Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - 12:36: Toronto Mike'd #632

Episode Date: April 29, 2020

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

Welcome to episode 632 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times and brewing amazing beer. and brewing amazing beer. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Garbage Day. Weekly reminders for garbage, recycling, and yard waste pickup. Visit GarbageDay.com slash Toronto Mike to sign up now.

StickerU.com Create custom stickers, labels, tattoos, and decals for your home and your business. The Keitner Group. They love helping buyers find their dream home. Text Toronto Mike to 59559 and Ridley Funeral Home. Pay tribute without paying a fortune.

I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me for his April 2020 recap is Mr. 1236 himself, Mark Weisblot. Okay, episode number 632, right? Which is like 1236 backwards. And by the way, when you mentioned that to me yesterday via Twitter DM, it caused me to delay the release of the next volume of FOTM KOTJ because I have volume 10 ready to drop, but it would have taken number 632. And I thought you deserve number 632. We have kept up the tradition of coming in as close as we can get to the last day of the month, doing the recaps here. When I was last on, it was episode 604, Vancouver Area Code.

It's 604 Vancouver area code. And it goes to show how much content you've been pumping out of that basement during the month of April. That's actually I'm impressed. Am I allowed to be impressed by my own efforts here? That's amazing. And, you know, it's one of those things where you had to kind of adapt to the new reality. And I think we've actually come a long way since our last remote episode. Like now we're on Zoom and we've got the mic stuff figured out and we know how to get you to hear new reality. And I think we've actually come a long way since our last remote episode. Like now we're on Zoom and we've got the mic stuff figured out

and we know how to get you to hear the music. You sound better than, well, not better than when you're sitting here, but you sound great. And I've actually started to do episodes I'm enjoying. Like I enjoyed Jody Vance. I enjoyed Shad. And I enjoyed Steven Page yesterday.

Maybe off the top, have you heard any decent episodes of Toronto Mike lately? Maybe you want to pat me on the back for anything? Or has it all been just same old, same old? Well, look, Mike, I'm pretty sure I've caught them all. I think some of those F-O-T-M-K-O-T-Js have kind of blurred together. But they keep on coming, right? People submitting their favorite song with a little anecdote to go along with them. You're the one saying you're going to keep producing them as long as the requests keep on coming.

I think you should do one because the people would love you to kick out a jam. Would they? love you to kick out a jam would they i'll have to i'll have to think about what is the one song that i feel a need to be immortalized with talking about because in the two and a half hours that we're here we we talk about a lot of songs all the time building up to the obituary segment at the end and i know we we have a correction by the way to get to from last time, right? Okay, wait, hold on. Because I got to play that jam. We're going to do a correction off the top. But

I want to ask you as a listener of the podcast, put aside the FOTM, KOTJ episodes. They're like a subset, if you will. And by the way, our mutual friend, Manny, kicked out a jam recently. So shout out to Manny. I know you think that name is too unique, like saying i talked to madonna yesterday right i had share on the phone and they're like oh we know who that is but i feel there's many many manys out there can i say that

i don't know are there many not too many i can't by the way the way i speak the word many and many are the same like i my mouth can't differentiate between the word many and many. That's part of the woman-woman problem, actually, but we'll talk about that later. Okay. I see where you're going here. You're fishing for compliments. No, no, no. Yesterday's chat with Stephen Page, we have to go by the yardstick of those people who

are longtime fans of Bare Naked Ladies, who know what makes a great interview with the guy. It seems like you scored on all counts. Like Brian Dunn, he's a big fan, and I want to give him a shout-out because he's like apparently he's a super fan. Even when he was on The Price is Right winning a car, he was shouting out the Bare Naked Ladies with Drew Carey. Please continue. Andrew Crystal, the day before that,

caused some controversy and consternation. I am familiar with Mr. Crystal's history in the Toronto media. Other people might have found it a little confusing. They're wondering what this guy was on. You had to assure them, no, that's what he sounds like anyway, and I can pretty much corroborate. You had Shad, the rapper from the show Hip Hop Evolution. Revolution? Evolution. Evolution. Also, the short-lived replacement on the CBC show Q talked a bit about that. I know you had Stormin Norman Rumack laying down the real talk about his experience of having to get a job beyond broadcasting and how that's gone for him. You had Jody Vance out of Vancouver and a whole bunch of pandemic Friday episodes with Cam Gordon and Stu Stone. And I guess this is where I got a segue. The fact that by virtue of listening to stew stone do his best to lay down the fun facts

about the history of music right no one among the fotms is more confident about getting things wrong than stew stone and this is a great segue because you're about to, in fact, let me play, can I, should I play the jam now and then we can correct something you stated on the, what was it, what was before April? That was March, right? The March 2020 recap episode. So wait, give me 30 seconds here.

Let's listen to this retro jam. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven.

Seven! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. All right, take it, nine, ten. All right. Take it from there, Mark. Oh, well, look, I just spent the past 30 days in the fetal position over the fact that I presented something during our death roundup toward the end of the March recap. our death roundup toward the end of the March recap, something which was factually incorrect. And even though I wasn't entirely sure whether I was right, I tossed you a song and you got so sentimental about this bit from Sesame Street,

but it turned out that the counting song that I sent you was not the one sung by Grace Slick, formerly of the Jefferson Starship and Jefferson Airplane. The one that we played last time was the Pointer Sisters with a pinball counting thing from Sesame Street. What happened in March? One of the deaths was Jerry Slick, the first husband of Grace Slick, died at age 80. And he's the one that recruited her to do that song on Sesame Street. And even though I had thought that the counting song was the pinball one, the Pointer Sisters thing, the group was called the Jazzy Spies. And that's the one from Sesame Street on which we heard the voice of Grace Flick. That Pointer Sisters jam is so much more uh memorable popular if i will i mean i actually will on a regular basis sing in my head that pointer sisters jam i think i heard uh the gray

slick version for the first time when you sent it over and you won't let me go in and re-edit an episode and you have a point because by then we are what like over two and a half hours into our last conversation but just for the record i wanted to correct that i got something wrong and every successive week by hearing stew stone feeling completely confident that error after error after error is actually right. Left me feeling a little better about getting it wrong on Toronto Mike. For the record, what's more of a sport? WWE, wrestling, or chess? Well, didn't Cam have a Twitter poll about that?

I'm standing by for Friday to see the results. No spoilers, please. Nothing at all. Also, toward the end of the last episode, I credited the Beach Boys as collaborating with Kenny Rogers when I met the Bee Gees. I had Marcella on my mind. As usual, we'll get to that in time.

Marcella on my mind. As usual, we'll get to that in time. I'm playing a little bit of the Canadian superstars. I don't know what you'll tell me what we should call them, but they're performing Lean On Me. So tell us

where this version was recorded and why it's an interesting tidbit when we get to the Ridley Funeral Home Memorial section of the 1236 episodes of Toronto Mic'd. That's the full and proper title, by the way. And it's interesting that in this month of COVID,

well, you tell me. First of all, what are we listening to and why is it of interest as we go through the... I always forget what month it is. I don't know what month it is. April 2020 recap. Go ahead. From the

Stronger Together television special in the tradition of tears are not enough and these other pseudo religious assemblages of of rock stars and other famous people, they tied it into the fact that Bill Withers had died about a month earlier and they all grouped together via video chat to collaborate on this show closing version of Lean On Me. Even though Drake was spliced in

at the end and they let him say goodbye for this food bank fundraiser. And Drake, like myself, has recently spent time in the fracture clinic, I think, or in an emergency or something due to a foot injury. I don't have a foot injury, but

I have a wrist injury. Please continue. A point of some fascination through the month. Bill Withers died on the 30th of March, and they didn't announce the day that he died until four days later, April the 3rd. And as part of my research here for the obituary segment, the Ridley Funeral Home Death Roundup, I keep tabs of what famous people have died.

There's a page on Wikipedia that goes along. And through the month, I was wondering, is somebody who was more famous than Bill Withers bound to die this month, I was wondering, is somebody who was more famous than Bill Withers bound to die this month, this month of tragic passings due to COVID-19, can anyone eclipse Bill Withers in terms of fame and recognition? Now, keep in mind, Bill Withers spent the past 35 years being a recluse. mind, Bill Withers spent the past 35 years being a recluse. He showed up in public, I don't know, three or four times in all those years. There was a documentary about him. He showed up at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but really he was laying low. He had his reasons. And it came to mind that no one who would have the same level of celebrity of Bill Withers managed to die in this tragic month.

Now, here on the 29th, we learned about the death of an Indian actor, Irrfan Khan. He was a slum dog millionaire and the life of pie. And as someone famous in India, you know, there might be hundreds of millions of people who know who he is, but still, look. Still not as famous as Bill Withers or the songs that Bill Withers is best known for. Not as North American famous anyways. I don't think it's not even close. Most North Americans don't know the name. They might know the face from the movies, but they don't know the name of that great Indian actor.

They might know the face from the movies, but they don't know the name of that great Indian actor. And so, fun fact, with one day to go, this month which has been riddled with death, that Bill Withers has continued to hover above us all. That he was the last most famous person to die if we get to the end of April 2020. Okay, we're going to dive into the radio segment of the 1236 episodes of Toronto Mic'd. But first, I promised a loyal fan, I promised I would ask you a question off the top. Mark, any question, sorry, I butchered the question. Any chance you could ask, this is actually for me, I'm sorry, I should have read it before I read it.

But for me, any chance you could ask 1236 about asking Rogers about hiring Teresa Bonham to replace Don Cherry. This is from loyal fan Matt Layden. Do you have any poll with Rogers where maybe you could get Tessa the Don Cherry seat when Hockey Night in Canada resumes? I have no answer to that one, but we do have today in the Toronto Star, Bob McCowan

giving, I think, his first official interview ever since he disappeared from Primetime Sports. Here you were trying to get him on, what, episode 500, episode 600? No, 500. And it turned out that disappeared from primetime sports. Here you were trying to get him on what? Episode 500? Episode 600? No, 500. And it turned out that somebody finally got him on the line.

And what was it? Another FOTM? Who was it? I actually don't know anything about this article. Did he say anything of interest that you can share with us? Well, it was Kevin McGran of the Toronto Star. He's an FOTO. He was interviewed by McCowan and he seemed to be asking him

to follow up on something he said on the radio over 30 years ago, that the day would come that they would be playing sports without a crowd in the audience, that they should be building stadiums that only have private executive boxes and you shouldn't it was no longer going to be economically viable You should be building stadiums that only have private executive boxes.

And you shouldn't – it was no longer going to be economically viable to bring in hordes of people to pay for the seats. With the broadcast rights that they could make more money running sports that way. And yeah, Kevin called the Bobcat. Oh, so no Bobcat. Answer that question. No Bobcat revelations, just his opinion on that subject matter. But we didn't learn anything like, where is he showing up?

Combined with the fact that McCowan is bitter and angry about not being on the air, highlighted on Twitter that the ratings for TSN and Sportsnet were down by 75% during this spring. Shocking. You got in there with the replies. It's like, well, there's no new program. Honestly, Mark, I know I'm a bigger sports fan than you are.

You do observe the big news. You're probably aware the Raptors are 2019 NBA champions. But I'm a pretty big sports fan with certain sports. And, uh, I have zero, maybe less than zero interest in consuming TSN and Sportsnet beyond. I kind of watched, I did watch for the seventh inning of that game five where, uh, Joey bats flips the bat. And I did peek at a couple of the blue Jays. Well, the only two world series victory games. I was nostalgic. I was kind of curious but other than that I have avoided the stations because you know what there's no sports uh just once a week I watch the two new episodes of the

last dance on Netflix you can hook that to my veins but that's pretty much my sports consumption right now so I'm not surprised at all that the ratings would be down 75%. It just seems a little weird, a little Trumpian maybe, that McCowan would sort of almost gleefully laud or celebrate that fact when, to me, it's like, duh,

there's no sports. What do you think's going to happen to Sportsnet and TSN? In this article, Bob McCowan says he's at the point now where he's starting to miss being on the air, that he didn't mind at all for a while.

When did his last show? Last spring? When did we last hear the porno theme music of primetime sports? I should play it now. I don't know. Getting paid to do nothing

wasn't so bad, but I get champing at the bit now and then. He's working on a whole bunch of stuff. He's got a new beverage brand in his winery, producing documentaries, part of what he's claiming right now. But I guess it's back to this idea that he's saying, OK, I did not predict that they would play sports without any fans due to COVID-19. This is not what I envisioned. I guess he was just musing about it on the radio one day, never formally pitched it.

