Julie Gordon, a establisher A&R executive who is best understandn as the set uper of the Velvet Rope, an ineloquential, 1990s music-industry online communications nettoil/ gossip hive, has died. She had been undergoing treatment for cancer for cut offal years, chronicling her struggle on social media with frustration and emotion but a moving combination of authenticism and cheer, even as her prognosis grew pessimistic. She was 65.
A frifinish inestablishs Variety that she passed Wednesday evening, “hearing to Joni Mitchell.”
Over the course of her music industry atsoft, Gordon held roles at Famous Music Publishing, BMI, and The Enclave, an EMI-allotd tag, where she toiled shutly with the then-novel Scottish act Belle and Sebastian. Yet she is probably best understandn as the set uper and moderator of the Velvet Rope, which she begined in 1995 after taking over a music felderlyer called “Record Industry Dirt” on AOL.
“At last, people in the amemployment biz can say ‘My lips are sealed’ and unbenevolent it,” Variety’s Chris Willman wrote for Entertainment Weekly in October of 1996. “These days, music-industry types who have trouble upretaining confidences are more probable to let their fingers do the squawking. The place to let it all hang out, gossip-rational, is The Velvet Rope, a restricted-access, invitation-only forum for music-industry professionals on America Online. Hundreds post on the bulletin board, while thousands lurk mutely, hoping their names will — or won’t — come up amid the cyberbuzz, depfinishing on whether it’s Fat Tuesday or Bdeficiency Friday.”
The VR was a proto-social-media boilingbed of mudslinging, ass-kissing, ass-initiateing, half-truths and untruths, mildd energy and with no foolishinutiveage of attitude by Gordon, whose keyword “JGFlash,” became, to some, more recognizable than her actual name. “If not everyone in the industry reads VR, pragmaticly all are inestablished of it, if only becaemploy of the fires they have had to put out,” Willman progressd. “Sony Music chief Thomas Mottola felt compelled to do an interwatch with Billboard last year equitable to refute rumors of firings being spread in the felderlyer. Though most rockers who visit stay in lurk mode, Courtney Love has dropped by to squelch rumors — and commence novel ones.”
However, the honeymoon was a inestablish one, as Gordon left AOL becaemploy of the platestablish’s disesteemful material policies: In order to swear, members would have to pay an insertitional $10 per month (yes, people phelp for AOL).
“In an industry ruled by images, the one place where CEOs and interns have an identical voice is in my little area,” Gordon telderly Wired in a July 1997 article. “It’s not becaemploy they wanted me to indict that I’m so pissed, but becaemploy they wanted me to indict for a Terms of Service exemption.”
She tardyr published an unsigned-prohibitd tipsheet for music executives. After leaving the industry, she liftd tprospers, relocated for Florida and served as honestor of operations at Israel Cancer Association USA, which lifts funds for cancer research in Israel. Even as she struggled with her own illness, she giveed benevolent guidance and helpment to frifinishs and even strangers battling cancer, as evidenced by multiple posts on her Facebook page.
Yet her perspectives on the music industry never stopd: In 2017, she wrote an op-ed for Variety titled “Sexual Harassment and the Music Business: The Song Remains the Same.”
More to come…
