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| Music Menu | The Winter Heat Project | Hot Spot | "Songs for Sale" | Buttnuggets | Lyrics & Poetry | |
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Album tracks:
Outtakes and B sides:
This was the very first set of tunes I ever assembled into a cohesive work, and the closest I ever came to producing an honest-to-god "album". It's here because most of it is still pretty good, all things considered, and because at least six of these tracks stand on their own as damn good songs, performances notwithstanding.
Hot Spot was supposed to be the fulfillment of a dream I'd had since puberty: my own recording and performing act. It was supposed to launch with a monstrous set of amazingly well-crafted songs, cleverly arranged and tightly produced on a solid budget derived from sales of my first bestseller. Ultimately, that would-be bestseller - The Ultimate Shopper - came oh-so-close to being just that in oh-so-many ways, but ended up as nothing more than an interesting experience, and Hot Spot was doomed to be a private four-track project done on gear bought with borrowed money, gear which was pretty much all sold within a year of this recording.
I wrote my first few dozen songs on some truly awful gear: a $150 basher guitar running through a borrowed Fender Champ amp, and an original Casiotone as a beat box. I later graduated to working with actual beats with a Boss DR-110 Dr. Rhythm analog drumbox, a horrid little tool for the kind of music I was writing, but the cheapest thing on the market that let you write your own patterns and chain patterns together into songs.
It wasn't until I stumbled into a deal for a DR-505 digital drum machine that I was finally able to put together some demo tracks that I didn't feel would embarrass me too much in auditions. And as one of the absolute worst musicians in Toronto seeking a paying gig at the time, I needed all the help I could get!
This was supposed to be the demo that led to the contract that led to the album that launched what I know in my bones could have been a pretty decent career as a writer/performer. It didn't turn out that way, and enough said about that for now.
Update 12/14/04: High-quality stereo mp3s have been removed from the site, and are now available only as "premium content" to paying contributors to this site. ("The CD" links at the top of most pages connect to an explanation of this policy and information on obtaining this content.) But...in return for this "insult", I have chosen to release virtually every half-decent track I've ever done as a 32kbps 44.1kHz mono mp3. These tracks are surprisingly high-quality at this low bitrate, and at less than a megabyte each, are quick downloads that take up very little space and cost me very little to serve. Try one...you just might be surprised at how sweet-sounding the LAME encoder can make a 32kbps file sound with the quality option set at its highest level.
| Misfits and Slow Learners |
"As a set of original compositions in this genre, it was one of the very best coming out of Toronto at the time and I damn well knew it."
As a bad musician, and not blessed with anything close to matinee-idol looks, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Friends who were just breaking into music themselves were literally astonished at what I was able to do with that four-track, and several were sure I'd be able to get signed, maybe even to a major label, on the strength of the tape. Musicians, however, heard only the "problem" spots, weak playing and two-bit production, and had a hard time hearing through that to the songs and the potential inherent in so many moments of the performances.
As a set of original compositions in this genre, it was one of the very best coming out of Toronto at the time and I damn well knew it. But there was simply no way to get past the facts that it was recorded on less gear than most polka bands carry around on weekends, and that I am not a good musician.
Family wasn't about to support me in this insane quest. The gear I used on this project was assembled through some diligent bargain-hunting and horsetrading, and as much as I wanted some quality performances on these tracks, nobody I knew with an ounce of talent was willing to invest an afternoon in helping me out unless I was willing to fork over cash for their time...cash I needed more for gear than for hired talent.
So in late November, I started pulling together some of the better song ideas I'd had and planned to produce not just a two-song demo tape, but a full album covering a gamut of song styles and arrangements. The result was a manually-reproduced cassette album consisting of the material I've offered here, minus a couple of truly embarrassing oeuvres which I never even bothered to digitize.
The title came from what appeared to be a theme running through the tracks: the lyrics all seemed to be perspectives on, or from, individuals who really had no place being where they were. In later years, I almost wondered if a more appropriate title might have been Hubris.
While guys like The Pursuit of Happiness' Mo Berg (allmusic.com refers to him as "Mole Berg", an appropriate typo considering his unlikely appearance. I saw myself then, and to an extent still do today as "shrew" to Mo's "mole", a resemblance that becomes grotesquely apparent when you see me in profile from the chest up.) and Red Rider's Tom Cochrane were ripping up the charts with songs I knew I could do as well or better, this was pretty much a waste of time and good gear in terms of what it did for me career-wise. The problem with being in Toronto at that time was that talent was clustering there like dust on a TV screen. I had the talent, and I knew it. I had the promotional ability to have taken that talent a fair ways up the ladder, too. What I didn't have was the money needed to polish the output, or the looks and charisma to charm people into a second listen.
Nine out of ten clinically delusional groupies agree:
"Hot Spot is better than a night home alone
babysitting the neighbor's pit bull puppies."I began working on this set on or about November 29 of 1987. Several of the tunes had already been sketched out; The Point and Critics, among others, were written on the spot as I tracked the other songs. By the time I finished this, on December 22, I had sketches for several more songs on cassettes in my room, and every song I was turning out seemed more polished and complete than the last.
