Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - 12:36: Toronto Mike'd #658

Episode Date: June 2, 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 658 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. 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, To sign up now. And our newest sponsor, CDN Technologies. Your IT and and cybersecurity experts. I'm Mike from TorontoMike.com. And joining me for his May 2020 roundup is Mark Weisblot from 1236.

Mike, I tried. I really, really tried. I thought if I held off until June, when it came to booking a date for our May recap, we would be allowed to get together again. That's why here we are on June 2nd, talking about the events in May. And guess what? As anyone can tell, we're still doing it on Zoom. I was thinking maybe for the next episode, if weather permitting, as long as there's no rain in the forecast, I could set up the studio in my backyard and I have a pretty long table. You could be a good two meters away from me and I could have Lysol wipes so you could wipe down the microphone and we could do it in person safely in my backyard. I think it would have to be extra safe because, you know, when we get going,

there are a lot of extra droplets flying through the air. We could just, we just don't face each other. We have to face apart. Like, uh, we just don't, don't face each other. We have to face apart like we just don't don't face each other. Tom Sharpling from the Best Show podcast. He's been interviewing people all through the pandemic. And the tactic he used was getting a 25 foot long cord, running it through the windows of people that he was visiting around L.A. and doing the show, doing his part from his car. Would something like that work for you? I actually pitched something like that. I can't remember if I pitched it to Peter Gross or Ralph Ben-Murgy.

But yeah, essentially, I'm in my basement studio and I've got a very long cable. And outside, you know, my driveway outside that side door, they're basically sitting there on the microphone. So again, you know, you lice all that, uh, that one microphone, but we, we can't possibly have droplets, uh, reaching us because there's a wall in the way. So I'm, I'm on board. Well, I'd be willing to come down because here we are finally in the time of year with the weather getting better that I can engage in my ritual, bringing my six pack of GLB or whatever is left of it. And they're out in New Toronto, just a short walk down to the lake, reflecting upon the podcast that we experienced together, listening to it back again on triple speed. Yeah, it's become one of those things I look forward to. Maybe we can get towards that point, what, at the end of

June? Early July? What's your prediction? That's my hope, is that maybe we can phase something in. Maybe you won't be sitting here at the table in the basement here, but maybe something, some kind of hybrid maybe next time. But I got to ask you a question, Mark. Are you at all threatened by the fact that the pandemic episodes of Stu Stone and Cam Gordon, because they're happening every week, they're closely approaching the number of Mark Weisblot appearances on Toronto Mike? Like, do you feel threatened at all by that? appearances on Toronto Mike. Do you feel threatened at all by that? Well, it's taken away from the embarrassment that I'm somehow dominating the guest list on your show. But here, your weekly quote-unquote podcast about anything and everything has been

almost daily now for the whole time that we've been in lockdown. However many episodes, what are you, up to 10% of all Toronto Mic'd episodes in the history of the show have now been done during this era. And there you wrote on your website about the prospect that you thought maybe you would just shut it all down and hang in there, wait for things to return, that you pivoted to this idea that you would do it virtually. And even though, look, it's a bit of a drag because part of the motivation to do these monthly episodes with you was, in fact, going down to the basement, that whole environment

that you created there being a part of it all. And this is our third month in a row of doing the recap this way. But from what I can tell with everybody else, you're having enough fun. Like you don't miss not seeing the people face to face and hitting their head on your basement ceiling. I think you nailed it with having enough fun. Like it's more fun than I thought it would be.

Not as fun as having guests in person. The three big things is I really did enjoy sharing some fresh Great Lakes beer with the guest. I know you enjoyed your six-pack every time you visited. I can't wait to get back to that ritual. I enjoy gifting each guest with a frozen

lasagna from Palma Pasta. As you know, that's the most delicious Italian food this side of the Atlantic Ocean. And giving all the guests a Toronto Mike sticker courtesy of stickeru.com. Like, so there's a lot of the, you know, there's a lot of the in-person, you know, that it lacks now.

And then also the photo, I got to say. I need a sponsor for the photo, if Henry's or anybody is listening, because I really enjoyed taking that photo after the episode with somebody I just met, a new FOTM, or somebody like yourself coming over for the 20th time. And I haven't taken a photo since March 13th, 2020. Well, I think Henry's camera store went bankrupt.

Oh, no. You might be out of luck on that front. Who else is out there? Who else wants to sponsor the photo? But we'll see. Mike, the future is bright. And I know you got into having guests who were from out of town when you had your policy going of only interviewing people.

When they came into the basement, you would never have talked to someone like Neil Morrison. Right. Out there where? Vancouver? Vancouver Island? White Rock. White Rock, B.C. since I was last on during the month of May, that one was the standout, because he spilled the tea on what it was like to work for CFNY, 102.1 The Edge, Edge 102, from the late 80s all through the 90s and the early 2000s, got a little more personal talking about his battles with cocaine and how it affected his

performance and how he was able to bounce back, lamenting that his longtime colleague, Martin Streak, ended up dead because he really couldn't deal with his demons. And that was a tragedy that touched so many people. And it was terrific to hear Neil out there, formerly known as Brother Bill, giving a message that I wanted to hear about somebody who made it happen in radio for so long. I got to know him a little bit through those years. He had nice things to say about me

and all the episodes that I've done with you. And I think above all, maybe some real talk about Alan Cross, his fabled colleague there at the radio station who's still around to this day, kind of questioning his narratives on some of the stories about the radio station who's still around to this day, kind of questioning his narratives on some of the stories about the radio station, things that he was not there to see firsthand, pictures that he now puts himself inside of. And that was some juicy dirt, as far as I was concerned.

Mark, it's no coincidence that some of the best episodes of Toronto Mic'd, they come from listeners of Toronto Mic'd. I've noticed that Neil's a good example, and I have permission to call him Brother Bill, so I have to call him that. But Brother Bill listens to most episodes of Toronto Mic'd. In fact, he even listens to episodes that don't exist because he congratulated me on the great episode

with Carlos Benavides, which I can now say is going to happen tomorrow. So I don't know if he was in a time machine or what, but Neil enjoyed the Carlos episode, which has never happened, but it happens tomorrow. He's my next guest. But he does, Neil does listen.

Brother Bill does listen to Toronto Mic. And I think when you you and i get this vibe from others who listen and then come on and like dave randolph and others if you listen and you get what it's about and then you agree to come on you know how to deliver the real talk like you know exactly uh what we're looking for here and brother bill was amazing he was fantastic I'm not going to name any names, but some of these other remote episodes did not quite have that same magic. No, name some names. Because I thought Brother Jake was good.

You do your best. I mean, you're interviewing people remotely. It's on the phone. You know, there's not going to be that same disclosure, I think, that you get when the people are in there one-on-one. That people do interviews that they kind of switch on this promotional mode that you're accustomed to doing when people are asking you questions about your career and your professional experiences. Again, through the history of Toronto Mike, you've had some people on who kind of stuck to the script. They came all the way to your basement. They didn't really say

much of anything. And then you would have lots of fun in the comments seeing how disappointed people were, people that were playing their cards close to their vest because maybe they didn't want to get in trouble at work. You better name some names because I do want to hear the names. Like, can you at least give me some initials? Because I will say, I find when I can't see the person, like right now I'm looking at you via Zoom, Mark. But like if I have somebody like a Bob Segherini and it's a phone call and we can't see each other. It's pretty much, it's, it's very difficult and frustrating for me, for example, to do that episode versus one, like, like a brother, Jake, or, uh, I thought Jody Vance,

like these episodes where I can see the person or shad, uh, or, you know what? Landsberg, who's the freshest episode, Michael Landsberg. I enjoyed thoroughly because we could, we were looking at each other and I really felt like I could ask him anything and that's what I did. But can you name the names of those episodes that did not impress?

I'm curious. Well, I don't want to get into any details. I have to make myself vulnerable here in doing the show with you. I'm just as guilty as not exhibiting the same level of disclosure that I expect from other people. I mean, how do I wiggle my way out of this, Mike? I got to say, you were tweeting that your last two episodes before I came on were the most important episodes that you've ever produced, which is definitely some pressure here today to somehow be poignant and profound and say something meaningful,

which I know that I'm not going to do. But there was Michael Landsberg, right? His Toronto Mike debut. You got some real talk out of him and the night before on Sunday night with your discussion about the state of Black America and what it means for Canadians. You were proud of what you did there, right?

With Garvia Bailey and Donovan Bennett yes they were fantastic I thought they were great and here we are with the monthly 1236 recap where we're going to wipe away any gains that you made as far as

portraying this podcast having anything important to say. Now, Mark, I'm going to play a little shaggy as I ask you something. It's been a month since we talked, at least voice to voice. During that month, Rick A

came across what he believed to be footage of a young Mark Weisblot on Just Like Mom. And he sent me the screen cap and I was sure it was you. It was Mark was spelt the same way you spell Mark. His mom's name is the same as yours. He looked like you. I don't know about that. I would beg to differ, but I don't have the photos by way of comparison.

Here's the thing. Here's what happened. Rick, who was kind of like, was he not the original online Toronto television archivist? Like he came before our pal Ed Condor, retro and terrible. Yeah, and he focused on TVO. And he still got his website out there. And, and,

and what is it? Rick's TV. And, you know, it still has that 1990s website. Look to it. Rick's Rick's TV. Dot com.

So not only does it deal with retro television, the website in itself is like a retro experience. I'm pretty sure I'd hinted on here maybe more than once that as far as I could tell, my episode, my appearance on Just Like Mom was in the rotation. They were running on the Canadian cable channel Game TV because they're in the listing of episodes that they had. Wasn't a lot of them. But yeah, there was my name and my mom's name. How could this not have been my Just Like Mom episode? And he wore glasses.

Running on digital cable in the last couple of years. Right. Like, I'm still, by the way, way and again for the record uh are you making the claim that like shaggy said it wasn't me that's not you on uh that i the clip i shared on twitter well first of all first of all the mark on there was about half the age that i was when i appeared on the show so that would have been the first giveaway. The second thing, and maybe I was experiencing like, what do you call it, Mandela effect? You know, like, I know for a fact that definitely wasn't my mom. But I gotta admit, maybe for a second or two, I wondered, wait, maybe, maybe it was. Maybe that was me on there. But anything but. I mean, I was offline at the time that he tweeted about it. And I thought, okay, maybe I'll work with this. And I won't do the reveal until we do the May recap episode.

But I couldn't resist. I had to let it be known that the impression I had that my Just Like Mom episode was recently in circulation turned out not to be true. I didn't get around to asking Rick what he was doing recording just like mom. Like, did you get a sense of why he had it to begin with? I think he might have been looking for you. Like, he's a loyal listener.

He's been getting a whole bunch of old sports line clips for Hebsey as well. So shout out to that. But I think he was looking for you. Okay, me on Just Like Mom Sportsline clips for Hebsey as well. So shout out to that. But I think he was looking for you. Okay. Me on Just Like Mom had come up because of a docu-series that was produced for that same game TV channel. The Search for Canada's Game Shows, where the producer of the show, a guy named Dave Hodgson, the show, a guy named Dave Hodgson, got in touch with me because he was looking to somehow find contestants who'd been on Canada's game shows who would talk about their experience and juxtapose

it by interviewing the host and showing clips from the game show they were on. Now, you know me. Naturally, my first inclination was to turn him down. And I made a suggestion that ended up coming up once again on an episode of Toronto Mike. And that was to tell him that I remembered Stephen Page appeared on Bumper Stumpers. And I think he got a lot more mileage by interviewing Stephen Page about his Canadian game show experience than he would have received out of mine. Fergie Oliver and this viral video, which I think unfairly portrayed him as some kind of pervert

for the way he talked up the mothers and more specifically their daughters. And in fact, just like mom, wasn't something that they wanted to highlight in the end anyway and so that was how i helped the search for canada's game shows that clip of stephen page which which came up again on the podcast i think people were much better served by having it out there than me trying to articulate my experience on this game show episode that i still haven't seen in uh here we're fast approaching 40 years since i was on this show there's a vhs tape somewhere i haven't gone rummaging for it i don't know that i'm really interested or inclined to uh but nice try r. You thought it was me on the show. You tweeted out confirmation. Who else could it on that front. But because you mentioned Steven Page and because you're you and because I'm me, that ties in nicely with a clip I pulled.

