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In December 1999 I received an invitation in the mail to participate in Toronto's Millennium Song Writing Contest, from the Millennium Office. Yeah, there's a City Millennium Office. Go figure. The song had to be catchy and easy for anyone to learn.
It seemed pretty simple, the City could use the winning song for Millennium events throughout the year. That sounded great to me. I sat down at the piano and thought 'pop', and simple C F G - that's all. Then I thought back to the 'Meeting Place' and called my friend Roslyn to ask for her research skills. She was more than excited to help. How about TO history since it was named. In about two minutes I had the melody and the top of the chorus "We've come a long way ... Oh Toronto". Two days later Ros had pages of info in five different categories and my new Alesis ADAT had its first assignment.
Dom Polito, Snooky Tynes, Stacy Tynes, little Anita and Ariel, Karen Kane, Mark Fournier, Ryan French and
John T. Davis became my extended family and my one bed room apartment became a studio for the next 9 days. Ariel, Stacy and I proudly took our package to City Hall at noon on the deadline date after hanging out all night at Kinko's while Stacy hand-traced the City Skyline from a post card. I photo copied Ariel's latest masterpiece for a background. It was pure magic. "Here's the winning song" I said when I handed the package to the receptionist, then went home to sleep for about 3 days. Ten days later, I got the phone call.
We won ! It was a hands down competition. I was told, none of the other songs even came close. Pure magic ! Its cute ...
check it out !
Why wasn't it promoted ? ... That's a whole other story .... politics
* Toronto 2000, We've Come a Long Way - by Eryn Vogn & Friends - Listen to full track
Check us out on Breakfast Television
Toronto Star Article by Andrew Chung
This is what I've been up to since then - Lynk PR and Heads Up Live
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