I didn't care what any athlete thought. It was all about economics. Welcome back, Bobcat. And it's only a matter of time until he appears on Toronto Mic'd. He could come on maybe episode 700. We're getting there faster than I anticipated, apparently. Now, before we get rolling here with the first radio item, have you, Mark Weisblot, signed up for Garbage Day

at GarbageDay.com slash Toronto Mic'd? I really do need all FOTMs to do that at garbage day.com slash Toronto Mike. Have you done it yet? Putting you on the spot. Oh, I already did. I mean, how could I resist a chance to support the show and download a useful app after I read the terms and conditions? Anything scary in there? Well, you can look it up. Around this time, when everybody's doing a little bit of house cleaning, they want to know when to get the garbage out of here.

And it helps the show. That's what the app does. So thank you for doing that. Thank you very much. GarbageDay.com slash Toronto Mike. And again, this is the second time we've had to do this remotely. I really can't wait till you're sitting right there

and we're cracking open a cold GLB. I honestly, that's going to be the sign things have come back to normal. Wise blots here. We got the cold GLB that's coming soon. And again, I know that you're a vegetarian lasagna man, and I got one of those from Palma Pasta for you. So let's go. I was actually going to play this song, and I now look at it in my song loader thing and there's like five seconds of it.

So I don't know what happened there, but I am going to play five seconds of the new Rolling Stone jam. Well, that's all you get. Sorry, doo-doo. What is this? One of those guess the song prize things on the radio? What song was that? You can probably find the whole thing without a lot of trouble while I talk about the fact that the Rolling Stones put out what might turn out to be one of the more memorable cultural byproducts of the pandemic living in a ghost town,

uh, that they were, uh, preparing a new album to go along with their tour. And they, uh, turned up on the, uh,

big, uh, American version of the benefit concert, Charlie Watts playing the air drums. You can't always get what you want. Look, what do you know? Surprisingly enough, Q107 in Toronto was playing this new Rolling Stones single. And I caught on to that by the fact on social media,

somebody was commenting in response to a tweet where they mentioned they'd be playing this song. How come you never play the new songs by these classic rock artists anymore? Great question. But the Rolling Stones with this one, it was good enough

to go into high rotation for exactly two days. And then they never played it again. That is a great question, though. There are a lot of stations who are playing certain songs by artists, and then those same artists put out a new album,

and possibly, probably, often, sometimes the new material is actually pretty good, and at least one or two cuts would be radio-worthy. But they're completely ignored. Like, no, we're only going to play the song you put out in 1996 or the song you put out in 1989. Or for the Stones, it might be the song you put out in 1968. It's kind of strange, right?

At this point, the Rolling Stones seem good for about one memorable song a decade. That's pretty much where we're at. And here in 2020, they were just about overdue. The last one I could remember was from the reissue of Exile on Main Street. That was in 2010. They had a leftover song. They re-recorded it.

Mick Jagger and Mick Taylor. It was called Plundered My Soul. That was the last Rolling Stones single I remember. And so welcome back to the Rolling Stones. It might be the last time we're able to say that because if there aren't any big stadium concerts happening in the next couple of years. Right. What, what are the odds that a rock band whose members are pushing 80 are going to assemble to play that kind of show again?

No, it sounds like my concerns for the, for the great LeBron James, like we got to get back to playing basketball because the window of his peak is closing quickly. The man's the man's getting older, but you're right. The stone's got to get out there now because there might not be a tomorrow

for that band too bad, but hopefully, I don't know. Hopefully the vaccine arrives sooner rather than later, but that's. Well, they would, they would be at the front of the line.

And we also had the Elma combo in Toronto, the reopening new owner, Michael Weckerley, who spent, I don't know, two, three, four years promising that he would bring the club back, that he was going to recruit the Rolling Stones to once again do an updated version, a reprise of their legendary 1977 concert. You get Margaret Trudeau back for another taste. Maybe invite Justin along. This was all going to happen. They were going to open the club on April

Fool's Day. And once again, that deadline extended because here we are in limbo where there is no public entertainment. Now, for me, I don't know if you experienced the same thing, but at the beginning of the lockdown, so if I consider the last day of school, March 13th, kind of for the next week after that, when you're kind of adapting to, oh my God, like we can't leave the house, we can't have people over, blah, blah, blah.

I was like soaking in a lot of news on COVID. Like I was watching a lot of CBC News, what do they call it now? CBC News Network. And I was taking in a lot of news. And then Like I was watching a lot of CBC News, what do they call it now? CBC News Network. And I was taking in a lot of news. And then at night I would go to sleep thinking I'm getting COVID. Like, oh, there's a scratch in my throat.

For sure I'm getting it. And then at some point after a week or two, I sort of dramatically reduced my news intake on COVID. And all this anxiety and all these, I haven't felt like I'm getting COVID since then. Something they're doing, tell us what they're doing on Boom. We talked about Q, now we have to give equal time to Boom 97.3. What are they doing on Fridays to help with this COVID anxiety? Well, you need some kind of hook. You need an angle. How is anybody going to talk about your media outlet at this point in time?

Commuting is down. All that kind of attention, not only to podcasts, but also terrestrial radio, people thrown out of their routines. And they announced on Boom 97.3, for the duration of the pandemic, They're going to be doing COVID-free Fridays. And the bait there is they're not going to have any discussion on the air, any reference to the fact that the coronavirus is going on. We might be in the clear where I guess no big rock stars are going to die, that they've all practiced social distancing at this point in time, that that won't cloud over what their plans are. And COVID-free radio, but only one day a week. I mean, how dedicated are they to this cause that they're still going

to mention it for the other six. But as far as what gets attention at this point in time, I think that's the best they could do. On the other side, you've got the AM talk radio stations that are all COVID all the time, including News Talk 1010, which I think I only have turned off from my clock radio to do these episodes with you. Wow. Otherwise, it's like playing in the other room at all times. I know everything that's going on there where they've got all these talk radio hosts doing their shows from home. Not entirely, but most of them. FOTM, Jason Agnew, we talked about that a month ago.

He's still on the air every weeknight that he caught a break that they wanted a live voice in overnights. And maybe the whole idea of radio providing that kind of necessary companionship has started to return. That better to do something live that speaks to the audience that they've got rather than plugging into the George Nuri coast to coast AM show. The conspiracy stuff. Fewer discussions of unidentified flying objects and more of this kind of bedside manner. And there they've got Jason Agnew getting a shot, another guy alternating on the weekends from Montreal, Dave Kaufman. And I can't say I'd heard him before, but his style is really laid back and mellow. And in his case, he'd been around Montreal radio for a while on TSN

radio, another name moving to the forefront here. There are definitely those who are reaping rewards from being able to provide this COVID-19 podcast. The question is whether there's been overkill, whether there's going to be a backlash. You can spin the statistics whichever way you want, but there was data out there showing that there were fewer clicks and fewer hits and less attention to writing these endless articles about the pandemic, and that we've moved on back to other things. And it's only this week at the end of April, I feel like some of the old culture wars are coming back, that the nonsense news that fuels the 1236 newsletter, what I'm paying attention to on Twitter and otherwise online, that people are

hungry to get back to the way it used to be, which is, you know, really like story after story about somebody getting riled up about absolutely nothing. You know, I think, for example, finding that the MP from Calgary, Michelle Rempel-Garner, that she was living in Oklahoma, that she crossed the border. It's where her husband, her stepchildren live. It was a personal matter, and she was advised to stay there, and that she's now participating in this Canadian Zoom parliament in Oklahoma. And the Toronto Star playing up this story, right? Look at these hypocrite conservatives. We're back to the old days. We're nostalgic for how it was way back at the beginning of March 2020. Okay. So back to the Agnew story real briefly is that it's good for Jason because I actually was

speaking with him this week on a unrelated matter. I was booking him on Humble and Fred, actually. We're going to get him to do a hit there. But the fun little tie-in with the Stephen Page episode I did yesterday is, of course, and we learned this from our great FOTM, our mutual friend, dare I say, but our

FOTM, Tyler Stewart, who in that episode, we had a clip from Jason Agnew talking about seeing the original lineup of the Barenaked Ladies performing on a cruise ship, ships and dip or something like that. And we confirmed with Tyler that that was the very last time that prior to that Juno Awards reunion, which you and I had the debate about, which I think I'm definitely going to win. But that was the last time that the Barenaked Ladies performed with

both Ed and Stephen. So Agnew was in the room, as I like to say. The room where it happens. On the boat. Joey Vendetta is another name I should mention that he got a radio gig

amidst it all during the pandemic. I guess no new sports radio, no new things to talk about. And there's Joey who can get his old school buddies on the line and they can talk about yesteryear. And they put him on, gave him his own weekend show. Dart Guy set the standard for weekend sports radio programming when they gave him a show on on tsn right tsn radio uh joey vendetta uh across town at the fan 590 trying to raise the standard and fill the air time and just standing by and waiting for sports to happen again.

But we've been kind of talking on and off for like literally years about the imminent Joey Vendetta fan 590 show, right? It feels like this has sort of been brewing forever. Like he does a lot of fill in work and these one-off things. But he's like, like just the Joey Vendetta show on fan 590. It seems to be happening right now. Well, in the period of time when they went through what? Seven, eight, nine, ten different morning show hosts in about five years? I collect them. I don't know if you saw my list.

I'm literally collecting them. And the only ones I'm missing, the new guy, well, Ziggle Manis is pretty new. I haven't had Mike Ziggle Manis on the show. But other than that, we're just, the only guy missing is Dean Blundell. And Greg Brady, though. Him went twice from doing that morning show. Yeah, he did it with, well, yeah, there was two, yeah. You know, he had the Brady and Lang.

Oh, yeah, Lang hasn't been on. He was booked when the pandemic hit. Lang was like the first guest I canceled when we got the Brady and Lang. Oh yeah, Lang hasn't been on. He was booked when the pandemic hit. Lang was like the first guest I canceled when we got the social distancing order, if you will. But yeah, Lang and Brady and Lang, and then it was Brady and Walker. And then, you know what happened to Brady? He went to one o'clock and then off the air.

And then he came back with Elliot Price and Hugh Burrell. Yeah, so he's had a couple of morning showgrounds. I think now you'll hear him on 640 doing fill-in work and different things. Another name who just started in podcasting, a name you might know, Marilyn Dennis. You tried to get her on Toronto Mic'd, right? You never managed to invite her successfully

into the basement. One of her people replied and said Marilyn was very busy and can't do Toronto Mike. I don't know. I don't even know. I couldn't even tell you if Marilyn was made aware of the invitation, but I did receive a polite no from the Marilyn Dennis camp. When you've got people answering those kinds of inquiries, it's a whole different level. And there's a Marilyn Dennis, the podcast is called

Marilyn Dennis Has a Podcast. The one I listened to was Marilyn and Roger Ashby. And they're reminiscing and kind of recycling the same stories that they were telling when Roger retired from the chum morning show.

We call that the greatest hits. And Roger still doing new episodes of that oldies radio show. And that's, that's also something I've been paying attention to. I don't know. I don't know why I'm, I'm drawn towards that old style, oldies radio. Because what I found interesting about Roger Ashby was the subversion, the fact that here this guy was sticking around pop radio

for all those years, a guy that was already past retirement age, teeing up Dua Lipa songs on the radio. He was an inspiration to us all. But hey, I can also sweat to the oldies when it's Roger Ashby talking in between them. That show is still a

going concern. The first music I ever loved was Golden Oldies. Those cassettes from the gas station, like with the 50s and early 60s hits on it. But here's something a little different. And now also celebrating the opening of Sky Dome is Liberty

Silver. Right, Liberty Silver is about to kill it here. Get ready. Open up. Here she comes. Time to let the celebration begin. Open up the dome and let the people come in. Open up. Open up.

Everybody sing. Time to let the celebration begin. Open up the dome and let the people come in. Are we even allowed to talk about this without Ed Conroy on the Zoom here? Are we even allowed to talk about this without Ed Conroy on the Zoom here? This is, of course, this is the famous ceremony they had when they opened up the Sky Dome. And, of course, it was famously raining while they sang about the dome opening up. But tell us, why have I dug up the old Tony Ambrose dome song? Well, if you're reading the 1236 newsletter earlier in april you would have

read about this as a little canadian angle on the launch of quibi and quibi is a new app a new backed by $1.8 billion in investment with Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman at the helm of this concept, which they were shopping around Hollywood. And it finally launched on April 6th. What they were selling here was Quick Bytes, short-form professional video shows featuring famous people in acting roles or reality shows. And this one particular one hosted by Will Arnett of Toronto, called Memory Hall. And the thing launched with a bunch of episodes.