So your friend Dave Bookman's been dead over a year now. And for the one year, there was a number of tributes and memorials and celebrations of Dave Bookman's life, including a Facebook appearance by Steven page. And Steven page was talking about bookie and I pulled a very short clip. So let's listen to like 30 seconds of Steven page talking about Dave Bookman in this next song,

which I've recently been told we actually premiered the first time we ever played it was on bookies radio show on CIUT, University of Toronto Radio. So that would have been about like 90, maybe 1990, 89, somewhere in that. So this is for the memory of the great Dave Bookman. Dave Bookman. So Mark, he's referencing that he was recently told this fact about how the first time this song was played was on Dave Bookman's CIUT show. Tell everybody who told that to Stephen Page.

How did he know this fact? Really, really drilling down here. But this was something that I talked about. to Stephen Page? How did he know this fact? Really, really drilling down here, but this was something that I talked about. I think it came up a year ago when we did that tribute to Bookie a few days after he died in May 2019, what would have been his 59th birthday. The fact that I was first introduced to Bookie at CIUT, we were part of the same surroundings at the University of Toronto Campus Community Radio Station. That's where I became acquainted with him. That was a gist of our tribute, that I didn't have that much to do with Dave Bookman in the later years of his life, outside the occasional interaction on Twitter, but also the fact that we connected with me as a listener when he was. There was no opportunity to celebrate this in public.

As far as I could tell, an event was hoped for at the Horseshoe Tavern. They lined up a bunch of guests. They couldn't do it live. They had to do it on the radio instead. And on Indy 88, as a result, one of the best days of Toronto radio this year, Maybe the best in a long while was a tribute to Dave Bookman, which he would have absolutely hated. You know, the whole idea of clearing 12 hours of programming in his memory. You know, he was way too modest for something like that. But, you know, what could we do? I mean, a lot of people bereft by the fact that he left us too soon last year, and we got a sensational day of Toronto radio out of it. Might advocate for the fact that why doesn't Indy 8 sound like that all the time? been as special if it wasn't just this one-time thing, Bookie Day. There was a petition hoping that Mayor John Tory would commemorate it in Toronto. That didn't happen, but then there's other distractions around. I mean, I noticed there was a proclamation for National Menstruation Day

or something from John Tory. I don't know why he didn't have any time for Bookie in that week. But better that it happens in a year when people can get together again and celebrate the life of this guy who made so much happen. And, yeah, so belated 60th birthday to Dave Bookman, belated 60th birthday to Dave Bookman, who would have turned 60 years old on May 30th. And I still miss him. And, you know, even though it had been so long since he, you know, directly had any influence on me, you know, something that I'll remember forever because he was someone I knew, took an interest in what I was up to. And as I flounced around through all these years, got to see him make his dream come true, which was to be on the radio every single day. And he hung in there. I'd meet somebody,

I guess I was still a teenager at the time, early 20s. I'd see this guy who was, I don't know, pushing 35. And you would think, okay, at the time, a lot more immaturity, wondering why doesn't this guy get on with his life already? What's he doing hanging out with us young people? Cosplaying that he's some sort of teenager? Doesn't a bigger life await for him? Isn't he going to settle down and get a real job? And then after a while, as we discussed last year, you start to realize, no, this is what he's going for.

year, you start to realize, no, this is what he's going for. These adolescent pastimes is what he's trying to turn into a career. He hung in there, he persevered, and he pulled it off and ended up being, I guess, he was eliminated from Chorus Entertainment, from CFNYny 102.1 the edge right like a constructive dismissal but he got a goodbye show that they did on the air in december 2012 and it was kind of surreal on indy 88 they were running clips from his last show on another radio station they weren't saying what the radio station was, just that you were supposed to understand the context that this guy had been on the radio in Toronto for that long and made that much of an impression,

even though it turned out that another radio station had to start for him to get his due, fill this airtime in the middle of the day, and reach the pinnacle of his career, I thought. Talking between pretty much every song, because they had that in their broadcast license. And the spirit of Bookie, everything he represented, we got to experience it on the air out there. But there were still videos of these live performances that were done, including Stephen Page doing the song Grind

Wilson, referencing me telling you where it all began. Yeah, and to be very clear there, when he says, I recently heard, he heard it on Toronto Mic'd. I told him that fact that I learned from you. Basically, because I listened to you

and I absorb your wisdom, I was able to tell Stephen Page about playing Brian Wilson first time on CIUT with Brother Bill, Brother Bill, with Bookie. And it's just strange to hear it all kind of come out of his mouth that we kind of are now

the straws that stir this. What you're saying, Mike, is that between you and me, we control everything that goes on in the media. And maybe we shouldn't be so starstruck because at some point in time, more people are going to be listening to us. Tell me about 1236, the newsletter. Before we go back to radio, because there's some more hits we've got to do on radio, you recently celebrated a milestone anniversary at 1236.

I thought, okay, is anybody really going to care? We've got a whole pandemic going on, and here I am doing this newsletter held captive on my couch, churning it out here every single day, pretty much. Only really like a couple of days since the middle of March, I took off. Just one day, I was too exasperated to publish it and needed a bit of a break. But we've gone all along with doing the newsletter every day at 12.36 p.m. as originally intended. People are still reading every single day, working towards some sort of goal. We'll see if it ever gets there. Was anybody interested in the fact that it had been around for five years? And I thought, who's paying attention to me? Who's got something

to say about what I've been doing all this time, can articulate it with some authority, Something to say about what I've been doing all this time. I can articulate it with some authority. And who's actually a reader that I have. And I thought of FYI Music News.ca, run by David Farrell, Slate Music, that keeps this kind of radio and records trade publication going. Would David Farrell be interested in the fact that I've hung around here for a half decade? That there's something simpatico about what he's up to relative to what I'm up to. He's borrowed from my newsletter before as I've excerpted stuff from his, and I couldn't have been any more flattered than I was back in early May, the first

week of May, which would be five years of the newsletter at 1236.ca. What did you think of the piece? I mean, do you think he captured the essence of what I've been up to all this time? Do you think he listens to your appearances on Toronto Mic'd? I'm not sure, because he mentioned you to me. Did he? As somebody that I might be interested in knowing.

And I mean, we're all so overwhelmed here by data. I just say, look, David, you've mentioned me before being on the show. It was in your newsletter. It was on your website. But I'm the last person who can snipe at somebody for not remembering what they might have done before. No, there's a lot of bits and bytes flying around. Okay, so five years of doing this. I thought it was a great piece. I shared it. But shout out quickly.

1236. Shout out to FOTM Bill King, who often writes great stuff for FYIMusic.com as well. Okay, so big news today with St. Joseph Communications Media, which has made 1236 happen for all this time and taken me down this road of media experimentation. It's given me an excuse to come on with you here every month. The fact that we've got this thing going on, it continues. I've expressed enough skepticism.

How long can this thing last? I'm having too much fun. At some point in time, maybe I'll hear that they don't want to do this anymore. But in fact, 1236 was made possible by a guy named Ken Hunt. He's been the publisher at St. Joseph, most significantly of Toronto Life magazine, for the past five years. And today they announced his appointment, that in fact he is president and publisher across the St. Joseph media chain. We discussed here how they ended up buying these magazines from Rogers Media and how there was some kind of integration coming around the corner, inevitably in time.

And Ken Hunt happens to be the guy who will be the publisher of all these publications. And look, it could have gone either way. I didn't know what was going to happen. So this is good news. could have gone either way i didn't know what was going to happen so this is good news i'm excited for the fact that the guy who gave birth to the existence of 1236 uh is now more in charge than ever before and i i think you know uh look he's an innovative character he puts up with me everything that i represent uh it can only mean some interesting things ahead for the canadian magazine industry as a whole because pretty much any canadian

magazine you've ever heard of is now owned by saint joseph on that note oh go ahead no as i was anticipating that something else was going to happen right maybe now we'll speed it up a little bit and we'll see some some evolution and what can be with the 1236 brand or it might provide some reason to maybe move on from uh the way i've been doing things to this point try something else stay tuned stand by well anything can happen now now it'll get at least a little bit exciting. That was at least some glimmer of anticipation amidst the pandemic, right? A lot of bad media news, and we'll get some of the doom and gloom that's in the air, but there's something great going on.

Congratulations to Ken Hunt for moving up in the world, and maybe I'll be dragged along with him. I told you my mom went to school with the founding family of St. Joseph's Media. Do you have a name? Do you know? Italian last name? Galliano. Right.

That would be the last name. Yeah. So I guess there's brothers and I guess their dad and anyway, this whole thing. They're all in there. So my mom went to high school. I want to say Oakwood Collegiate but I have They're all in there. So my mom went to high school. I want to say Oakwood Collegiate, but I have to confirm all this stuff. But anyway. Why are you bringing it up to me if you don't know what you're talking about?

Look, I'm on their radar. They know what I do. And I'm excited to see what happens as they integrate these publications together because Rogers didn't want to be in the magazine business anymore. And you got to see the bright side here of an opportunity in these other magazines. McLean's and Chatelaine. They all come together.

Okay, it all comes together. Firstly, if they do fuck with 1236, the most wonderful newsletter on the planet, then just let me know and my mom will make a phone call. So just let me know. And secondly, well, two of three. Secondly, in the passionate speech you have, just make sure you don't rattle against your microphone because I'm getting

like microphone rattles like that. So, uh, just be, be conscious of that. And finally, because you mentioned these, uh,

these, uh, magazines that, uh, St. Joseph's media bought from Rogers. Uh, I guess you noticed that the,

you learned that the, uh, the case of Bullard versus Rogers, because of the Sarah Boesveld article with Cynthia Mulligan in Chatelaine, has resolved not in Bullard's favor. And that is of significance to listeners of this program because Toronto Mike was mentioned in the courtroom during this lawsuit. So there you go. Bullard lost that one. Yeah. It was fascinating to hear a multi-part untrue crime podcast that was produced in defense

of Mike Bullard. That was one of the more bizarre productions that we ever sat through, I think, in the world of podcasting as he outlined his side of the whole story. But it turned out that, in fact, the judge ruled that it was Cynthia Mulligan. She had every right to express her opinion about what she went through in the justice system. And that Bullard's attempt to slap this thing down wasn't going to go through. Now, a big fun fact, if you will, is the original lawyer who seemed to have a role in that podcast you're alluding to that mentioned me and I came in these transcripts. Toronto Mike came up in the transcripts.

Although I did listen because I wanted to hear what they were saying about me. And I noticed it kind of just ends. I'm not sure it really concludes. It seems to me like the podcast just got abandoned. I don't know. It just ends. I'm not sure it really concludes. It seems to me like the podcast just got abandoned. I don't know. It just stopped. No more episodes dropped unless I just missed them. But what was I going to say?

What was I talking about this podcast? Oh, I don't know because I've got over 2,000 other podcasts to keep track of at this point in time. I can't remember where the Mike Bullard podcast is. Oh, yeah, yeah. I remember now. I remember. so the original bullard lawyer died okay he died and then a new lawyer had to pick it up and take it home in the

final stretch there that new lawyer is the son of an fotm so uh i lauren honickman great fotm lauren honickman his son asher is was bullard's lawyer for the home stretch because Bullard's original lawyer died. So there's a fact. I don't know how fun that is, but it's a fact. And all this happened because, what? Because you were looking to have Mike Bullard come on

the podcast? I had booked Mike Bullard for the Toronto Mike podcast and I won't name names, but a number of people told me that would be the dumbest thing I could ever do. So, okay. And it never happened, but it actually never happened for that reason.

