviews, critiqued Rock and Roll concerts, and was able to hobnob backstage with some of the greats of the industry. It’s all about reputation, of course. Once I had developed some respectability, promoters and record company reps would call me up to offer interviews with some of their celebrities, which is how I came to interview Peter Townshend, of The Who.

Townshend was a follower of Meher Baba, a spiritual leader who claimed to be the Avatar, defined by the Wiki as: 

In Hinduism, an avatar (/ˈævəˌtɑːr, ˌævəˈtɑːr/;[1] Hindustani: [əʋˈt̪aːr] from Sanskrit अवतार avatāra “descent”) is a deliberate descent of a deity to Earth, or a descent of the Supreme Being (e.g., Vishnu for Vaishnavites), and is mostly translated into English as “incarnation“, but more accurately as “appearance” or “manifestation”.[2][3] 

The phenomenon of an avatar is observed in Hinduism,[4] Ayyavazhi, and Sikhism[citation needed]. Avatar is regarded as one of the core principles of Hinduism.[5]

I remember so very little about the interview with Townshend because I was nervous and — after all — it was 40 years ago. I don’t even remember which publication bought this interview (and can’t seem to find it in my archives. Maybe it was a radio interview instead). However, I will never forget the secret code I had to use to get past the front desk at the hotel and the doorkeeper at Townshend’s hotel room:

“Temple, eel, and ocean: Baba rules them all.”

I was already somewhat familiar with the teachings of Meher Baba because my dear friend Kathy Hahn, who I worked with at Island Records Canada, was also a devoté of Baba’s. We were both delighted that Townshend was using a Baba quote as his secret password. 

While you may have not heard of Meher Baba before, you are certainly familiar with his most famous quote:

“Don’t worry. Be happy.”
Today is Meher Baba’s 122nd birthday. He died in 1969, but still has tens of thousands of followers around the world. You can find out more about Meher Baba at these websites:

 …and his many words of wisdom can
be found at Maher Baba Wikiquotes.

The Hit Parade ► A Musical Appreciation

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The first issue of The Billboard Advertiser

It was 80 years ago today that Billboard Magazine launched The Hit Parade, a countdown of the most popular recordings in the country based on sales and radio play. While the chart has changed over the years — and has been balkanized into just about every genre of music known — the main list is now known as The Hot 100.

We know Billboard today as a music magazine, but when it was launched in 1894 it was a circus magazine. At the time the circus was the biggest form of entertainment in the country. Atlas Obscura tells all in Number One With A Bullet: The Rise of the Billboard Hot 100:

According to a history written by his grandson, Roger S. Littleford, Jr., the founder of Billboard,
William H. “Bill” Donaldson, built the magazine to serve an entirely
different need. Donaldson worked for the family business, a Newport,
Kentucky-based lithography shop that churned out advertisements and
posters for the circuses, fairs, and other traveling shows that
criss-crossed the country. Donaldson realized that most of his
clients—the managers and owners who ordered the posters, and,
especially, the billstickers tasked with staying one step ahead of the
shows and pasting the posters to every available surface—lacked
permanent addresses, and thus were unable to communicate with each
other.

In 1894, Donaldson started to spend his nights and weekends putting together Billboard Advertising,
a trade publication dedicated to gathering all the news that might be
relevant to his more itinerant peers. The first issue, published that
November, had eight pages of relevant tidbits, laid out in columns like
“Bill Room Gossip” and “The Indefatigable And Tireless Industry of the
Bill Poster.” Now the “advertisers, poster printers, bill posters,
advertising agents, and secretaries of fairs,” as the issue categorized them, could pick up a magazine at a newsstand anywhere in the country and know what to expect on the opposite coast.


This is the first #1 tune on the first Billboard Hit Parade in 1936

Over the years as the entertainment industry expanded, so did Billboard’s coverage of it; from sheet music, to plays, to movies, to musicals, to radio, to recorded music, to downloads. It was all a natural progression to follow what was popular in ‘Merkin entertainment and technology. The WikiWackyWoo picks up the story:

On January 4, 1936, Billboard magazine published its first music hit parade.
The first Music Popularity Chart was calculated in July 1940. A variety
of song charts followed, which were eventually consolidated into the
Hot 100 by mid-1958. The Hot 100 currently combines single sales, radio airplay, digital downloads, and streaming activity (including data from YouTube and other video sites). All of the Billboard
charts use this basic formula. What separates the charts is which
stations and stores are used; each musical genre has a core audience or
retail group. Each genre’s department at Billboard is headed up by a chart manager, who makes these determinations.

For many years, a song had to be commercially available as a single to be considered for any of the Billboard charts. At the time, instead of using Nielsen SoundScan or Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems (BDS), Billboard obtained its data from manual reports filled out by radio stations and stores. According to the 50th Anniversary issue of Billboard,
prior to the official implementation of SoundScan tracking in November
1991, many radio stations and retail stores removed songs from their
manual reports after the associated record labels stopped promoting a
particular single. Thus songs fell quickly after peaking and had shorter
chart lives. In 1990, the country singles chart was the first chart to use SoundScan and BDS. They were followed by the Hot 100 and the R&B chart in 1991. Today, all of the Billboard charts use this technology.


IRONY ALERT: When I worked at Island Records Canada, I promoted this tune

There was a time in my life when I lived — literally — and died — figuratively — by the Billboard charts. When I worked for Island Records Canada as a Promotion Rep, I spent hours with each new issue of Billboard, trying to discern trends the same way astrologists look for signs in their charts.

Trying to get Bob Marley played on FM radio in Canada was a nearly impossible feat at the time. This was when Rastaman Vibration was just released. It was such an uphill struggle because few people even knew who Bob Marley was and Reggae still confused a lot of people. I told people it was just like Rock and Roll, except the beat didn’t go KUH-thunk, KUH-thunk. It went Thunk-kuh, Thunk-kuh.

We badgered one radio station in Canada after another to add Marley to their playlists, with almost no luck whatsoever. Only the odd campus radio station were sold on Marley’s power as an artist.

CHUM-FM was the station we worked on the hardest because it was the biggest station in the country. Consequently it was a leader among Canadian radio stations. CHUM’s music committee consisted of Benji Karsh and Brian Masters. They hated Marley. Week after week, we’d pitch them Bob Marley. Each week we’d send them photostatic copies of charts from around the world, showing which radio stations were smart enough to jump on the Bob Marley bandwagon. Every week they just laughed. Finally one week they said, “We won’t play this until it charts in Billboard.”

Guess what?

A few weeks later Rastaman Vibrations finally appeared on the Billboard chart. We were able to go back to CHUM-FM and make them eat those words. From that day on Bob Marley was heard on CHUM-FM. Later I was amused to hear them pretend to have discovered Bob Marley, even though they had to be dragged kicking and screaming all the way.