Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - 12:36: Toronto Mike'd #459

Episode Date: April 30, 2019

Mike's monthly chat with Marc Weisblott of 12:36 about the current state of media in Canada and what you oughta know.

Welcome to episode 459 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Propertyinthe6.com, Palma Pasta, Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair, Camp Turnasol, and Sticker U. I'm Mike from TorontoMike.com and joining me this week for his monthly recap is Mr. 1236. Mark, wise blot.

What'd you crack open there? Over My Dad Body from Great Lakes Brewery. Now, I was looking forward to getting the electric circus beer. What happened? Why is it not here in my system? Because I biked there to get some paper cases, and I was told they had a case of the electric circus beer for me.

But I said I'd have to come back with my automobile to bring it home. So it's waiting for me in a corner of Great Lakes Brewery. Okay, but let's give them a plug for their ingenious idea to do a special edition brew dedicated to the show Electric Circus. And who did you see on the cover of the can? You tell us. Well, it was the Electric Circus cowboy, Kendrick Pompey.

Kendrick, no D. Kendrick Pompey, father of Dalton Pompey, budding baseball star. What's he up to now? He's commenting on Instagram. I've noticed him with Retro Ontario, with Six Buzz. I guess he's not so much of a star that he can't get into the

comment section on Instagram posts anyway. Electric Circus, the Electric Circus cowboy, which everyone remembers who watched the show. We're talking now, what, three decades back. Yeah, this is the early days of Electric Circus with the cowboy, for sure. And they made a mistake on the label, which you were willing to acknowledge. I mean, it was a typographical error. They said Electric Circus started in 1988 as a Friday night show when it was actually on Saturday afternoons. They repeated it on Sunday on City TV. And you called them out on it, I saw.

And good for you for doing that because details matter, especially on Tron. Okay, but there's a bit of shame and embarrassment, right? It's a little weird because it's bad enough when you have a typo in an email newsletter. I think it's a, it's a different thing when it's on a beer can and you've already printed up a whole bunch of them. A limited run for sure. In fact, I had, I had a, I had a glass. It's very good. And I'm not certain there's any left. Like I'm, I know they have a case for me waiting and I was going to give, for example, Master T is in here next week. Now, I know he wasn't on Electric Circus,

but close enough. Like, I was going to give him one. I have to make sure that we get one to Joel Goldberg, creator of Electric Circus. I understand Retro Ontario's already been taken care of, because I believe his partner was able to pick some up for him. Like, this has already been arranged by of because I believe his partner was able to pick some up for him. This has already been arranged

by Great Lakes Brewery, taking care of our pals. But obviously, I'll hold on to one for you. I'll make sure next time you're in here, you get an electric circus can. Okay, so typo aside, electric circus is out and not for very long, right?

These are short-term. Yeah, they don't make a lot of it, so it goes pretty damn quickly, but I'm pretty sure it's gone now, but I had a glass last week and it was great. Now, since we're talking Great Lakes Brewery, obviously, you're already diving into

your six pack. That's courtesy of well, let's call them of course, GTA's greatest craft, Canada's best craft beer. They've been serving Ontario since, well, let's call them, of course, GTA's greatest craft, Canada's best craft beer. They've been serving Ontario since, what, 30, 32 years now, I think. I don't know, 31, 32 years. And Mike, what percentage of GLB remains in Ontario?

Oh, where's my script? I can't remember. I believe it's 99.997% of all Great Lakes beer now remains here in Ontario. Keeps it fresh. Okay, so waiting on that electric circus here. I need to drink two Tall Boys during my monthly visit here on Toronto. Mike usually ends up resulting in some distortion

when it comes to getting all my facts right. I'll listen back to the show afterwards and cringe about mistakes I made because the beer was having a... At least you didn't print your mistakes on a can. Yeah, well, listen, we're all human, but I'll try to do better here because I don't drink a lot. I mean, we've talked about how this is like

my allocation of beer coming on the podcast. I'm grateful to GLb for being your sponsor giving me this beer and that's where we get to talking about tmlx3 perfect my brother will i see you there do you think i've listened to this podcast before i want like i because you've been to one of these events so when i talk to you about the specifics, you know what I'm talking about? We're going to put the stage on the opposite side of the patio than last time. So the stage where the Royal Pains and Lowest of the Low, that's right. The Lowest of the Low is not some cover band with the same name. So the real Lowest of the Low and Great, uh, and Great Lakes. And look i you think i've been drinking and royal pains will play on the stage on the opposite end as uh they did last time and therefore the spillover crowd

like if a patio is full will be on the lawn there's it's licensed for the whole like space so the lawn we can have people on the lawn if it spills over and i I want to get, I want to get, tell me if I'm crazy, I want 150 people to be at this event on June 27th. Okay, well, as long as I don't show up and they end up harassing me, you can have as many people

as you want. You can stay in the retail store like you did the first time. Yeah, I'll hide. I'll be in the corner. Well, people will want a selfie with you. So, yeah,

so that is June 27th from 6 PM to 9 PM at Great Lakes Brewery, TMLX3. Please come. You get your first beer on the house and then lowest of the low, and I'm going to make a great speech. Maybe I'll mention Mark Weisblot in my speech. It's going to be a good time. Now, vegetarian lasagna. Let's get you all the gifts out of the way, right off the top. Yeah, Palma's Kitchen. You can't come to the Toronto Mic'd podcast without a lasagna to take home. And how have the reviews been amongst the lasagna eaters?

Yeah, I wish they were more active on social about it because they all sent me a note to say it was fantastic. Everybody loves this lasagna. And you have to try this to know what we're talking about, but it's fantastic. And I always think, I always ask, you know, meat lasagna, vegetarian lasagna. My guest yesterday, Garrett Joyce, hasn't had any meat since 1974. I don't know if you caught his story. Yeah, he, look, Garrett Joyce is a terrific storyteller.

It's like every story he tells has this manic subplot to it. It's amazing. And I haven't heard him anywhere else, so I think he's been a good addition to the Toronto Mike repertory players. Well, we got 10 stories out of him yesterday, and the 10th story, for those who like the sports media episodes, the 10th story was why he was banned from primetime sports and it i love his bonus story which is the whole like you know i don't call myself bobcat story i love the punchline i love

that whole story so i actually uh i'm trying to get more youtube followers to the official toronto mic account because if i can get to, what's the number? A thousand followers, I can try to live stream from there instead of Periscope and I'm trying to experiment. But in an effort to get more followers I took that clip of Gear Joyce talking about primetime sports and Bob McCowan and I put it on

the official Toronto Mic'd YouTube page so you can find it there. But you should listen to the whole episode. Great stories from Gear. On that note, okay, so palmapasta.com to find out where their four locations are. You can go to palmapasta.com to get your event catered by Palmapasta, which I highly

recommend because it's kick-ass Italian food. They should put that in their quotes there. And also, they're on Skip the Dishes now too, so you can order Palma from Skip the Dishes. Now, since I was last here, you figured out who the guy was

that saw you going into Palma's kitchen. Neil Lewis is his name. Okay, any comments as the brother? I know, I actually got, I screwed up. I think I had a... There's two Neils here. It's not the brother it's a different because I okay I had a I thought uh the brother who is a Neal I thought that was the guy

from Palma and then he sent me a DM to say no it's actually not him it's actually a guy a different Neal so there's lots of Neal's listening but Neal Neal Lewis is the guy I met at Palma Pasta not the brother who people confuse with Neil Morrison just to make things even more confusing because Neil Morrison, when he was here, went by Brother Bill. So I'll hold back on my anecdote about the brother. He once called me a tool on the internet.

He's very active in the... Now, we're not live right now on Periscope. We will be live again on thursday with mike richards so please go to periscope i want to ask you about that in a moment but uh what am i saying here except that neil the brother is very active on periscope so he'll he'll he'll write in lots of statements and questions but uh neil as i've told you i'm so busy doing 100 things during the recordings uh the one thing i'm not doing is reading the comments as they come in. So I always read them after the recording.

So here you're going to pester me about why I don't want Periscope. No, no, no. I think it's because we're going to do a thousand things in this episode. It's not the distraction that I'm looking for. I like to keep the mystery. I always said that the audio is mandatory if you're coming on Toronto Mike. This is a podcast.

But the video is... Amazing. I haven't been here in a month. And all of a sudden, you've got these new policies, terms and conditions that you have to pretend to read in order to be on the show.

The bottom line is I won't force video on any guest. And I'm not forcing it on you. And I'm not even upset that you don't on the show. The bottom line is I won't force video on any guest. And I'm not forcing it on you. And I'm not even upset that you don't want the video. I was happy not to have the video for this episode. This is audio only. But what do you think of the new configuration? Because it's never been like this.

I'm a total hypocrite. Because whenever I've been able to catch the live stream. I've watched. I've watched Gino Vanelli. Live on Periscope. What did you think? That cut out before the end. It was disappointing.

Then I had to wait for the audio version to come online. I want to say that was intentional to whet your appetite and make you listen. But that app, the Periscope app, which is owned by Twitter, crashed a couple of times on me. It crashed at 45 minutes into the Gino episode. And it crashed recently. I had Elvis on to talk about the G me. It crashed at 45 minutes into the Gino episode and it crashed recently. I had Elvis on to talk about the Gino. It's only crashing when we talk about Gino Vanelli, but I need to ask you the question I used to ask Elvis all the time. In fact, I would say,

Elvis, did you listen to these episodes? And Elvis never listened and I found it very depressing, but you actually listened. So can I ask you, Mark Weisblatt from 1236, how has April been in terms of Toronto Mike Real Talk? Any highlights? Well, I mean, the Gino Vanelli episode is the one that everyone is talking about. Especially when he rebuked you for being

on black cars. Get off black cars! That line is going on the Toronto Mike bingo card. So yeah, the visit from Gino, I thought that was a big deal. I mean, there's only one Gino Vanelli, a Canadian icon. And he came to your basement. And I think based on some of the comments you received,

there were a lot of people out there who didn't realize that they were Gino Vannelli fans, right? They've heard his music all through their lives. He got started around 1973. That must have been his first hit. People Gotta Move, 73, 74. Second album, A&M Records. That's where he had the clip from Casey Kasem. And thank you so much. Thank you for hooking me up, pointing me to where the clips are of Casey Kasem introducing Gino. I think that made a big difference in differentiating this interview of Gino with the 100 other interviews. The 100 other interviews where they ask him about black cars. So from people got to move to Black Cars and Wild Horses. In between there was I Just Wanna Stop. Big hit.

So big it was parodied on SCTV. Right. It parodied everywhere. I think it was number one, definitely number one in Canada. It was top five in the States, am I right? And somewhere in there, Living Inside Myself. By the way, let's quickly? And somewhere in there, Living Inside Myself. Living Inside Myself. By the way, let's quickly,

just because you mentioned it quickly, this is Gino saying get off black cars. I want to know if you, at the time, regarded black cars as any sort of, I joke that it's don't call it a comeback. Can we get off black cars? Oh, God. There's only half an hour more on black cars. We can move on to another cut

from the same album here. I got more Black Cars questions. You know what? You're breaking my heart, Gino. Can we get off Black Cars? I'm going to wake up in the middle of the night tonight in a cold sweat. Did Gino really say that? You remind me of my parish priest. Get off of it, I said.

Classic moment there. But a lot of people, or at least one commenter, anon and on, was convinced that you were fixated upon black cars for the entire episode. Yeah, and I noticed we had a little back and forth in the comments where he felt we slagged him on the Elvis episode about Gino,

and he stopped commenting. We might have seen the last of it. I can't afford to lose listeners, okay? Well, he said he would be waiting for us to cover it here in the 1236 obituary section. I don't know if he meant that it would be an obituary for the Gino Vanelli episode. What percentage, you heard the episode of Gino Vanelli,

what percentage approximately, what percentage of that episode would you say was Black Cars-centric? Oh, I don't know. What? 30? 40? 10%! So Gino had like a 15-year hit-making career.

You know, the fact that he took a couple of breaks along the way from his first hit to the last time that he was really played on the radio, of course, with Canadian content rules, he's still never really gone away. That's a really long time for a guy to have been that successful through his 20s and 30s. So of all the media appearances he did, he was even interviewed by Steve Paikin. I think they might have banked that one

for when Steve is on vacation because they didn't show it right away um he was on uh ted wallachian interviewed gino and gino asked him to talk about black cars i saw that uh bill king wrote about that and bill king who is of course the musical director of the ted wallachian show i guess that's his title but he uh he said that yeah he gino literally said ask me about black cars meanwhile he's telling me uh get off black cars he's telling ted ask me about black cars so a little mixed messaging there so uh out of all the episodes uh through april gino vanelli is the one i think that's enshrined as a toronto mic it's a class to remember i remember. I'm a big Blue Jay fan who loved Tom and Jerry on CJCL,

calling these games forever. I hope the Geno ep doesn't detract from a couple of eps that were kind of sandwiched. Geno was the meat in the Murray McLaughlin, Jerry Howard sandwich. Murray was great. Then Geno comes and eclipsesarth sandwich. Murray was great. Then Gino comes and eclipses that, but Murray was fantastic. And then Jerry Howarth was just the kindest guy

who was so giving during 90 minutes where I was able to play the clips and ask him anything. So I hope people, especially anyone who ever enjoyed the Blue Jays or any baseball, I hope people give the Jerry Howarth episode a listen as well. Who else was in here during April?

What else did I miss? Recently, Stu Stone was in here on Sunday and Gare Joyce yesterday. And there was other great episodes. I've got to check my notes. I don't know. I didn't take note of them all, but it was a good month. Well, I haven't been here in over 30 days, and we're recording on April 30th, so I got down in

the last day of the month, and you've got a few episodes coming up with people that we have talked about here in the monthly 1236 recap. Jamar. Yeah, Jamar McNeil. Your man, and I've been talking about Master T for a long time. He's coming in, which will be good. The next episode is actually Mike Richards, who's been on a few times, but he's got stuff to say. He's full value. He shoots from the hip.