Curiously enough, the focus of the episodes was crappy Canadian culture. And one of the first ones, the worst celebration of all time, was distilling the opening of the Skydome, 1989, the first Canadian stadium with a retractable roof and Will Arnett offering snarky comments in between the clips. With $1.8 billion in the bank for Quibi, you could only imagine how much he was getting paid to do something.

That's not all that much different from an experience that you can simulate for yourself on YouTube using clips from people like Retro Ontario. But there it was. It was a really slick presentation that you

were supposed to get excited about. We'll learn that talking about the golden age of the littlest hobo. And also, what was it, a rap? Some kind of fight song performed by the Calgary Flames. That was somewhere in there. And after this thing launched, the curiosity was, is that all there is? Is this what $1.8 billion can buy? Is this something that anybody is going to care about?

At least of all, at a point where most people were stuck at home. least of all, at a point where most people were stuck at home. And this idea of watching content on your phones while you were on the run, riding on a bus, sitting in a waiting room, was there anything realistic here about what they were trying to sell? Quibi also has a tie-in with Bell Canada, Bell Media, that they've got a CTV news update, TSN update. That's part of Quibi. Oh, yeah, Kayla Gray. Is that what I read? That Kayla Gray maybe is part of this? I'm Kayla Gray doing one of the TSN daily updates. I don't know what they're talking about exactly because the thing launched at a time

when there wasn't much going on in sports, but they had to deliver what they promised. And they probably don't, knowing Bell Media the way I know Bell Media, they probably don't want to talk a lot about The Last Dance, which is an ESPN thing that's on Netflix, considering that Belle is home of Crave and, you know, ESPN has the ownership in TSN. So they're probably, yeah, I don't know what the hell they're talking about, but I got to say

this and I know they're not targeting, you know, 40 something year old dudes like me. I'm aware of that because there's like, again, I might have less than zero interest in Quibi. Quibi? Quibi? Quibi. I can't even say it. But have you sampled it? Like, have you subscribed? Well, I subscribed. I signed up for a free trial.

I promptly canceled it because there wasn't much I wanted to say. I tried to get into the Will Arnett show. I thought that was relevant enough to pay attention to because of the content he was covering. But very quickly, I didn't care anymore. And that's what everybody is finding out with this service. QuibiVerse. They were going to review all of the Quibi shows. A guy and a gal doing some banter back and forth. They enjoyed what they were seeing. They were enthusiastic about the service and they received a cease and desist order from Quibi's

lawyers. And now the show QuibiVerse, renamed Streamiverse, and they relaunched. I couldn't help but listen. It was great. Their rebranded podcast started by trashing the hell out of Quibi and talking about all the executives who leapt off this Titanic even before it got going. And a couple weeks after the launch, they lost their director of marketing. And once again, this is being run like a well-capitalized, big-time Hollywood studio. All the dot-com disasters of 20 years ago couldn't have spun a more fascinating story than I think what's going to go down over here. And to promote how hard he's working,

Jeffrey Katzenberg was bragging to the Wall Street Journal about the fact that he's been waking up at 2.30 in the morning to do all of his Zoom meetings and strategize online. I mean, what can you say? He doesn't need the money. He wants to see this thing become a success. His whole reputation, his ego is riding on it as an entertainment mogul, from Disney to DreamWorks to the idea that you watch content on your phone. And as soon as you tether Bell Media to an operation like this, very few people are going to want to do the real talk about it. I looked on the credits of the CTV Quibi News, okay, beyond the anchors. And one of them who

they recruited back to CTV from CBC was Reshmi Nair. She's doing like the Ctv national news quibi version and i'm sure once again you know she she's being well compensated uh to be you know a talented genuine tv anchor uh that she can kind of languish here somewhere on an app and hope people to discover it i i don't. I don't know who's paying who. All I know is I counted the credits. 29 people beyond the anchors are working on CTV News for Quibi. Do you know how many people's names show up in the credits for an episode of Toronto Mic'd? I know.

Okay. So again, their production values are much, much higher. Of course, of course, of course. Do you, wouldn't you love to know the true number of unique sets of ears or eyeballs, if you will, that will watch that news, that QEBI news? Wouldn't you love to know the real number? And would you be shocked if you heard the real number was something like 42?

Well, they got a good laugh. Some venture capitalists noticed that on the Apple iPhone rankings of the App Store, it's kind of a black box, right? Like you can't find out how many people are actually listening to a podcast through Apple, but you can find out relatively how it's doing. Well, you can actually find out a number of unique devices to access your podcast via Apple Podcasts. to access your podcast via Apple Podcasts? There's a, what is it? A-M-S-R cake slicing app that simulates the experience of slicing through cakes of sand where you get the whole auditory experience if you download this app through Apple.

Right. And this ASMR slicing app was higher in the rankings than the $1.8 billion of Quibi. I don't wish anyone ill. I just think the cease and desist to the podcasters who are actually paying attention to your service and talking about it is entirely the opposite strategy I would have implemented.

Another service out there looking for attention in these pandemic times is Apple tv uh and uh they just launched the beastie boys movie i watched documentary i watched it i loved it too i loved it and i should point out the i'm no one can see a view but the the macbook pro i bought in december 2009 to upgrade the infrastructure here at tm came with a 12-month subscription to Apple TV. And I've only ever seen two things on it. I watched The Morning Show with my wife, and I watched the Beastie Boys documentary alone.

And I got to say, The Morning Show was okay, nothing special. But that Beastie Boys doc was fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was some easy viewing there to watch the two surviving Beastie Boys talk about the history of the band. And I don't know,

it got like trashed by one or two reviewers who said, well, they put out a book with this exact content in it. Why would you want to watch the movie? Which really doesn't make any sense. Makes no sense. If you enjoyed it in one medium, you would get into it in another. How many, it's like, oh, like that makes no sense. If you enjoyed it in one medium, you would get into it in another.

How many, it's like, oh, like that makes no sense. It's like saying, you know, you can read about Titanic in old newspapers. You don't need to make a movie about it. I just think that's ridiculous. A lot of great books became movies and people would judge them separately. But tell me about this wonderful slice of CanCon that is coming to Apple TV. Well, the legacy is very Canadian because Fraggle Rock was originally filmed in Toronto. And there is a piece at Spacing.ca, which kind of dissects like the Yorkville counterculture, the macrame Toronto legacy that contributed to the making of the show.

Jim Henson was quite familiar with the culture of the city because he did a lot of productions in Toronto, the ones that were not Sesame Street or The Muppet Show. If there was a credit for Jim Henson, it probably had something to do with producing it in Toronto, specifically around those CFTO-TV agent court studios that seem to come up on every other 1236 episode of Grunt of Life. You were on, just like I opened Stephen Page's episode of the Bumper Stumpers theme and talked about him doing Bumper Stumpers,

you were on Just Like Mom. And the producer of that Canadian game show documentary wanted me to come on and talk about just like mom. And I wasn't so into the idea there, but in chatting with him, I said, did you know that Steven page formerly of the barren naked ladies was once on bumper stumpers.

And it was my, my tip that created that clip of Page talking about his own Canadian game show experience. Only you can see this, Mark. My brain is exploding. I actually totally love it when the stories all kind of link together like that, that you are the man responsible for Stephen Page

telling the story of Bumper Stumpers, which is how I chose to lead off his episode of Toronto Mike, just to, you know, lighten things up. Cause I knew it might get a little heavier later, but amazing how that's you. Yeah.

And yet amidst everything, I feel like I never get enough credit, but I'm doing my best. So I give you two and a half hours a month. Do you think anyone other than Stu Stone and Kim Gordon, which by the way, if you want that zoom link, I would let you in.

You are a special FOTM, but enough credit. I got to make, take a moment to tell anyone who can hear my voice. If you have not yet signed up for the 1236 newsletter that goes out at 1236 PM every weekday, go to 1236.ca right now and do it. Do it. Do it! Well, you would have read already there

about the return of Fraggle Rock. And this is being done, filmed on iPhones, the iPhone 11. This is Apple TV after all. They want to show that you can do professional enough productions just with your phone.

And so, in this time of self-isolation, the puppeteers are getting the band back together and they're filming these initial revivals of Fraggle Rock at home. No need for a Toronto studio setup, but whatever, a little bit of nostalgia, I guess it hits the right chord, just like the Beastie Boys. You can see demographically, Mike, they're coming for you as somebody who finds some resonance in these totems from your childhood. They are coming for me because I loved Fraggle Rock. I loved it. Even before I learned it had the Canadian connection. Although I did recognize,

the guy who, the old man whose dog was Sprockets or whatever, I recognized his voice from another CBC thing. And even I remember Connect thinking, oh, that's the same actor, but it never did connect that this Fraggle Rock was filmed here. But I should have.

I was young and dumb. But you know I have the check your head sticker you.com sticker here. Check your head. I loved Beastie Boys since I was playing them with my buddy Joe, who got rid of them. Do you know Bill Brio, F-O-T-M, Bill Brio, wrote a big piece for the Toronto Star

about my buddy Joe backpacking around the world with his family, being stuck in Thailand during this pandemic. And you know where Bill Brio learned those details. Right here, I put Joe on this show. But I digress. I'm just going to say I loved a lot of Beastie Boys, but that album, Check Your Head,

is the one I played over and over again at number 11. And I love every cut on it. And anyway, wow, what a trip that doc was. It was fantastic. Okay, so Fraggle Rock is coming back to Apple TV, filmed on iPhones. If anyone sees it, let me know if it's any good. We're going to burn through a couple of these items.

I want you to spend a moment and tell us about a publication that you wrote for. And I know you wrote for this publication because I would read things about TMDS clients like Mark Hebbshire, Ralph Ben-Murray, Peter Gross. I'm talking about, of course, the Canadian Jewish News. Did they shut the door? What happened over there? Okay. Well, it's a complicated story, and it's one that I'm a little bit part of. For the last two and a half years, only in print, I was writing this thing.

They called it trending. There are too many things out there called Trending, but it wasn't my idea. I was doing an old-fashioned entertainment roundup column specifically for the CJN, which is a 60-year-old publication dedicated to the Jewish community in Canada. And I could write about whatever I wanted to. And some of it would have overlapped with the 1236 newsletter. Because it was only in print, I was playing it to a different kind of audience. But I was always trying to get those morsels in there to make that point that I can write and cover things that you won't find anywhere else. And that includes podcasts that you were producing at TMDS because in contemplating who's going to give press to these things, there are no more reporters that you can contact at the big time daily newspapers who are going to be able, they don't have the context to give the time of day to what your people have been doing. And as a result, there I was able to

get that overlap happening. It turned out that these veteran media personalities happen to be Jewish, and that was good enough for the agenda of the CJN. And so a little bit of a loss and some perspective that even though this was a specialized community newspaper, there it was. It was an outlet. It was printed. It was written in the English language. Tens of thousands of people saw it. And I would often- Ultimately-

Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but- No, I'm going to say. Go ahead. It was a, I was building up, Mike, and there you rudely interrupt me. It was a newspaper as good as any other when it came to serving that kind of purpose. Now you can make your point. Okay, forget that point now. I feel sorry for ruining your point there, but I would ask- Well, you should feel sorry

that I was out of a freelance gig as soon as they announced they would no longer be publishing a weekly print edition of the CJM. Nobody gave more love to the Canadian Jewish News than I did because every time you would kindly write about a TMDS client,

I would find it somewhere online like pdf or whatever and I would screen cap it and I would tweet thank you the CJN news or whatever for uh the love anyway is there any hope that this wonderful publication can uh return in digital form well unique for a situation where a newspaper was closing down, they started implying that it would be coming back even before the final issue was printed. And here I had this participation. I guess you could call me some kind of consultant. I would put together a newsletter, email newsletter for them. It went out at least a couple times a week for a while.