It never happened for a variety of other reasons. I decided to pull the plug, but it never did happen. Okay, so everybody involved in this case can now get on with things, and I guess that includes Sarah Boesveld and Chatelaine Magazine and Rogers Media, and that Mike Bullard can put it back together because, look, he's had a rough time of it. There was some disclosure about how little money he earned in the year when all this was

going on. A little peek into the realities of Canadian show business, and we'll see what's around the corner. I mean, look, it got a lot of attention when the story was out there, when all this was happening. I think most people would have forgotten about it altogether. And that, I don't know. We'll see if, will you invite Bullard on the podcast ever again? Is it something you're interested in doing, talking about what he's been through? Yeah, I mean, I don't shut the door on anything. I don't have any current plans. I haven't extended an invitation to Bullard to appear, but I would never shut the door on anything.

I'm just looking for real talk and having an open and honest conversation about everything. So I would challenge Ballard if he did come on, but I don't know. Maybe one day. Who knows? Okay, but it was a judge sticking up here for freedom of expression through the media to publish valid thoughts about something that happened. And I think that anybody who is in the media, writer, a podcaster, anyone working in news would certainly appreciate the fact that this was the decision that they came to. C-K-O-C, more music. C-K-O-C, all hit music.

C-K-O-C Solid gold C-K-O-C Hamilton C-K-O-C C-K-O-C Consider me Hamilton Mike for this segment. Tell us who we lost from C-K-O-C. Consider me Hamilton Mike for this segment. Tell us who we lost from C-K-O-C. Nevin Grant. He was a longtime music director, program director of 1150 C-K-O-C out of Hamilton, Ontario. And after a battle with Parkinson's, he died at age 80. And that was back on May 6.

Now, not a household name, but somebody that anybody who's a radio geek would have known who Nevin Grant was, partly because of the fact that he got a job originally as a copywriter with CKOC. And he hung in there for so long programming this top 40 radio station that when it flipped to oldies in 1992, he was still around and he kind of worked in reverse. He spent another decade or more programming the music that was even older than the time that he had spent running the radio station. But I think he was worth bringing up here off the top when we talk about radio because it got me reflecting on the legacy that was left by CKOC.

Now, by the time I became a chum bug and started to pay attention to radio, whatever happening on CKOC was completely alien to me. I'm not going to pretend that I understood that radio station. It was from Steel Town. It represented a different kind of Top 40 culture. But one thing that they would run was the Casey Kasem American Top 40 countdown. That was the affiliate for Southern Ontario. So it would get me creeping over at least once a week that I would have a sense of what was happening on a strange radio station. I think it was because here they had that legacy when Hamilton was more happening in the boom years of the 60s and 70s into the 80s, even the early 90s. Nevin Grant kept programming the radio station with new music, but in that old-fashioned style,

which everybody else had moved on from. else had moved on from. So even though with CFTR, you had more of a soft rock sound, Chum was more new wave, then they kind of switched their positions. Chum became favorites of yesterday and today. CFTR got that power boost, became that powerhouse. That's when you were listening with Tom Rivers and Jesse and Gene. There was CKOC, this kind of strange younger stepchild from that scene that was plugging away over at 1150 and still trying to represent that full scope of music. That if anything was a hit uh nevin grant would give it the time of day and figure out how to how to work it on the air you could realize that this this sound became weirder and weirder as time was marching on because suddenly you had these heavy metal power ballads coming on the scene right and then there was like a little bit more hip hop. And in fact, it was Rapper's Delight by the Sugarhill Gang that C stands as the very first rap record ever produced in Canada.

Yeah, I tell them to move and then I tell them to groove and then I'm dancing to that song. I'm with a tap dance, jazz dance, disco dancer, scuba do, toot toot. When the music gets loud, I say, look out, people, cause I really shoot the boots. I said, hey, now you've heard my voice, but I brought one friend along. That's me. Yeah, I would have brought two, but I only got one. So come on, beat us in that song. Well, I guess by now everybody knows that this song is all about feet.

So let me tell you about other people and all those feet I meet. Well, there's a big one, small one, so don't you know. So are we listening to personalities from CKOC? This is the Scotty Pete gang who put out this record. It was their tribute to the Sugar Hill gang. The Rapper's Delight sounded, I guess, a little foreign at the time. It sounded like the kind of record that would be

worthy of a parody. Kind of like a proto-Weird Al thing going on. It was released by Quality Records in Canada, which put out the original Sugarhill Gang record. And like I said, if

somebody asks you the trivia question, what was the first rap record to ever be released, recorded, produced in Canada? I hate to break it to you, but it was Rapper's Defeat. Do you know what year that was? Did that show up in your research? Yeah, that would have been

1980, right? That would have been 40 years ago now that the Sugar Hill Gang first showed up in Canada and ended up with a bigger hit on the Canadian charts even then in the U.S. I think it's appropriate that looking at the last ever CKOC all hit 40 countdown. OK, this is when they made the switch over to all these following in the footsteps of CHOMP, other stations like that. Right. I mean, the FM dial was diversifying. There wasn't much future anymore for listening to music on AM. And they're you know, they joined in the trend of flipping over, if not to talk radio.

Then in the case of 1150, it became an oldies radio station. It became an oldies radio station. The final number one on CKOC, February 12th, 1992, I'm Too Sexy by Right Said Fred, which lived up to this whole spirit, I guess, of being favorable to these novelty songs. Right on its heels, number two that week, Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana. See, it couldn't have happened. Spirit by Nirvana. See, it couldn't have happened. You could not have allowed Kurt Cobain to eclipse Right Said Fred on the CKOC chart. It feels like symbolically, as soon as they saw this coming, right, that grunge was going to take over, that there would be no more room for songs like I'm Too Sexy in the world anymore. They had to pull the plug. They never played a new

song again. Who's bearded, witty, impish, lives with his dog in a cabin in the woods and writes riddles and all sorts of other gossipy stuff which more Torontonians enjoy? Hint, you can read him on page six in the little paper that grew. His initials are GD.

Yeah, there was Buffalo Bob. Now there's Buffalo Burger. Yeah, I lived and worked in Buffalo for many years. In fact, I have been in the business so long, I was with Erwin Weinstein when he covered his very first fire many years ago. 11.23 on CFTR. Hi, girl.

CFTR, 11.26, George Hamburger on a sloppy Monday morning with Murray McLaughlin. Try walking away. Looks like you'll be rocking in the rain for most of today, according to our latest AccuWeather forecast. So tell us, speaking of CFTR, who else did we lose that we could talk about in this radio segment? Oh, George Hamburger was a Buffalo DJ who made the rounds, I think, on pretty much every Buffalo radio station. And at one point, unusually enough, ended up being recruited to Toronto to work on 680 CFTR. There we heard in that clip an FOTM, Murray McLaughlin. And another FOTM only shows up in the comments on Toronto Mike mentioned, Gary Dunford.

Right. Who's usually out there and he was in a commercial in that clip, if you caught that in there. But we're talking about George Hamburger, who died at the end of May. And, you know, after he had his stint as a full-time radio DJ, then he became a real estate broker in the Buffalo area. And I guess with a name like George Hamburger, after being on the radio for all those years, it would have served him well in real estate, I think, that he would have been recognized. What was really sad was finding a clip of the last time he was on the air in Buffalo. It was just a few weeks ago. He was talking about how Buffalo office real estate would deal with the aftermath of COVID-19. But it turned out that we lost him here in the month of May and just sort of a shout out

there to a character from another Toronto Top 40 radio station all through Buffalo and all through the years even even stayed on the radio part-time once he started doing real estate The legendary primetime sports theme song is playing. So tell me what's new with non-FOTM Bob McCowan. FOTM Bob McCowan. Although speaking of real estate, it sounds like he had an encounter with an FOTM this week. Are you talking about Brian Gerstein from propertyinthesix.com?

Of course. Who was one of those Bobcat fans. Are we allowed to call him Bobcat? I guess. Sure. How can he be offended? He keeps turning you down. The Bobcat fans, are we allowed to call him Bobcat? I guess. Sure. How can he be offended? He keeps turning you down.

You've Got Five Minutes is this YouTube show that Bob McCowan started, I think, just in the nick of time. Because wasn't it always Bob McCowan's shtick that he was not interested in watching televised sports, let alone going to a game, right? Like, the last thing that he ever not interested in watching televised sports, let alone going to a game, right? Like, the last thing that he ever wanted to do was be a spectator sitting through the games that he was talking on the radio about. I think what came to the actual consumption of sports

that Bob McCowan is even more indifferent to the whole idea than I am. Like that he puts this thing on behind his sunglasses. He's got no time to sit through an entire baseball, basketball, hockey game. He has better things to do, and it served no purpose whatsoever to the way that he was discussing stuff on primetime sports. That's my read on him and what he represented. And I think it was a brilliant routine because it served him on the

radio for all those years. When you heard that 1980s porno music playing, you knew you were going to get some real talk when it came to what was happening in the sports industry. What better time than now when all talk of sports is theoretical, that there are no games to follow outside of South Korean baseball? For Bob McCowan to make a comeback and move his idea of things to the forefront of it all. and move his idea of things to the forefront of it all. He's the nihilistic sports talk radio host, and he's doing it on his YouTube show, You've Got Five Minutes. Have you watched any of these You've Got Five Minutes episodes? I wonder if You've Got Five Minutes will be evolving into You've Got Five Viewers. Because like any YouTube startup,

you do have to keep working it, right? You can't take the audience for granted. Just because people click play on day one doesn't mean they're going to keep coming back. And to build an audience, to make the curve go up when it comes to YouTube viewers. You've got to really keep massaging this stuff.

And look, I don't want to put it past him. I'm not sure if Bob is ready for the reality of what it takes to make it online. Or maybe he's just standing by and waiting for one of these old school broadcasters to take him on once again. and waiting for one of these old school broadcasters to take him on once again. You must have watched your buddy, Brian Gerstein, posing a question to Bob McCowan. The whole idea here is that he's got a listener of his who wants to be on the show and pose a topic.

He hasn't got his professional pundits anymore, left them all behind. Sportsnet, Fan 590. They're all doing the show without him. Writer's Block. And in fact, he's doing these Zoom chats. Perfect for the time. Do you have anything to say about Bob McCallum's digital strategy? And how much does he really need to come on Toronto Mike now to kickstart what he wants to do?

I'm a little baffled at this move by Bobcat. Now, you know, no disrespect to Brian Gerstein, who brings it. Like I watched his episode because he's a he's a good FOTM and he's got the the Expos jersey and he's got the passion. And I mean, I mean, if you listen to Toronto Mike, you've heard Gerstein on about about I don't know 300 episodes or something like that right he always posed a question for guests on this show uh back in the day now I so I list I watched a bit of that and I watched a bit of the first one because I was curious I think a lot of people tuned into that first episode just to hear what was Bobcat up to I don't think this is his strength I personally don't give a shit what the average Joe wants to ask McCowan about the, the Leafs power play or,

or anything really like I find if you, what the strength of a McCowan show was, was when McCowan was interviewing subjects. Like, so firstly, I don't, I don't think this is an appealing show and I don't know what the view counts are at,

but he'll be lucky if a thousand people give them, give them five minutes for the recent episodes. And secondly is, this is not a podcast. I'm surprised he would do a YouTube-only show, and I'm not sure why he wouldn't, you know, take that audio and make it an actual true podcast

so that you, Mark Weisblatt, could add it to your I don't know, 2,000 podcasts that you follow like it's not a podcast look i'm all in with listening to a sports talk radio show by a guy who refuses to watch any sports okay like i i'm into the whole idea but more likely to listen if it was podcasting right okay so yeah so that's one thing but But if you want to hear Bob McCowan, do you really want to hear him field three questions from an average Joe from Vito and

Woodbridge? Like, is that what you're hankering for? It allows him to maintain the mystique of wearing the sunglasses at all times, right? And you wonder, you know, what's really going on inside of Bobcat's soul and that he's able to keep up that pose by doing it on YouTube. And not only that, but you get a word from his sponsor and it turns out his sponsor is his own winery, right? Stony Ridge Wines.

They got a new wine from from the tragically hip but yes fine but even the even the sponsor and again i'm the last thing i'm gonna do the last thing i'll do is throw stones at a broadcaster for sponsor mentions okay i think i have seven on this episode because we got ridley funeral home today so but but what he does is he literally he says hi it's me this is five minutes and then they air a 30 minute canned commercial for the Tragically Appointed. Like, it's not even like Bob talking about it or having, I don't know, it's, it's, it's, it's not even the kind of ad that works in this new medium. Like nobody wants to press play on something and then get the 30 second, uh, canned ad.

