My first big TV interview was before the days of this wonderous thing called the Internet. Back then we were the first record company to make a real go at using computers to communicate with our fan base. And being that the Internet hadn't really hit yet, we set up a BBS. For those of you born before Star Wars, a BBS is a bulletin board system. Basically a message board hosted on a little 486 with a dozen dedicated modems and phone lines that people dialed in on. It was strictly text based, expect for the wacky colour ASCII graphics that Ralph and I used to create the menus. People posted messages discussing their fave bands and you could download discographies and GIFs of album covers. We even hosted an online chat with Sarah, which was a first as well. That reminds me, a lot of the stuff of the BBS made it into the court case dealing with Sarah's stalker Ewe (sp?). I even got mentioned in the tell-all unauthorized biography because of it.

But anyways, so Muchmusic sent this guy Dennis (who later hosted the movie nite on Space channel along with a guy with a turtle shell glued to his forehead) to interview us about our amazing use of technology. And wouldn't you know it, the night before we are robbed of every computer in the building. The VP Ric even walked in on them as they were loading up a truck. He blocked the driveway with his jeep and they drove away through the flowerbed. Ric's home was robbed day's later. This time he, I and Ralph walked in on them.

So I spent the next 12 hours frantically creating a fake working mockup of the BBS on a old 8088 notebook that had 64K RAM and an 8Mb hard drive. It worked perfectly. He never even noticed and I pulled the interview off flawlessly.

It was never broadcast and I never saw it.

But regardless, to this day, any work I've done since can be quickly replicated on an 8088 notebook computer that I bought for $50 in 1990.

No kidding.

I think it was Philly. When you are on tour and playing at what are refered to as "sheds", they blend together. A "shed" is a stadium venue and they all look the same from a tour bus. So it might have been Philly or Boston, maybe Boston. "Where" is iffy, "when" is summer 1997 and "what" is Lilith Fair. It was about 9 in the evening, Sarah was the headliner that night (the only other headliner ever was Sheryl Crow) and I was running from backstage to the bus with a digital camcorder in hand, in some sort of panic.

They had a massage therapist on the last half of the tour, her name was Ocean. Ocean was a new-age crystal wearing dyke, I mean that in the nicest way, and I think she wore pachouli (scent of the demon).

So here I am running like a chicken with his head cut off. That sense of borderline panic and adrenaline that I enjoy so much, days like that fly by and I can't sleep afterwards. Mid dash Ocean grabs me by the waist and swings me around, throws a somewhat stinky arm over my shoulders and sez "Look at the moon."

"What?" I ask while panting to catch my breath. And giving her a "what the fuck are you talking about" look.

"Look at the moon." And so I looked. It was big, white and hanging at the bottom of the sky like it was going to fall into the edge of the earth. And I breathed. And I looked and I smiled.

"Thank you, Ocean"

"You're welcome."

Sometimes people just need to stop and look at the moon.

Remind me sometime to tell you about why people should sit on the floor in hallways or stand on chairs in offices.

Here I sit, listening to the First Quarter Earnings Results Conference Call for the Microsoft Corporation Fiscal 2003. After capturing and listening to the entire thing at 52 minutes and 44 seconds, I then must transfer the roughly 550Mb file to the mastering server so that a few CDR copies in redbook format can be produced. Then these are hand delivered to the fourth floor so they can be given to the StudioGM who then listens to this Top 40 hit in his beamer on the way to work from his hilltop mansion. Yesterday it was Costco, next is ebay, Acclaim, Sony, Mattel, Hasbro and so on. This happens every three months.

This is what I do now. Now.

It's strange to listen to the grown men at Hasbro exclaim how they "kicked ass with the Yoda dolls last christmas" and are hoping "to push a lot of lightsabers this year".

I just realized this second that I own both the Yoda doll and lightsaber. They were presents from my Uncle Dickey.

"There's more than this. There's more than this!" - Peter Gabriel

Right now, OK not right now, I haven't hit play yet. OK, now I'm listening to Front Line Assembly's Millenium. I remember many years ago running into Bill Leeb of said band at the local indie (why not spelt indy?) record store. This was before I began working in the music industry, if you can call it working. To spot a cyberpunk rock star at my local shop was quite exciting. Till he snubbed me and bought some shitty music on top of it. This pissed me off to no end. Right then and there I decided that if this idiot can be a success in music, then so can I. So from there I began to make some sort of effort to become part of the music industry.

Years later I actually worked quite a bit with Bill. In fact we moved him out of his studio space and our multimedia team moved into it. Turns out he's a real nice guy, just painfully shy and a ObsCompDis. His onstage aerobics still kill me though.

But it was that turning point that really put a fire up my ass. So when a few weeks ago my boss asked me what lead to my work in the biz my answer was:

"Anger"

So it begins.

Let the fun start now.

Or not...