Throwback Feature: The Beginning of Dine Alone FRESH OUT OF COLLEGE I had been working in record stores for a while now and knew my path would be in music. To what extent – I had no clue, as there wasn’t necessarily a glowing path being from St. Catharines. From my days at Sam The Record Man I had met many great people who worked in the music industry in Toronto and were for the most part, very nice. One gentleman in particular, Andrew Lindsay, got along with me quite well. He invited me to a few events in Toronto and seemed to like how I carried myself and my over all sense of humour. This relationship spawned into an interview at Polygram Records in Toronto, where I landed my first behind the scenes gig. I was a CSR, which meant Customer Service Rep. The job required me to cruise the QEW and pop into all the record stores and check stock, make displays, do lunches, talk music and organize release parties. It was an interesting gig with little direction but I enjoyed it, I had trunk full of music promo and no one in my ear telling me what to do. There were some artists you liked more than others but none of them fell into where my heart was at the time, it was just fun and new. It wasn’t until in 1998 when Deftones announced a show in Toronto with a reformed Quicksand and Snapcase. I was working at Polygram and one of my favourite bands who was signed to Polygram would play with two other of my favourite bands. My young self is thinking, “I am going to meet them, become friends with them and talk about stuff that is new to me and probably boring to them.” The show arrived, and it was there I forged a new relationship with Greg Below, who I went on to promote shows across Canada with, as well as work on Distort and Alexisonfire together and form Dine Alone with him by my side. I had the best time in the Quicksand pit, but as fun as the night was, I unfortunately did not make new friends with any of my favourite bands. It was that night, however, that my brain started triggering new ideas and wanting more out of what I was doing. Shortly after that I would travel the QEW doing my thing and eating breakfast, lunch and dinner often alone and listening to Quicksand and those bands on my Discman. I remember sitting in a packed food court in Mississauga listening to their track “Dine Alone” plotting my next few moves. That song took on a new life for me. There is this line in the first verse that hit me; “Alone, what are your aims, or do you have any?” Here I am with a new found drive after being at the show, meeting a few people and sitting alone plotting what was next to come. That band, that line, at that moment was truly serendipitous. From that point on, ‘Dine Alone’ was going to be a name of something I started in the future. Did I know it would be a record label at that time? I don’t think so. I knew I wanted to be involved in one but Polygram was not for me. ‘Dine Alone‘ meant a lot to me and knew that it needed to be the name of something I worked on. dinealonerecords/news/beginning-of-dine-alone/
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 23:03:53 +0000
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