That's the same every time. Like, I just think it's, it's, it's, I don't think this show will last very long because and then get the 30 second canned ad that's the same every time. Like, I just think it's, I don't think this show will last very long because I think at some point he'll ask his techie person how many people are watching and assuming they don't do what we've seen many, many broadcasters do of YouTube shows and buy viewers,

you'll see very quickly, because I looked at it, the first episode gets 6,000, the first episode gets 6,000, the second episode gets 4,500, the third episode gets 2,500, the fourth episode gets 1,000, and the fifth episode maybe gets 800. And you can extrapolate what the 20th episode will get. And you're right, it will be, you have five viewers. Okay, Mike. Let's check back in about 30 days or whenever we do the June recap and see where things are at

with Bob McCowan making his comeback on YouTube. But as you have speculated, different times ever since he left Rogers a year ago, the possibility, he'll go back to his old job and then they'll make amends. And once again, you'll have primetime sports on the fan five 90. We shall see. And of course you'll hear it all here.

And we'll talk about it when things are announced. And that's why I want to talk to you about the big change at flow, because we, we announced it because it was happening that the syndicated us breakfast club show was going to take over mornings on Flow 93.5 and then they paused it at the last minute because suddenly we were in COVID-19 pandemic

shutdown and they wisely determined that's probably a bad idea to have a show that's not local and they kept FOTM Blake Carter and Peter Cash on mornings but at some point in May they said said, okay, now's the time. And they moved Blake Carter and Peter Cash to afternoon drive.

And now the morning show on 93.5 is out of New York City. It's called The Breakfast Club. Tell me, have you listened? I'm sure you have, but tell me what you think. Well, I'll tell you when I listened, it was because The Breakfast Club is making more headlines than ever, partly because one of their guests was U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden. And that was the radio show where he said that if you are voting for Donald Trump, you ain't black. Voting for Donald Trump, you ain't black. And it was predicted in advance that every political guest who'd come on this breakfast club show made a fool of themselves trying to seem hip with the hip hop kids and put their foot in their mouth before it was over. And at one point in this Biden interview, he was about to wrap up and no, he wanted to carry on.

He wanted to continue. And it turned out they got that faux pas that he later apologized for in just in the nick of time. all the trauma that's now hit with the riots around evolving black America. Toronto Radio Station is running a show, a black radio show from New York City with black radio hosts, which was something that was not even prioritized on Toronto's hip hop radio station. An unusual circumstance. And there this week, in the end, look, it all comes down to show business. The Breakfast Club with Charlemagne the God. The G is silent, by the way. And the reason I'm now sure of this, I don't know if I was getting it before. Didn't want to seem like I wasn't getting it right because I was listening to an interview with the Breakfast Club with Charlemagne and Rush Limbaugh. And they both work for the same company, Premier Radio Networks,

part of the corporate banner of iHeartMedia. And they did a collaboration. They did a conversation together that ran on the Breakfast Club as well as Rush Limbaugh's show. Rush Limbaugh made his Toronto radio debut here this week, June 2020. The first time a Toronto radio frequency ran a radio show with Rush Limbaugh. I mean, who would have thunk? And the fact that it was a flow. And this interview with The Breakfast Club, and like anything of this sort, it was picked apart and what he had to say. And did he recognize no white privilege and all these years spouting on the radio? Was Rush Limbaugh bad for the United States of America, that people listening on the FM dial in Toronto, however many are out there, that they would have been exposed to a show like this.

It's all just totally surreal. I don't know what it says for the future of the flow and hip-hop on Toronto radio, because at the same time they made this change, they streamlined the playlist. And even though they said they were going back to the hip-hop roots of the flow, it's a pretty conventional format once again. If you look at what they're playing now, they're playing it more on the safe side. They've got musical interludes in the morning and this morning drive show, Blake Carter and Peter Cash in the afternoon. We'll see how long it lasts. Because people talk about that American radio shows don't last very long,

syndicated into Canada, traditionally speaking. But I looked at it more like a last resort for this flow radio station that was in the basement of the radio ratings. What else could they do to draw attention to it? I can only think of one other example. You're the authority, but I only remember Howard Stern coming in being the Q107 morning show. I can't think of another morning show. Once they got into, well, a lot of sports radio.

Oh, sure. Dan Patrick and yeah, a lot of sports radio. Sure. The Fabulous Sports Babe. 1150 CKOC after it turned to tsn morning show i was thinking but and uh howard stern which lasted four years on q107 i guess some revisionist history that it didn't really last very long i mean it was over four years sure've gone spliced up every single morning time moves a lot faster now and we'll see what's ahead for this uh this breakfast club this kind of controversial move

but uh i think the the uh seasonal radio ratings for the spring are coming out the day after we record here uh on wednesday june 3rd are people listening to drive time radio at all like they used to anymore? People have been thrown out of their routines, right? We've just gone through what? Like 11 weeks in a row with less traffic on the road, not the same amount of commuting, people working at home.

I've long said that the saving grace for radio is traffic jams. Like to me, traffic jams are everything to radio and the bulk of radio, like terrestrial radio listening in real time, the bulk of that happens when you're stuck in your car. And let's face it, since mid-March, that hasn't been the case for the vast majority of people. I would not be surprised to see that the radio pie has

dramatically shrunk during the COVID pandemic. But I guess it sounds like we'll find out tomorrow, see what leaks. Yeah, stand by and wait for the comments on torontomic.com, which is where it all happens. And really, for anybody who hasn't caught on, that's how we got into talking about radio so much during these 1236 episodes, that it's kind of a spinoff of not only what I've been covering all these years, but also the fact that your website was seen like as the last place where people would Google stuff

about what was happening in Toronto radio stations and land on there. And here, you've got this diary now for a couple of decades, like every change that's ever happened on the radio that you've been there chronicling it on your website. No, you're absolutely right. And I think looking back, I don't know who to blame, but you might want to blame the Mix 99.9 when they fired Fred and then Humble. I think that might be the origin. I don't know when this became the thing, but you're right. If you go now and Google morning show changes on flow,

uh, you're going to end up on Toronto, Mike.com. Now, before I got a little ad, that's going to introduce the next topic. I just got to say, it's good that,

uh, Rush Limbaugh got his Toronto debut in because I, I think possibly in the near future, he'll be showing up in the ridley funeral home memorial section i hear he's not doing very well health-wise he sounded okay on that bit with the breakfast club you know santa kind of energized to be talking to a younger generation and i mean you know even though these are serious topics going on with the state of race relations in america you know uh these these are people that are ultimately entertainers, and

I think that drives everything that they're doing. I mean, I don't know. What lies ahead for any media after this pandemic has passed? Here we are in this great unknown. We're going down this road together, exploring the possibilities, uh you know the here the fact that we you know had rush limbaugh trying to talk to this other audience trying to have what was generally a pretty civilized debate with them uh and in the process uh being heard for the first time by a whole different audience and i'm sure getting a lot of flack. Why are you platforming this guy who is pro-Trump, right? I mean, responsible for everything that has ailed is, what, battling cancer and talking about the treatments wearing him down. And we'll see what's ahead. And if we'll get to hear Rush Limbaugh up until right through this 2020 election like no other.

But I think his ratings will go up because it's Breakfast Club. Like I think it drew more people to know about him than ever before. Do you know, I've never heard him utter a sentence, like not a sentence. I can't, I know that there's a parody of him on an episode, on an episode of the Simpsons.

I quite like, uh, where there's a guy who's doing kind of a Rush Limbaugh accent and talk radio shit. I think that's the, when sideshow Bob is running for office, I believe it's that one. But anyway,

I've never heard Rush. I don't know where I would have heard him. Like I know of him because he's sort of a famous person out in the zeitgeist. And I feel I've absorbed some through osmosis, but I can't picture him. I can't picture hearing a sentence from Rush Limbaugh in my entire life. So I don't know. A lot of people would say that you're lucky to have come this far for so long.

I don't know where I would have heard him. Like I don't know where I would have been exposed to Rush Limbaugh. I was also going to mention K-Rock in Los Angeles, K-R-O-Q. And, you know, you touched on this with Neil Morrison and the fact that they're in Los Angeles, like the flagship modern rock alternative radio station, making some changes that are stirring things up in L.A., even though a lot of it's based on nostalgia for people that grew up with the radio station. But in fact, you know, they've made some changes during the pandemic. Some would say it's the end of an era over there. And it's because they've changed their station IDs to de-emphasize KROQ,

that it's now mostly being known as K-R-O-Q. And they're trying to chart some kind of path. Like, is there a way to draw the younger listeners to FM radio? This is maybe the last exit. This is the last chance for a station like that to reinvent itself and try to connect to a younger generation. Variety.com had a thorough article

talking about the changes there. And I think as we imagine, what will the last day of CFNY sound like if they ever pulled the plug on that radio station, enough speculation in the air, including by the former morning guys, Kevin and being that in fact, we're seeing the last act of K rock.

Well, it would be a shame if we lost a one Oh two, now that we finally got FOTMs in the morning show. Like, it just seems like that'd be bad time. Yeah. Well, another case of bad luck where,

where they started that B team show with Jay Brody and, you know, all ready to go. He spent seven years listening to seven other morning shows run through the ringer before he got his chance. His eye was on the prize. And then it's like three weeks later, tossed out of the studio, forced to fend for himself and hope for the best, and just not reaching people with those same patterns that they were used to. You've got to look at it as an opportunity. Here's a chance to reset and capture those people who fell out of the routine of listening to any radio in the

morning. That's great. Let's go with it. There's always more to the story. And with Toronto Star Touch, our new app for the tablet, you can have it all. And not just soundbites, the complete story and the star's famous investigations that keep you in the know about what matters in our city, our country and our world. And it's the complete Toronto Star. More videos, more photos, more exclusive daily features. You won't want to miss a day. Toronto Star Touch, your free news app from the Toronto Star. Big news coming from one young street in May.

Star Touch is long gone. The Toronto Star is no longer invested in the iPadad as a future of journalism but that was a good memory their super bowl commercial from 2016 that's somehow still uh they're on uh youtube a reminder of when the toronto star tor star corporation had like 40 million dollars to burn on the idea of going down the road of adopting, adapting the newspaper to this tablet technology and, of course, having absolutely nothing to show for it. It was situations like these that led to the fact that the Toronto Star was running out of money, and the five families that controlled it, along with the stock, the public investment that was on the Toronto Stock Exchange, kept on plummeting. They suspended the dividend. 2020 was bound to be the year that they had to find somebody to take this off their hands, that the old system, the old structure wasn't working anymore. And there we got the announcement at the end of May that two families,

the Bitov and Rivet families with their front men, Paul Rivet and Jordan Bitov, who had varying experience in Canadian business, that they were going to be the new custodians of the Torstar Corporation, taking a private, private equity off the hands of the structure that was there before, claiming that by working things this way, that they'll have a little more liberty and leverage to experiment and finally find some kind of profitable path for this newspaper without the pressure that they had before. Of course, Mike, you saw this news. It was the biggest Canadian media news, at least of last week.

Did you get a sense that these are the guys, that this is the structure that's going to somehow redefine, uh, where the newspaper industry goes now into the 2020s. Like, do you have the confidence in these characters that they're the ones that do it? I did a lot of reading on this subject and it seems to me like the inevitability is the merger,

if you will, the, of, uh, of, of, of the Toronto Star, the National Post, and the Toronto Sun into one blob of publication? There was some kind of leak.

It seemed to be a story broken by the Toronto Star reporters themselves, that the debt holder who was lending money for this purchase turned out to be the same people, Canso Investment Corporation, who were holding the purse for Post Media, left them in the uncomfortable position where just a few days before, they announced these earnest and eager new buyers. A little bit of research found not uncommon for white guys in their 50s. They were aligned. They were donors to the Conservative Party of Canada, to the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. That's where their interest had been found as far as a political affiliation was concerned, suddenly it made sense. A little bit of clarity. Why was former Ontario Premier David Peterson presented by them as a vice chair who would be like a steward, a custodian for these progressive Atkinson principles? Why do they need to put David Peterson in the mix? A little bit of spin, courtesy of Navigator Limited.