Lots of good stuff coming up. How are things going at 1236 Enterprises? I'm not sure right now. Still working with St. Joseph Media after the parent company acquired all of the print publications from Rogers. So we're going through a period now where McLean's and Chatelaine, Hello Canada, Today's Parent, Flair, Canadian Business, these will all become sister publications to 1236. So I have a bit of an aim to try and figure out how I can integrate what I've been doing all this time

with what the company has planned for these other magazines. The original thing was to be an offshoot, a sideline of Toronto life, and that's still the case. That definitely applies. Let's just say that I've got irons in the fire and no idea how all of it is going to turn out. There's other things that I want to do. You had another great guest, Michael Barclay. Oh, yes, of course. He said he's looking for work, right? He just came out and mentioned that he's done all the promo he wants for the tragically hip book, and he's looking for that next gig. I mean, he worked as a copy editor at McLean's for a long time, and they had so many rounds of layoffs over there,

for a long time, and they had so many rounds of layoffs over there, ended up being caught somewhere in the undertow. Still doing the 1236.ca newsletter, but also watching what's on the horizon because I've got time to do other things and the liberty to do them. I wanted to get into the podcast business. Yes. Not as a voice necessarily. Doesn't mean that I have to be the host. I would end up doing it by default because there would be nobody else that I could think of to be qualified for what I would have to offer. But I did that

Canada Land podcast thinking, okay, maybe this will turn into something because I talked about my hundreds of podcast subscriptions trying to seem like some sort of authority on the emerging industry in Canada. And guess what? Nobody called. The phone never rang. Crickets. People love your appearances here. Does this mean that I have to do all of this myself? That I always have to be the guy behind the microphone? Don't you want to control your own destiny that way? Would you trust another voice? Are you looking for some kind of an actor? I'm not sure. I don't know.

It depends where the opportunities are. But I'm doing other journalism stuff as well. Not just the 1236 newsletter but that is what i'm here to promote and the idea is that if i come on here enough times i'll get more subscribers tuned into what i've been trying to do where are my new subscribers let's uh see how many we get today everybody's go to 1236.ca and subscribe to this fantastic week daily newsletter. I love it. And the platform that I signed up

with, Substack, is getting a bit more attention. It's still early days. We're going to see where that goes. Okay, we'll see where it goes. I see that you tweet out that you're the second most popular newsletter there. Is that possible? Yeah, sometimes. Then I slip to number three, number four.

I don't know what their metric is for these rankings, and maybe it rankles them to see that, you know, what is really like a regional newsletter focused on Toronto, Ontario, maybe all of Canada. Well, this is how I feel whenever, because I'm, this morning, I was just curious because I have a potential sponsor and I was curious where am I ranking right now in my category

on Apple Podcasts. So I just popped in and I was 24 or something like that and I was looking at some big names ahead of me like This American Life and Dirty John and all these guys and I'm looking and I'm thinking, this is a Canadian chart and my show is called Toronto Mic'd. You can actually carry the country being gta centric like i can't imagine there's a lot of people listening to the

show i mean this is where most of it happens where when it comes to like media and arts and culture there's going to be some toronto component you've got the cbc based in downtown Toronto apologizing all the time for the fact that they're coming out of the biggest city in Canada. They want to relate to all these smaller places. I don't seem to have that problem. But, yeah, in that respect, we're all in the same game. No one knows where this media thing is going to go. We're on the cusp of a new decade here. I mean, what are the 20s going to be all about? All the signals seem to indicate that it's

going to be about being more private, that there's not going to be the same level of oversharing of, you know, people going on social networks, trying to build a random audience out of nowhere, that now it's going to be about people, be about people chatting in groups behind the curtain using these apps like WhatsApp or Slack, even direct messages on Twitter, that there's no longer going to be that whole performative thing that carried us through the past decade. And what does it mean for anybody in communications? How are you going to be able to build a brand? What is it going to take to have that authority to be recognized? That's what I signed up for.

I'm still waiting to get there. You need to print hundreds of 1236 stickers and plaster the city with them. That's what you need to do. And this is not a bad idea, by the way. No, it's a great idea. I'm going to give you a few gifts now. Now you've already got the lasagna and the beer,

but now I have gifts from StickerU. That's where you make your customized, your own customized stickers, labels, decals. In fact, I've got a kick-ass decal going up on this wall behind me here that hopefully will be up before the Mike Richards episode on Thursday so people can see it. But you can, you know, you can order just one sticker or as many as you want. StickerU.com. They're great people. So I

went to pick this up just yesterday. So what I have for you, Mark, is I have a Toronto Mike sticker. Now, that's my logo. My wife designed that logo. And seeing it in a sticker yesterday, and I put one on my bike over there, and seeing it on a sticker, it sort of, like, it seemed real. Like, yeah, that's a brand. Like, there's some weight to it.

Like, it just, it makes things different when you put things on a sticker. So that's for you. I can't wait to find out where the Toronto Mike sticker ends up. Because you're a Toronto guy at 1236, this is a cool six sticker. You know, again, no visual here for anybody. Looks like something that Norm Kelly would want to sell.

And I got it for free. And the I, yes, right. And the I is the CN Tower. And this is all thanks to stickeru.com. So here's a sticker you sticker so you remember where to go when you want to get your 1236 stickers. So a sticker you is not affiliated with Deco labels and tags, right? No.

So if you want to stick it to the Premier of Ontario, make sure to get your stickers from sticker you. That should be their new tagline, unaffiliated with Deco. No, these guys are great people. StickerU. So we're all set on this front. Maybe we, well, let's do it. Let's talk about the song that you brought me.

So might be the last time I play it for the season. So let's enjoy it. This is courtesy of you, Mark Weisblatt. Courtesy, I remember the teacher's name. What's her name? Mrs. Green. Madame Green. It was a French teacher, right?

You always had to call them Madame. Madame or Mademoiselle, as I recall. Even if they didn't speak French. And I don't think that my grade school French teacher knew how to speak French. That ought to be, maybe Doug will fix that. That's no good. I think it should be mandatory that the French teachers speak French. And if the French teachers had just gone to Camp Tournesol when they were a kid,

they would be fluent in French. If your child is 4 to 14 years of age, you should strongly consider sending them to Camp Tournesol. They have French camps for francophone, French immersion, or even children with no French experience. Overnight experiences, day camps. Go to camptea.ca. They have a new concern for the environment camp called Love My Planet.

That looks pretty cool. Go to camptea.ca, and when you do register your child for Camp Turnasol, use the promo code, this is important, Mike2019. Mike2019. You'll save some money, and it lets Camp Turnasol know that it works. Sponsoring the real talk on Toronto Mic'd. Bye-bye, Nana. Hope to hear you again soon. Bye-bye, Nana.

Hope to hear you again soon. Now, Mark, we've been pretty good at hitting the two-hour, two-and-a-half-hour mark the last few months. I'm going to see if I can do it again, okay? That's our challenge today. And where to begin? Oh, I know where I want to begin. Hopefully still a future guest. Like, I know I dropped hints about it and it never happened but i'm told it's still probably gonna happen i just have to be really really patient for corey hart to make his appearance on the toronto mic podcast Just a little more time is all we're asking for.

Tell me, Mark, about the death of the Rio movie theater. Just a little more time could open. You know that the Rio movie theater is in this video for Never Surrender by Corey Hart. I did not know that. I only know that Steve Anthony is in the Boy in the Box video. Well, I mean, this was at a time when they wanted to simulate Corey Hart as an angry young man walking the streets of Times Square. And there was really only one theater by the mid-'80s

that could simulate that grindhouse effect, and that was the Rio, which was still standing into the late 20th century. It had been there as a movie theater in one form or another since 1913, but what we must remember is the role that it played on the Yonge Street Strip of the 1980s. You must have walked by the Rio in all of its glory. They ran four feature films. Admission was probably, I don't know, three, four, five bucks. It appealed to everyone that wanted the experience of planting themselves down in a movie theater and taking a nap. Never surrender, but the Rio movie theater has surrendered.

Okay, so when the Rio theater closed, it was 1991, 1992. I remember this because I did an article about it for my Ryerson journalism class. And I'm pretty sure I was at the Rio Theater for its very last weekend of business in early 1992. I don't think I have a copy of my school assignment anymore. Of course, Ryerson was right around the corner there from young, between Girard and Gould, north of Dundas. And as I saw the theater, the building was up for lease, it was a point of some curiosity. What goes on in there? So for the first time ever in its last few weeks of existence, I set foot in the Rio Theater.

Early one morning, the four features started at 9 o'clock. It was 9 a.m. They were showing First Blood with Sylvester Stallone. Of course, the Rambo movie. I got to go into the projection booth, whatever conversations I was having

for the idea that I would be writing about what happened to this theater, and I ended up crossing paths with a guy named Mark Ulster, who was the descendant of the family that ran the theater in its glory days. I think he might have also been a journalism student at Ryerson,

whatever it was, and he claims the theater closed Ryerson, whatever it was. And he claims the theater closed in 1991. But this was early 1992. I think I had an argument online with him about this. And I kind of conceded that it was 1991 because he had it published in so many places that that's when it closed. 91, 92, whatever the difference. It was somewhere in that winter that the theater was gone. He managed to hoard all of the memorabilia,

all of the posters and the lobby cards and the signs and everything that had to do with the theater as it was winding down. He managed to get his hands on it. He has a Facebook account. He has Twitter, always memories of the Rio Theater. It's a fascinating part of the history of the Yonge Street Strip. But I was there at the end lurking around the place. I talked to the projectionists.

It must have been then when I learned that the movie theater projectionists were still unionized. And Toronto, did you know this? No. It was actually possible to have like a decent middle class life as a movie projectionist in Toronto. They were all very protected, very well taken care of. They got pensions, everything like that. And it ended up being expensive for these movie theaters. That's why so many of the single screen cinemas shut down because they had to pay a union wage for somebody to be manning the booth, whether or not anybody showed up to a movie. Ended up sitting there to

watch a film, and they would try and diversify the program. I mean, I don't know what was going on in the theater most of the time. The patrons, you would say, were not on the highest level of the societal pecking order. I mean, who would plant themselves in a movie theater for an entire day to watch four movies in a row? Not to pass judgment about what they were doing in the seats, but there was definitely an element of people who didn't have anywhere else to go who were just hanging out in there. So they always had an adult movie in the lineup. So for my final visit to the Rio Theater,

I ended up sitting through a screening of the movie Emmanuel in Bangkok. But it's not as sleazy as it seems because the version they were showing had so many edits in it that they took out any of the scenes that wouldn't have passed the Ontario censor board. So I think I watched, I don't know,

a 30 or 40 minute version of Emmanuel in Bangkok. And that was my last Rio movie theater experience. I don't recall. I was there with a friend. I don't recall being propositioned for anything while I was sitting there, although maybe a little bit scared about what might have been going on around me.

Okay, speaking of Yonge Street, 333 Yonge Street, the old home of HMV, and they're getting, it's going to be a weed store. Yeah, so it's a Rio theater. That was the point, I guess, of bringing it up here, right? It's just been reduced to rubble. It ended up being a Granada TV rental store.

Later on, it was an adults-only video. And then going back to its roots, they still had some peep shows on the upper level, but yeah, now they've demolished the theater. Any trace of what the building used to be isn't there anymore. That was the whole point, bringing up the story. Did I digress too much?

Is that a problem here? Let me say this. If we're going to get this to two and a half hours, I'm happy to have you digress, but we're going to have to... We mentioned the Rio Theater memories because, in fact, any trace of the building is no longer there. And that just happened in April. Right.

That it's now a pile of dirt. Going on down the street on Yonge, we're waiting for the opening, 333 Yonge. We must have talked about this last month. It's coming soon, right? Yeah, we probably did talk about it last month. Tokyo Smoke. Right, yes we probably did talk about tokyo smoke right yes we did talk about there'll be a cannabis retailer a little bit north of where the rio theater was

no and uh also a little bit south now uh when i was a teenager buying lots of cds uh i always made my way to that neck of the woods because as we've talked many times there was a sam sam the record man of course and hmv was at 333 and there was a Sam the Wrecking Man, of course, and HMV was at $333,000 and there was a period of time when there was an A&A nearby, but that was basically, I'd go there and then I'd see who had it for the cheapest price.

But this is a great segue into Brian Gerstein's question for you. So Brian's from Property in the Six. Here's the robot we affectionately know as Brian. and myself in about a month all ready to move in for 2023 contact me now by phone or text at 416 873-0292 and i can put you on my vip first access list for these both investor friendly and end user suites mark what was your most memorable mall record store toronto or elsewhere and is there a backstory of interest or some interesting fact about that store like if it still exists? And if not, what replaced it?

For me, growing up in Montreal, I had a discus at the Cavendish Mall near me, now long gone. But my treasure chest was picking up bootleg Beatles and Dylan CDs at Rock on Stock on Crescent Street. Though not a mall and long gone as well. I paid $50 each, which is nuts now that I think about it, but they were such prized possessions. Well, I asked about the mall record stores on Twitter this month because the Dufferin Mall was getting a record store again. Sunrise Records, which was taken over by a new owner out of Hamilton, Ontario,

a guy named Doug Putman. He also bought the HMV chain in the United Kingdom. So he snapped up what was left of HMV in Canada, and now he owns it in its homeland. As part of the deal, they wouldn't let him change a name, so it still has to be HMV, which has led to some curiosity about whether the HMV name will end up coming back to Canada.

The Dufferin Mall had two incarnations of an HMV. They had one there for a few years, and then the chain ended up going bankrupt, and then when it was resurrected by a restructuring firm, it opened up again, and then it closed when the whole chain went under. In 2017, it must have been, because when that HMV closed, Duffer Mall was replaced by a temporary store

that only sold fidget spinners. Remember, everyone had to have a fidget spinner. That was not that long ago, and I think they're all gone now. I don't know. So as for my own memory, so it got me thinking, right? I mean, here's Sunrise getting back into the business of mall record stores. What were the mall record stores that inspired me while I was growing up?

