Jane Siberry, a canadian singer/songwriter of whom kd lang once remarked that she ought to be as famous as she was/is, is taking yet another new turn within the music business.
In an interesting move 9 years ago this May, Siberry parted with both record company Warner and then manager Bob Bloomer (now a TV Chef in the States. Stranger things can happen), and starter up her own web-based record company, Sheeba.ca.
And now, turing 50 herself, she's closing its doors.
And i' celebrated the cycle with a sale of rare and special things.
Mien Bitte: Several years ago, at the mid point in the Sheeba cycle, i was meeting with Jane each Saturday for months and months to work on the web site with her. This was before it hit its php phase and just when it was verging into frames.
Included in the refit was a desire to start digitizing audio tracks for the web site (this is how sound edit pro works...this is how to make an mp3...remember not to muse aloud about issues with goLive tags) to promote her upcoming release of traditional and not so traditional songs (became known as "HUSH"), and potentially to get video excerpts up from the various music vids Jane now had for sale.
I was given videos to digitize and could keep them for my efforts (the whole web tutor/cleanup thing was voluntary: help support independent canadian artists one html tag at a time).
These vids, from Janes hands to mine, are the ones of which i'm now, in Jane's parleance, "letting go." To be had for a song. Almost literally.
If you're a Jane fan, or know someone who is, you can give them something even they mayn't have.
Of the videos, there's the 11 minute film "the Bird in the Gravel," from the Walking. Rare is not the word.
the siberry-directed videos in support of "When i was a boy," on the compilation Boy Collect One. There's the Video Collection 84-89 including Mimi on the Beach, the 9min video that started it all (did i mention these are all out of print?). There's also the documentary I Muse Aloud from the Speckless Sky tour. It's great to see the live performances. Her musicians were exceptional. Anne Bourne, Rebecca Jenkins, Ken Myer, to name a few. This is an award winning live music documentary.
Then there's a special Advance Release Copy of Jane's collection of older tunes, HUSH. It was right around this time that i was getting emails about how best to rip and send a new dub of Calling All Angels because the producers of Kevin Spacey's new film, Pay it Forward, were interested in using it for the film. This would be an all-siberry version, not the duet with lang.
Anyway, the advance cds were to help raise money via the sheeba site to help cover costs of recording the album.
Each of these items sat in Jane's basement office in TO, and went from her hands to mine. And now i'd like to put them into the hands of others who would enjoy watching the vids of some of the best written, best delivered (Canadian) songs ever.
kd lang's recent Songs of the 49th parallel does two of Jane's pieces. That's high praise to be in the company of songwriters like Cohen and Cockburn. But you know, if that's the only way you've heard a Siberry tune, you owe it to yourself to hear the originals.
As you can see, it's pretty cheap to do just that (update: all gone now, 4 to the UK, one to Germany. Surprisingly, nothing to Canada. Ah well, burn little candle out into the world...)