And it turned out that David Peterson was kind of apologizing on their behalf, saying, you know, these are not right-wing zealots. This is not the United States of America. They're not going to turn the Toronto Star into some kind of conservative propaganda rag because I am here with my watchful eyes as a member of the Liberal Party to uphold everything that Tor Star represented. Well, all that goodwill, most of it, seemed to go out the window as soon as the connection with Post Media was established. And then out of that, you've got pundits who are figuring, okay, this is actually the perfect position that they're in. To merge Post Media

with Torstar, take the financial post, which is part of the National Post, as we know it, Post Media Papers, sync that up with the Toronto Star. You've got this investigative journalism position at Torstar. That's a reputation. That's what they're known for, that you can find a way to export that all across Canada. And at a time when there's got to be more consolidation going on that, in fact, maybe this deal can save newspapers in the end. After all, just don't pretend that it means that Toronto Star will remain independently liberal. Well, guess what? In my own review of what was happening here, I have my own theories of what the Toronto Star can do. And, you know, I'm willing to sell them

at pretty much any price. I can give them away right here on Toronto Mike. Which one do you want? I mean, you got to look out for me, right? Should I hold this to myself and, you know, tease the fact that I'm thinking this stuff?

Or should I let it all out in the open here? I say let it out right now. I think so, because I put it on Twitter already. And look, journalism, I think, has partly been destroyed by the fact that journalists are always looking for affirmation on Twitter, all social media platforms, as far as I'm concerned, has murdered the purity of the idea that if you're going to do any real reporting, which is not a business that I've really been in, I'm not going to pretend to be any authority on it, but just snarking on the sidelines in the way that I do. I think that attention has been diverted from getting the real story and addressing the

audience that is paying to read you because all the reporters out there, anybody in journalism, an editor, a columnist, they want the instant feedback, right? I mean, how can they resist the idea that if they're online all the time, that people are going to tell them immediately what they think of what they're up to? And the path forward, I feel, involves dislodging the Toronto Star from the social media platforms. Log off everything and everywhere. It doesn't do anything for anybody. forms, log off everything and everywhere. It doesn't do anything for anybody. I don't know if the enticement to click through to stories has done anything for their digital subscription business. I mean, they're like almost two years into it and they have 32,000 digital subscriptions

across Torstar. It's not nothing, but if you compare it on a scale relative to Washington Post, New York Times, it hasn't worked out at all. Get off TikTok. Who cares if the Toronto Star is on Instagram? Focus on your core competency, realize where your audience is, competency, realize where your audience is, and play to the crowd that actually likes reading the newspaper. And here's the thing, the audience that's paying the most attention to the Toronto Star and is the most loyal to it is not very young anymore. And it means that if you're looking for your fellow millennials and Gen Xers on social media to pay attention to you, I don't know that there's any money in it when you're working for a legacy newspaper like that. These are people who grew up with the Toronto Star.

You were a Toronto Star household, right? I don't know, 70%, 80%, 90% of Toronto got this newspaper on the doorstep. Not all those people are dead, you know. Some of them are still getting the newspaper every day. And I don't think it matters to them that the newspaper has pulled out every stop over the past, I don't know, 20 plus years to try and seem hipper than it actually is. I mean, look, respect to FOT and Ben Rayner, who just officially wrapped up all the time, 22 years being the Toronto Star's rock critic. But I don't know if music reviews were anything that if they found that the subscribers that they have were driven by, you know, reading Ben Rayner's opinion on indie rock. It was great that he was there as long as he was. that things should work out for him in the future, along with FOT and Peter Howell,

also cut as a movie reviewer. You'd think symbolically you should have some culture critics around a big city daily newspaper, but they're not there anymore. What are you going to do? You've got to play to the strengths of what they have, this thorough investigative research reporting, and you've got to make the people that have stuck with the Toronto Star like it even more. And they're the ones you've got to start with. That's how you've got to seed the comeback of this newspaper with the audience that you already have. And expecting them to come your way because you introduced a tablet app like we listen to. They tried it. It didn't work.

You've got to go with something else. And I think that something else is really that older OK Boomer generation. And I think if this newspaper is going to get anywhere going forward, you got to win over these people even more than before, before they're all dead and gone. And that's the way you can start the renaissance, the razzle dazzle return of the Toronto Star. Thrown in there is a fact that the Financial Post, owned by Post Media, is a proposition that people are traditionally willing to pay for, financial news, and that's happening. And all these Postia dailies across Canada, the broadsheets, Vancouver Sun, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, Calgary, Edmonton,

that they've been cut back significantly over the last few years. Maybe this is a chance for them to get some kind of revival and do it with that rigor associated with the Toronto Star. And there's my plan outlined here, free of charge, on the Toronto Mic'd podcast about where I think it can go. But nobody's going to listen to me. And besides, I'm glad to be affiliated with a different media company anyhow. Well, good, because at some point in the future, there's only going to be one media conglomerate. And that's what? TMds toronto mic digital services

that's right all right quick hits mark i just checked the clock this is a deja vu all over again very quick hits we talked about quibi and we scratched our heads and we we we looked puzzled i looked at you you looked at me we were were puzzled as to how this could succeed. What's the update on Quibi? Last month, you wondered aloud if there are more than 42 people watching CTV news on Quibi. Right. Guess what? I found out from no less than Jeffrey Katzenberg, who's in charge of this $2 billion boondoggle, that 42 people might have been a pretty good guess and maybe even a little bit of an exaggeration. They started out Daily Essentials along with these quick bite video shows, these Hollywood shows, productions, celebrity stars, anyone they could sign up. They would have like a news component.

And he said, his quote, it turned out the Daily Essentials were not very essential. There they roped in CTV. I guess it was a way of cross-promoting. You could have CTV News on Quibi. They could talk about Quibi on CTV News. I don't know how long this is going to last. Some Bell Media thing there. Bell Media does have some of their people, like Kayla Gray, doing stuff on this Quibi. But again, I said 42, and I actually would like to adjust that to 12, if I could.

Okay, well, when the grand poobah, Jeffrey Katzenberg, is already writing a thing off, and I was looking around the Bell Media website, and they weren't even promoting Quibi anymore. He blamed the whole thing on the coronavirus.

Like, had there not been COVID-19, we would have done great, which is easy to say. Serious question, because I know you cover this, you probably would have encountered it, but in the wild, have you have encountered it, but in the wild, have you ever encountered any human being in the wild

who is subscribed to Quibi? I have barely set foot in the wild, Mike, in the past 11 weeks. So I don't know that I'm one to answer. I would say there was, you know, a real scathing, bitchy review of Quibi. It ran on the website magazine Art in America and just kind of saying, you know, this is like the last hurrah for a certain kind of Hollywood narcissism at work here, where they gave money to all these creators like, I don't know, Chrissy Teigen to produce their own show and give them free reign to come up with something and burn millions and billions of dollars on what could be here.

I don't know. I guess, in theory, it looked like something that could catch on. Do they know YouTube exists? Because I can tell you, these short shows, these 10-minute episodes and things of that nature exist on YouTube and have been there forever,

and people are already consuming them for free. Oh, well it's already set up. The Quibi will be a punchline for years and decades to come. I think, especially given the timing of its launch, uh, that,

you know, that it was a, a disaster waiting to happen from, from the start only exacerbated by the fact that like, even the, any fans that it had could not watch this on their bigger screen. So even if you liked the show, you were stuck watching it on your phone, even if you were permanently at home.

But that supposes that anybody wanted to watch the stuff to begin with. that anybody wanted to watch the stuff to begin with. $2 billion or 1.8, whatever it was, down the drain for this idea here. And there's been speculation about how you can save it. That there are different characters, personalities, platforms, concepts out there that they can pivot to, that it's not too late.

I mean, here you've launched this thing. Why didn't it have any viral hit? Why didn't they start with one show, just like Netflix and these other platforms? Why couldn't they just settle on one thing that everybody would buzz about and then they would migrate to the platform? Do you remember, I don't know, a couple months ago, we talked about the podcasters that had a podcast in which they talked about Quibi. Do you remember this?

And then Quibi sent them a cease and desist and said, stop talking about us. Do you remember this? That kind of short-sighted nonsense is the reason Quibi will die a death. They'll die a death in the near future. I have a jam I'm playing. I want you to listen to this.

Hold on. Doja Cat, what am I listening to, Mark? You're listening to the biggest hit record to ever be cultivated by videos on TikTok. And that's Say So by Doja Cat, who at one point during the pandemic was canceled on Twitter for hanging out in in-cell chat rooms or something. Didn't get in the way of the infectiousness of this song. And yeah, TikTok, a big winner, I think, from COVID-19. The fact that so many people were bored at home doing their dances, you know,

15 seconds at a time on TikTok. Where does TikTok stand with your teenagers today, Mike? I mean, at this point in time, it's like part of the adolescent lexicon, right? You cannot be, as far as I can tell, a teenager today without knowing a little bit about TikTok. a teenager today without, without knowing a little bit about Tik TOK. Yeah. Well, my,

my son does my son who's 18 keeps his cards a lot closer to his chest, but my 15 year old daughter, we talk a lot about what she's consuming in the media and she's a big Tik TOK user. Yes. Yes. I don't have, I'd like to say I don't have a Tik TOK account and because I simply, why I don't know if 45 year old guys are supposed to be there

i don't know are you on tiktok mark i know you like well i'm not i'm not participating in tiktok mike i don't know what you're trying to get at uh look i mean the fact that it's owned by a chinese company a point of contention at this point in history. But they hired like a streaming guru away from Disney and ByteDance, the parent company, they've moved their operations from Hollywood and trying to get the message across that now TikTok is no longer subject to Chinese communist censorship. We'll see about that because there's been suggestions about censorship going on there. They've got a little bit to prove. But yeah, TikTok getting all the action that Quibi was hoping for, I think. And that's been part of the story here of the pandemic, along with Joe Rogan's podcast.

We got to mention that here because of the big deal he signed with Spotify. And, you know, a lot of speculation about what this means for podcasting. Is this the beginning of the end of the concept that podcasting is open to anyone and everyone who, you know, wants to set up a feed and be available on any app, any platform that, you know, here there was some kind of democratization going on. And now here, Joe Rogan with the most popular podcast in America, making him exclusive to the Spotify machine. Ultimately, you'll only be able to hear and watch him through Spotify. What does it all mean? You, Toronto Mike.

What was your take? Okay, I hope it doesn't catch on. The beauty, the glorious beauty of podcasting is that it's an open source schema that nobody can own. Like, you know, you and I could build an app and release it that can parse an XML file and serve up podcasts. Like we can go do that today. Maybe we should do that.

Take a note. We're going to, after this call, we're going to talk about it, but it's XML, man. You know, Apple can parse it on Apple podcasts and Spotify can do it over there. And Google does it and Stitcher and TuneIn. I love that part of podcasting. You know, some guy can have an app to listen to podcasts to him and 10 other people use. I hate the whole concept that Spotify, to me, it's not a podcast, first of all. So it's Joe Rogan audio show. It's a Joe Rogan audio. It's as much a podcast as Bob McCowan's five minute

thing. Nah, sucks because A, Spotify is a shitty podcast aggregator. I hate it as a podcast listening podcatcher. And last thing I want is some shows I like are only on Google, some shows I like are only on Apple, other shows I like are only on Stitcher or on Spotify. It would suck for a podcast consumer like yourself, Mark, who listens to 2000 podcasts. Okay, well, let's give Joe Rogan some credit in other areas. And it's a fact that he pretty much solidified this idea that a podcast should be three hours long because you never know where the conversation is going to go. And that is something that you've embraced, right? Who had it first? I don't even know when Rogan started. Didn't I invent the three-hour podcast?