The nearby mall to where I lived was Bayview Village, Bayview and Shepherd. I don't know, have you ever been there? No. The mall had, I think, one of the first franchises of Sam the Record Man. And as far as like being a preteen was concerned, shopping for records,

I wasn't going to get to downtown Toronto. Young and Dundas was a long way away from where I grew up. But I could always count on knowing what was up at Sam's at Bayview Village. So I think I got a lot of cultural education out of this place, even though I was always resisting to buy any records there. Why? Because I always knew that they would be a buck or two cheaper downtown. Yeah, that was it.

I had a Sam the Record Man near Jane and Bloor, and I would go there because I was going to school near there. And I guess the CD I wanted would be, for example, it might be $18.99 at that Sam the Record Man. But I knew when I went downtown, it would be, for example, it might be $18.99 at that Sam the Record Man. But I knew when I went downtown, it would be, for example, $14.99. And look, I mean, this is a small difference when it comes to something that you would actually buy and cherish and enjoy. It seemed like a lot. I think when you were a kid, you look at it like, hey, I'm not paying extra buck or two.

On that note, okay, so my 17-year-old has these Bluetooth headphones, and they sound amazing, but they're like $200, okay? That's about what these things cost him, okay? I'm so scared he'll lose these stupid things. He's got these $200 headsets, and they connect to his iPhone, which his mom got him, and I don't know what the retail price of that is, but that's hundreds of dollars. And I was thinking, I remember distinctly at the exact same age, I had a Sony Walkman and I would bargain with cash deals, guys on Yonge Street to see if I

could pick my, whenever it would break or whatever, I needed a new one because it was stolen or broke or whatever. I would see, can I pick up another good Sony Walkman for $50 cash? That was like my target. And that was it. You know, the headphones came, the headphones were nothing. They're like, buy whatever. So the whole thing that I would, my portable music system would cost, and again, I'm not adjusting for inflation here, but you know, $50 in like, you know, 1989 money

versus my son, who's, his system is, I mean, you're approaching $1,000. So what you're saying, like every generation of dads before you is that your teenage boy does not understand the value of a dollar. He doesn't know how good he has it is what I think I'm feeling, but he's got it good. All right. So when I asked on Twitter about the mall record store, what Brian brought up, and if

other people had memories of going to specific stores, it wasn't that came up over and over again. Can I guess? It was Music World. That's the one, yeah. You know, Music World was a big deal because they had Ticketmaster locations inside. And that was back in the days

when you had to line up on a Saturday morning to get the tickets. And I used to do that all the time. But when the wristband policy came into effect, you could get your wristband at a Music World and you could then come there on a Saturday morning and try to win the lottery and not have to get there at like

4 a.m. or something. So Music World had like a stranglehold, I guess, on the shopping mall business. They shut down in 2007, it must have been. They had one location, it was on the corner of Young and Gould. It was across from

Sam the Record Man, just north of where HMV was for all of those years. But, you know, it seemed like they figured out how to cater to that suburban Canadian customer in a way that the other stores never did. Either that, or they were just early to get into all the shopping malls. And the name just keeps coming up now and again, which is fascinating, right? Because, like, who thinks about Music World? Who remembers?

And yet, you know, sitting in people's basements are stacks of old cassettes that they bought at these stores that were very suburban. A guy that we know online, Photo Blair. Yes. I'm not sure exactly what's up with him, but we've reminisced a bit. He used to work at Music World at the Dawn Mills Center, the shopping mall over there. At one point, I went to summer school. I took an economics course at dawn mills collegiate around the time he was working there so i was i was trying to figure out whether he was in fact the

sarcastic guy behind the counter okay let me put out a call rebuke me when i try to apply for a job let me put out a call if photo blair is hearing our voices right now can photo blair please send an email to mike at torontomike.com because I have a question about his Twitter presence. So Photo Blair, contact Mike if you can hear these words. Some other comments I got, one of them mentioned the Scarborough Town Centre HMV. At the time, the HMV was in its glory downtown.

I guess if you grew up in Scarborough, it was a big deal that they had an HMV was in its glory downtown. I guess if you grew up in Scarborough, it was a big deal that they had an HMV there. I'll throw in, Sherway had an HMV, would be the same deal for the Westenders who didn't get downtown that easily. Although it was Scarborough Town Center where Naughty by Nature did an in-store,

ended up having one of those shopping mall riots. Trutch MC dug that band. Other comments I got about Sam the Record Man stores included the fact that there is still one Sam the Record Man left in a shopping mall. I'm sure we've talked about that here over the years. In the Quint Mall in Belleville. I'm always looking out to see what's up with this store. At one point, the owner was looking to get it designated

as a tourist attraction, which seemed a bit dodgy, that it wouldn't really qualify as a private business inside a shopping mall. But the fact that Sam the Record Man had this franchised store model, and this was the last Sam standing, it's a point of curiosity. Not only does a Quint Mall have a Sam's, there's also a Sunrise. This might be the only shopping mall in the Western world that has two record stores.

Very interesting. I don't know how many records they actually sell at Sunrise. Seems to be mostly based on selling this licensed merchandise. Yeah, memorabilia, right? I mean, DVD box sets ain't what they used to be, although those are still around. And vinyl records. The guy now running the chain mentioned that's a big deal,

and they think they can do well with that in the UK. It just seems to be a good place to make some sort of impulse buy of something or where grandma can figure out how to buy a birthday present. So that's where we're at now with the mall record store, that it ain't what it used to be, but hey, look, kudos to Dufferin Mall. So that when we're, after we buy our condos in the Galleria Mall. Right. If it's still around by then, going to Dufferin Mall.

Just the Dufferin 29 South, I believe. Will still give us that experience of being able to walk past the shopping mall record store. I'd love to know if it's still the Dufferin 29, because when I worked at the Galleria Mall, that was the bus that got you from Dufferin and Bloor to Dufferin and DuPont. Dufferin 29, maybe it still is.

Now, in other Toronto news, Faith Goldie is in the news, but do you want to set up the clip? Tell us, who is Faith Goldie married to? Faith goldie is in the news but do you want to set up the clip there's a so faith tell us who is faith goldie mary who is who is what faith goldie is uh perhaps the biggest newsmaker in canada right now is that right uh her name comes up all over the place because she's the face of the white supremacy movement and the liberal party Party of Canada is trying to make a big issue of the fact that there are some nasty people out there,

especially on the internet, mostly commenting anonymously or under pseudonyms in different online forums. The Globe and Mail had a big weekend cover story about that. I don't want to underestimate that this might be a bit of a problem, but it's a fact that certain people seem to be leaning on it a little too much. Like, say, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada. Whenever somebody criticizes him,

they must be in league with these neo-Nazis. So Faith Goldie, who ran for mayor of Toronto last fall, has become a face of the movement. And like it or not, she's getting plenty of coverage, partly because of the fact that she was called to City Hall just yesterday. And, you know, she pleaded her case not to have to go through a whole compliance audit to look into where she got the money for a personal donation to her mayoral campaign. This is up to the forensic auditor appointed by the city of Toronto. the city of Toronto, and she tried to put up a spirited fight, but this organization, Anti-Hate Canada, managed to prevail, and now Faith Goldie is nervous that they're going to start promoting about where the deposits in her personal bank account were coming from. Then she has a live stream where she goes on about all these forces that are aligned against her, Canadian Anti-Hate Network

and different journalists. Look, I mean, we've talked about her intermittently on the podcast. Not too much. I think I even gave her more credit as being this kind of outsider media personality. But over time, you just start to get irritated with all the oxygen that she takes up. Now, more often than not,

when I see the Faith Goldie news on your list, more often than not, I leave it on the cutting room floor. That's precisely the... Okay, well, look, I mean, I think it's been defined that her cause here is white nationalism. And there's a nasty undercurrent to all of this stuff. Well, I'm going to play a clip, but can you introduce to the audience, who is Faith Goldie married to?

Well, Faith Goldie married this guy who he was written about like 15 years ago for going to private school and being found out, allegedly, that he was behind some anti-Semitic postings to a message board. This was a scandal at the private school that he was at. So that's what you're thinking of when Faith Goldie got married. No, I'm confusing. You know what I'm confusing?

I'm confusing Faith Goldie with Jill Colton. That's what I'm confusing. Jill Colton! Yes. My apologies to, I don't know if I should apologize to anybody, but I'm sorry. Okay. I've confused the two people.

You almost had her on Toronto Mike, did you? Really, almost? Well, via Twitter, she was into it, and then I got cold feet, and then it never happened. Because her story at the time was, well, I worked for CP24, I was a weather lady, and I'm against corporate media,

and I no longer believe in what they were doing at Bell, and now I'm going to go out on my own. I'm going to be a YouTuber. And she seemed to be involved somehow in the US Tea Party movement. I guess you would categorize her as alt-light. That maybe she was making insinuations as far as conservative politics were concerned. Yeah, we're maybe moving toward the fringes, but I don't think you can get the kind of attention

you're looking for by being moderate. So I think she cranked up the rhetoric in a different direction, found her being a guest on Faith Goldie's YouTube show. Okay, this is how it's all got conflated in my head here. So who is Jill Colton married to? Oh, Ben Mercer.

Ben Mercer is a guy who at one point was on News Talk 1010 CFRB. I think after John Donabee was shown the door, they gave Ben Mercer the weekend morning show. And he did the trivia thing over there. He was working with 1010 for a while. At the same time, his wife was on CP24. So is Jason Agnew doing that now? Who does that now?

Agnew? He's got the trivia show. Jason Agnew got the job. They went to Sudbury or something. Husband and wife. Ben Mercer and Jill Colton. The clip I'm about to play. The clip you're about to play. If it's a clip I'm thinking of. You want me to play it first? Is Jill Colton and her husband, Ben Mercer.

Right. A guy who's gone through a whole bunch of mainstream media gigs and still has one on Zoom or radio where he does this trivia show on Thursday and Friday afternoons. So it was much to my surprise that you would see somebody who's working with Zoomer somewhere in that Faith Goldie show. They've made a crack about him being a Zoomer showing up on YouTube with Faith Goldie.

Here it is. I think there's a few things there. Of course, people talk about birth rates and stuff like that. But, you know, there was a baby boom. And then we can't just grow exponentially. So at some point, there will be a tapering off. But also, I don't know, if you roll back the clock 150 years ago, all of us, even Nick, what's he, 21? He probably had four kids by now because he'd be trying to run a farm. He'd be able to turn the butter and feed the cows and all that. It's just the number of people that you

need around, you know, like people would procreate for to have more help around the farm. It's not really the world that we're in anymore. I think people say, well, if I have a kid, I want to be able to provide that kid tons of resources so they have more advantages. So I think there's some natural, I mean, you know, third world countries becoming second and first world, you do see family size shrinking over time. So some of it's not necessarily a race or an entire continent is just rolling over and dying. The real question that I would raise is that if we do peter out in population, does that

mean we need tons and tons of immigration? If a nation decides it wants to just shrink and shrink and shrink until it's just one guy left in the country, that's up to the people of that country. I don't know that the international body needs to pressure or whatever. Totally different discussion. But I don't know that having more children is necessarily the best thing from an all-around perspective. More people might not be the answer to more success in the Western world or planet Earth. Okay, now what would you think if a guy came on Toronto Mic'd and started blathering about that sort of stuff? What would your reaction be?

I'm trying to understand what he's talking about. Is his point that we don't need to... Well, he doesn't want to come out and agree full on. So he's anti-immigration. I don faith. So he's anti-immigration. I don't know that he's anti-immigration. But he seems, if a country wants to contract and go down to one people, that's up to the citizens. Like, it's clearly, he's being a bit

subtle and cute about it, but he's basically saying no more joiners. He's speaking in code. Yeah, and then I think you talked over, but at the end, is that Jill, or is that... Yeah, that's Jill Colton. Who basically comes out and she over, but at the end, is that Jill? Yeah, that's Jill Colton. Who basically comes out and she spells it out at the end, basically.

Okay, so he didn't even use his last name. He called himself Ben Colton. Ben and Jill Colton on the Faith Goldie Show. Now, I noticed this. Might have been the only person watching on double speed, flipping through it, who knew who Ben was, and ended up generating a discussion on the soundy message board about whether or not he should be fired from Zoomer Radio. What do you think?

Well, there's no smoking gun there. He's dancing on the- Well, it's a lot of babble. That was just- Right. Like, there's no, I couldn't, there's no, you know, clip you can pull where, hey, that's, you know, that's racist, or's racist. It's just uncomfortable. Are you sure?

I know. I haven't listened too much. Listen, what can you do these days to seem outrageous, to be so far outside of the box? And I think it's showing up on a YouTube show with Faith Goldie would be an example maybe of pushing it as far as what you can get away with and be a mainstream media figure at the same time.

Last time I checked, he's still with Zuma Radio. He's still doing his music, Face the Music trivia thing on Thursday and Friday afternoons. So good luck, Ben Mercer. Let's get some celebrity news here. This is a great cut from Steel Wheels. When Steel Wheels came out, remember 30 years ago,

it was a joke that the Rolling Stones were elderly. The Steel Wheelchairs tour was a crack that people That's a Simpsons joke, yeah. And they were like the same age

that we are right now. No, I definitely remember this because I was working the C&E this summer. They played the grandstand. And yeah, so I remember it very well. Almost Hear You Sigh, which was on a list, a great listicle on Pitchfork.com by Stuart Berman, where he listed the greatest Rolling Stones songs that don't sound like the Rolling Stones. And this was at the end of the list, 1989, maybe the last time that you could tell that the Rolling Stones were banking on having a hit single.

So true. I think there were like three hits off that album, and I'm not sure there's been a hit since. Well, there were some airplay and attention for what they did in the 90s, and beyond that, a few different Rolling Stones albums, and they did that blues album a couple years ago. Mostly, though, the tradition of putting out a new album before they go on tour, that doesn't seem as necessary anymore. You just imagine Mick, Keith, and the boys sitting around in 1988, 1989, wondering how do we get played on the radio? How can we have a song that's as big a hit

as Chicago Look Away or something like that where an older rock band made a comeback? You're the inspiration. Yeah, they conjured up this power ballad and it's a different relic. Or Beach Boys Kokomo. Of like the last time that the Rolling Stones power ballad and it's a different relic. Or Beach Boys Kokomo. Of like the last time that the Rolling Stones ever tried to have a hit, almost.

