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Jill
This past Thursday was the first full day off I’d had for a couple of weeks. I was sitting in a coffee shop, drinking a latte and doing a word puzzle, and decided to look at my email on my phone. Just as I opened my email account, a message came in, with a subject line so shocking I thought at first I had misread it. “Jill died in a house fire.”
“Jill” is Jill Sobule, who I took songwriting classes with during the pandemic. The email was from a friend in my online songwriting group – a group that grew out of Jill’s classes. The heartfelt tributes from Jill’s friends and colleagues describe what I saw in those classes. She was generous, kind, incredibly talented, and funny. I’m so grateful that I got to learn from her.
In the 1990s, I knew Jill from her hit singles: “I Kissed A Girl” from her second album, and “Supermodel” from the soundtrack of the movie Clueless. (“Two-hit wonder”, she always pointed out whenever someone called her a “one-hit wonder”.) I started following her on Twitter around 2018 or so, because her Tweets were hilarious. Then in April 2021, when we were all stuck at home during the pandemic, Jill announced on Twitter that she would be doing a series of online songwriting classes. I thought about it, and got up the courage to DM her. I asked whether absolute beginners could participate, and she replied, “Sure!”
I’ve taken music lessons and can read music, but other than singing in choirs at school I’ve never been a performing musician. And as much as I like music, I had never felt the impulse to write songs. Obviously I like to write prose, and I can make up little melodies to entertain myself, but I had no idea how anyone went about connecting those two things. I had concluded that other people had the songwriting gene, but I did not.
Jill in the video for “Supermodel”. (photo credit: YouTube)
But when I saw Jill’s offer, I thought, well, she writes great songs, and if I write about music I should probably learn something about how songwriting works. So, with some degree of apprehension, I signed up for the four class sessions.
At the start of the very first class, Continue reading
Led Zeppelin’s Lunchtime Concert
I recently saw the documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin. Throughout it there were montages of ticket stubs, concert posters, and the like, to illustrate how much the band toured – and every time I glimpsed something that mentioned “Vancouver” it made me laugh. Not because I saw any of those shows – although I think half of my high school was at one or both of the Led Zeppelin shows here in 1975 – but because I was half-hoping there would be a mention of one of Vancouver’s greatest urban legends: Led Zeppelin’s lunchtime concert.
This is the story. Led Zeppelin were booked to play here in spring 1970. Allegedly, upon arriving in this fair city, they decided that Continue reading
“Mixtape” Interview
Dr. David Dobson, my former colleague at the University of the Fraser Valley, hosts a show named “Conversations” on his YouTube channel, where he interviews researchers and writers about their work. I was honoured to be on the show to discuss my book Mixtape. You can watch the interview here.
Tom Harrison
This is a blog post that I didn’t think I’d be writing.
On December 27, my friend Tom Harrison passed away at the age of 70. We were friends for more than 40 years – a number which astounded me when I calculated it. We met in the late 1970s when he was the music writer for The Province newspaper and I was the music writer for The Vancouver Sun, but it honestly doesn’t feel like that long ago.
I knew who Tom was long before I actually met him. Any music lover in Vancouver in the 1970s knew who Tom was, from his writing in the Georgia Straight weekly paper and also from the pioneering music video show Soundproof that he co-hosted on cable TV. But a lot of people didn’t know that Continue reading
Articles in Record Collector magazine
In the last few months, I’ve had the opportunity to write several articles for Record Collector magazine. Because the magazine’s articles are only available online for subscribers (and every music lover should have a subscription to RC) here are JPEG images of the articles.
Eamonn Forde: Leaving the Building
I interviewed journalist Eamonn Forde for Please Kill Me about his fascinating new book, Leaving the Building: The Lucrative Afterlife of Music Estates. You can read the interview here.
Adele Bertei’s “Why Labelle Matters”
I was so pleased to get the opportunity to interview musician and author Adele Bertei for Please Kill Me about her excellent new book Why Labelle Matters. You can read the interview here.
“Song Book” now available as an e-book
My book Song Book has just been released in e-book format.
You can buy the Kindle version on Amazon. There is also a preview of the book that you don’t need Kindle to view – just click on “Look Inside” at the top of the image of the book cover.
You can buy the Nook version at Barnes and Noble, and the Kobo version at Indigo. Both of those sites also have free previews.
You can buy Song Book in all other e-book formats (e.g. Apple Books, Google Play, PDF) at Smashwords.
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