Doesn't he owe me something for that i can't remember the timelines but you you waved off all the naysayers who said nobody's gonna listen to a discussion that goes beyond 90 120 minutes uh and that's part of what he's contributed and uh we'll see we'll see what this does for podcasting as a whole. The domination of Spotify is a platform you have to go to to listen to this guy. And if Spotify ultimately ends up charging people to listen to him. Yeah, it's a lot of money. So I don't blame them for taking that huge paycheck. I hope there's a little leftover for us independent podcasters

who didn't have a big NBC show or platform. I hope there's still some money left over. You were trying to move on. What was that? Start it again. That was Houdini, the rapper. Did we ever

come up with the name of when there's an artist you don't know of until they pass and then you start to dive in and listen to all their stuff? Did we ever, is there a German word for that? I can't remember if we established one. But this is, I'll play it again. This is Houdini, up and coming Toronto rapper that I only learned about the day he was tragically killed. Gunshot wound.

Daytime shooting in downtown Toronto. I think it was like Peter Street and King. I don't need you all I needed myself I wasn't asking nobody for help She wanted me cause her name ringin' bells Designed her jeans so designed her the belt You wildin' on me never nobody else Got a bit on my hip and nobody could tell Before I grew up I just wanted to sell I'm independent I'm good by myself

I don't need you all I needed myself I wasn't asking nobody for help She wanted me cause her name ringin' bells Designed her jeans so designed her the belt You wildin' on mean never nobody else. There's a little Houdini. He passed away in May. But we're playing him off the top here, how this ties in with 6Buzz.

And you tell us, Mark, what should we know? Where to begin? It's the fact that 6Buzz TV, which is famous in the greater Toronto area, primarily as an Instagram account that does this meme news. And it's made a lot of headlines over the last few months. I guess the most attention it got came by insinuations that involved blaming the coronavirus on a place called a restaurant called Wuhan Noodle in Toronto that they got a lot of blowback for that that here this Chinese restaurant said that their business was being affected by this joke on this meme account you know I think between the things that they post on there and the comments that are made, you can find racism in every single direction.

Like that's the free for all they've created. But Six Buzz is also connected to a hip hop music scene. that have been promoted through this somewhat mysterious company, even though you can look up the corporate registry and find out who founded this thing, that their names are out there, that they put out a compilation album in December. And from mid-December until May 2020, four of the rappers on this Six Buzz Toronto compilation album were shot dead. OK, so something is going on there and it's a little bit unfortunate. And I can't find really any reporting that's been done to explain what the connection might be, how these people are tied together.

The connection might be how these people are tied together. Whatever it is, nobody knows. But they fell into the fact that after Houdini was shot in broad daylight, Blue Jays Way, downtown Toronto, there was this gunfight happening on the street in which a couple of those allegedly involved were teenagers. A 15-year-old associate of Houdini. And this is the middle of the day. This is not at 3 in the morning, right? This is literally daylight, middle of the day, downtown shootout. At a time when people are traumatized enough about what's going on in the world and trying to stay safe walking out there that this happens to go on.

Okay, and you had Joe Warmington write a column in which he was taking his position that, in fact, you know, hip-hop is a negative force in the city of Toronto. Threw in what he claimed to be some lyrics from Drake. And these were lyrics that Joe Warmington seemed to come up with from the top of his head. They weren't Drake lyrics at all. Where did he get this quote from? What was he Googling that he came up with this? But he invented them? He tried to pass them off as Drake lyrics, but they were- It seemed like it. I don't know what's going on. Was he experiencing some kind of delirium? Whatever it was, the son retracted this rant from the scrawler. I mean, listen, you can't say that Drake rapped this thing about shooting people in the streets when he he really didn't after a while uh this is going to come back to the guy and drake is going to find out about it but still

you know a lot uh look uh the reaction to the headline that they put on the front page of the sun who made houdini vanish and the fact they were playing off his name, that, you know, magician Houdini, right? He adopted it as a rapper. You know, in fact, that's a little harsh and maybe unfair to the memory of this young rapper who there was killed in cold blood on the streets of Toronto. It's all quite complicated. I mean, I don't know. Like, what do you think about

the fact that here we keep talking about all these rappers, young men that came up with an opportunity. Here, Drake created this industry, put eyes on Toronto, made it possible for this generation to have some kind of hip hop career. Imagine emulating his fame and fortune, managed to get a certain amount of attention, go through rapper after rapper, even if we didn't hear of who these guys were before they died. You'll look up on YouTube and Spotify, you'll see that they had like millions of people who knew who they were, who were listening to them before all these lives that have been snuffed out. And what does it mean? What does it say? Especially at this point in history

where people are trying to figure out what's going on, that we've got this sequence of murders that involve rappers in Toronto. What is the right way to report on what's happening here? Can you not despair about the fact that there might be something to all this culture that is maybe not the greatest thing to ever happen? Can you cast a critical eye on the whole thing like Joe Warmington, the Toronto Sun, are trying to do? I think the problem is no one quite knows the stories. We're not finding out about why these murders have occurred and if there's any connection to tie them together.

And so it all becomes this kind of social media war of words without any explanation about what's really happening here. Well, what I do know is that it's tragic and scary as all hell that there's gunplay on Toronto's downtown streets at any time of day, let alone at daylight time when I saw a little video of what looked like a six-year-old boy or something was running across the sidewalk

as men run by with guns out. That's scary as all fuck. So do you think that Joe Warmington was off base in the way he characterized this stuff? You know, that this is like a cause for alarm, that there's some kind of crisis going on here that needs to be somehow addressed. And, you know, maybe Drake isn't directly culpable. You don't want to make that insinuation that he's, you know, actually promoting the idea that people should run out onto the street and start shooting one another.

I listened to a lot of Drake. I mean, not just the singles that hit the airwaves, but I've listened to, you know, complete Drake albums, several of them, many, many, many, many times. I don't hear him glorifying gun violence. I don't hear an abundance of gun violence glorification in Drake songs. And I think you're right. But Joe Warmington is desperate to make that connection anywhere he can, asking questions in this clumsy kind of way. And I don't think it does anybody any favors. So here you had Six Buzz calling out the Scrawler, which in turn led to people calling out Six Buzz saying, you know, what exactly are you doing here for the city? How are you any better

than this Toronto tabloid, the Toronto Sun, you know, as far as how you characterize this stuff? Are you not bad enough? Are you not doing something as far as promoting these rappers that are ending up dead? Do you not have any responsibility here to spread a more positive message? You've got this audience out there. You've developed this platform. What are you going to do with it besides throwing out all this clickbait on Instagram and hoping for the best? Now, these six buzz founders have remained a little shadowy. One of them whose name is on the corporate registration disavowed any of this said he's not the one running the Instagram account. And so it's all kind of complicated because they managed to get this much attention as a player in the Toronto media.

And, you know, mostly once again showing up when, you know, something controversial crosses their path and shows up on Six Buzz TV on Instagram. They get referenced all the time in Toronto newscasts. People are following this meme account, what they're doing. And, you know, those wondering out there, of course, there are no professional standards. There is no news media council. There's no press standards for putting stuff up on Instagram. And we've got millions of eyes paying attention to you, I guess you can decide. Do you want to be a force of good

or do you have some other agenda in mind? And that's what they were being called out for. And that's how Six Buzz ended up at war with Joe Warmington. Is there a May 2020 chair girl update, Mr. Weisblatt? Well, May 2020 was the month where Chair Girl decided that she should go outside. Brazilians who moved to Toronto who were looking for some food bank relief in the time of COVID-19. The chair girl put on her Instagram stories pictures of her helping out to deliver this stuff from supermarkets around Toronto that she was doing the most to repair her image. I got in touch with her lawyer. You know, they said here Marcello was hoping that she could do some good and she made sure to publicize it and she got in the newspaper

and it worked out for everybody in the end. Subsequently, though, it seems like Chair Girl has been flouting social distancing rules because I've seen on Instagram pictures of her in very close proximity to her friends, hanging out together, vaping live into the night that they retreated to some kind of cottage and she was working out in a gym. I don't know if Chair Girl is going to need a good character witness when she's ultimately sentenced for her chair throwing. If it even happens at all, somehow here in June. I don't know if she's going to some kind of virtual court, but she persists.

She keeps on bringing the content. And in the end, we are eventually going to run out of things to say about the case of Marcella. We might then pivot into chair girl updates, just talking about her generally here every month to keep the Beach Boys song flowing. That's the best. That's everything on my mind as far as Marcella Zoya is concerned for May of 2020. On my mind right now is that this is going to be the longest episode, I think, of Toronto Mic'd ever, I think, because we have a lot of deaths to cover and here we are now. So let me, before we enter the memorial section of the 1236 episodes of

Toronto Mic'd, let me thank CDN Technologies for their tremendous support. If you have any issues with your network, contact Barb at CDN Technologies, cdntechnologies.com. There's a 905 number right on the top there. Call Barb and she'll help you with your computer problems, your network problems, anything of that nature. If you have any Toronto real estate questions at all,

you need to talk to Austin. Austin Keitner from the Keitner group, text Toronto Mike to 5 9 5 5 9. And Mark, I know you've done this, but if anyone out there has not done this, shame on you. Visit garbage day.com slash Toronto Mike and sign up for the free service.

You can decide when you get your notifications as to what goes to the curb. I'm going to get one tonight. I know that, yeah, tomorrow is going to be, it'll tell me if it's a yard waste pickup. Is it garbage? Is it recycling? Of course, every week is the perishable items, the green bin,

but I get, takes all the guesswork out of it. And they let you know if there's any delays due to COVID-19 or due to holidays garbage day.com slash Toronto Mike sign up you'll thank me later and because this is the monthly recap with Mark Weisblatt of 1236 this memorial section of Toronto Mike is brought to you by Ridley Funeral Home they're at at 3080 Lakeshore. That's at 14th Street. I was literally there today dropping off masks. My wife made a bunch of masks for the frontline workers at Ridley Funeral Home. Brad Jones has been a tremendous FOTM.

At Ridley Funeral Home, you can pay tribute without paying a fortune. Learn more at RidleyFuneralHome.com. It's a double rainbow all the way down It's a double rainbow all the way down Oh my god What does this mean? It's so bright, so vivid Double rainbow, double rainbow It's so intense, intense What does this mean?

It started even looked like a triple rainbow That's a whole rainbow map Double rainbow all the way across the sky That brings me right back. Double Rainbow Guy. What a viral video that was. We lost the Double Rainbow Guy, Mark? It seems like every time that we report on the death of somebody who was most famous for an Internet meme, we've got to mention them here somehow.

Right. Tribute there to a double rainbow guy, Paul Vasquez. He died at age 57. There he was a decade ago in Yosemite National Park where he lived kind of the life of a hermit. And he posted a video of himself reacting to the double rainbow in the sky. Observations were adopted into that auto-tune, the news song. And as a result, 10 years later, his death became international news.

And off the top here, a salute to a guy that gave everybody a smile, the Double Rainbow Guy. Here I am at six o'clock in the morning Still thinking about you It's still hard At six o'clock in the morning To sleep without you

And I know that it might Seem too late for love. All I know. I need you now. More than words can say I need you now. I've got to find the way. Man, that's a catchy hook. Who did we lose related to this epic Canadian jam?

I need you now. Who passed away? Denny DiMarci, the keyboard player on this alias song, More Than Words Can Say. He died on May 15th at age 57. And in referencing this song, we're talking one more chapter here in the history of When I'm With You, the song by Sheriff, which was a topic on a 1236 episode. become a number one American hit and how a couple members of the band wanted to get things back together. The sheriff, finally, they made it in America. And it turned out that the two guys that were in Frozen Ghost wanted nothing to do with these two other guys that were in the band and that they had to strike out on their own and start all over again. The band called Alias.

It was Freddie Kirchie and Steve DiMarci, vocalist and guitarist, that decided that they could replicate the success that they had by doing a song that sounded a lot like When I'm With You, but also just different enough that it could become a big hit all on its own. Well, it was Steve's brother, Denny, who facilitated their home recording as a keyboard player that he made that alias record happen and help them to get in the position where they could have that comeback and, you know, have that a second time around for having one big hit. Denny DiMarci, though, had a day job and he started his own dental supply company that, by all accounts, was successful enough that, you know, he didn't have to struggle as a musician. Didn't have to struggle as a musician. And, you know, even after the whole alias thing fizzled out, it turned out that the owner of the courier company that the guys from the band were working for had a son who wanted to make it in the music business, work on a road crew, ended up working for Duran Duran. And through a tour with the C Cranberries met and married Dolores O'Riordan this is where the story gets really great it's one of those stories that just shows like all

the levels of coincidence that can happen in life even if things turn a little tragic like Dolores O'Riordan you end up dying young and these these are all tidbits. As you put out these breadcrumbs, I'm now remembering them coming up on previous episodes of Toronto Mic'd with Mark Weisblatt. Absolutely. There you go. Once Denny DiMarci was settled in with his dental supply business, he was free to go on the road.