We were experimenting in that direction. They also had some podcasts going on. And it's not only me aspiring to be a part of whatever kind of comeback is happening there. But I also want to see it as a role as far as establishing a template for how newspapers can enter this new era in general after COVID-19. What does it take for an outlet to be sustainable? What kind of financial support does it need? What sort of audience is out there? If you're running something that has a niche for a specialized community, a religion, an ethnic group, some racial definition, whatever it is, how can you get it out there to make it feel as mainstream as possible? part of the challenge that lies ahead, that not only should a Canadian Jewish news of the future be of interest to people who it's directly related to, but there, even Toronto Mike, who as far as I can tell is not Jewish at all, would find enough reason to care about what's

happening on the website and in any future publication. That's where I am hoping it goes. And I'm kind of standing by to hear all about it, but like everything else in the world, how much can you hurry right now at this point in time? And we'll see, it could be going on behind my back. I may not know anything about where it goes at all, but I'm looking forward to playing a role in the future of the concept. It had been around, after all, quite continuously for over 60 years. At one point, they shut it down back in 2013. The people who were backing it, they said they didn't want to support it anymore with the structure that they have, that they had back then. It was – they announced that they were laying off 50 people, 50 people on the payroll of a weekly, let alone daily publication.

I don't think that model is sustainable anymore. publication, I don't think that model is sustainable anymore. Part of the shtick with the 1236 newsletter was me trying to show that basically one person could do it all and get a media brand out there. That is still a work in progress, but because it's only one person, you get a long runway, it turns out. Coming up on five years of sending out a 1236 newsletter every day in early May. I can't believe it's gone on for that long. And I also wouldn't be

surprised if things change in some direction in the very near future. Which you've been saying every episode. Every episode you say that. You know that, right? It's real talk. I feel like I'm kind of opening the curtain a little bit for people to understand what's involved with working in the media in a situation where you're still trying to make it.

Now, I don't know how many years I've got left to live. How much time do I have to make a success out of something? And yet, a lot of people know 1236, I'm on here every month. We're talking about the newsletter. We're talking about where it's going to go. And we know that everything is going to change on the other end of this. We're hearing about closures and cutbacks and layoffs in the media. But I don't believe that anybody that wants to succeed in something in the future is going to cancel it now and then go through all the trouble of bringing it back. That if we hear of stuff being called off, it's because it was in a precarious situation anyway. And things just sped up because of COVID-19. But this is just my theory.

And here, we're going to put it to the test. But I think the same goes for you with TMDS. Now is the time to find out if there's any viability to this model. Because people are going to want media production that's done with the lowest overhead possible, with the most passion that they can find, and the least amount of infrastructure. Because you've got to pay people on every level to manage things, micromanage, get rid of them all. The whole idea of this is that one passionate guy who cares about quality, who can handle the A to Z. Anyway, this is not meant to be an ad for TMDS except I really do. Well, then it could be an ad

for 1236 because I had this company, St. Joseph Communications, believe in my theory of things and I would like to expand it a little bit more, that we could do this modern-day guerrilla journalism still in the corporate context. Right. In that sense, there's a need to be hitched to this larger operation. And there they were

absorbing a whole bunch of other magazines, Maclean's and Chatelaine. We've talked over the past year how they acquired these magazines that Rogers didn't want anymore, that they still see a viable business in them. I am standing by waiting to be a part and coming on here every single month telling you how I'm still waiting for it to happen. Mike, even you are losing patience with me. Mark, you're ahead by a century. The bleeding edge. It's nice to have company there.

Oh, it's a short version. That must mean that's the theme song for Anne with an E, a show I must confess I have never watched, but I hear it's good. Is there outrage? Is there riots in the street? What's going on with Anne with an E? You know, I contacted somebody at Twitter Canada, Cam Gordon. FOTM Cam Gordon. Coming back for another Pandemic Friday, I asked him to verify a claim that appeared in an article in The Guardian. The claim was that fans of Anne with an E

have now sent 13 million tweets protesting the cancellation of their show. Asking Cam if he could somehow back up this claim, all I got from him officially was Twitter Canada has not published these numbers, which I think goes to show that you can usually get away with saying anything about the groundswell that you've created. If you want to throw out a number like 13 million people have tweeted about the Toronto Mike podcast. About the duck, maybe. You have a pretty good chance of that being published without verification. But hey, it sounded great.

And it was worth a headline because there was in the Guardian talking about the fact that the CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, read the riot act to these and with an e activists telling them not to barge in on unrelated twitter threads anymore they will hide any replies from these people who are demanding the return of their show which was announced that it would have its final season they had three seasons and of green gables updated for the 21st century. They got three years in. Netflix usually doesn't keep a show around more than two or three rounds. They're satisfied with what they've got. They want to move on, give other people the opportunity,

but they are demanding, in fact, that the show return. They bought billboards at Young Dundas Square. People, I guess, they're in lockdown. They're spending their entire lives right now raging at the powers that be, saying they have three hundred thousand signatures on a petition that they're going to bring back this show, which the producers were perfectly fine with ending. Like they made they're ready to move on. They want to do something else. They got to get on with their lives. This new cast of the end of Green Gables are looking forward to their next job. No, the groundswell out there, 13 million tweets wanting them back.

At some point, Mike, we might have to tune in and see what all the fuss is about. It's almost summertime. The cherry blossoms in High Park are going to be in full bloom. But we can't go see them. They've shut down High Park. By the way, how are you holding up, man? We didn't start with the obvious, which is another month went by in this social isolation. How are you holding up, man? We didn't start with the obvious, which is another month went by in this social isolation. How are you doing?

Oh, Mike, don't get me started on that one. All I got to say is this. All the work that I was doing was dependent upon the world being in motion, whether or not I was participating in it. And even though I don't think that my work routines have changed all that much, it doesn't mean that I'm not in various states of despair. How can you avoid it? We're all in this together. And here we are, you know, coming to the end of April. I was thinking that freedom would arrive maybe by the 1st of May. I could revisit your basement again. Or if we needed some social

distance, I don't know, I'd come to the Humble and Friends Studios. We'd do the show from there. That might be happening, right? Like if you can't let people into your house, if you're not comfortable. Maybe if you're Kathleen Wynne, maybe. You think I can sit six feet away from you and we can successfully do this show? You don't think sitting in your basement as I do that some droplets are not in danger of making their way into one of your bodily openings or vice versa? You with children in the house, it could happen. We got to be careful.

You're asking the trillion dollar question. This is the question. And my answer to it is how I feel, which is when the health experts say it's safe to do an in-person episode of Toronto Mic'd, you're the first episode I want to do. And we will be bumping elbows again. I can't wait.

Hopefully bring some GLB down to the lake, part of my post-podcast ritual. In the meantime, I can't hang out by the lakeshore there in New Toronto. And I definitely can't go to High Park. You can't go to High Park. That's for sure. And you can't see the cherry blossoms. And the midges are really bad. Like, you're actually better to skip your lake visit this round and pick it up at late May.

There you go. That's the optimism I've been looking for. Okay, that song, Orville Peck, Canadian artist, based in Toronto, Summertime. That's one of those tunes that came out out and I think we're getting a little tired of this now where you see new music happening and the headline invariably is about how

this is the perfect song for the pandemic a masked country singer he had the mask on before the rest of us. Didn't want his face to be seen, even though you can easily figure out who the guy is. Orville Peck. Record deal with Columbia Records.

That's pretty good for a fringe Canadian indie rock artist. It's Michael Bublé, right? This is Michael Bublé in disguise. Well, I don't want to spoil it for people. Oh, because I don't know, actually. Maybe think that it's somebody more famous than he actually is. there over the digital airwaves as we anticipate the first virtual blooming of the sakuras in High Park, right? After so many years of this being a Toronto ritual, which by the way, like so many other public events, I'd never partaken in. But now that I've basically been

locked up for the past six or seven weeks, I can't wait to see the cherry blossoms at the next available opportunity. There should be a name for that phenomenon. That's like when, remember the, of course, you remember the water levels rose to a point where they said you can't go to the Toronto Island anymore. And this is something I hadn't done in many, many years and never really felt I was missing it. Suddenly, it's all I wanted to do was go to that island because I hadn't done in many, many years and never really felt I was missing it. Suddenly, it's all I wanted to do was go to that island because I couldn't do it. Virtual cherry blossoms coming to a YouTube stream near you.

Toronto Mayor John Tory saying they'll have various angles. I don't know. Maybe look at some drone shots in there. The Cherry Blossoms will be joining such legendary visual experiences as the Christmastime Fireplace, the Aquarium TV. That year they had a Swiss Chalet rotisserie chicken running 24-7. What about the… And this year, Cherry Blossoms. The Rideau Canal. What about the... And this year, Cherry Blossoms. The Rideau Canal. What's that called?

What is it called? Boating the road? What's the term I'm looking for? You know what I'm talking about. The TVO documentary I talked about in a whole episode. Anyways, there's a word for it. Something the Rideau Canal.

Can you say it so I don't... Okay. Well, then I got to Google it. I got to make sure I'm right, and then I'm worried about correcting it on the next episode. Tell us about Tim Hortons and maybe a little bit about

Loblaws. Well, Tim Hortons, a great piece that ran from University of Waterloo statistics professor. Earlier in the spring, a ritual here that bridges the winter into the warmer days, the Tim Hortons roll up the rim to win contests, and they were going to give away reusable cups.

This was going to be the response to the backlash about too much litter, too many Tim Horton rims littering the streets. And, of course, they had to call it off because it was not the time in history to start giving away reusable cups and asking people to keep bringing them back over and over again. This statistics professor was paying attention to the giveaway, which I went ahead with regardless, on the app. on the app. And noticing the fact, and I guess this is where that mathematical education came in, noticing that the prizes were being given away at particular intervals. And if they didn't give away enough over the course of a day or a week or a month, they built up towards the end. On the last day of the contest, he used up all his accumulated rolls and he won. He tried 96 times, and he won 94 of them, which naturally he announced he hopes to give away to a good cause. Wow. By the way, the answer was tripping. Tripping the Rideau Canal is that documentary on TVO.

Thanks for leaving us hanging, Mike. Thanks for leaving us hanging, Mike. Another story which everybody loved was back on the Easter weekend. And traditionally, the Retail Business Holidays Act stipulates that supermarkets, large supermarkets, can close on Easter Sunday, kind of an old-fashioned relic of Ontario laws, going back to the Orange Order, when they locked up the playgrounds, you couldn't swing on Sunday. Well, you know, there are still some things that are held sacred, and those include Easter Sunday. And on that particular Easter Sunday, in fact, it was even Premier Doug Ford, who was saying he wanted the supermarkets to open, that in fact it would create crowding and lack of social distancing. And he was appealing, like he was willing to drop that law. But whether it was the company's decision or they had a union that they had to answer to, decision or they had a union that they had to answer to. Loblaws, all major supermarkets closed on Easter Sunday, but still enough people figured, hey, when is anything closed these days? People

can't keep track. They went into this Loblaws at St. Clair and Bathurst in the Forest Hill neighborhood only to find that the doors were open and there was nobody inside. Observed by someone who commented online, seeing somebody, you could just imagine the comical experience of watching someone walk out of this luxury supermarket with these big stuffed plastic bags, right? Like at eight o'clock in the morning, they were helping themselves. And once in the store, finding that in fact, there was no staff inside, a few people browsing around and perhaps enjoying this accidental generosity of Galen Weston, who had a staff member who forgot to lock up at night. I think that's a story that will be remembered for a while out of these days of COVID-19.

There that morning, that Easter Sunday morning at Loblaws, until somebody figured out what was happening and called the cops who alerted the security company. And that was the end of that. Even stranger was the claim that people were, do you believe this? They were taking groceries and they were like writing down what they were taking with them so that they could come back and pay later. That seems a little too.

Here's my take on that. While the beach boys sing in the background, my take on that is that people know their faces are on camera, and they don't actually want to get, like, arrested for thieves. So that's a way to, like, oh, no, I wrote down what I took to pay later. Like, it's sort of to plead some ignorance, so no charges are laid. But you're also hopeful that, you know, I don't know, somehow it's forgotten, and you did actually get those groceries for free.

What do you think? That's like a layer that you think will give you some kind of an excuse if you're pulled before a judge. What do you say? I'll work on that one. Okay. So why am I playing? By the way, Blair told us about a different version of this song.

I almost played the other version. Should I play the other version? No, no. It's been so many months, Mike. Do not screw with tradition because it's when I hear this song by the Beach Boys that I know it's time to talk about Marcella.

Is there an update? Did anything happen in April regarding Chair Girl? Well, what came and went was the date that was supposed to be Chairgirl's final time in court when the judge was ultimately going to

render a decision. That there was not going to be any more waiting around to figure out what was going to be the result of this case, and that Chairgirl would receive some sort of sentence after what by that point was like over 13 months of going through the system and different delays and wondering what was going to happen to her. They postponed that court date until June. But I think we speculated here before that the Marcella Zoya case will not be a top priority once the courts open again. That they'll file this one away as inconclusive and that the world can go on without finding out what chair girl's punishment should be.