Here you sign. And the Rolling Stones are in the news and the GTA here because, of course, they had to postpone their gig in Burroughs Creek because Mick had heart surgery. And would you have a Rolling Stones concert without Mick Jagger? No way. Could you?

I mean, all these bands go out on tour with different singers. The guy died from street heart, and they hired the guy from Harlequin to take over. I know that's not the Rolling Stones. You've got Mick Jagger impersonators everywhere, a guy from the Blushing Brides been doing it in Toronto for 40 years. Could he have filled in for Mick? They announced the biggest show of the summer.

It's going to be at Burles Creek with the Rolling Stones and postponed it due to Mick Jagger needing surgery, and Ron Wood reports that he's doing all right. You mentioned Street Heart, so Nature's Way. Right? This is Street Heart? Yeah, and as far as moving to the fringes of Canadiana is concerned, Street Heart have some album that came out their last hurrah here

with the singer Kenny Shields. Died a couple years ago. And this was the last song that he recorded with them. It was a cover of Nature's Way. Kind of sounds like The Flame by Cheap Trick. Yeah. It's nice. It's a lot better than this next band here I'm going to play.

Can you name that band, Mr. Weissblatt? It's got a very famous band member. Oh, this is terrible. And I don't feel bad for saying that because the bass player in the band agrees. And who is this bass player? It took like over 20 years for Keanu Reeves to admit that Dogstar, this group that he went on tour with, that they sort of sucked, and they could have used a better singer. Now, Keanu was not the singer.

Part of the act back then, this is after Speed came out, that Keanu Reeves, you know, he just wanted to rock and roll. So he'd go out on tour, he would do like this sullen thing on the stage where he'd be, you know, plucking away at the bass

with this other guy being this post-grunge singer and someone on the drums in this rock trio and you were supposed to sort of take them seriously because if you were a Keanu fan you should respect his artistic vision and they would give interviews you know when they would have interviews like the three guys and Keanu Reeves would be sitting there but but the thing was Keanu Reeves would do the least of the talking and when they would be interviewed by much music

or something you're supposed to be like reverential towards what Keanu Reeves wants no Sandra Bullock question nothing about Bill and Ted were just in it for the music and I guess I mean he trolled the media that Dogstar got a lot of attention. Here, a cover story of GQ magazine, April 2019.

Keanu Reeves admitting that Dogstar was never all that good. Now, at least with 30 seconds to Mars, like at least they had radio hits. Like you could hear one of their songs on 102.1. And also the famous guy is a singer. Now, at least with 30 seconds to Mars, at least they had radio hits. You could hear one of their songs on 102.1. And also the famous guy is a singer. Right, that's a key. That's right. Jared Leto. Right.

Of course, from My So-Called Life. I know he's done a lot of stuff since then, including winning Academy Awards, but to me, he's the guy from My So-Called Life, which was a great damn series. Only got 13 episodes. So we can kill Dogstar here. I don't want to put down this Dogstar.

Yeah, I think that's the last time anyone's going to listen to Dogstar. And I went to their concert in Toronto. Dogstar? The Government Club. Get out of here. Wow. Were you doing like an interview or an explanation? I wrote a cover story for iWeekly about Keanu and all of his ties to

Toronto. 22 years later, we're talking about the same sort of thing. Yeah, we pretty much, I think it was last episode we

talked about, or maybe two episodes ago, we talked about people who have connections to the city. But speaking of people with

connections to Toronto, this is Nav the rapper. How did he hack his way to, how did he get his way to number one on the Billboard chart? Well, rap albums now mostly get their attention from streaming services. But the methodology on the Billboard chart, because it's tied to the music business and how how they imagine that they're supposed to make money you still get big points on the charts for for sales so selling albums is considered like a much greater weight in the total when they do the metrics for how many people have been buying an album,

they count streaming, but they don't count streaming as much as purchasing. So in the case of Nav, we had a situation where, yeah, he managed to game the chart, have a number one album, a rapper from Toronto who never got any attention around here, even though he was affiliated with The Weeknd. And he's on this track. Well, this is The Weeknd here, right? This is The Weeknd, right? What a surprise then to find out here was a rapper from Toronto with the number one album on the Billboard chart. And a complete enigma as far as the media was concerned. What would happen is if you bought some merchandise from NAV's website, they would bundle in a digital download album.

And somewhere in there with the merchandise, it also gave you a pre-sale code so that you could buy his concert tickets first. And this also counts on the Billboard album chart. So it was all very crafty and cunning. And whatever they did, it ended up with the guy being able to brag that he had number one album in the USA. But I mean, it's kind of important that The Weeknd is all over this song. Like, I feel like that's a big part of this song's success. But what do I know?

Well, look, speaking of things that one day could be canceled, the lyrical content of songs by The Weeknd and his affiliates. I don't understand how these guys tend to get a pass. If you actually read the lyrics on Genius.com, what they tend to be about, I don't know if this is something you want your teenagers to be listening to.

Maybe a lot of parents would be alarmed if they actually knew what was in the words of all these songs that the kids were streaming on Spotify. Somehow, speaking as a parent, I feel like art is different. It's different somehow. I do remember like in 2000 Eminem was talking about you know killing

his ex and I don't know throwing her in the trunk of his car or something but it was sort of like it didn't it wasn't the same you know what I mean because it's art but we have this discussion here once every few episodes it's still lewd and it's still rude and it's not the sort of thing you would want to promote

saying in polite society but it's still lewd, and it's still rude, and it's not the sort of thing you would want to promote saying in polite society. Chew that. But it's still big business, and it has been now since the days of gangsta rap. And Nav is the latest guy to get away with it, I guess, with no Canadian press attention until the other day. Gave an interview to the Toronto Star. Why? Because he told Ben Rayner of the Toronto Star

that his mom reads the newspaper. Ben Rayner, future guest on Toronto Mic whenever he gets back from Nunavut. What am I listening to here? Oh, this must be Frank Walker. She doesn't sound like a Frank. I'm in the bright lights, but yes, it is Frank Walker, but that's a woman's voice I'm hearing. So, pardon my ignorance, but yes, it is Frank Walker,

but that's a woman's voice I'm hearing, so. Where have you been, Mike? Have you looked at the Chum chart lately? No. The listing of songs on 104.5, which I still check after all these years. That's one of the things I want to be known for. When my life is over, they'll say, he was listening to Chum from cradle to grave.

He still checked the charts all along. And there, a new entry, number 38, Frank Walker, Heartbreak Back, with whoever the singer is. So is he the producer? All the songs, well, half the songs on the chart are credited to multiple artists. You've got, you know, featuring this and featuring that. This is what's happening now in music. Where have you been?

I know, I do know that because, you know, like Avicii and all these guys, they would have, you know, other singers on the tracks, but Avicii would get, like, top billing as the producer or whatever. Riley Beterer is the name of the singer here, if she deserves any credit. But Frank Walker is a significant name in Canadian history. Why? Because his mother is Belinda Stronach.

Wow. So Belinda Stronach's son and Frank Stronach's grandson has a hit on the chump chart. And he's been at it for a while. This is his first mainstream hit record. I think that's something more, I put it in the 1236 newsletter, naturally, but I think it's something that should get more attention.

The song came out last fall. It was one of those slow burners. It took like six months to get on Chum. But there it is. It's on the chart at the same time that his mother and his namesake grandfather are suing one another over control of the company. There's been some concern about Frank Stronach, the elder Frank Stronach's management style. What he's been doing with his billions of dollars that he made from Magna Auto Parts,

including paying, what, $10 million for a statue of a Pegasus horse beating up a dragon outside one of his racetracks. Frank was lamenting the future of horse racing. Horse racing ain't what it used to be. Were you ever into horse racing? No, no. I watched the Kentucky Derby, which I think is Saturday, and I watched the Preakness,

and I watched the Belmont Stakes, and that's pretty much it. Well, Frank has been invested in it, and I think he made a lot of money along the way. But yeah, from his daughter Belinda, also curiosity about what he was spending money on, including Frank's energy drink. Like Frank Stron launched his own d'angelo his own competitor to red bull and he got gene simmons to be the spokesman for frank's energy drink and then

belinda after she was in the canadian parliament said she was gonna start a record label with gene wow how did gene simmons gene simmons doesn't get out of bed for any less than what? $100,000? I'm not so sure about that. I think it's all negotiable with Gene. So a Stronach family may be struck out with Gene Simmons, but it turns out that Frank's grandson, Belinda's son,

she had in her early 20s, I think, his music career seemed to be turning into something. If, in fact, he got on the radio under genuine pretenses, then he could say he has a hit. That is a Toronto milestone to be on the chum chart.

At least I am paying attention. No, and speaking of the chum chart, every time you comment, so I typically talk about what was number one. This is for Remember the Time. I better open another beer for this one. Okay, so what are you opening there? Oh, careful, spilling on your jacket there.

Canuck Pale Ale. Excellent, enjoy. Who was it on Twitter that called me the drunk Jewish guy? Comes on your podcast. I think that was, oh, on Twitter, I saw, I had a comment of that nature, which I felt was anti-Semitic,

that I removed from TorontoMike.com. Well, that's always encouraging. There's no tolerance. It's always good to know that this is capable of going on here. Just from me talking in your basement every month. Well, I have a zero tolerance when it comes to such comments. Okay, remember the time.

I'm the one. I'm working on my own track here as far as remember the time is concerned. You usually have been leaning on Billboard. Were you doing also number one movies? I think I've been doing. TV shows? No, pretty much sticking to Billboard. I just did yesterday was The Fifth Dimension, Aquarius, and Let the Sunshine In.

Okay, well, forget about it, because I come packing my own version of a number one song. Set this up for me. This was, is it correct, this was number one on the chum charts 50 years ago? Yeah, at the end of April, 50 years ago, April 1969, the number one song on the 1050 Chum chart is one that you have written about at torontomike.com. Not just written about, but I am sourced in Wikipedia as like an authority on this subject. But we'll get to that. Let's hear it.

Come on, feet. Start moving. Got to get me there. Hey, hey. Come on feet, start moving, got to get me there 25 miles from home, girl My feet are hurting mighty bad Now I've been walking for three days and two lonely nights You know that I'm mighty mad But I got a woman waiting for me

That's gonna make this trip worth a while You see, she's got the kind of lovin' and the kissin' I'll make a man go stone wild So I got to keep on walkin' I got to walk on Edwin Starr's 25 Miles. I am so tired For Ed Keenan, it's one of his favorite songs of all time. stars 25 miles.

Fred Keenan. It's one of his favorite songs of all time. Number one on the Chum chart. Didn't get quite that high on the Billboard Hot 100. I think it made number six, but just like how we talked about Sir Douglas Quintet, Mendocino. Here was a song that was

top of the pops on 1050 Chum. Not long before Roger Ashby joined the station. That was August 1969. So that was the year. You gotta get Roger down

here to talk about some of these Chum hits that were bigger on there than any American radio station. Because Edwin Starr recorded for Motown, and 25 Miles was a bigger hit in Toronto than a lot of other places, and probably inspired a song that's been played on the radio every day since. And that was the crux of my entry about this song,

because if you listen to that part, that... That clearly, to me, that is the theme song to CBC's As It Happens. I did some Googling about this. I couldn't quite find a definitive answer to whether Edwin Starr got any credit from Moe Kaufman for inspiring his... Oh, for inspiring.

For inspiring his song. He doesn't have a writing credit. Or some writing credit. Or something. The other part of that entry I wrote, and I don't have it in front of me, but was that Edwin Starr himself had to give...

Who was it again? It was a famous R&B singer. He had to give credit to someone else because he borrowed the same part from somebody who had recorded it two years earlier so he had to give writing credit but when Mo Kaufman recorded this the version that we hear on As It Happens

Curried Soul was Mo Kaufman's right. It's only credited to Mo Kaufman. But, like, listen to this part. If anyone listens to CBC Radio, which I do, and I'm sure you have, that's As It Happens. Mojo Mama by Wilson Pickett.

Wilson Pickett. That was a song that you mentioned on torontomike.com. Right. So chronologically. But before that, it had a different title. It was an adaptation of a song by Hoagie Lanz called 32 Miles Out of Waycross. So this song by Edwin Starr was so entangled in legality about who deserved credit that by the time mo kaufman

got around to it it was too complicated they couldn't be bothered to go after him because they then would have had to credit so many other people along the way but it's too funny that the mo kaufman version of curried soul uh is played as you said every single day across this country it is played on a very popular news program and on that note Jeff Douglas who's leaving that show at the end of this is the end of the month this might be his last

day but he's leaving that show to go do some work I think he's going to Nova Scotia to host a show there but he does live in this hood and he has promised to make an appearance on Toronto Mike before he flies east. Okay, so remembering the time there on the chum chart. And yeah, the fact that, how many people know

that 25 Miles by Edwin Starr was a bigger hit in Canada than the United States? I think Ed Keenan knows that. Okay, at least as far as Toronto was concerned. So that was Remember the Time. I've got another good chum chart one to get to. We'll do that in another month when I'm here for May. I love it.

And that's brought to you, of course, by Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair. They've been doing quality watch and jewelry repairs for almost 40 years. If you go to a Fast Time location and go to fasttimewatchrepair.com to find out where they are, they have a new location in Richmond Hill. If you mention to them that you heard about them on Toronto Mic'd, they're going to give you 15% off any regular price watch battery installation, which is a killer deal. That's a great place, family-run business,

like I said, almost 40 years. If you have any watch repairs required or any jewelry repairs, you go to Fast Time. Vladdy Guerrero Jr.'s walk-up music. This hit is making the Toronto Sun's Joe Warmington very happy. Tell us why. Joe Warmington was the first journalist in the world to champion the career of Billy Ray Cyrus.