"With me, Henman was blunt. The upshot of our 'consultation' was little more than a recommendation that I trust my embarrassment and keep this little 'album' to myself."
How'd that happen? Well, it turns out that he was selling off an Ampeg tube head for $250 that he'd had with him since the early 1970s when April Wine got a pile of new gear as part of a sponsorship deal from Ampeg. I spotted it in the classifieds and went out to see it. I wasn't too impressed with the head, but decided what the hell...if I could resell it for what I paid for it, maybe I could swing some of his time. Henman (and his brother Ritchie too if I recall correctly) had actually left April Wine and formed The Dudes with a fairly well-respected local talent named Bob Segarini, and this was a smart pop band! I expected Henman to be a sharp cookie and he was. But with me, he was rather more blunt. The upshot of our "consultation" was little more than a recommendation that I trust my embarrassment and keep this little "album" to myself...even though the material wasn't too far out of his area of expertise, he wasn't impressed in the least.
Not even he could hear through the weaknesses to the potential in this set. He was listening through a pair of ears hardened by his own travails in the industry. He heard me trying to produce my own songs (an absolute no-no, he explained in great detail) and arrange my own instrumentation. Essentially, he explained that however expressive this material might have been, I was dealing with an industry that had precious little respect for self-expression. Assuming I ever did get a deal, he said, I'd very likely be giving away chunks of my work to everyone who assisted me in establishing a career, and in the process, submitting to the will of producers, A&R reps, marketing assistants, publishers and others, and that if I expected to hear my own expression in any finished work well, heheh, more power to me...if I didn't mind dreaming alone.
But to this day I can't help but listen back on these tracks and realize that with better production and some quality players, there were at least six very good songs on this album. If only...
| Hot Spot was a band |
"It was one of the greatest compliments that anyone ever gave me creatively when Rich Jagger agreed to hang in and record some of the Winter Heat material long after Hot Spot was a dead issue."
My limited skills meant that any band with me in it would require a singing bassist...I couldn't carry a show on my own, and if I swapped off with another player, all I'd ever get away with playing would be bass. Amazingly, I found a bassist who'd had a fair bit of experience around town, and had actually played for a time with a well-known perennial club singer named Walter Zwol.
Even more amazingly, it allowed me to run into a kid ("kid"...hell, I was only three years older than he was) with the unlikely name of Rich Jagger. Rich was studying at Humber College, which was only then developing a reputation for turning out some truly amazing talent. And Rich was hot. He also had the pop-rock sensibilities I didn't have - he loved Def Leppard to death - and it was one of the greatest compliments that anyone ever gave me creatively when Rich agreed to hang in and record some of the Winter Heat material long after Hot Spot was a dead issue.
The idea behind Hot Spot was to get a band onstage ASAP, and build constantly...toward what, it didn't matter, as long as we were building.
We booked our first performance as part of a three-band show at Lee's Palace. For those who don't know, Lee's is a club on Bloor Street in Toronto which is probably the second most famous and beloved club in Toronto next to the El Mocambo. It was easy enough to get on the bill; believe it or not, I took a rehearsal-room tape of Watchin' TV and Born to Be Wild into the booker's office, and we were on a Tuesday ticket a month later.
First strike: intimidation factor. We were second on the bill behind Cottage Industry, a "techno-pop" band out of Regina who had a college radio hit at the time (Things Go Up) that I happened to really like a lot.
Second strike: management incompetence. It was my first experience at managing people, and I was not at all good at it. Early on, there were serious ego clashes between myself and the "other bassist", who seemed not to realize that this was, for practical purposes, going to be a vehicle for my original material. Hey, I was paying for rehearsal space and gear, and doing all the legwork. I expected everyone involved to know the odds on an original band making serious money. But I also made it clear that I was going to push this project as long as I had a project to push.
To make a long story short, things came to a head ten days before the Lee's set. I fired the other bassist, leaving us as a three-piece with a bassist who couldn't play bass and handle vocals too (that would be me, in case you haven't been following closely). I quickly recruited an old friend, Dave Wildsmith, to fill in on bass and we shifted material so that I'd sing the whole set. Dave had time for two rehearsals, but I knew Dave well enough to know that he could carry it off beautifully.
Third strike: insecurity. The problem was that Peter couldn't match my confidence in Dave, or my confidence in him. The day after I got Dave to fill in, Peter decided he didn't have it in him to go onstage with the shaky familiarity he still had with the material. I knew he was ready to have his feet put into the fire, but I've never had it in me to force anyone to do anything against their will. So at Peter's insistence, we canceled the Lee's gig, which was no big deal since Lee's always had bands willing to take pick-up slots on short notice.
Hot Spot, as a performing act, ended then and there. Peter decided to take over responsibility for rehearsal-space rent, I went back to writing and producing in my room, and Rich went back to his schoolwork. That was pretty much that.
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