Because chair girl has suffered enough. Well, don't forget. And she's suffering along with the rest of us. I want to hear more about your Marcella observations and maybe talk about whether it's borderline creepy or not. But first, I want to know, I want to point out that in this age of COVID, being in jail is actually now a far harsher punishment than it would be in non-pandemic times.

I mean, a prison is where COVID could spread like wildfire. So I think a judge would consider this crime and everything that she's been through. And at this point, does it make sense to put this young woman behind bars? And i'm sure the answer will be no uh what we got during the month from chair girl uh was uh kind of an instagram that you could imagine her sharing uh if if she in fact was doing time because you know there she was dressed to the nines, whether this was a new photo or not, with her comment, I can't wait to dress up and be allowed outside again. Chair girl is dreaming of freedom.

But aren't we all, Mike, at this point in time? Do you think that your personal interest in the Marcella story, how much of it has to do with her enhancements? I'm going to try to answer this seriously. Okay. I think as a member of a generation that is, let's say, about three decades ahead of mine, I am eternally curious about how much shame those younger people are able to feel about anything, right? They grew up with the internet. They've had these smartphones going back as far as they can remember. They've had access to this kind of exhibitionism that we did not understand when we were teens. And I think the story of Chair Girl

is like exhibit A in seeing how much remorse can someone feel about a situation which to them doesn't seem all that antisocial? She was performing a little stunt. She was throwing a chair off the 45th floor condo balcony. And somebody filmed it, and she shared it on her social media, even though they spent, like, a few times in court disputing whether or not it was actually posted under her name. And, you know, what has gone wrong in this society that allows anyone, you know, who got educated in Canada, as she did, you know, to think that this is perfectly okay? And that's where I'm at with Chair Girl. And I think it's interesting for you too, as a parent of teenagers who similarly grew up in this world,

only a couple of years younger than Marcella. Now, the tools have changed. I'm not referring to the throwing of the chair off the balcony. To me, that was reckless and irresponsible and probably criminal, yes. But I'm speaking of the exhibitionism, the public profile, there's not much difference in my mind, uh, between the 2020 Marcella and the 2000, for example, Ramey, the minks, for example, like it is simply this public life. Or even if you want to go back to like an American example, like Jenny cam, right? Like to me,

it's, it's, it's just a more a mindset than a, a result of this Instagram culture. Again, I'm not referring to the chair off the balcony. That's completely inexcusable, but the whole exhibitionism,

you know, no more privacy. This is me. You know what I mean? Like that's pretty much like the Ramy the Minx model from 2000. Am I right? And yet these days there's plenty of competition and how else can you distinguish yourself? Even if you're just in it for the likes, okay. Even if you don't imagine this is something you can monetize, like you're, you're, you know,

you just, you just get that, you get that endorphin rush, that adrenaline that comes out of liking your photo on Instagram. Even that marketplace has got really crowded. You have to distinguish yourself somehow. Maybe this is an extreme example of somebody who's gotten noticed for that reason. But in the process of kind of ridiculing the whole chair girl story here every month, I guess you hope for the best for this young woman, that she can kind of turn this whole experience upside down, that she can be a role model, that she might be good making the rounds speaking to school children about what she went through.

Maybe that should be the sentence rendered upon her by the courts. In fact, if they throw out her case, was there any lesson learned at all? If she turns the corner here and starts to become an agent like an agent for good. Like you're describing, they'll make a movie about her because this is the, this is the ending the movie requires, right? We need to sort of, she needs to redeem herself, so to speak here.

But I, I do look, I do look forward to the, the Mark Weisblot chair girl updates every month. And I'm sure I'll miss them when they're gone. Maybe at least for one episode, I'll miss them. And then as far as I can tell,

we're just going to keep doing them forever. I'm sorry about when they're gone. Maybe at least for one episode, I'll miss them. As far as I can tell, we're just going to keep doing them forever, Mike. I'm sorry about that. Now, forever. You know, I'm glad you said forever because everything ends. This is the line I remember from the bonus episode of my mom when Kenny Rogers died. She's like, oh, everything ends. And I'm like, yeah, everything everything ends so let's just go ahead i was gonna mention uh honest eds has played a role here in in this time of covet 19 uh got sentimental

because you were talking about everything ending and that included the honest eds department store at bathurst and bluer in toronto Toronto. And a bunch of posters that were printed up by an artist named Dream with three E's, a street artist kind of character with the words, we're all in this together. Have you seen these posters out in the wild? I haven't been out in the wild, Mark. I can't even bike. This is my first month, my first calendar month I didn't bike, and I gotta go back to the archives, but I think since 2012,

there might have been a winter month where I took it off, but it's been a long time, but I am not out in the wild. Okay, if you got far enough as the Annex or Queen West out in Parkdale... I walk within like a two kilometer radius of my home and I don't know where else

have I been in the month of April, believe it or not. That's shocking. I even saw Young and St. Clair, a poster saying we're all in this together. Done in that style, that hand painted typography,

the font that was synonymous with honest ads. And the artist that put them together out of the goodness of his heart, and he started selling prints of them online. Now, even though it was dubiously rendered, I didn't like how he split up the word together. Together with a hyphen in the middle. Oh, yeah. I don't like that either. It looked off.

It looked wrong. British or something. He got a complaint from Wayne Rubin, who was one of those artists who worked in the back room hand painting signs for Honest Ed. Saying that, in fact, this style was something that he had the rights to, even though there were multiple painters. And he, along with his daughter, they went to the Globe and Mail, who had written a nice write-up about these honest-ed style posters, to complain that his idea was planning to do some kind of fundraiser, or at least he was inspired, and that he wanted this artist, Dream Lord, to get out of the Hon anyone any pain, and he's not going to sell these posters anymore. brewery and doing his own uh his own cans of beer uh even more awkwardly we must stand alone to win together and those are the posters that he's selling uh and then you can get a can of beer from henderson brewery which of course i have to say is nowhere as supportive of the Toronto Mike's podcast

as Great Lakes Brewery. That is awkwardly phrased. I don't like that phrasing. Nothing to do with which brewery is behind it. Even if it had come, that was a Great Lakes production. I would just say read it again. Do you mind reading it one more

time? We must stand alone to win together i would like an opportunity to workshop it a little bit i think in about five minutes i'd have a cleaner smarter version okay well you're a little bit biased and you can you can buy a poster of it and uh some of that goes to charity, and some of it also goes to the artist Wayne Rubin for $250. Some proceeds to the Parkdale Community Food Bank, which I'm sure can use the money, whether or not $250 for a poster is in your budget. I mean, this guy was the Honest Ed's artist, right? But his spin on it is not going to be as iconic as the guy he accused of ripping him off. Right, right. And I don't know if he has any legal grounds it's like above all i mean there was david

mervish right the the uh son of ed who was asked by the globe what he thought of this tribute he thought it was wonderful and yet here was one of honest ed's artists who did not originate this style but he says like okay he perfected it and he had specific flourishes and that there his style was being ripped off by this street artist uh and that's going to go down to history as one of the wackier toronto stories in the time of covet 19 it's got me thinking about public enemies rebel without a pause but let's pause for a moment. I mentioned everything ends and it's time for us to memorialize those we lost in April,

2020. This section, this segment of Toronto Mike is proudly brought to you by Ridley funeral home. They're at 30, 80, three, zero eight, zero Lakeshore.

That's at 14th Street and Lakeshore. And Brad Jones has been a tremendous FOTM. At Ridley Funeral Home, you pay tribute without paying a fortune. I encourage you to learn more at RidleyFuneralHome.com. He gave you black days

And now you slouch He didn't mean it He's just a dummy Lean and playboy On your couch And now it's time to say what I forgot to say Baby, baby, baby Come on, what's wrong?

It's a radiation vibe I'm proving on Don't it make you wanna get some We start with the little Fountains of Wayne. Well, you had mentioned the death of Adam Schlesinger back when you had the Wilners come on. That was Mike Wilner and Norm Wilner. Because what? That was Norm Wilner's all-time favorite song? One by Fountains of Wayne? Yeah, one of his favorite bands of all time. And he kicked out a Fountains of Wayne jam when he kicked out the jams here.

And as far as COVID-19-related deaths, people who had some level of celebrity, this might have been the most surprising of all. By the fact that Adam Schlesinger was only 52 years old when he died after contracting the coronavirus. This was announced on April 1st. was announced on April 1st. And, you know, even sadder with the fact that initially we got reports that he was in a coma and then his manager or publicist or something denied this. And, you know, you got to wonder when a report like that gets out, there's usually maybe a kernel of truth involved. Like, that is entirely random.

You know, I mentioned that he was suffering and fighting for his life. And it turned out, unfortunately, to be the case. I first knew about Adam Schlesinger when I talked to him on the phone for an interview for iWeekly back in 1997. Was that for The Thing You Do? 1997. Was that for The Thing You Do? It was around the time of the release of That Thing You Do, which was the Wonders, right?

Tom Hanks directed movie. It was supposed to sort of simulate this fictional Beatles knockoff band. And there was Adam Schlesinger who, you know, got what for him was really hitting the big time. And how he made his way there was having this reputation for being this kind of power pop song writer with, in fact, two bands going on at once. One was called Ivy and the other one was Fountains of Wayne. And they both at the time had major record deals there with him in both of those groups. It was Fountains of Wayne, I guess, doing their first tour, playing the clubs, getting in the van, you know, with that backing at the time with Atlantic Records and trying to have one of those elusive

modern rock radio hits and never quite getting to the point where, you know, they were showing up on the charts. But for Adam Schlesinger, it got him where he needed to be, which was to be recognized as this guy who you could call to deliver a catchy song for all occasions. That's how he ended up doing the music for these TV funhouse animated skits on Saturday Night Live. You remember those, right? He did the

theme song, Ambiguously Gay Duo. That was one of his. Fountains of Wayne, I mean, they made a couple of albums that turned out to reach the heights that they were expecting. Stacey's mom was a big jam.

Like that was everywhere. Here's, here's where we're going. They got dropped by Atlantic records. They wanted to keep going and they couldn't get a deal. I mean, they were stigmatized. They were,

they were part of this trend of these like no hit wonders who work through the modern rock radio machinery and really had nothing to show for it. But Stacy's mom, which was an homage to the cars. It was obviously a tribute to the sounds of Rick Ocastic, who we lost last year. And before you know it, it was Fountains of Wayne with their biggest hit of all. Subsequently, he worked on the show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, that musical sitcom, writing the songs on there. He wrote a musical about the childhood of Sarah Silverman,

which was about to debut. Silverman, which was about to debut. He produced a couple of the reunion comeback albums for the Monkees. Somebody remarked that, you know, Stephen Sondheim, the Broadway songwriter who just turned 90 years of age, like imagine how many years Adam Schlesinger might have had ahead of him. Like imagine how many years Adam Schlesinger might have had ahead of him. And really, I think as far as touching a certain generation, a certain type of music fanatic, definitely one of the most tragic deaths of COVID-19. Yeah, for the Norm Wilners out there, that's as big as it gets. Everything ends and things fall apart. This is Things Fall Apart by Christina. Yeah, going deeper here for somebody who died in April. It was a singer who recorded just by her first name.

Christina died at age 64 due to COVID-19. And that song, Things Fall Apart, these were like, how would you describe them? Part of the no-wave post-new-wave music scene, not what you would call commercial hits, but connected to a lot of people who then figure out how to gain their own kinds of fame. And in this case, it was an association with the duo known as Was Not Was, specifically the producer Don Was, who also produced that new

Rolling Stones record. And Things Fall Apart by Christina, not a song that a lot of people know, but at the same time there, the very end of March began in April, I think, when it was a shock to hear that people died because of the coronavirus. That was one name that will be there on. Baby of mine, dry your eyes. Rest your head close to my heart, never to part. Baby of mine. Baby of mine Little one It's funny we just talked about the Wilners, as I called it Wilner Squared. Don't you mind

Who did we lose that would be tied to this great Bonnie Raitt jam? Hal Wilner with two L's, no relation to the Toronto Wilners. Really like one of those characters in the music industry who didn't record anything under his own name, but rather a player behind the scenes exclusively who is best known for putting disparate musical artists together.