This was back in 1992. His album Some Gave All was released. Achy Breaky Heart and the whole line dancing craze that accompanied it at the Toronto Sun. Of all places, they caught on to the idea that they should pay extra special attention to Billy Ray Cyrus. So Joe Armington went on tour with Billy Ray, covered his press conferences in Toronto. It was like Billy Ray mania all

over the sun, and every story was bylined the Night Scrawler. See, I have a huge blind spot for anything Toronto Sun before the internet. Like, I just never saw it. Whereas I used to hang around, wait for the Toronto

Sun to show up in the box at one in the morning, the Bulldog edition. Read Gary Dunford's column. Right. That was the first thing I flipped through. So Billy Ray Cyrus ended up on this Lil Nas X, 19, 20-year-old guy, SoundCloud rapper. He categorized his song Old Town Road as a country song. Ended up getting so many streams that it turned up on the Billboard chart. Country hit fast on the rise on Billboard.

What did they do? They took it away from him. He was no longer categorized as country. And that, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's strictly because he's a black guy? No, of course not. Listen, Darius Rocker from Hootie and the Blowfish is one of the biggest country stars out there. Is it Charlie Pryde?

Multiple number ones. Is it a person of color? Is it Charlie Pryde? Anyway. So yeah, of course, look, I mean, it's easy to categorize this as being some form of racism. No, they determined it didn't have enough elements of country music that qualifies a country hit.

So what did Lil Nas X do? This was a genuine request. When he first put the song out, he asked Billy Ray Cyrus on Twitter, this was back in December, to come join him on a remix of the song. Who would have thought it would be such a news-making track that Billy Ray Cyrus ended up saying yes and has now the biggest hit of his career, like even bigger than Achy Breaky Heart. Is that even possible?

Is that even possible? And so, you know, this is, talk about Gino Vannelli sticking it out there as a pop star for, let's say, 15 years. And Billy Ray Cyrus, 27 years later, has his biggest hit of all time. Somewhere in there, he did a duet with Miley. But yeah, this is the big one for Billy Ray. You know who it reminds me of? When Tammy Wynette had that hit with the KLF, right?

That's sort of, because Tammy Wynette, big country star, disappears for 20 years, and then suddenly, kids are discovering her again because she's on a top 40 hit. Yeah, justified and ancient. But I mean, look, Billy Ray Cyrus, I recognize that he's

something of a punchline, right? He had that whole mullet going on there back in the early to mid-90s, and I mean, all the kids know him as Miley's dad. And it was fortuitous for Joe Warmington because,

as we've talked about here before, Billy Ray Cyrus ended up living in Toronto, filming the show Doc, and taking his daughter Miley to these song dance classes that ended up influencing her career as Hannah Montana. So when Old Town Road hit number one on Billboard, there was Joe Warmington. I mean, you wouldn't expect anything less.

Joe Warmington brought a column in tribute to his buddy who he's been standing behind all this time, hitting number one on the Billboard chart. Now, far and away, the biggest hit of his career. And again, that really is the walk-up song for Vlad Guerrero Jr., or the Messiah, as I call him. Okay, and I mean and what's a status? You pay way more attention to baseball than I do.

What's going on with Dalton Pompey? He's the son of the cowboy. He's the son of the cowboy. I think if you're looking for a bigger upside in a major league career, you should skip Dalton and go to Tristan. So there's another Pompey kid who just got drafted. Again, they're from Mississauga. So which one are you trying to get on the show?

The one I'm trying, either or actually, but Dalton is the Blue Jay property. So obviously, you know, you root for the Jays. That's exciting. So he's with the Buffalo Bisons now. He had some injury problems, but, you know, he's 27 or something now. So he's no longer a kid.

So I hope we can find room in the outfield for him. Well, look, if all else fails for these guys, they can go down saying their dad was on a Great Lakes Brewery beer can. Right, and I will give them a can when they come in here. But here, so Billy Ray Cyrus, new styles. Here's another old coot with new styles. Ever been to sea, Billy? No, Captain. Hi, I'm Garner. coot with new styles. Captain Highliner ought to know when you do get your fork in Highliner's the best fish you ever tasted the best of the sea from Highliner

what's going on with the captain? well that commercial is not creepy at all and it's 40 years old at this point that we were first introduced on TV to Captain Highliner yes he was old then and he's old now. You couldn't make Captain Highliner a younger man. You couldn't go through this thing like Mr. Clean

or the Sun Made Raisins Lady where they went through some sort of makeover where suddenly it was like a younger version of them doing the part. The Maytag Repairman, for example, eventually after the original guy, and then Gordon Jump did it for a while, and then they introduced some new Maytag guy to come on. Captain Highliner could not be anything but a gray-haired, gray-beard captain, right?

If you had a younger Captain Highliner who was representing a younger generation, I don't think that would work anymore for selling fish sticks. You would still need Captain Highliner to be this old guy. It's been so burned in our brains it's ever been to see Billy thing that if they were doing a reset of Captain Highliner that he would at least have to resemble what he used to look like before. But they managed to make him, dare I say, sexy? Andrew King, a guy on Twitter, has come up from time to time here.

He once had a big tweet about Byway. Remember that? He's from Ottawa. Oh, yeah, I do remember this. It's a nostalgia site. Stealing my Byway Thunder, I recall. Comparable sort of to TorontoMike.com about Ottawa. And he noticed there was a change in the Captain Highliner box.

Captain Highliner wasn't looking like he used to. What was going on here? Suddenly Captain Highliner has slicker hairstyle than before. The hat's removed? The hat is removed. And suddenly he's putting on this, let's say, business casual style. And there was some curiosity about whether the photo was real. So they let it linger, Highliner.

Like, they didn't confirm that this was the new look of Captain Highliner. And they let it go on for a week. And then they debuted a hashtag, Hello, Captain. Here is your new gay grandpa, Captain Highliner. All right. We need to please keep this brief because I got to get to media and radio before we talk about the ever-popular memorial section of these episodes.

Oh, I noticed in your voice some sort of resistance to talking about Chair Girl. But if you could keep this to 60 seconds or less, I'll give you more beer. Okay. So, look, the Chair Girl case was back in court. She didn't appear, but her lawyer did and said, they're trying to work this out. They're trying to arrange some sort of deal with the Crown. Let her get on

with her life. She's only 19, maybe 20 years old. Accused of throwing some patio furniture off a balcony. And one of the things that they told the media afterwards, the lawyer, that, you know, she's gotten off social media. She's not on Instagram anymore. She's laying low. She's

trying to get her life back together. She got kicked out of dental hygienist school. You know, she feels remorse. She wants to repent for everything that she did associated with being chair girl. At the same time, he's making these assertions anybody who follows her on instagram was noticing there's chair girl partying hard every night instagram stories one after i wake up in the morning i check uh what what has chair girl been up to last night well i mean look listen i'm i'm i'm an older person here i i don't relate to what the kids today are up to but uh she seems to be having good time in the lap of luxury all around Toronto. Yeah, and one of the Instagram stories

had her hanging out with a bunch of her buddies, and they made a reference to the fact that there was some Coke on the table. Right. Chair girl got a bit nervous knowing that she was streaming this live on Instagram. No, it's Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola. Oh, fuck.

She noticed she got caught, and before she could delete it, maybe she was distracted at the time, Siobhan Morris of News Talk 1010. Friend of the program. Revealing herself to be paying as much attention to Chairgirl's Instagram as I do. Look.

Busted. We're journalists out here. We have to pay attention to the newsmakers of today. That's right. Now, this wasn't mentioned in court. It wasn't something, he wasn't like pleading innocence. It wasn't, you know, under oath that he said that she wasn't on Instagram. But the fact is, she's been on Instagram all along.

Chairgirl got some headlines out of it, and suddenly there's an item in the Toronto Sun column by Emma Title and the Toronto Star. Chairgirl getting maybe a new wave of attention that she didn't anticipate. Sort of a self-own, as the kids say. Let me ask you, I should know this as an influencer myself, but obviously not one of these modern Instagram influencers, but is there real money in this game for Chair Girl?

Like, if she gets enough followers, is it lucrative? Again, I want to be euphemistic here. I would say that there seems to be the air of indication that her personal life is benefiting from the fact that she's known as Chair Girl. But maybe not her bank account yet. Well, it's not for me to say. Right. We'll see.

That must be the endgame, but we'll see. Oh, it might be the game right now. Right. Right, right. Okay, let's talk about media. Where do we begin? Oh. Another lovely day begins. For ghosts and ghouls with greenish skin.

So close your eyes and you will find that you've arrived in Frightenstein. Perhaps the Count will find a way to make his monster work today.

For if he solves this monster mania, he can return to Transylvania. So welcome where the sun won't shine. To the castle of

Count Frightenstein. Vincent Price. Last fall, our friend Ed Conroy, Retro Ontario, he was promoting the fact that somebody was selling the master tapes of Hilarious House of Feinstein. $60,000 they wanted for the last surviving masters of this show that ran on CHCH-TV out of Hamilton in 1971. Now, it's not like the show hasn't been on most of this time.

You grew up watching this, right? I watched it quite a bit, yeah, absolutely. The show was created by a guy named Riff Markowitz, but his main star was Billy Vann. Yes. And Billy Vann didn't have any ownership in the show and all these characters, and it was a point of contention for a real long time

about the fact that here was a show that was rewriting all across Canada all day, every day, weekend mornings, and showed up on some of these specialty channels, and there was Billy Vann, never got any royalties. There was no such thing in Canadian television. He signed off on it all and, you know, died with a lot less money than you would think that somebody who worked on this show

that was played over and over again might have been entitled to. That's the Canadian showbiz story, yeah. It was a guy named Riff Markowitz who was the producer of the show. And it's his brother, Mitch Markowitz, who was on every episode as super hippie. Do you remember super hippie? Like three, four, five seconds of every episode, I had super hippie flying by. Remember, like three, four, five seconds of every episode, I had Super Hippie flying by.

It was a fortuitous thing to be on the show because it allows Mitch to walk around saying that he was in the show, Hilarious House of Freidenstein, even though it was really all about Billy Van. Right, because he played multiple characters. He was, yeah, multiple. So there's been a lot of drama about who owns a show and what's behind it, and other companies bought the rights to it, and they say that they're developing new properties around it.

So with these master tapes up for sale, I don't think it's a coincidence, the fact that Crave TV announced that they're going to be streaming. They restored all the episodes, all 130 episodes of Valerius House of Frightenstein, the first and only season, which as as far as I can tell, is 130 episodes, are going to be streamed through Bell Media. They announced it for April, and it turns out, some technical issues, and it's been delayed

a little bit, but there's a part of Canadian TV history. I don't know who wants a binge watch 130 hours of Lawyer's House of Reitenstein. This is a great example of one of those things where GLAAD exists, but I don't think there's any appetite to actually consume it. The big point of contention are the segments with the Wolfman.

There was Billy Van as a DJ inspired by Wolfman Jack. Right, right, right. And back then, this is the days of 25 Miles and Curried Soul. Nobody was checking and balancing royalties and getting permission so they would play entire rock hits of the era on the freidenstein show without any permission i mean the budget wouldn't have allowed to pay for these songs but they just had them on the show and even the reruns all the years i guess nobody noticed nobody caught this no one no one with any authority so you get like a like a wkrp or wonder years type thing

going on see if they show up there i couldn't imagine 130 episodes at bell media when i'd gone through the trouble to get the rights well we'll see when it shows up for streaming on there so there's mitch markowitz super hippie uh he's promoting the the comeback the revival of the show a documentary is apparently in the works it seems like something there should have been a He's promoting the comeback, the revival of the show. A documentary is apparently in the works. It seems like something that should have been a documentary about a long time ago. Well, maybe Retro Ontario should have made one. That sounds like it's right in his wheelhouse. Well, they're going to have to acknowledge what happened with Billy Van,

how it didn't really end well. Right, right, right. Or it's not much of an honest documentary. Now, speaking of Bell Media, here, let's play this and let's talk about it. You are tuned to CFTO-TV Channel 9 in Toronto Cable 8. So, CFTO, of course, which is now known as CTV Toronto,

but it's always been Channel 9, Cable 8. Yeah, ever since New Year's Eve, 1960, 61, CFTO-TV, Channel 9 in Toronto Cable 8. Ever since New Year's Eve, 1960, 61, CFTO-TV, Channel 9 in Toronto, Cable 8. Channel 9 used to be the CBC. CBLT, the CBC affiliate. Which is now 5. It moved over to 6. Okay.

And then 5. And it did that to make way for CTV. I mean, this was the early days of television 1950s so there was a sense of cooperation they weren't going to squat on this signal i don't know enough about the technicalities of all this stuff all i know is that i grew up with channel nine in toronto cable eight guess what it's now channel eight in toronto so it's now it's now channel 8 in Toronto. It's now Channel 8, Cable 8. And I don't even know if Cable 8 means anything anymore. Well, it's Channel 8.

I mean, it was always Channel 8 if you had cable. It wasn't Channel 9. There was some cognitive dissonance. Right. So now it's Channel 8, Cable 8, except on a virtual antenna, it's still 9.1. But an old-fashioned VHF viewing, CFTO-TV is now Channel 8, Cable 8.

That's how far we've come. It seems like something that there should have been some commemoration of, no? Aside from me tweeting about it, mentioning it in the 1236 newsletter. I think that's a curiosity. Like, I'm into this kind of curiosity. I'm your prime target audience here.

And I find it... Well, you and everyone listening, I hope. I hope so. So it's a fun fact, interesting to note, but I don't think it means anything to 99.99% of us viewers. But if you grew up hearing the voice of Dave Duvall saying Channel 9 in Toronto Cable 8, doesn't that branding have any effect, leave any impression over all the decades?

