Bookie’s music will long play on
Late radio personality remembered at charity sale of his vinyl collection
Even in death, Dave “Bookie” Bookman is still sharing music.
The late local radio personality and concert promoter passed away suddenly in May, but in a fitting tribute, his family and friends organized a sale Thursday of his record collection, with proceeds going to MusiCounts, a charity supporting music education across the country. Held at Rotate This, the sale let fans, friends and former co-workers go digging through his albums but also let listeners and fans pay final tribute and have a musical memento of someone to whom many felt a debt — for sharing his infectious love of the medium, but also often introducing artists who became favourites.
“I listened to him in my teenage days, and when I went to school in New Brunswick, and listened to him on the internet when that was a new thing. I’m a big Oasis fan, and Doves, and he pushed both of those bands hard, even if they weren’t being accepted in North America as well as they were around the world, and that made a great impact on me. I met my wife and she moved up here after university and possibly became abigger Bookie fan than me, but she teaches, so she couldn’t make it, so I figured one of us has to go,” said Chris Goodwin, 37, who walked out with a number of records including albums by Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and New Brunswick indie rockers Eric’s Trip.
“I got ‘Pet Sounds.’ It was a pretty integral record that I have wanted to get, and there is no better one to get than Bookie’s,” said Evan Rolfe, who was a fan. “I listened to him on the radio for years. I think this is great, that the family and loved ones were kind enough to open up his record collection to the people that listened to him, and get a chance to have a piece of him at home.”
People lined up outside of the
Ossington Ave. store before it opened at 11 a.m.; when the doors unlocked, a horde of vinyl fans began digging through crates of all kinds of classic and obscure albums. Organizers hoped that it would raise around $10,000 for the charity.
Rotate This owner Pierre Hallett said Bookman “celebrated music, he celebrated local things, he was a great guy and really, this is the perfect way to honour him.” Hallett was glad that many fellow music fanatics got a crack at finding something cherishable in the collection, as opposed to it all going to a single collector.
While there were plenty of
Bookie fans, this was also where friends and former coworkers came Thursday to celebrate him, like local singer/songwriter Stephen Stanley. Once part of The Lowest of the Low, he came to Rotate This to take a look, but as a close friend of Bookman, he got early access.
“There’s no album that Dave and I talked about more than ‘Blood on the Tracks,’ by (Bob) Dylan. Like, literally every month it was part of the conversation, because for both of us, that was the album that we thought had the best songwriting in history. Actually, there was a guy at the Rivoli who used to get musicians to do classic album covers — this was before Classic Albums Live — and I did ‘Blood On the Tracks,’ I memorized every lyric, and Dave didn’t come to a lot of shows, but he came to that one. It was pretty cool. So (Craig Laskey and Julie Booth, among the sale’s organizers) procured that for me last night … It’s at home already, but I’m going to look through and see what else is here.”
For one of Bookie’s former coworkers, it was a surprise case of repossession.
“Other people are going crazy in there. I came more for nostalgia and for a friend, as opposed to (needing) records. I’m already a record addict,” says Sudeep Dutt, a former producer who used to work at the The Edge 102.1. “He used to come in and sit on my retro show with Martin Streek, and one time he borrowed this record from me, ’cause he said it sounded crazy. It’s this Kruder & Dorfmeister dub reggae thing. It just had this great bassline and Martin would talk over it. Bookie wanted to borrow it, and I said sure, all right, just bring it back … I did think it was weird, because he was usually all about the guitars. I forgot that he borrowed it, and I saw someone flipping by it, so I thought maybe I should buy it back. It’s for charity.”