And he did it through a whole series of tribute albums and tribute concerts. And starting there with one that was a Disney tribute album that came out in 1988. Remember hearing that song on the radio in Toronto on CKFM 99.9 because it was when Bonnie Raitt was first getting her career resurgence going Willner would find these topics, these artists, the legacies to focus on. And he was the guy who put it all together, found people who you could never imagine collaborating together, putting them on the same record as tributes to different artists. And this all built up to the opportunity he had to produce his own TV show. It was called Night Music and it ran on NBC in the late 80s and early 90s. And CBC picked it up too at the time. And the whole idea there was to have people jamming together

on the TV screen who came from the most avant-garde scenes possible, connect them with some famous artists, people who were a little more part of the establishment. Case in point, you had the host of the show, a fusion jazz saxophonist, David Sanborn. And there he was on camera with Iggy Pop or Sonic Youth performing live on TV. And that was part of Hal Wilner's aesthetic. How he got there was the fact that he was a sketch music producer for Saturday Night Live.

And that's where he was memorialized on that Saturday Night Live at home episode to the tune of the Lou Reed song, Perfect Day. And that was part of the tribute there to Hal Wilner, also a friend of Lou Reed. And Lou Reed didn't have many friends. And Hal Wilner was credited as one of the producers of the Lou Reed and Metallica album which will go down in

history as one of the least liked collaborations of the 21st century but you imagine these guys were laughing at it all and yeah we lost him due to COVID-19 you know all those tributes to Kurt Vile and Neil Young and Harold Arlen.

And some of these things ended up being produced with the CBC and in Toronto. And above all, there was Hal preparing his T-Rex tribute album. And it said in the New York Times obituary for him, he thought this was the album that would finally make him a star. It still could happen, but he's not around anymore.

I'm from Montgomery Make me a poster Of an old rodeo Just give me one thing that i could hold on to to believe in this living is just a hard way to go When I was a young girl Mark, I don't even want to talk over this jam. This is fucking great. This is, of course, John Prine.

Do I got this right? You're in the legions of people who have suddenly become like big John Prine fans after learning that he died. I'll confess that my first father-in-law, I've had multiple, my first father-in-law was really big on John Pryne and we used to trade CDs back in the early mid-90s

and he was all in on John Pryne and I just didn't get it. I don't know if I just couldn't bother to listen to this old country sound and stuff. It's like you have to age into it, like yeah i just didn't appreciate it and here i am in my 40s and i'm i'm ready to go man but yeah it took his passing for me to kind of dive in deep but yeah we lost a great one and i'm sorry we just didn't acknowledge it when he was alive oh not all dave hodge acknowledged. I needed to catch up.

Angel from Montgomery, which was later covered by Bonnie Raitt. And one of the few songs that I knew, okay? I'm not pretending like I was in on the John Prine thing either. But you want to talk about a cult following, he probably defined the whole idea of building up this audience and reputation, you know, to the point where he played what turned out to be his last concert in Paris, France, and that he had long dreamed of performing there. he had long dreamed of performing there. And this is where it gets really sad that it would seem like that trip that he took would have been responsible for the virus that ultimately killed him. And look, I mean, all these songs that John Prine left behind and after, you know, taking a run at, you know, some level of commercial success, like working within the American corporate framework in the 1970s, trying to be, you know, one of those next Bob Dylans and people really not knowing what to do with him.

to do with him. There he was in the early 80s starting his own record label, being way ahead of the curve for that kind of concept that he would just release music on his own. And there we've got this whole massive catalog that John Prine left behind. And yeah, when we look at the recognizable names, the people who brought on the most amount of sadness, I think, when we were fearing the worst that could happen with COVID-19 that we lost. John Prine at age 73. Hard way to go. A couple of little footnotes to our discussion about John Prine here. One is that I encourage people to listen to the most recent episode of Toronto Mic'd with Dave Hodge in which he kicks out his 10 favorite albums of 2020 thus far because we do a bonus track.

It's a John Prine song and he speaks about, you know, seeing him recently and it's a great tribute that Dave Hodge gives for John Prine. Also, about a week before it was revealed that he was sick with COVID-19, an FOTM kicked out the version of John Prine's

Hello Out There that he recorded as an older... And I put these together, and I'm listening to the FOTM speak about why he was choosing that version because those words had more weight in his older voice as a mature gentleman and I uh I'm listening to it and it's really resonated with me like I started kind of started listening to more John Prine like one week before it was revealed he was sick because an FOTM kicked out that jam so it's just it was just a weird

coincidence but speaking of weird coincidences. I saw her dancing there by the record machine I knew she must have been about 17 The beat was going strong Playing my favorite song And I could tell it wouldn't be long Till she was with me, yeah me And I could tell it wouldn't be long Till she was with me, yeah me And I could tell that it wouldn't be long Till she was with me, yeah me

Singing I love rock and roll So put another dime in your two bucks baby I love rock and roll That's right ladies and gentlemen, if you haven't heard Cam Gordon, stew stone and i discussed this uh in great detail this is not a joan jett original it was a cover of a song by the arrows i love rock and roll who passed away well stew stone once again showing his reputation to be completely confident in every mistake that he makes, was insisting to you on an episode. What was the theme? What were you doing on a pandemic Friday?

Canadian, American covers of Canadian songs. No, the yes, yes. Correct. Or non-Canadian artists performing songs written by Canadians. Correct. So he was wrong on this one twice, but go ahead. And as we're all inclined to do every once in a while, I am not immune. He googled the wrong thing.

And when he saw that the song I Love Rock and Roll, which was originally recorded by the Arrows was because by then, nobody remembered that there was a band around, a British band that was also known as the Arrows that left behind one of the best known rock and roll songs of all. I Love Rock and Roll in its original form produced by Mickey Most was co-written there, performed, sung by Alan Merrill. was early in the list, I think, of people whose achievements we would remember that back on February, sorry, March 29th, he died at age 69 due to COVID-19. Like the day after maybe that we talked about him on the episode of Stu and Cam, but you remember Stu was wrong twice, like before he messed up the arrows, because you're right, he made that mistake. He also got Pat Benatar confused with Joan Jett.

Originally, he had hit me with your best shot or something when he meant I love rock and roll, and then he got the wrong arrow. So it was like a Stu Stone twofer special. I'm sorry, Linda, but he was wrong twice on this one. Okay, but you know what? You can't beat. Amongst all the Stu Stone mistakes, linda but he was wrong twice on this one okay but you know what you can't beat amongst all

the stew stone mistakes my absolute favorite was the one when he insisted that the soprano's theme song was sung by leonard cohen right well it's a lengthy list and that was definitely a a memorable one for sure and he was adamant we googled that and yeah he was adamant. We Googled it. And yeah, he was adamant and he was wrong, of course. I don't know if Stu is made for these times of having to do everything remotely. I mean, I'm confused enough here, but I hope this obituary recap is going well. I mean, you know, we only really get one shot to remember all these people in the context of the month they died. Mike, what else was on the edge Better shut me in the fridge

Because I'm burning up I'm burning up With the vision in my brain And the music in my veins And the journey with the rain My blood They are messing with my heart You know, another reason you should be listening to the FOTM Kick Out the Jams episodes is that

Hawksley Workman, FOTM Hawksley Workman, recently kicked out a jam that opened up a volume of FOTM KOTJ, and he kicked out a Thomas Dolby joint. And now we're playing this Thomas Dolby joint, and that's two Thomas Dolby Dolby joints that are not she blinded me with science so that's a that's a new record but why am I playing Thomas Dolby today Mark oh well hyperactive and I remember I think that day this song would have debuted on the

radio it's not real exciting because Thomas Dolby had that previous album, right? She blinded me with science. And there he was going to have that follow-up. And there we heard some prominent bass playing from a guy named Matthew Seligman, who worked with Thomas Dolby through those early days of his solo career. Also played with the Soft Boys and the Thompson Twins. So, you know, a lot of pop history there, even though it was Thompson Twins that was originally seven members.

They cut it down to three. Right. It was all confusing. These people aren't twins. The Soft Boys with Robin Hitchcock. Right. It was all confusing. These people aren't twins. The Soft Boys with with Robin Hitchcock. Right. And later, Kimberly Rue, who went on to Walking on Sunshine, Katrina and the Waves with Thomas Dolby. Another song video killed the radio star, Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club and there was also a credit for Matthew Seligman on top of it all he worked with David Bowie and the biggest show

he did with David Bowie was Live Aid in 1985 and one of those names that we lost a bassist age 64 died April April 17th due to causes related to COVID-19. I had drawn On the sand

His sweet face That smiled at me Then it rained On this beach In this storm Puis il a plu sur cette plage, dans cette orage. He's tough. Mike, what do you think of when you hear this song? I'm wondering if what you're thinking of subliminally is that you maybe should be buying a new Volkswagen. is that you maybe should be buying a new Volkswagen.

Because there was a Canadian Volkswagen commercial which ran just a couple of years ago in which they used the sound of this song, A Lien, by the French singer Christophe, one that goes back to 1965. And, you know, these advertising agencies, ever since they found Pink Moon by Nick Drake, and it kind of kicked off a trend that you find this vintage obscurity. And it's very useful for selling cars specifically from Volkswagen. And this was the best known song that was associated with with Christophe.

I think there was always a stigma before, like the days of Phoenix and Daft Punk, that like French rock and roll music never quite translated into the Anglosphere, that there was always something about it like it didn't didn't quite connect uh you know a lot of these singers uh like johnny halliday like they they struggled to make it in america and they couldn't quite figure out how but this song broke through like one of the uh fun facts about it is uh that it became a little known in the united states because a jukebox company, Seaberg, used it as a test song and they put it inside jukeboxes across the country, wondering if through its availability on jukeboxes, whether or not this song could make it in America. It got some exposure,

it got some attention there. But mostly here we have Kristoff, just like Jerry Lewis, big in France and an icon over there. But of course, on the internet, we can explore, you know, musical history of absolutely anyone. And here's one of the songs he left behind. And, you know, connected with the fact that John Prine probably got sick after being in France. Here was one of the more famous people from France who died on April 16th due to COVID-19. A terrible French teacher in primary school ruined me for the language for all eternity. That's what I think of when I hear French music. But here's a retro ad that I heard often. I saw it often because of obvious reasons that will make themselves clear when we conclude the playing of this vintage ad.

the playing of this vintage ad. The Commerce has been with the Blue Jays all the way as part of the ownership group from that very first crack of the bat way back in 1977. We're proud of our role in helping bring Major League Baseball to you because our involvement in the community is just one more reason

to bank on the commerce as your home base. We're the bank of the Blue Jays. That old ad, of course, as I see it in my mind's eye, Damaso Garcia is sliding home. He's safe. Damaso Garcia is sliding home. He's safe.

And one of the cooler Toronto Blue Jays through history, right? Along with Tony Fernandez, who we also lost this year. Damaso Garcia, not only because he had a name that sounded great when it was recited over the PA at Exhibition Stadium by Marie Eldon, the announcer, Domusso Garcia. And I don't know, how much thought did you give to Domusso Garcia in the 30 plus years since he retired with the Montreal Expos and when you heard that he died? Well, okay. So firstly, both those names are sort of your classic Murray Eldon names like Tony Fernandez and Damaso Garcia.

Like right up there with, I mean, Willie Upshaw was great too. There were Rance Mullenix. But that's sort of like, that's sort of my sweet spot of Blue Jay. Right there, mid, like if you will, drive of 85 here. So to lose these two middle infielders in the same calendar year is really a shame especially because they were both very young but as I've often dropped as a not not so fun fact because it's not fun that this happened but Damaso Garcia threw out a ceremonial first pitch for one of the World Series games in 92 and at that time he was

doing so because he had basically been given six months to live he had a tumor in his brain and it was the final days if you will, final weeks and months for Damaso Garcia so we all anticipated losing him long ago

and he was at Tony Fernandez's funeral. I understand he couldn't speak, but he was actually there. So making it into his sixties, uh, defeated, uh,

was against all odds. So love the guy had a lot of passion, was a great, great player for my blue Jays. Hebsey tells me he's probably the worst lead off history in Toronto, blue Jays history. Uh, so I won't argue with that.

Hebsey saw it all, but, uh, yeah, I mean, loved him as a J. A lot of my favorite Jays teams had Damaso Garcia playing second base. And in that 1985 commercial for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, do you think you would have known more about a bank because it was endorsed by a Toronto Blue Jay? All these years later, did that advertising do its job on you?