I know they've moved away from it. They don't talk about TV as much in terms of channel numbers. But the street where the CTV compound is located on in Agincourt is 9 Channel 9 Drive. There you go. So they're going to have to change the street sign because for all intents and purposes it's no longer channel 9. Here's my confession. I only

learned this song existed today. And I feel like I should have known decades ago. I should have known about this song. What are we listening to? Like, how did I miss that this exists? This is The Islander by Bruce Moss.

And I bet you this is like an anthem for, like, Newfoundlanders. I can hear Heather Bambrick right now yelling at me through her iPhone. Did you watch the Simpsons Doe Canada episode on Sunday? The most hyped episode of the Simpsons. What, in decades? In the entire 21st century in Canada? Probably since the time they visited Toronto. Right?

Remember, they came to Toronto at some point. Yeah, although this was like of national import. And it was Lucas Meyer, News Talk 1010 reporter, had a viral video doing a bunch of celebrity impressions. It was the Justin Trudeau one that stood out. And tremendous attention there for Lucas Meyer doing a voice on The Simpsons. It doesn't really matter.

It was only for a couple of seconds. He was on The Simpsons. What would you think if you got called out of the blue, inviting you? The Simpsons doesn't really matter. That was only for a couple of seconds. He was on The Simpsons. I mean, what would you think if you got called out of the blue, inviting you to do a voice on The Simpsons? Yeah, why isn't Toronto Mike doing a voice on The Simpsons? Maybe next time they come to Toronto, they'll sit down for an interview here in the basement.

I'd like to see it animated in Simpsons style. So it turned out that the Simpsons episode was not as benign as a lot of people thought it might be. Here we've got an old-fashioned controversy reminiscent of the early days of the show when the Simpsons

was associated with the demoralization of society. Why? Because they made fun of Newfoundlanders. Oh, they called them dumb Newfies or something like that? I only caught a little wind of this. It was Ralph Wiggum. Who is a dumb character, but yes.

Saying, I'm a Newfie. Clubbing a stuffed baby seal. I'm a Newfie. So here we learn, courtesy of the CBC, who really seem to have it in for this episode. The CBC, which is not known for comedy, anything related to CBC comedies, is generally seen as second tier.

When it comes to shows like 22 Minutes, this is stuff that people live to ridicule on Twitter. But the CBC seems to be driving the backlash against the Simpsons episode. They found Bruce Moss, a musician turned plumber, who had this song in 1982, The Islander. The one we just heard.

The one we just heard. Yeah. Bragging to the CBC that he turned down $20,000 American dollars to use his song in the show. That he doesn't like The Simpsons, he never liked The Simpsons, and now the fact that he's seen the backlash to the episode has assured him that he made the right move. That The Simpsons, a show that he considers morally bankrupt, that was a term he used,

that he would not take their filthy American money and that Newfoundlanders should look at him as a hero. The guy that was behind the episode producer for The Simpsons is a guy named Tim Long who went to U of T was a writer for the Varsity newspaper ended up writing for

David Letterman. He's been at The Simpsons for a long time now and the whole Doe Canada episode seemed to be his idea sure and you know the fact that he knew that song from 1982 this is an obscure reference but uh based on what i know about tim long like this was a this was a a genuine cultural touchstone that he was familiar with and when he called the guy to ask him to use the song, he said no. Wow. So now we all know about The Islander,

and yeah, I hadn't heard about it before today, but I'm not a good Canadian. I never heard about it until today either. I don't know much about Canada outside of Toronto, but that seems to be an answer. Except the Barrett's Privateers or something like that. So when you have a future guest who grew up there. I'll play it. You'll have to play it.

Have you ever heard of this song before? No, no. I never heard of the song. And when I do, because Heather Bambrick will come back to kick out the jams. I will definitely play The Islander for her and find out what it means to her. And find out what she thinks about this guy turning down the money. I will. Because he has a grudge against the Simpsons.

They didn't show him the script or anything. Like, he already was anti-Simpsons. Yeah. He must be doing pretty well. He's been having a cow for 30 years about the Simpsons

long after everybody else sort of forgot about it. But, big week for the Simpsons. And, now coming up on 30 years since it premiered as a stand-alone standalone show which is amazing

because that first I was there every week for the first 10 years like this was my show for the first 10 from episode 1 through 10 seasons so it's amazing to me that 20 years after I stopped watching it like religiously that it's still going it's mind-boggling but that's for another episode because we have 50 minutes left and I, we need to do radio, which is always my favorite. And then we have to do the memorial section, which is quite lengthy.

So we got to move on. And I want you to please talk to us a little bit about one of our favorite radio personalities is on the disabled list. Talk to me about Bookie. Oh, this is so heartbreaking. Dave Bookman was found in a condition that was originally reported, and then we heard that his close family and friends didn't want this online. So we've got to respect those wishes here.

But it did sound like a heavy situation based on what I read about it. I'm glad to know that he's hanging in there because it sounded like they found him under some extreme circumstances. Now he's under doctor's care. And I need Bookie back. I mean, this is what I listen to

while I'm writing the 1236 newsletter. Bookie on Indie 88.1. And there he is with his midday show. I met Bookie over 30 years ago now. At the time, I think he was working at the Book City location that was around Young and Wellesley. He was trying to make it.

He had his own act. He was trying to make it his own act. He was doing like a Bob Dylan thing, the name The Bookmen. Right. And trying to get into radio, and we ended up on the same station at CIUT. And, you know, while everyone had this idea to come in and do this volunteer two- or three-hour radio show, or maybe overnights, it was Bookie who sold them on the idea to come in and do this volunteer two- or three-hour radio show, or maybe overnights.

It was Bookie who sold them on the idea of coming in every morning for half an hour doing his own show called Don't Look Back. And before podcasting, this was the closest thing to a podcast on Toronto radio, just this wild free-form thing where he sometimes had a guest on, sometimes he just riffed on his own. So that's part of the reason that I'm always tuned in to Bookie, because I remember hearing him all the way back then in late 80s or early 90s. And he's been on my radio all along. He wanted to get into CFNY. He managed to do it. He was the street reporter, Dave Bookman,

and did the Indie Hour over there. And you could not say enough about the influence he had as a guy on the radio, on the station, that so many Toronto suburban kids grew up listening to, still at the time, in the 90s. There was Bookie all the way, made it up to afternoon drive at one point got demoted to evenings to make way for fearless fred my buddy this is one of those

toronto mike website controversies right and then they i just showed him the door i don't know maybe he's too old for whatever they were trying to do over there and uh through the help of Alan Cross, ended up with a new job at Indy 88.1. And this has been Bookie's place to shine. He's got the Sunday morning rock show where he seems to have free reign as far as programming is concerned. And he's on in middays through the mornings, early afternoons.

They do have like a thing in their license where they have to do a certain amount of talking. So there's no one better qualified to do that talking than Dave Bookman. And they better get him back. And I hope he gets well soon. So Dave Bookman, wishing him a speedy recovery. And yeah, that was alarming news.

I mean, this is part of the experience of social media, how you find out that somebody's in this situation. But I'm just going by what the station put out. He is on the mend, and we'll be hearing him hopefully on the air sooner than later. Now, when I learned this news, I learned it from Alan Cross, and I tweeted based on what I read on Alan Cross's website. Subsequently, the family asked Alan Cross, I believe asked Alan Cross to, that was too much detail and they wanted some privacy.

So it became sort of like he's in the hospital and under care and we're wishing him well or whatever. And my tweet still lives. So, I mean, we won't talk about it here, but that tweet that I tweeted based on the Alan Cross stuff that got deleted now is sort of, now that's out there as like the source. So that's how that works. Okay, well, look, I need Bookie back. I was there when he had this dream to be on the air every day.

We want Bookie back. And he fulfilled it. He made it happen. And I hope to hear him back for years to come. Absolutely. Speaking of coming back, John Moore is back on Mornings on 1010. We speculated about this last month, and I don't know if the way we talked about it was entirely fair

because it turns out that he felt that he was going through a real mental health crisis, but they tried to couch it in the idea that he was a little bit burned out, maybe wanted a co-host, and they were trying him out with a couple different people, and then he suddenly disappeared, and it was all very suspicious, and then he revealed what was really happening here. And in subsequent days, now that he's back on, and it's great, look, because no one else can do that morning show. It's idiosyncratically wired to be hosted by John moore so he needs to be there and it's a good

thing he's back because i do have it on my clock radio every morning and uh you know he's talked about how the fact that he's found twitter particularly toxic i don't know how many of the am radio audience relate to the fact that a guy saying they can't tolerate being on Twitter anymore. But you can see how that. Oh, I could. I could see. Yeah, because John Moore is much higher profile than me. And I'm trying to stay plugged in all the time.

Twitter may not be the greatest thing for your mental health. So he's talked about trying to detangle himself from social media and just addressing in general the issue of burnout. So whereas before maybe it was a little cagey, it wasn't upfront about what was going on with him. I think this is a condition that, you know, more than a few people in the media are dealing with, that they're expected to be always on, and that has an effect after a while. The ability to come through and do your job, especially when it involves waking up early in the morning,

and he felt the effects enough that he needed six weeks away. So good on his employer for giving him six weeks off to recharge his batteries and improve his mental health. The good on them, right? This is a progressive move, I would say, for Bell. Yeah, it's great. So we might have speculated, okay, you know, the ratings aren't what they used to be. Maybe Mike Stafford is beating him.

I pay attention to Stafford, too. By the way, when you say we, you mean you, right? Because I just listen to you. I also listen to Stafford. More on the podcast than when he's live. My other friend, Stafford. Okay, so good that John Moore is back. I'm happy for you. John Moore, of course,

famously was booked on Toronto Mic and ready to go and was told he could not do it, but maybe one day that'll change. I look forward to one day. I'm listening to these people on the radio. I need them to be there because when they're not there, I get disoriented. And, of course, people on the radio get fired all the time.

But, you know, there's so much on the radio that I don't want to listen to. The fact that you've got John Moore on one station, Dave Bookman on another. Those are two shows that I am listening to pretty much every day. I hear you right. There's so little quality out there that these are a couple of guys who produce quality. Not having them on the air, that means you've

got rid of some of the little quality that's sort of left on the air. Of course. And Bookie, I mean, I didn't know him from CIUT. I got introduced to Bookie on 102.1, but I'm a long-time huge fan of Bookie. And as you know, he was one of the first guys I asked to come him from CIUT. I got introduced to Bookie on 102.1, but I'm a longtime huge fan of Bookie. And as you know, he was one of the first guys I asked to come on Toronto Mic'd

because I dig that guy so much. So I hope he gets better. Yeah, yeah, it's entirely selfish. It's all about me, but I need them back. So we're halfway there. Good. Now, where do I go? Radio, I'm going to give 10 more minutes here,

but let me see. JJ and Melanie, they were on Flow, right? They've come back of a podcast? Of all the podcasts that I found involving radio personalities who lost a job using a podcast to try and get back on the radar. Well, it was JJ and

Melanie. They were on the Flow, the Move 93.5. I don't think they made it to the move they didn't make it out of the move they made it to flow right and there's a unfiltered hosted by melody martin are you familiar with her i'm vaguely i'm a little bit familiar with jj she's a unique character and i think good enough to be doing her own podcast where she talks about her personal life. She does a show with JJ, her old radio partner. And, you know, she gets into her personal issues and recently had a breakup.

As far as radio people getting into podcasts, this is one of the better ones out there. I guess I'm mentioning it just because I want to encourage them to do more. They were off for a little while. She got a job on Big 101 in Barrie, Ontario. Oh, yeah. Chorus radio station.

And JJ turned up on CBC Music on Radio 2. And he does some different shifts on there, fills in on some shows, which is unusual. You would think, you know, how does a guy like that end up on the CBC? But the CBC Music Service, which has been in its current form

playing pop music a lot of the time, singer-songwriters, stuff like that. They were primarily a classical station. In 2008, they flipped the format, introduced these drive-time shows. Raina, Raina Duras in the morning, Richter Fry. Right. If you want to hear radio people who are constrained, that's a station to listen to. I mean, they've got people on there who would be terrific personalities,

but something's going on where they're held back from being their true selves. And I think it's because it's CBC, and they want to play it safe. They need to be ambiguous enough, right? They don't want to really offend anybody. They want to cater to the widest possible audience. But I think all along now, for over a decade, they've been doing it wrong. Because you should hear, why not have voices behind the microphone who are, you know, going off on personal tangents? Now, I realize that's not the, but who makes up these rules? Who decides

that this is how it should be? And as a result, you've had like this really middling operation that where, you know, where's Metro Morning, number one, number one talk radio morning show in all of Toronto? Huge, huge share. You haven't seen the same thing for the music side. There just hasn't been that spontaneity. Most Torontonians cannot tell you where on the radio dial they can find Radio 2

or CBC Music. CBC Music. So I advocate hearing J.J. Laborde. That's his last. I think that's his last. He used to go by the name Axel on the radio in Toronto. That's going some way back. I mean, I'd like to hear these people like J.J. and Melly on CBC Radio.

But instead you've got J.J. just doing, look, it's a gig. It's a paycheck. I mean, just like most journalists journalists now people that want to work write articles you have to work for the cbc in one form or another i guess it's a good thing they're still around so that these people can still have jobs but uh cbc yeah cbc radio music uh i i don't know it's not gonna get anywhere i mean it's not gonna happen just because i'm venting about it here. You never know. It's got a big reach.

At one point, they got CRTC permission to run commercials, and that ended up being a flop because the audience share wasn't big enough. And they revoked their license condition to take paid advertising. So as far as experiments go, I don't know what's going to happen. It's just there. They play music, and it's good for Canada and everything, and it's nice. I mean, listen, this Canada,

there's a busker on every corner playing folk songs. That's right. Here's a place they can get played or aspire to do the same. Now, Raina, of course, has been on Toronto Mic'd, as has Stacey Thompson. And Stacey Thompson is on a news station that I believe she's recording from Toronto, but you can't actually get this station in Toronto unless you stream it on the web.

