My Pete Townshend impression didn't go over well during my audition for Toronto-based Who tribute band Who Did You Expect. When I called later to ask why I didn't get the gig, I was told "You weren't bad, but we were kind of hoping for the post-rehab look."

In the early 1980s I embarked upon an abortive career as a musician. As a player, I make a great fan. But by the mid-1980s, I had exploited the availability of cheap desktop recording hardware to become, without a word of boast, one of the best pop/rock songwriters in the country. I really was that good...I just wasn't a good enough musician (in fact, I was horrible) to be credible as a performer, and never managed to acquire the money and personal connections necessary to be anything more than a hard-luck hobbyist.

Damn shame, really...because several of the songs here - particularly Take These Chains, Only Time Will Tell and Wrap Me - were just a few minor changes from being honest-to-god hits...if I'd only hooked up with a capable producer. Several other songs need no more than a bit of updating and an extra hook or two to still be hit-worthy today. And in 2009, as the last faint pulses of adolescent libido were delivering their two-week resignation notices, I was stupid enough to add heartbreak to heartache when I wrote what might be my very last rock song - I Got Nothing to Say That You Want to Hear (link plays a 1-minute excerpt) - and discovered to my abject horror that I still had the touch...and no one who wanted to touch me.

But then stories of great music that never gets heard are a dime a dozen in this business. Persistence matters more than talent, and in the absence of support, which I didn't have, persistence requires money, which I couldn't raise.

10-song 1.3MB sampler mp3 Don't waste your time on music you won't like! This small four-minute sampler mp3 (48kbps mono; fairly good fidelity for the size) contains snippets from ten different Winter Heat/Hot Spot/Cub Lea tracks covering nearly the full range of styles I've written. Links below connect to pages with downloads to the full-length song. Tracks included in this sampler are: One is a Thousand | Take These Chains Shake Me | Only Time Will Tell Wrap Me | More to Life Than Sex Old Time Tunes | The Ecstasy Point Livin' on the Upside | Shivering Heart

While these tracks are all offered here in low-bitrate monophonic audio, most of the original recordings were fairly low fidelity to begin with (4-, 8- and 16-track analog), and you should find these ultra-small encodings quite listenable...soundwise. As for the music, well, that's a matter of taste, isn't it?

The Winter Heat Project This was my dream-never-come-true...a project from the late 1980s that I still think could have written a legend in Canadian music if I'd found the right management and promotion. As it turned out, none of these tracks ever made it past the demo stage. Mp3 quality ain't the best, but some of these songs are truly excellent, and the musicians I found to help me with them all told me that working on these tracks was the most fun they'd ever had in a recording studio. (11/04)

Hot Spot: Misfits and Slow Learners   I recorded my first "album" in 1987 as Hot Spot. This cassette-only release entitled Misfits and Slow Learners was only ever heard by friends and acquaintances. As I only discovered after recording it, the audio quality was too poor to merit the time and expense of shopping it to management and record companies; by that date, no one was . No real stand-out tracks here, but considering that I'd only been writing songs for a year when I put this collection together, I think it was a damn good first effort. (12/04)

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