And along with Steve, they were part of the backing band for Dolores O'Riordan when she had her solo career. And when there was a Cranberries reunion a few years later, they were part of the live band. And, you know, here we have this history that has been left behind from Sheriff to Alias to the Cranberries, and Denny DiMarci was a long for it all and died of cancer here in May 2020. As you can hear, I'm so invested in the history of this song and all the coincidences that surrounded it. You could really like write a book on what happened with the history of When I'm With You and More Than Words Can Say. You might remember a few years ago, it was used in a commercial for Subway sandwiches that ran during the Super Bowl.

And, you know, everybody remembers 30 years ago, peak power ballad, More Than Words Can Say, none of which would have happened without Denny DeMarci. Gone I was. Gone I was. Gone I was. Gone. The now feeling. Here's a song that some people might recognize as a Canadian radio hit from a husband and wife duo called Lost and Profound. Brand new set of lies. Now the connection here relates to someone that we lost in May 2020. A guy who I knew just a little bit named Alan

Bakeland. And Alan Bakeland was best known in Calgary, you could say, a character maybe on the same level of Dave Bookman, in which he was kind of like, I guess, the king of the hipster beatnik counterculture characters that were around Calgary in the late 70s and early 80s, in the heyday of punk rock and new wave. And where Alan Baikland established his reputation was by becoming the station manager of the campus radio station, a university in Calgary, CJSW, had one of those legendary confrontations with the student government where they wanted to cut off funding to the closed circuit radio station. Allen locked himself in the station and stayed on the air like a whole pump up the volume scenario. This guy that was around 20 years old, they stuck to his

guns and he kept this radio station on the air. And subsequently, CJSW got an FM radio license. But Alan Baikland ended up moving to Toronto. And that's where I crossed paths with him because just like Dave Bookman, he was one of those personalities that showed up at the University of Toronto CIUT. And, you know, here this guy was already a seasoned veteran of this college radio. They had a whole aesthetic that he represented, that he had a chance to bring on the air and had his own show there. But unlike these other people who wondered if they could actually make a living just being a bohemian, he went out and got a respectable job. He delivered mail for

Canada Post. And he had his eye on the idea that you could do this job for a certain number of years and you could have a nice retirement when you weren't very deep into middle age. And so not only would I see him around CIUT, I would also see him delivering mail on his routes around downtown Toronto. Through Calgary, he also was connected to other people who ended up moving from there to Toronto, others that I knew, including Bill Reynolds, who became the editor of iWeekly. So in charting my own evolution, I don't know if I would be doing what I was doing today if I wasn't familiar with Alan Baikland. And ended up moving back to Calgary, kind of rode out the rest of his career delivering mail, and went back once again to Campus Radio in Calgary and being a musician.

That was a band that we heard, the Now Feeling, that song, a brand new set of lies. He reunited, got the old band back together, guys in their 50s, and did a new version of that song that was a hit for one member of the band, Terry Tompkins, from Lost and Profound. Shout out here then. It's been a while to remember somebody that made a little impact on me that I got to know, you know, casually enough that he knew who I was, that I knew what he represented. Shout out here,, dead age 60 due to cancer. Sad to report that we lost Alan Bakeland. Okay, now we're going to remember

three people that were taken by COVID-19. Elle a tout ce qui me plaît Elle est celle que j'attendais depuis bien longtemps Quand elle est à mes côtés On voit les gens se retourner pour la regarder C'est ma lady C'est ma lady Je oh, oh, oh, oh, c'est ma lady. Je veux vous parler de ma lady, de ma lady à moi.

Oui, oui, Marc, who are we listening to here? I'm not going to pretend that I knew anything about Jean-Nicole before I saw that he died at age 75 on May 11th due to COVID-19. But in learning that he was a Tom Jones of Quebec, kind of Googling around and looking to see how exactly he got that title. And within a matter of minutes, it was obvious Jean-Nicole was not only the Tom Jones of Quebec, he straight out did his own French versions of songs made famous by Tom Jones. I'm not sure he got the same number of panties thrown his way when he was on stage.

But just discovering that whole world of two solitudes, a bit of Quebec culture that I didn't know anything about until he died. There were a few coronavirus related deaths of celebrities that were only in Quebec. But yeah, only only three to cover this month. I figure it's important if we're going to do obituaries that we mention those who were taken because of this virus going around. Who else was there? I don't think we lost Michael Jackson due to COVID-19, but I'm playing some MJ because... Why am I playing this Michael Jackson song? This is the theme song from the live stage show by Siegfried and Roy.

Okay, it sounds a bit like Leave Me Alone. Remember Liz Taylor in the video there. I gotta say, look, you know, for such a legendary figure, there was not a lot of quality control after a certain point in the career of michael jackson right that's why after he died they were able to put out an album in which like some sound alike uh did a fake michael jackson songs and they figured they could get away with it because he left all these demos behind which really weren't very good even songs that he released himself on his own albums.

After a while, they all blurred together. They all had that same sound to it, including this theme song that he wrote for the Siegfried and Roy show. Nonetheless, Roy Horn, who died on May 8,, 2020 at age 75. His career had ended when he had an injury on stage, right? With one of their Lions and Tigers live in Las Vegas, that their career as a duo ended there, that there was no more stage show of Siegfried and Roy, even though afterwards they tried to do an animated show called Father of the Pride.

Oh, I remember this. Yeah. And that was back in 2004, 2005. They were still trying to keep the Siegfried and Roy brand alive. and Siegfried and Roy, who themselves were presumed to be a romantic couple. That was a subject of much speculation. I don't know if it was something that they had actually confirmed. But it was this whole thing, you know, of these two German guys who moved to the USA and they found some glory here in hanging out with these wild animals on the stage. A little bit of danger show that was running through the Las Vegas casinos.

And so when we lost Roy Horn, I think everybody knew, right? Roy Horn, I think everybody knew, right? Siegfried and Roy, that they became household names, even if no one was really quite sure what they were famous for, that it was really just doing this magical show on stage and had a friend there in Michael Jackson who gave them one of his songs to use as their theme. No surprise there. And also, much like Rush Limbaugh,

I know the, uh, Simpsons parody of Siegfried and Roy. So, and, and just that you said this, but just to bang it home, the guy who died of COVID is the same guy who was mauled by their white

tiger. Golden brown texture like sun lays me down with my mind. She runs throughout the night. No need to fight. This is Golden Brown by The Stranglers. Dave Greenfield was a keyboardist from the Stranglers who died due to COVID-19 on May 3rd at age 71. And if you know nothing else about the Stranglers, I barely even do. But that song, Golden Brown, which is all about that, all about those keyboards. keyboards and you know just to remember that uh here was here was one of the musicians uh that died as a result of the coronavirus in general though uh i mean is there a bright side to any of this it's a shorter list than we had last month in the obituaries at least we're we're going in the right direction there as far as flattening the curve. It's still sad that here was just

this iconic song from the whole new wave movement and that this was in the first sentence of his obituary, Golden Brown. Oh, you This jam goes out to FOTM Cam Gordon. But Jodeci is not dead. He's still with us.

So who passed away, Mark? Well, referencing Cam Gordon on a pandemic Friday. What was it? He mispronounced Jodeci. And like some of my great faux pas here, spent an entire week kicking himself over his inability to articulate a certain noun. Guess what, Cam? Welcome to the club.

Lately by Jodeci was the subject of a New York Times article that ran in the New York Times who spotlighted that as one of his favorite songs ever, that it was really the pinnacle of everything that Andre Harrell represented as a music mogul. Now, at first, he was part of a rap duo, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, who predated FOTM Maestro Fresh West in the fact that they dress in formal wear to do their rap act in the early 1980s. I hate to break it to you, Mike, but Maestro was not the first that these guys beat him to it. that these guys beat him to it. He ended up going to business school and got a job in radio, which he did for a long time, but then met up with Russell Simmons, got a job at Def Jam Records during its initial glory days,

and then started a record label of his own, Uptown Records. And through Uptown Records, Andre Harrell, he discovered people who are still around to this day, the most famous of which is a guy named Sean Puffy Combs. And Sean Combs was originally working alongside him like as a A&R executive. He was involved in the managing of these artists. And those artists included Mary J. Blige, a teenager who they had a tape of. She did like a karaoke thing in a booth at a mall.

She sang Anita Baker's song, Caught Up in the Rapture, and gave her a record deal based on that. Jodeci, two sets of two brothers. That's where they came up on a pandemic Friday. Not Jodeci. This is Jodeci. Just want to clarify for Cam. Okay.

And he turned them into stars as a vocal group. Heavy D and the boys were also in there like uh like all these stories of music moguls there ended up being a rebellion at uptown records where all the artists were claiming that he was ripping them off they went off and got a better deal and it seemed to uh seemed to work out in some sense also for Andre Harrell because he was able to explore working in movies and TV. If you remember the show New York Undercover, a hip-hop cop show that ran on Fox.

That was his creation. That was his production. And reunited with Puff Daddy for the Revolt TV channel, helped him run that. Anyway, suffering from heart problems, we lost him on May 7th. Only 59 years old, Andre Harrell. I'm breaking away I'm breaking away Does this song take you back, Mark?

Some 1050 memories? Not only do I remember the song Breaking Away by Balance from the 1050 Chum chart, but does it not sound like the kind of tune you would hear like blasting out of a 20-minute workout class, right? Some aerobic studio back around 1982 when this song was a hit for this band. And who died in May 2020 was the guitarist for Balance,

Bob Kulik. was the guitarist for Balance, Bob Kulik. Bob Kulik, this was a band that he debuted with, his own group with Pepe Castro, who'd been in a 60s band called the Blues Magoos. But prior to that, he was a session guitarist who goes down in history as one of the many uncredited members of the band Kiss, that he was like a ghost guitar player filling in for Ace Frehley when he was indisposed, like unable to play the solos on the Kiss albums because he was too drunk and that Bob Kulik filled in for him on a bunch of Kiss records, including the studio side of Alive 2 and later appeared with Paul Stanley's solo act. Anyway, Kiss had a bunch of lineup changes, and when they needed a new guitarist again, Bob suggested his brother Bruce.

And it was Bruce Kulik who became an official member of KISS, which Bob Kulik never got to be. And from what I could tell, this ended up resulting in a decades-long feud between the brothers, bad blood that was still playing out on social media up until recently, where Bob was angry at Bruce that he got the shot that he felt was supposed to be his. Instead, Bob Kulik ended up playing with the band Wasp, W-A-S-P, kind of like the raunchiest of the raunchy heavy metal bands. Blackie Lawless in the 1990s, before he became a born-again Christian. Bob Kulik also performed with Lou Reed and Meatloaf made the studio Rock Rounds for so many years. Credit on a bunch of records that people remember and a lot that people might rather forget. Made it to age 70. Died in May 2020. My boy Lollipop Don't ever, ever leave me

Because it would grieve me My heart told me so Millie Small, My Boy Lollipop My Boy Lollipop A hit back in 1964 for this Jamaican singer who came to some attention in the UK thanks to a young budding record executive named Chris Blackwell, who ended up founding Island Records, that he was the one that discovered Millie, Island Records that he was the one that discovered Millie and that she had this number two hit in the UK and also in the USA.

And, you know, she had a bit of a career as a teenage singer, but spent, you know, most of the last 50 years as a recluse, that she became this character that people would wonder, where is she now? That she initially moved to Singapore and then reports were out there that she was living in a youth hostel, but that My Boy Lollipop

lingered for all that time, just one of those legendary songs that was for a lot of people, their first exposure to Jamaican style of music. And not a lot of people had given her much thought. I mean, the song was in the Spice Girls movie. Spice World, if you remember that. Of course.