Tell us about Stacey Thompson on the Evening Breeze. Yeah, good for Stacey, who's on the Evening Breeze across Canada. She might not care about this, but I think it's terrific because she's doing it from 2 St. Clair West, the former home of CFRB and CKFM. So here's where these old-school broadcasters, the overnight guys like Fred Napoli, who died not too long ago,

Wayne Van Exen, Carl Bannis. These were the voices that would introduce these yacht rock songs late into the night. And it seems like Stacey Thompson has picked up this baton doing the show. I don't know if it's live or not. I don't think I've actually heard it. I'll bet you it's not live,. I don't know if it's live or not. I don't think I've actually heard it. I'll bet you it's not live, but I don't know that for a fact.

But this is like, we're talking like, yeah, Yacht Rock. It's like Loggins and Messina, like that kind of jam. Yeah, and from St. Clair, which I think is symbolic because the neighborhood, even though there's a lot of renovations going on, it still retains that kind of turtleneck 70s vibe. I got up there once. Did I tell you that? You expect guys that look like Captain Highliner

to be hanging around there. I once sat in on the Boom morning show when it was out of 2 St. Clair. And I got to, so I did that. And then I got a tour. There was the Mix 99.9 and CFRB, I guess, was going on in there. This is going way back now, about a decade. So I got a tour there.

So there you go. Toronto Mike's success story. Somebody else who came on your podcast not knowing what was ahead for them in the future. It's happening more often. Like a lot of people like the joke. I'll have someone on and then, I don't know, seven months later, they might be let go or something. But there's actually far more examples of people coming on the show, like a Barb DiGiulio or something, coming on the show,

not sure what's next, and then they get a kick-ass gig, or Kelly Cotrera. There's a lot of examples of that. Yeah, a lot of people would lament, okay, there's like a national evening syndicated radio show. It's taken away from local radio. But the fact that it's coming live from Toronto, but not airing in Toronto,

so they probably don't mention that it's from Toronto. They definitely don't. There's no breeze in the GTA, because they're not going to mess with Boom. This is New Cap. No, not New Cap. What's the new one? Stingray.

Stingray. So they're not going to mess with, I don't think they're going to mess with Boom, because it's doing well. Stu Jeffries and I are hoping they don't mess with Boom. And of course, the other station is the Flow. Flow. And that's a pretty dramatic change if you flip Flow to Yacht Rock.

So, note to self, a reminder to check out Stacey Thompson on the Evening Breeze. You'll hear some bread, some seals and crofts. Right. Some Gino Vanelli. And, of course, some Hall & Oates and of course uh some hollow notes of course as well lots of great yacht rock now we're gonna go into the uh much into highly anticipated memorial section but here's a moment for us to promote that jamar mcneil is booked for toronto mic next week i can't wait because every month in 2019 i've been wondering what is the deal with Jamar's baby?

It'll be my first question and I'll get him. Yeah. I mean, he, he really opened up last time he was on the show, which was the day they legalized weed right on the night before. I can't remember, but at the time,

did he know that he was about to be a father? This is what I'm trying to figure out now. Okay. Now, again, you were wondering whether or not this was a little too intrusive. Well, it does seem a little bit personal. He has pictures of the baby on Instagram. Okay, then it's very good. I'm not sure I've seen them all. And I'm not sure what happened where the baby was born in Atlanta,

and he ended up being the replacement for Roger Ashby, and he did it for a day or two, and then suddenly disappeared. We're going to find out the story behind Jamar McNeil's baby. It's time for the memorial segment. I re-watched, for the first time in 20 years, I re-watched for the first time in 20 years I re-watched Boys in the Hood and I was reminded that there's a fantastic scene with Trey and his father Furious

who was fantastically played by Lawrence Fishburne but there's a great scene to this song by the Five Stairsteps, Ooh Child. So I play it because we lost John Singleton, and you, Mark, have found a tie to Toronto with John Singleton's untimely death

at the age of 51. Yeah, just like Luke Perry, who had a stroke and suddenly was gone a few days later. It seems like the same situation with John Singleton, who was the youngest director to ever be nominated for Academy Award. And he won the Academy Award. Is that right? No, he did not.

He did not win the Academy Award. Is that right? No, he did not. He did not win the Academy Award. He was also the first black person to be nominated for Best Director because they screwed over Spike Lee, who should have been nominated, of course. But wasn't. Okay, so from Boys in the Hood, he went on to have, I guess you would call it more of a corporate movie-making career

and was really successful at a young age. He was only 23 when he made it. Yeah, he was 23 when he made it. Same age as the stars of the movie. I mean, around that original hip-hop generation, Ice Cube and N.W.A. was right in there. Ice Cube's great in the flick, too. Yeah, just because I just freshly revisited it.

But Ice Cube's fantastic in that film. So it turns out that John Singleton has a couple of kids who were born to a mother from Toronto. Wow. I can't quite confirm if this is true, but I think it was on Wikipedia, then it disappeared. But it does explain why he would show up

at the TIFF Bell Lightbox more often than the usual kind of Hollywood director to do different events. Seemed to have a connection to the city in that way. So yeah, there you go. Just at the end of April, one to lead off the section where we talk about who died in the past month. It's a sad one.

John Singleton, dead at 51. John Singleton's a very famous guy. You know, Oscar nominations for Best Director will do that. But tell me about a lesser-known name who passed away, Gord Stimmel. Oh, yeah, this one I also had just found out a little bit late. This was a wine critic for the Toronto Sun. You mentioned earlier, you're not familiar with the Toronto Sun. The culture of the sun before the Internet was the kind of newspaper that would have a wine critic.

internet was the kind of newspaper that would have a wine critic that they saw their readership back then as sophisticated enough to want to know what was happening in wine. And Gord Stimmel was editor at The Sun, who at the same time was doing this wine column all along and became a recognizable name just because you saw him in the paper all that time. He ended up getting a job at the Toronto Star. Now, how this happened was he was the editor of what would have been at one point, I'm sure, your favorite section of the weekend newspaper, the TV Listings Magazine. Absolutely. Yeah. And he did that job at the Sun, ended up at the Toronto Star to do the same thing in Star Week. So this is when the TV listings magazine still had its own cachet. Like they had columnists, right? Editorial features that were specifically commissioned

to be in between the TV listings. Like I'm thinking of a name like Jim Bodden, for example. He was doing that for Star Week, right? They would go on these junkets, TV critic press tour. We had Bill Brio in here. I think he talked about doing a lot of that. He's coming back, by the way. I shouldn't do this at the memorial. Why not?

Okay, why not? I make the rules around here. Bill Brio's coming back. He's given me what he thinks are the 10 greatest TV theme songs of all time. We're going to play them and discuss the shows. Remember the TV talkback column in Star Week? Of course.

Of course. A guy named Eric Knutson. Right. And before there was internet, before you could Google all the stuff, he would answer trivia questions. He would do it like the old-fashioned way, like he was a guy living in Hollywood

and call around different people, find out what happened to some obscure TV star. There was no IMDB. There was no real way to look up this stuff. You had to write in to Star Week. I can't tell you how much I looked forward to reading TV talkback. Like, it was massive to me. Yeah, absolutely.

So in the last days of them putting a real effort into Star Week, it was Gord Stimmel who was the editor of Starweek in the Toronto Star, along with the wine columnist, and did some other work there, other writing for the paper. So we lost him this month at age 72. So if you, I mean, above all, if you ever read one of these TV magazines in a Toronto newspaper, it's a legacy of Gord Stimmel. I guess also wine writing,

but I don't know anything about wine. No, that makes two of us. I'll ask Matt Caw, his former guest. Seems to be big on wine these days. This, uh, it's a grand saga. Got a wonderanger, Mark. I love it when this kicks in.

It's coming. And it's worth the wait. Low Fidelity All Stars. Battle Flag. Woo! Tell me about Sean Smith. One of my favorite voices of the 1990s. Sean Smith, who at one point was the lead singer of three different bands.

And he got the most attention of all because of his connection to Pearl Jam, a band with the name Brad, for which Stone Gossard played guitar. So he was in Brad, but he was also in, is it Pigeonhead? Is that the name of the band? Pigeonhead is in this song, right? This was Pigeonhead with a guy named Steve Fisk, who was one of those early electronica artists, and they recorded for Sub Pop Records. This song ended up being sampled, I guess.

I mean, it's a prominent part of this song from low-fidelity all-stars. It became a radio hit. It was a big hit. Back when the Chemical Brothers and the Prodigy were coming up, and they were considered the future of the alternative rock format, this one got all over the radio. And this was a song from Pigeonhead that ended up being a hit, at least in that world of radio.

There was another band as well called Satchel, which was Brad, but without Stone Gossard. This is where it got a bit complicated. So Sean Smith made these three albums in the space of about a year, 1996, 1997. They were all spectacular. This was, I mean, I got so snarky writing for iWeekly about music at that point. This was like the only music that I liked during that period of time. This is the only thing that I listened to without being ironic.

That's what I was reduced to. It was kind of these soulful albums out of Seattle, kind of a Lionel Richie influence. I remember well all the songs. And as far as I could tell, I even saw him in concert at Lee's Palace in October 1997. Sean Smith died on the same day as Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley. So 25 years, I guess, after Kurt's passing, if I've got that math right. And he was also from Seattle.

He was part of that scene. But of course, most underrated of them all. Sure, because it's not a name most people will recognize, Sean Smith. But this is a jam most people will recognize. A lot of health struggles

along the way. And I think Resign, even though he had this angelic voice, seemed to be dealing with the fact that he couldn't really get much of a career going and his health issues that also held him back.

So a huge loss, even if it's somebody that we might not have thought about. I don't know if those Brad and Satchel, you'll find them on YouTube, Brad and Satchel and Pigeonhead. I know that's on Spotify. So Sean Smith, Big Law, saw him in Toronto, interviewed him once on the phone. And somebody I'm going to miss,

who knows what could have happened for his career. Now, speaking of big losses, we lost Teva Harrison. Teva Harrison. Teva Harrison. Yeah, an artist in Toronto. Died the past week at age 42

and uh diagnosed with uh breast cancer for most people you know what might have been sort of a death sentence that she ended up really uh turning that into the focal point of her career, doing graphic novels, illustration, had a book called In Between Days. So Toronto cultural icon. And, you know, a lot of her work was about the fact that she was going to die soon. That's what she was really open about as far as, you know, what she was talking about. I don't know if you could do something like that, if I could do something like that, make that like the focal point of our career that we were, you know, battling this terrible disease. Well, it's a terrible disease. And if you are so unfortunate to be stricken with it, you might look at the resources around you and say, well, life has given me some lemons. Let's see if I can make some lemonade. I could see that.

Yeah, so I think, you know, pioneer in that sense, and, you know, in this age in which she is oversharing on social media that somebody made their own mortality, the focal point of that, it was, you know, rather intense, but drew a lot of attention for her

and therefore, you know, a lot of mourning for the fact that she died at age 42. Wason Choi has passed away. Wason Choi, novelist who in 1995 published a book called The Jade Peony. It was inspired by his upbringing in Vancouver, in Vancouver's Chinatown, 1930s and 40s. He made it to age 80, so it was relatively late in life that he got this acclaim because he spent 18 years working on this book that he put out, and it was nominated for all these awards, got all this attention. He ended up finding out, because of the fact that he was doing all these media interviews,

somebody got in touch with him, and at age 56, he found out that he was adopted. Made it to age 56 without knowing this fact. But that reminds me of the Tom Wilson story. So, yeah, same sort of thing for Wayson Choi, who wrote a follow-up novel and a few memoirs. It was kind of like the nonfiction book about the era. They wrote about his big novel. And then as well, somebody who went through some health struggles

and turned them into writing that comforted a lot of people. He was also a teacher at Humber College. So it turns out that a lot of people who went through the radio broadcasting program at Humber College, people who've been guests on Toronto Mic, a lot of people you had on here went to Humber, right? Right. So he's beloved there as an English professor.

The course that they would make kids take at Humber College when they were in radio, reluctantly, because you want to be in radio. What do you need this reading and writing for? But based on what I read, he endeared himself to a lot of students over at Humber. Now here is a gentleman we, you I think deserve a lot of credit for shining a light on this gentleman's death. But we'll introduce it by playing, again, we played Casey Kasem for Gino Vanelli.

And let's play it right now for James Reynolds. Number 34. Up two notches is the duo Sky That features James and Antoine Antoine says their sound is a combination of their personalities I bring the more energetic groove The drums and bass The outgoing vibe James brings the deeper side to the songs

Blending those elements Here's Sky at number 34 with Love Song. From Montreal, Canada, that's Sky with Love Song. This week, the song climbed from 36 to 34. Now, we finally got an obituary, a proper obituary for James. Well, it wasn't mentioned in a lot of places that the voice that people knew from Sky had died. And even I was surprised by the fact that bringing this up on the podcast generated a certain amount of feedback. Like people, this love song, kind of can-con song that we're used to hearing on a station like CHFI

at, I don't know, 11 o'clock at night or maybe 6 a.m. on a Sunday or you'd hear it in the aisles at the supermarket, that after 20 years of hearing this song, not giving it a lot of thought really resonated with you, right? By learning that the guy was no longer around, that he committed

suicide at age 47. I think there were a couple of hits from Sky, exactly like you described. And I think I joked that there should be a word for this. Like when you don't care about a band until you learn that somebody in the band has passed, and then all of a sudden you like a song? That's a good example.

It was kind of in the background at supermarkets and on Chum FM or whatever, just kind of playing, you ignore it. But then when I heard it after knowing what happened to James, suddenly I'm like, yeah, this is a good pop song.

Now, I couldn't quite confirm what happened here, but it was David Friend, reporter for the Canadian Press, who told me he spent like nine months working on this article, which you can easily find online now, because his family wasn't so eager to talk about what happened here.

And his sidekick, Antoine, who Casey Kasem mentioned from the band Sky, was also resistant to draw attention to the fact that he died by suicide last August. But finally, you know, he got the right permission and enough stuff to be able to publish the article, which only came out in April 2019. So an unusual situation where there was not a news article about a voice that at least Canadian pop radio listeners would be familiar with. We only found out about it in the past month, even though he died last August.