Yeah, yeah. Actually, that ad was good. But the one I remember, because I listened to a lot of Tom and Jerry on 1430. So I would go to sleep listening to Blue Jay games all summer. And the one I remember, and I'm going to butcher this. I'm going to try because it's all coming out of memory. I haven't heard this since, I don't know when,

but, um, C I B C get us working for you. C I B C C I B C get us working for you. That's the jingle. I remember being played, you know, between innings every single night of the summer.

And although I didn't, I don't actually bank with the C I B C, but it definitely is like a jingle tattooed on my brain because I heard it at a formative time when I was listening to Blue Jays baseball. For what that's worth, it did its job that way. So good on them. They're stuck in my brain.

Maybe one day they'll actually get my business. Okay, so Damaso Garcia, who hung in there for like, I don't know, 28, 29, 30 years beyond when he got this bad news about his health, made it to 63. And we lost him not due to COVID-19 in April 15th, 2020. From Miami, Florida, weighing 275 pounds, the People's Champion, The Rock! This is The Rock! From Victoria, Texas, weighing 252 pounds, Stone Cold Steve Austin! Steve Austin Steve Austin from Greenwich, Connecticut

weighing 272 pounds the game Triple H Triple H No, you know, this is 24 minutes long and I find it interesting. I just wish I had this which I believe was pulled from a video game

Smack WWE Smackdown. But I wish I had it for like 1985 or 86. Well, I think if you make it to the end of this video, which it was me who found it and sent it your way, I think you do eventually get into some classic names like Ricky the Dragon Steamboat. Okay, let me jump ahead. get into some classic names, like Ricky the Dragon Steamboat, which was a nickname invented by somebody who died in April, WWF, WWE, but all the way back to the WWWF ring announcer Howard Finkel. And he died in April at age

69. He also came up with WrestleMania as the brand name for the biggest annual world wrestling event. Wow. That was a wise choice now did he live long enough to

see uh wrestlemania happen this year the fact that in this uh season where we've been deprived of all sports um that they they went ahead right at the end of March and hosted WrestleMania 36. Everybody got tested for the coronavirus, right? And there they performed wrestling without a crowd. It was compared somewhere to like a Samuel Beckett play. Just the whole experience of like audience- free pay-per-view wrestling. And that if no other sport is able to say that it kept up its traditional championship here in 2020,

the world wrestling entertainment can brag that they pulled it off. They are an essential service in Florida. Now, you called it a sport. Now, Stu's going to take that and use it against me on Friday. Okay, with the death of Howard Finkel, does Stu Stone see a job opening for him somewhere in the world? Is he not a wannabe pro wrestling announcer? Isn't that one of his aspirations?

He'll be offended at the word wannabe because he's affiliated with some West Coast wrestling league or outfit or consortium or whatever it is. He's doing it. He's just not doing it with the WWE. But

I will just close by saying that if there are predetermined outcomes, you're simply disqualified from being considered a sport. The Sunday Morning Funnies will return in just a moment. Easter's coming, bringing a treat. A Cadbury favorite, something you eat. Cadbury's Easter cream eggs. Nothing else tastes anything like them. Cadbury's milk chocolate makes up the shell, rich cream of

vanilla, and the most delicious golden candy yolk any egg ever had. They're in the stores now, but they won't be long. Just until Easter, then they'll be gone. Cadbury's Easter cream eggs. You can get them wherever you buy candy bars, but just until Easter. Speaking of earworms, who did we lose from that great jingle? I'm not sure whether that jingle was connected to somebody who died in the month of April. Hamilton Bohannon, right, was a legendary disco musician who was a pioneer as far as creating that sound, bringing disco to prominence that it had.

And one of his tunes was called Disco Stomp. And Disco Stomp, if you even got around to finding that one, is a song that resonates in that Cadbury Easter cream eggs commercial that ran for so many years. And maybe I'm throwing it out there to the FOTM hive mind. If there's any confirmation, if anybody knows whether Hamilton Bohannon got permission to appropriate his song for that Cadbury roller skating commercial. What do you think? I have no idea, but here's the jam.

This is called, of course, Disco Stomp, as you said. Let me just hear a little bit of it here. I heard the hook earlier in the song when we were talking over it. Yeah. I don't know the history of what came first and who got credit for what, but it's the same hook. Okay, let me tell you what the complication is. Tell me. Ace Frehley of Kiss had a solo hit record called New York Groove in 1978, five years after Disco Storm. And it was a cover version of a British band called Hello.

The songwriter would have been Russ Ballard. And trying to Google this, trying to figure out was there permission given? Was it ever accused of being some kind of ripoff? Did they pay off Hamilton Bohannon for what amounted to like a sample of his song, as they would call it later, like an interpolation of Bohannon? It's completely unclear. clear. Did the Cadbury commercial pay Russ Ballard for taking the song from Ace Frehley? Did they pay Hamilton Bohannon for Disco Stomp? Or did they figure that kind of like the Bo Diddley thing there going on in the song, that this was enough in the public domain that they could get away with what we knew as the song about Cadbury Easter cream eggs. Unfinished business here, which I'm throwing out there to the universe if we can find some kind of answer. All I know in the meantime is that Bo bohannon uh whose name i probably first heard in a song that has come up here before a genius of love by the tom tom club there's a bohannon bohannon bohannon bohannon

bohannon reference tribute to him from um from the talking heads uh from Weymouth and Chris France that they referenced him there that they gave him a shout out but Hamilton Bohannon at age 78 died on April 24th 2020

and you know a lot of those deep tracks a lot of singles that you find in the crates that are, you know, really coveted by those hip hop DJs everywhere. You know, a career that went from 1973 until around 1983. and one of those cultural icons really because look, disco had to come from somewhere and it wasn't the village people but in fact, Bohannon was one of those guys who could say that he invented it all.

All the drops in my eyes I wish someone had told me Your love wasn't meant to be Now they're trying to tell me You're gonna set me free That's why my love Came tumbling down A little more CanCon here.

This is Barry Allen's Love Drops. Did we lose Barry? We lost Barry? Well, Barry Allen. A guy named Barry Allen Rasmussen who recorded without the long last name. And if you were listening to 1050 Chum, maybe CKOC, when those were

all these radio stations in Toronto, you would hear a lot of songs that qualified as Canadian content that you really, I guess, if you weren't old enough at the time to remember, you'd wonder, like, where did these songs come from? And that was definitely one of them, a song called Love Drops,

which made it to the top 10 across Canada, 1966, even higher on the Chum charts. And, you know, and him trying to get some kind of career off the ground. He was one of those teen idols who worked with Norman Petty, the guy who produced buddy holly uh but then you know the hippie era started dawning and coming in and he reinvented himself it's like one of those bearded long hairs uh and and hooked up with uh uh randy bachman suddenly you know he had a whole different sound and he did a show, a Canadian TV show called Come Together, in which like generic hippies would come on and sing different cover songs.

Later on, a band called Painter. And there was an obituary, you know, hearing that this guy died, age 74, back on April 4th. Here we remember Barry Allen, an unsung legend of Canadian music. Oh, you've done me wrong Oh, you've done, done me wrong Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Took my love, now you're gone

Please, please, please, please, please Please, please, please, please. I love why you've chosen this song for this death. And I'll let you tell the story. But of course, that's James Brown, the hardest working man in show business. Do I have to tell the story? Because I looked up on Twitter and you once told the story. All right. I have told the story a few times because I learned this from the story because I looked up on Twitter and you once told the story. All right.

I have told the story a few times because I learned this from the Flyer Vault. So shout out to those guys who have been on the show. What the heck is, tell me who are the name of the, oh, Daniel Tate and Rob Bowman, of course. Rob Bowman, the music historian, if you will. So Daniel Tate, Rob Bowman had come over here to tell the story of the Flyer Vault, but I saw on Instagram, back when I used to frequent that place, that there was a roller rink in Mimico on Lakeshore, like right in the heart of Mimico on Lakeshore

called the Mimicombo. And James Brown played his first ever Canadian concert at this roller rink. And there's a million, they even reproduced a poster to sell from the Flyer Vault because it's such a cool story that James Brown

played this now defunct no longer there place called the Mimicombo. So who passed away related to that fantastic story? Perusing through the newspaper obituaries, I spotted this one uh a memorial for joe bobechko and right there on the first line of his obit a small print in the newspaper died on april 18th the long time proprietor of the west end roller rink, the Mimicombo. Now that you are into

the 632nd episode of Toronto Mic'd, the effect that you've had now on chronicling these morsels of Toronto history, I think it's been significant because there are things that wouldn't be familiar to me if it wasn't for your podcast. And that includes knowing anything about the Mimicombo, like knowing what that was, understanding that reference, understanding that in, I think, November 1965, there was James Brown, who was booked to play at this West End, Lakeshore, Toronto roller rink. And there was a blackout that night in Toronto. As a result, they were wondering if the show could go on. And that James Brown had that electrifying effect that it turned out the power returned just in time for him to play this legendary set in Toronto, all the way back then.

I mean, you know, certainly there's no video evidence of this happening. Right. That it goes down in history, like you can still find, I guess, from the Flyer vault, that there's some evidence that this went down. There's a poster. Before, there was much of an established concert industry, you know, that they're at this this tiny roller rink. If you were in the know, you could have seen in his prime the godfather of soul. And we lost somebody who I guess happened to be there.

He might have even been the person that made it all happen. Joe Bechko, rest in peace. Well, thank you for spotting that. That's why I love it when we kind of do this together and we merge these fun facts I'm trying to uncover in 631 episodes. But the amount of time and energy you spend to bring us something like that, do you think CTV News is talking about the Mimicombo guy passing away? A lot of great stories in the newspaper obituaries. And because, you know, in different places, like in Italy in particular, but also in Boston, there have been people noticing, like, there's quite a few more paid death notices making it into the newspaper. And there's some people sort of

figuring okay even rosie domano acknowledged this and maybe she had a point that you are seeing more in the toronto newspapers as well uh certainly people who are dying in long-term care homes because of covid19 that must be a factor i'm not going to discount it but you know what at the same time the number of pages that are dedicated to this in the weekend papers, in the Star, in the Globe and Mail has been going up exponentially. And I think that's partly due to marketing because there's not a lot of print advertising you can count on anymore. Right. But there are always people who are going to die. And there's always people who want to be

memorialized, family members, you know, who think it's still a good idea to just put it And it might be because more of a coronavirus factor, but in general, they've gone up in the papers. It's more to peruse. Like it's more of these little buried morsels of history that you can find. And I'm always checking it out. Don't nobody get into this, then I'm going to lose my exclusivity

as far as finding out first. I don't think you have much to worry about with that. But to your point about uncovering that story and sharing it with good FOTMs like yourself, that you can use that, is that I want to say that when I have a conversation now with Kish, let's say, like I just talked to Kish.

We Zoomed together. He's in California. And we're talking about it. And he's talking about going to DJ Ron Nell. And he's describing his visit to DJ Ron Nell's studio and Farley Flex doing this. And as he's talking about going to DJ Ron Nelson and he's describing his visit to DJ Ron Nelson's studio and Farley Flex doing this and as he's telling me this story like in real time I'm now recalling

what DJ Ron Nelson said about his studio where Dream Warriors recorded and Legacy Begins etc and Mishimi and everything and then I'm also thinking of when Farley Flex came over and he told me the story of when him and Maestro were doing this and then Kish and stuff. So it's just such a dense fabric. It's so many layers and it's like you take it all in and all the pieces do fit together like a giant puzzle. So it's at a point

now where I'm just like, I need to find those missing links and get them in here to complete the puzzle. But okay. So Mimicombo, James Brown, fantastic story. That's a great discovery you made of the obituaries there. Thank you, Mark Weisblot. Okay.

Let's round this up into the people that died in their 80s and beyond, because you'd like to end it with the oldest of the old that we can get. Deep down inside you know this Love's worth one more try Don't push it all aside Cause I wanna be good for you I didn't mean to be bad But darling I'm still the best That you ever had Now you told us off the top That no one bigger than Bill Withers

Has died to our knowledge this month Therefore I know Rod Stewart is safe and sound. At least I hope so. He's alive, at least. Why am I playing this great Rod Stewart jam? Well, you might remember this song from your days working at Food City, playing over the PA.