Now tell me about Jim Allen passing away. Here was, I think, another eccentric, eclectic character in Toronto. Jim Allen, a photographer who initially started out working in the fashion industry, moved on to become a fashion photographer, and I don't know how many people out there read the credits in photo shoots, but he had a prominent place as far as Canadian fashion magazines were concerned, and enough of a character to have a documentary short made about him

called Jim Talks from a few years ago. So you can find that on YouTube. And again, his death notice didn't show up in the newspaper until a few months after he died, at least I think from February to April. There wasn't anything about this. They were trying to do a follow-up called Jim Lives, ironically enough, and plans for a documentary film about Jim Allen.

One of the other things about him in that obituary is the fact that his family, the Allen family, was involved in some of the great movie theaters that were built in Toronto, including, I think, the Bloor Cinema and also the theater used to be in Lee's Palace across the street from there and all over the place. And there's Toronto Historical Plaques. So the Allen family has a big place in Toronto history. And this was Jim, influenced by images, became a notable photographer of his own. And we lost him in 2019 back in February, but the obit that only appeared in April.

Here's a little Simple Minds. For Bobby Gale, we lost Bobby Gale. automobile accident right as i recall he was driving back from a show in i want to see, Ottawa or Montreal? The whole business of being a record promo guy, it's not the sort of job where you end up with a lot of fame. You're just the person that brings the artist around to the different radio stations. You're showing up there trying to promote their record, meeting with the radio station program directors,

music directors, trying to sell them on adding something to their playlist. Bobby Gale was one of those guys, but he took it one step further. Like, he wanted to live the part. So he turned himself into one of those rock stars very much influenced by brian ferry of roxy music uh he he he made sure that he was dressed up that he was decked out that here was a guy who was who was pitching music acts and made it look like he was a

rock star himself i've met him a few times along the way. Worked for Polygram Records in the 1980s. Simple Minds was one of the acts he promoted and did it successfully enough. This song, Love Song, was a big hit in Canada long before it made it in the United States. This was before Don't You Forget About Me, Alive and Kicking, all those Simple Minds hits. was before don't you forget about me alive and kicking all those uh this scottish band was a bigger deal in canada before the u.s and uh jim kerr of simple minds wrote a facebook post saluting bobby gale for the guy that broke the band in north america i believe uh bobby was in

prince edward county i think he was doing a radio show on the station there. Sound Off podcast. The Sound Off podcast with Matt Cundall. Had Steve Anthony on. They talked a bit about Bobby Gale. Because Steve now lives there in Prince Edward County. Yes. And he knew Bobby as he was living there, doing a radio show,

being the town hipster who everybody admired from his history in the music business. Was driving back from a concert in Montreal. Ended up running out of gas. Ended up in this tragic accident. And he was walking along the highway. Bobby Gale. And one of those music promo guys, remember, started out in radio. In Windsor at the Big 8.

CKLW. And he was on Q107 at one point. But ended up in that world of doing radio promotion. Trying to get media attention from polygram artists that struck out on his own. Moist was one of the bands he was credited with breaking. And also the Matthew Good Band was in there somewhere. I dig them both. Independent acts that were commissioning his services.

And he had a track record. He made it happen. I think he might have even worked with Gino Vanelli. He didn't get around to it. He only had an hour with Gino. No, I needed more time, but Ross said I had an hour. Okay, well, anyway, a big loss, and one that got wider media attention as far as his death was concerned.

I mean, not only for the fact that it was a tragic accident, but Bob Lefsetz had one of his newsletters about Bobby Gale, so someone that is definitely remembered for his contributions and his enthusiasm for music in Canada. Talk to me about the founder of Centerville, Warren Beasley.

Not much about this, besides seeing a death notice somewhere. Toronto Star, I think. That's where I find out some of these Toronto people who died who are not on the radar of the newsrooms, even though they're mentioned in the newspaper. It's always a point of curiosity about the fact that you don't see these wider obits about them.

Like this example where it'll be in the Star, the death notice, you'll see it make some noise on 1236 and through Twitter. Then maybe they'll see your noise about what's in their paper, and then maybe then they'll shine a brighter light on it, possibly. Or maybe not. Well, the Beasley family had a long history with amusements. They were involved in the making of the Canadian National Exhibition, as we know it.

We were talking about horse racing before, when it came to Frank Stronach. in the making of the Canadian National Exhibition as we know it. We were talking about horse racing before when it came to Frank Stronach. And the Beasley family was also involved in the racetracks around the Toronto area. But based on that death notice, I learned that Warren Beasley gets credit for Centerville, the amusement park on the Toronto Island, which made the most news recently for the fact they were trying to sell the carousel.

Right. The vintage carousel there. They struck a deal with Carmel, Indiana to sell it to them. There were floods on the Toronto Island. Right. And there was no business. I mean, terrible season there on the Toronto Island. Right. And there was no business. I mean, terrible season there on the island. Centerville was

closed, so they wanted to balance the books. They wanted to sell this carousel. It was all ready to go. I mean, they were already packing it up when it turned out that the Caramel City Caramel City Council Is this Clint Eastwood's Carmel?

No, this was Indiana. Oh, a different Carmel. Okay, sorry. I should pay attention. That they didn't want the carousel, and then I think at Toronto City Hall, they took some measures to preserve it, that it wouldn't go away.

So it is Warren Beasley. We have to thank for the fact that, I don't know, Disney doesn't have a theme park on Toronto Island, that it was his family that got the rights to have this artisanal amusement park. Have you been there? Absolutely. As a kid, absolutely. And my cousin worked there and would get us, like, tickets, like ride tickets.

And absolutely, as a kid, I went to Centerville and loved it. And it's still there. So he's the guy you have to thank that it was over 50 years ago they got the rights to this place and to ensure the spirit of the Toronto Islands was retained in the amusement park over there. How would you describe it? I mean, not too commercial, right?

No, no. Like there's not Fred Flintstone mascots hanging around the place. I was going to say, it was nothing like Canada's Wonderland. No, it was much smaller and more quaint, I'd say, and less commercial. Centerville is for kids, as a jingle that I couldn't find in time for the podcast. Do you want to sing it before we move on or no? We'll just move on. George Martel.

Do you want to sing it before we move on or no? We'll just move on. George Martel. Oh, this guy was an influential figure in the history of Canadian media because he was a founder of a magazine called This Magazine. Which reminds me of who's on first skit when you talk about This Magazine. This Magazine is about schools. That was the original title. is about schools.

That was the original title. Back in the 1960s when the whole idea was to get experimental with education. I mean, how much were you subject to experimental education in Ontario? Different ideas that came up, right?

Like, let's have a classroom without any walls. Let's let kids be free. Well, I do know they sent me to... Let them find themselves within the classroom. How much of this were you subject to? One day a week, they sent me to a different... I took the TTC to a whole different school,

which was kind of like... It was called Five Talents. It was like for gifted kids or something. And it was supposed to be kind of like what you're describing, like where you would group discussions and projects together and just much less regimented and structured than the normal school. So George Martel, George Martel, right? He's the guy to thank, I think, because he had a big role in Ontario education policy,

but also founding this magazine, still around as a progressive publication in Canada, has a certain number of funders who believe in this. So as far as history of Canadian print media is concerned, this magazine, the fact that it is still around at all, is a reflection of the legacy that he built. Bernard Schiff. Oh, another name. I'm still waiting on a bigger article about him

because Bernard Schiff, Burl Schiff, he was one of the founders of the Walrus magazine. The Walrus magazine first came out in 2003. It was funded through a family foundation. And I think in pretty short order, it turned out that they didn't really know what they were doing. Do you remember hearing about the walrus? This was going to be the future of Canadian media because it wasn't beholden to trying to turn a profit that had like more of an educational mission. And it's been around all that time since 2003. I mean, they had a couple

of death scares along the way, but they found a sustainable business model. So it was Bernard Schiff who ended up stepping in as publisher when things were getting turbulent around there and stepped aside, and it seemed to change his business model to what we know the Walrus for now. I don't know what that is, but Jonathan Kaye was the editor-in-chief for a while, and there was a lot of drama involved with the fact that he was working there as more of a conservative, leaning guy running this pretty liberal magazine. Bernard Schiff then returned last year to write about Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson was his protege at the University of Toronto, and he had an article in the Toronto Star about how Jordan Peterson has let him

down. And this guy that he nurtured and established at the University of Toronto Psychology Department, where Schiff was working, that he was turning out to be this dangerous character and that we should watch out, look out for Jordan Peterson, dangerous man. We should watch out, look out for Jordan Peterson, dangerous man. So I don't know if there were any flowers from Jordan Peterson when he found out that his old mentor passed away. Sounds like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker there. Okay, Stephen Dewar.

Oh, another one that I found in the small print. Here was a guy that in his early career, he was in a group with Joan Anderson, singing group with a woman that ended up being known as Joni Mitchell. Wow. That was in Saskatchewan when he was young. But then he got into the media, and we were talking about As It Happens earlier,

and Stephen Dewar was one of the architects behind the show as it happens and the whole idea of that block programming on cbc talk radio which was established in the 1960s he was behind that now there was a show you might remember that he was uh the main producer of lauren green's new wilderness absolutely yes channel nine in toronto Green's New Wilderness. Absolutely, yes. On Channel 9 in Toronto, Cable 8. He was behind that show. Also a fan of IMDb, TNT, the show with Mr. T. Stephen Dewar had credits on there. Anyway, in his obituary, I learned they got into something wild in his older age. He was an inventor.

In his older age, he was an inventor. He was involved in optical disks written with parallel lasers. And then he went on to figuring out how the bumps on the edges of humpback whales could be harnessed for power. And he started a company called Whale Power. I don't understand any of this. But it sounds cool. How these bumps could be applied to wind turbines

and rotary machines. And just last year, he was honored by the European Patent Office Inventor Awards just before he died at age 76.

So I take me down to Main Street and that's where I select just before he died at age 76. The Four Lads. Frank Busseri passed away. Earlier in the winter, in fact, was the oldest surviving member of this classic Canadian singing group. You mentioned here with Jerry Howard that you used to listen to music of your life.

By accident, sure. So you must know this song. It was always an accident. When it was on the radio in the middle of the night on CJCL. Because they played this stuff all the time. I'd literally fall asleep after maybe Scott Ferguson, out of town scoreboard, and I'd wake up and I'd be hearing songs like this. And I'd be like, what happened?

And I'd switch it to 680 CFDR. And yet in the 1950s, stuff like this was considered Canadian music. So you could put away all your, I don't know, whatever, lowest of the low, rusty, what else are you into here? Forget about all that stuff. This was the roots of Canadian pop music. And I wanted to include it here mostly because my late father was really into this stuff,

which was kind of weird, because my father was younger than John Lennon, but he liked listening to this music, and I never understood why. And he's not around anymore to ask him, how did this become your musical taste? So I heard a lot of this stuff growing up. He had some cassette.

Four lads, four freshmen, four preps. Every group with four. I feel I know about these guys because Pat Marsden would talk about them on the Fan 590 morning show. Oh, well, yeah, that really endeared him to the younger demographic. Standing on the corner,

watching all the girls go by back in the day when you wouldn't get arrested. Terry Hargraves um here was a cbc reporter uh who spent a long time at the canadian broadcasting corporation there's a whole documentary of him online on the opening of the bluer danforth subway line what we now know as line two and you know there is, a young reporter, like in his late 20s, and already had that authoritative voice. Ended up being the first parliamentary bureau chief for the CBC. Later got into magazine writing, and then I guess he got a good deal.

He married a Canadian diplomat, and she ended up being posted to all these other countries, so he just trailed her along. But a name from the past, Terry Hargraves of the CBC. And there was no CBC article about the time that he died. So disappointing. I mean, at some point, we're just going to have to concede that I am the authority on who died in Toronto in the past month.

I already consider you the authority on who died in Toronto in the past month or anyone with a Toronto connection. And I already anticipate that every month I'll get this wonderful rundown on Toronto Mike. Okay, as long as I stay alive, I'll come in to do it. That's a good point. You need to be safe because I'm not sure there's anybody ready to take over. So stay safe.

I got to start training somebody to be my 1236 protege. We have one more to go here in the memorial segment of Toronto Mic'd and I did miss my two hour 30 minute target but not by much.

What are we listening to here? Oh, a Spirogyra. This is Morning Dance, a hit song in the late 1970s. You want to talk about the golden age of yacht rock. This was a song that I remember hearing on AM radio, FM radio, and probably got more attention around these parts because Spyro Gyra were from Buffalo. And the guy who made this song distinct

that I think helped this fusion jazz act have a hit, he was the one that we lost. What was his name? Dave Samuels. Dave Samuels. act have a hit. He was the one that we lost. What was his name? Dave Samuels. Dave Samuels. And there he is. Nice.

Nice. Do you know how old Dave was? I'm not supposed to remember. Only because I liked it. I should have ended with Frank from Four Lads. He died at 87. I may have messed up by ending, but I'm going to assume Dave was... Dave was 70 years old.

And Spyro Gyra was a fusion jazz act that I don't think would have been as well-known without him. Mark, always a pleasure. Thanks so much for visiting. You're only two beers deep. Are you off to the lake, to the waterfront to enjoy another? I think that one is going to have to wait for May.

Still a little chilly out there. No, you're right. It doesn't heat up around here until June, so you've got some time. Okay, but I can tell you, just from wandering in, the smell of marijuana is already in the air in New Toronto. We're going to see how it goes for the first legalized summer. I think that's Mimico you're smelling, but close enough.

That brings us to the end of our 459th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Mark is at 1236. That's at 1236. Subscribe to his email newsletter at 1236.ca.

That's an order. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Propertyinthe6.com is at Raptor's Devotee. Tough loss last night. We'll bounce back. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair is at Fast Time WJR. Camp Turnasol is at Camp Turnasol.

And Sticker U is at Camp Turnasol. And StickerU is at StickerU. See you all next week. ... ...... And it won't go away Cause everything is rosy and green