It was a legendary adult contemporary radio hit disavowed by Rod Stewart. Like he calls it the biggest piece of crap he ever recorded in his career. And I love it. The love theme from Legal Eagles, which famously starred on the

poster Deborah Winger, Robert Redford, Daryl Hannah, and the fourth billed star in that movie, a guy named Brian Dennehy. Brian Dennehy, a classical actor who won a couple of Tony Awards. He did four different shows on four different stages at the Stratford Festival. But when they announced that he died, who could deny that he was also one of the stars of Tommy Boy? Another Canadian connection, because it was shot around these parts. Big Tom, the father of Chris Farley, no longer with us.

And now Tommy Boy's father died at age 81 back on April 15th. But look, I mean, he was a serious actor. I mean, we're talking about like the plays by like Samuel Beckett again, Eugene O'Neill. Eugene O'Neill, he was like a theater hall of famer and did this other Hollywood stuff on the side. That included First Blood with Sylvester Stallone, which was like his first big movie role that he had starred in and some of those other character actor parts beyond that point. But I think the fact that there he was, booked at something else, it's not going to happen this year, the Stratford Festival,

that's the legacy that maybe he also wanted to leave as being known as one of those masters of the theatrical craft. You know, talking about Tommy Boy when you discuss that passing is sort of like when you realize Chuck Berry's biggest hit was My Ding-a-ling, right? It's the equivalent, if you will. I was at U of T when they filmed Tommy Boy and there's a line from the movie

I actually still kind of remember and laugh at. It's kind of a dumb line, but I'm going to share anyways. I think they're throughout U of T, where Chris Farley went to college, and he says something to David Spade, like a lot of people take seven years to graduate from college.

And David Spade says, yeah, they're called doctors. So there's a little Tommy boy. Still love that movie. Go ahead. How many years are you into doing this podcast? I don't know. Nine?

I don't even know anymore. What is time? Eight. I believe it's eight years. Let's do some Bill Withers, finally. I have heard that you care and it gives me butterflies Oh yeah What a pure delight

Oh yeah Bill Withers A real deep cut here. I don't expect you to know this song at all. Because it is from the last album that Bill Withers made. And this goes back to 1985. A song called Oh Yeah. And look, I mean, there's always like messages embedded in my choices of songs here, because I remember hearing this on the radio in Toronto on, I don't know, CKFM, CHFI, CJEZ.

I was weird that way. I was listening to these smooth, yuppie radio stations as a young teenager at the time. And it was kind of big news, like the comeback of Bill Withers. And guess what? This was the album that he put out and he just said goodbye to all that. He didn't want to be in the music business anymore. There he was trying to play the game with a video on VH1,

the video for this song, where it looks really awkward and out of place. And it was after this thing failed to really catch on, after he went through some legal battles for a few years where he couldn't make records under his own name. That's where Just the Two of Us came in with Grover Washington Jr. He could only do like feature parts on other people's albums. And there, you know, Bill Withers,

a guy who really didn't have a breakthrough until his 30s, you know, he gave it until his mid 40s and came to the decision that he was perfectly fine with like the regular guy life he had before. He had made a bunch of money thanks to uh lean on me and ain't no sunshine and lovely day what else uh use me that's uh that's a jam people remember the album still bill uh and you know really just like walked off the stage and that's why i'm fascinated by the fact that no one more famous than him arguably died in April. Because, you know, here he was, somebody who looked for no public profile, like he sought none of the spotlight. Any times you saw him, it was completely reluctant. He didn't want to be there, but he just kind of went along appreciative of the fact that he had all these fans through the 1970s.

And I don't know. I have a soft spot. I have a soft spot for that song. Oh, yeah. A flop just before Club Nouveau did their cover of Lean On Me. It was the last song that we had heard. The new one under the name Bill Withers. Lolita. This Canadian actress who died on April 5th at age 86 is somebody who I think is more more famous by association. I mean, so many associations.

So then she becomes famous on her own. Right. I mean, when your father was was Tommy Douglas, the, you know, premier of Saskatchewan, went to lead the federal NDP, credited as a father of Medicare. At one point, the husband of actor Donald Sutherland, the mother of actor royalty, even if she doesn't really have the longest string of acting credits that she left behind in her career. But she did do stuff, and that included playing Mrs. Starch in Lolita, soon before she hooked up with Donald Sutherland when Kiefer was born. When he announced her death, like he tweeted about it, it was Kiefer. And by the way, he's also being paid by Quibi. He's also riding that $1.8 billion gravy train.

Good for him. But, you know, he left that aside, put that on the back burner to mourn his mother died 86 years old on April 5th. And, you know, he clarified at the time. I mean, you know, that was a pretty intense week right back in early April. Like he had to say it was it was due to causes that were not COVID-19. And it was, you know, other health reasons related to the fact that she was 86 years old. And, you know, definitely somebody remembered for who her father was, who her ex-husband was, who her son was, but also like a familiar face in her own right. Just, you know, there aren't that many canadian celebrities there aren't that many uh people that lived here that were hanging around all this time for decades and uh shirley

douglas was uh was way up there guitar solo One time One time Mark, don't go away, man. Just go away. It's Motley Crue on Q107. Mort Drucker, among his accomplishments as a caricaturist, which would have been best known for the movie and TV parodies that he illustrated for Mad Magazine.

I know you were a big fan of those. Absolutely, yeah. I'm sure you were too. I think, weren't we all big fans of the the mad magazine stuff mike this stuff was the biggest influence on my entire life and uh part of it was the fact that more drucker like he developed this concept it came out of those early mad comic books where they you know had a had a variation on this of doing these like long form parodies of movies and TV shows. But it was him who perfected it.

You got to remember, like, you know, we're talking about an era before before there was a video cassette that he could refer to. He was working on sketches from, you know, seeing a movie, watching a show and, you know, finding a way way to represent the characters in the pages of MAD. And every panel was filled with all these references. You could stare at these things for hours, trying to decode all these things that Mort Drucker had stuffed in there in these illustrations that he did for these parodies that he was responsible for illustrating, you know, that he was responsible for illustrating based on other people's works. He wasn't the writer. He was

just the illustrator, which makes it seem even more of an achievement because he was taking an assignment, a concept, a parody that other people gave him. Mort Drucker also got into doing, you know, commercial art, and it included doing some record covers. Three of them stand out. I remember them all. The back cover of an Anthrax album. which featured Adrian Ballou, later of King Crimson, or before, whenever it was. He was in this power pop group. Mort Drucker did the cover. I bought the album because Mort Drucker did the cover. And the last of those three, the single cover, cassette single, Motley Crue. Don't go away mad.

Just go away. And you would imagine where they would have gotten the idea to represent a song with that title with a motif from Mad Magazine. Motley Crue. I don't know. Of everything that's ever happened to Motley Crue, I would think having Mort Drucker do the artwork for one of your singles would have been the greatest thing to ever happen to you. And, you know, I'm sure if you contacted these guys from Motley Crue, they would wonder what the hell you were talking about. Right. But for me, for me, that's the greatest thing that ever happened to Motley Crue, having Mort Drucker illustrate one of their covers. Bobbin' with the Robin. Bobbin' with the Robin. Everybody fly sky high.

Yeah, and this is the Big Bad Bird. And for the next three hours, we're going to be Bobbin' with Robin. All the hits, everything new, and everything just for you. So come on along and let's everybody have a ball. Bobbin' with the Robin. No more time for sobbing. Who's the Robin that we're Bobbin with, Mark? Robin Seymour died in April at age 84. No, sorry, 94.

Right. Way up. Don't cheat on that decade. We try to do this in some sort of order, but it's late. But it's late. Robin Seymour, bopping with the Robin, a broadcasting legend of Windsor, Ontario, died on April 17th. And he was such a legend that there he had, courtesy of Toronto group The Four Lads, lads uh they gave him his own theme song to introduce his segments on the radio back in the back in the 1950s replicated there on one of those uh cruising albums that brought like the oldies radio experience uh like an american graffiti thing up to date and there was uh some some bopping with the robin coincidentally another, another DJ associated with CKLW in Windsor,

Detroit also died on that same day, a guy named Johnny Williams. Robin Seymour, born Seymour Altman. See what he did there? He made his first name his surname. Okay, yeah, sure. Rockin' Robin on the radio. And, you know, when people are nostalgic about what used to be in radio, I don't think you have to look very far to find out. You know what? It wasn't as exciting as everybody would like to remember. It was just a guy coming on the air saying, Hey, this is Robin, and I'm going to be rockin' with the Robin.

It's never the art that's exceptional from when you were young. It's the fact you were young, right? That's what it's all about. It's like that you were young and you're never going to be young again. You'll, you know, we talked about this of Norm Rumeck. I talked about how, you know, there's a time where you're listening to all night sports radio and you have no kids, you have no mortgage. Okay. And now you're what, you're in your forties or fifties and you've got, you know, no kids, you have no mortgage, okay? And now you're what? You're in your 40s or 50s and you've got many kids,

you got a big mortgage, and there is no live all-night radio on sports radio. And you can hear Norman's voice because Elvis wept openly when he listened to the Storm and Norman episode because suddenly, bam, time machine. So it's not so much that the music and the art was so exceptional, it's not so much that the music and the art was so exceptional it's that

you were young okay well i was not born at the time when robin seymour was on windsor tv introducing uh motown acts right but pretty good i mean he had like stevie wonder and the supremes that came on his tv show that a guy like that was still hanging around here in 2020, made it to 94. That's pretty good. It's excellent. And so a Toronto-miked Ridley Funeral Home salute to Robin Seymour.

And he had the four lads doing his own theme song, Happy Birthday to Ill Vibe, who's my four lads. And yesterday he had a birthday and Ill Vibe, of course, composed the original song for Toronto Mic'd eight years ago. Okay, one more to go here. One more.

I was going to say, Mike, may you live long enough that a couple of snarky guys on a podcast 50 years from now are playing the Toronto Mic'd theme while they joke about your death. Say it's only a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sea. But it wouldn't be make believe if you believe

in me yes there's only a canvas sky hanging over a muslin tree but it wouldn't be make believe if you believe

in me. Without your love. We're closing with a little Paul McCartney. Who passed away tied to this song? It's only a paper moon. Bucky Pizzarelli is a guitarist performing on this song, which he did with Paul McCartney on his Jazz Standards album, Kisses on the Bottom.

That went back to 2012, one of the last recordings by this jazz guitarist who spent the first part of his career primarily as a live performer. And he was like a musical director on TV shows, including the Dick Cavett show. But as a sideman, he appeared on some records that you might know, including the one by Roberta Flack. The first time ever I saw your face has Bucky Pizzarelli as a guitarist. Later on, he also became associated with his son, who was also a jazz guitarist named John Pizzarelli. And John Pizzarelli Jr., That was Bucky's real name. You know, he kind of rode that like classic jazz renaissance.

He was like a guitar playing equivalent to Harry Connick Jr. And he found a new generation of audience looking for that sound. He's a co-host with his wife of a radio show, Radio Deluxe, which airs in Toronto and runs on Jazz FM in Toronto. So you would hear a lot on there about Bucky Pizzarelli.

You would hear him on that Paul McCartney album in which father and son also appeared. I mean, at one point on the Johnny Carson show, he was on there backing up Tiny Tim on the day that Tiny Tim had his wedding. There he was, you know, front row to a lot of music history. And at age 94,

he turned out to be one of the more famous people to die due to the coronavirus. And, you know, a huge loss there as far as jazz history is concerned. You know, not the only jazz musician to die in April, but I think because of that, you know, association with his son's radio show and that Paul McCartney song,

it was one that I recognized, wanted to acknowledge here. I think as the oldest death that we've got to talk about this month, a couple months older than Rob and Seymour. And they both died at age 94 during April 2020. Mark Weisblot from 1236. Everybody, go to 1236.ca to subscribe to the newsletter. Thanks for doing this, man.

Hopefully next time we can do it in person. But thank you. I'm trying to do a screenshot of our Zoom call. All right, you work on that. I'll read the outro, but we'll talk. Thanks so much for doing this. And that brings us to the end of our 632nd show. You can follow me on Twitter.

I'm at Toronto Mike. Mark is at 1236. That's 1236. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Sticker U are at Sticker U. The Keitner Group are at The Keitner Group. Garbage Day, they're at GarbageDay.com

slash Toronto Mike. And Ridley Funeral Home are at Ridley FH. See you all next week. I know that's true because everything is coming up rosy and green. Yeah, the wind is cold, but the smell of snow won't stay the day. This podcast has been produced by TMDS and accelerated by Roam Phone. Roam Phone brings you the most reliable virtual phone service to run your business and protect your home number from unwanted calls. Visit RomePhone.ca to get started.