Memorable cameo for it. On May 5th, 2020, Millie Small died of a stroke. Of course. ska that really, you know, any ska music that we heard subsequent to that point, and the fact that people were open to that sound, that the roots of it all lay in the song My Boy Lollipop. Wir fahren, fahren, fahren auf der Autobahn. Wir fahren, fahren, fahren auf der Autobahn. Kraftwerk Autobahn Florian Schneider died on on April 21st, was the day that he died. But we only heard about it, what, a couple weeks later.

We didn't do craft work in our last recap, did we? was Florian Schneider, who was credited with founding this whole idea of creating a German version of a rock band in which everything that they did would be relayed through computer machines. And that through craftwork, they did what a lot of people interpreted to be like this grandiose art project. The craftwork where it never really meant to be like this grandiose art project. The Kraftwerk were never really meant to be taken all that seriously. They were pushing the limits of this idea that, you know, you could perform rock and roll entirely with computers. And of course, all music that was subsequently performed, which, you know, the main instrument was a synthesizer, was a throwback to what

Kraftwerk had invented, left behind. Yeah, it wasn't until May 6th that we heard that Florence Schneider died from cancer on April 21st. And here's a footnote to talking about Nevin Grant of CKOC, that Autobahn was a hit song all around the world, including in Canada. And I found from 45 years ago, there was a CKOC chart with Autobahn by Kraftwerk way up there in the top five. So when we talk about this Hamilton radio station and how, I guess, they glorified these novelty records and took them seriously, that it was part of what Nevin Grant brought to the radio,

that, as far as I could tell, he played a big role in the fact that that Autobahn became a mainstream hit record and defined so much that happened. Any music that involved machinery, it all comes back to Kraftwerk. Doctor, doctor, you gave me the news. I got a bad case of loving you. No pill gonna cure my ill. I got a bad case of loving you. Moon Martin. Bad Case of Loving You was a song that people know thanks to Robert Palmer. The guy who wrote it was John David Moon Martin from Oklahoma. He died on May 11th at age 74.

And when there were obituaries, I mean, not a lot of people had him on their radar. You had to dig a little bit to find any reports that he had died. Eventually it got out there. One of the stories mentioned that Dr. Doctor, give me the news. I've got a bad case of loving you. Paid the bills for the rest of his life after a certain point in time. That this one song was made enough to live off of thanks to the fact that it was used in all these movies and commercials. And I guess you could thank the late Robert Palmer for making that possible. On a side note, I read a piece about who's the gentleman who first recorded Spirit in the Sky? Greenbaum?

Norman Greenbaum. Yeah. I read an article. He's been living his entire life off the royalties of that one song. The money from that song supports his entire existence ever since. supports his entire existence ever since. Moon Martin had also a song called Cadillac Walk, which Willie DeVille made famous.

And then the biggest hit of his own was called Roll Lean. Also, I remember that one from 1050 Chum. But it kind of faded away. It didn't have to work so hard to make it as a performer on his own and died in May at age 74. In the rain, down in Mexico, yeah. Where did your heart go? Did you put it on a train? Did you leave it in the rain?

Or down in Mexico? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Or down in Mexico Was not was. Where did your heart go from the first album by a group i think we we talk about a lot was not was david and don was along with their their backing band and guest musicians and two vocalists that they primarily perform with one called sir harry bowens and the other uh who we lost in may sweet p atkinson and he was he was uh the soulful side of uh their singing voice uh walk the dinosaur is a song that was not was became best known for. But Where Did Your Heart Go was later covered by Wham! George Michael on their farewell final album was like their goodbye single.

It wasn't even wasn't even much of a hit, but it was George Michael paying homage to his influence. I mean, talking already 35 years ago, cult favorite in Sweet Pea Atkinson. And I think, funnily enough, that when Was Not Was had a couple of hits, they up on this club mtv tour so you know here these old soul guys were performing in these teenage concerts along with millie vanillie and paula abdul and they were aghast at the fact that these other people on stage with them maybe weren't seeing their own songs live. Surreal experiences that they subsequently were talking about. Age 74, Sweet Pea Atkinson, Rest in Peace, because all those Was Not Was albums, I think

hugely influential on a whole bunch of people, including me. Now, here's what we're going to do, Mark. Because of time constraints, we're going to talk about four musicians who passed away, but I'm only going to play one jam for all four of them, even though I could have played four different songs. So you're doing a four for one here. so let's start with betty wright since i playing Clean Up Woman, a song I quite dig. We lost Betty Wright in May.

Yeah, Betty Wright died on May 10th at age 66 because Clean Up Woman, well, she was really young. Only 17 years old when she recorded that song that everyone seemed to know. Came out in November 1971 and then, you know, tried to adapt to disco and more modern R&B. But, you know, I guess because she started at a young age, she was one of those women that people might have been surprised that she was only 66 years old because she'd come up so often as having that influence just with that performance

on that one song, Clean Up Woman. Now tell me about Bobby Digital. I thought about playing Shabba Ranks twice my age because I love that song as well. But tell me about Bobby Digital passing. Oh, Bobby Digital. Speaking of history of Jamaican music, he was the producer behind that dance hall sound, which became uniquely popular, I think,

around Toronto in the late 1980s, especially that song Shabba Ranks and Crystal. I'm in love with a man nearly twice my age. And Bobby Digital was the producer between a lot of those sides. And when it comes to that, like, lover's rock sound of the era. And he died on May 21st at age 59. What were the other ones in there? Brian Howe. The Bad Company.

Yeah, from Bad Company. Bad Company singer Brian Howe. We could have fit in, like, Alias, another, like, big late 80s, early 90s power ballad, but he was the replacement singer in Bad Company. Paul Rogers is a singer that everybody knew from Bad Company, who were associated with Swan Song Records and Led Zeppelin, but they regrouped in the mid 80s

because Paul Rogers was off playing with Jimmy Page and a few memorable corporate rock songs from that period of time, which have a charm all their own. It's kind of confusing because it kept the name Bad Company, but the sound and the

front man had nothing to do with what it was before and eventually got back together with their original singer, Paul Rogers. And what was the last one in the four that you wanted to mention? I'm playing the pretty thing. Don't bring me down.

Who did we lose from uh related to this jam uh phil may uh vocalist for the pretty things originally contemporaries of the rolling stones and they had this uh first big hit to show for it and then they uh and then they went down i guess a bit of a weirder road. They ended up signing with Motown Records and S.F. Sorrow, their album, which is seen as like the first rock opera. parallel universe, Mick Jagger. If Mick Jagger had more artistic credibility and didn't go to business school, that he might have had the career of Phil May, dead at age 75 on May 15th. are you ready for some football mark here's some uh of the nfl today theme phyllis george uh ubiquitous presence on the cbs television network i think partly

by virtue of the fact that she was a lady who was part of the pre-game show on cbs sports sports NFL today, which made her a pioneer as far as showing up on Sunday afternoons, leading up to the NFL football games, made her a certain kind of celebrity. And she later got into news on CBS and doing interview shows of her own. and doing interview shows of her own. And also, I guess, notable for who she was married to, which included the movie producer Robert Evans, an infamous figure all his own. And then she became the first lady of Kentucky when she married Governor John Brown of Kentucky.

Phyllis George, somebody, I guess guess in the 70s, 80s, a lot of people grew up with, died at age 70 on May 14th. guitar solo This, of course, is the theme from the new Leave It to Beaver. A lot of recognition for the fact that we lost Ken Osmond, who played Eddie Haskell on Leave It to Beaver. But how many people out there, besides Toronto Mike, is going to pay attention to the fact that there was a new Leave It to Beaver that ran in the late 1980s? The fact that it went through a bunch of different adaptations of the original theme song. We had like a smooth jazz style applied to the theme from the show. You know, Leave It to Beaver was not such a successful

show when it was originally on. Like, Leave It to Beaver owes it all to the reruns, including on CKVR, classic television from Barrie, Ontario, where it was a reliable performer at lunchtime. And I think most

people listening, including you and me, that's where we know Leave It to Beaver from. Oh my god, yeah. I remember Lumpy and of course, Eddie Haskell was the best character though. To me, this was the sharpest, the funniest character

Eddie Haskell. And yet, I think you could catch on at a young enough age that you were watching a show from a different time. Because everybody references Leave it to Beaver, right, as the ultimate depiction of a certain white picket fence American ideal that was alien enough to us, right, by the time you got to 20, 25 years later. That there was a fantasy world that the show represented in itself and managed to be sharp enough that gained more popularity in reruns than it did in the first place.

And as a result of the reruns, people were wondering, whatever happened to Eddie Haskell? Did Ken Osmond become a pornography actor? Can Osmond become a pornography actor? It was John Holmes who claimed that he was the real Eddie Haskell on TV. Or did Eddie Haskell, Ken Osmond, grow up to be Alice Cooper, the shock rock star on stage? Because he referenced in an interview that growing up he also was kind of like Eddie Haskell. Look, rumors traveled a lot more slowly back then. You could ride on the idea that in fact Alice Cooper or John Holmes was actually Ken Osmond. The thing is he was embarrassed by the

whole thing because Ken Osmond was a real law and order guy. That he grew up to become a cop. And that, in fact, he served with the LAPD for a while. Except he ended up in a foot chase with a suspected car thief. He ended up being shot. And it derailed his police career. But guess what? He was just in time to be back around

for the return of Leave it to Beaver, and that's where we got the new Leave it to Beaver show. And that's how we remember Ken Osmond. Okay, this is the theme from Airport 1975. A movie I haven't seen, but it is a movie, right? I've seen Airplane. Playing this rather than like the theme from Seinfeld is a way to remember Jerry Stiller, who died on May 11th at age 92.

And with his wife, comedy duo Stiller and Mira. And after they spent the 1960s doing live shows and being recognized from Ed Sullivan, that I think they recognized that they had to choose between staying married or staying in show business. had to choose between staying married or staying in show business and they pulled back from doing that live act and spent the 1970s instead um kind of being like these personalities that would show up on tv and radio commercials and that stiller and mira ended up uh being the voices of Blue Nun Wine. They did the preview segments that originally ran on HBO. In between the movies, they would do little skits

talking about the other movies and shows that were going to be running on the channel. And then, as everybody discussed, when Jerry Stiller died, here he had a career resurgence like no other, playing Frank Costanza on, what, about 30 episodes of Seinfeld. Originally, they had a different dad. George Costanza's dad was a different guy. They went back and reshot the one episode for syndication so that there could be continuity so no one would ever again come across this old episode.

What's going on here? That's a different guy playing George's dad and Frank Costanza leaving so many lines behind. Then he did another version of the character in The King of Queens. And beyond that, he did videos for the 30th anniversary tour by Rush on stage that they recruited him and he did a bunch of skits. Diller, lots of fond memories about this eccentric, eclectic, unusual career, really, to have been this 1960s comedian who became more famous in the 1990s, all thanks to Seinfeld. A little tribute there to Jerry Stiller. now mark you assure me that everybody left to memorialize lived at least to be 80 years old. So there's the good news. But who did we lose related to this early Beatles song? Astrid Kerher. She died at age 81 on May 12th, just before she was going to turn 82.

And she was one of the characters that Beatles met in Hamburg, Germany. And she is, well, originally she connected to the Beatles, engaged to Stuart Sutcliffe, who was originally a bass player that's well documented in the movie Backbeat. As legend goes, she invented the Beatle haircut. And I think with her and her German friends who took to the Beatles, part of the story was that they kind of felt guilty for the fact their parents were Nazis. And, you know, they were self-conscious about this fact. And by

befriending the Beatles, by being kind of accepted by them, it was, you know, their way of connecting to the broader counterculture and realizing artistically that they could contribute. And it was a friend, Klaus Vorman, who ended up designing the Revolver album cover and performing bassist with John Lennon. Juergen Vollmer is also a photographer, but Astrid Kjerher, dead at 81 on May 12, 2020. I've been seeking I've been searching I've been looking I've been searching I've been seeking

I've been searching Trying to find Trying to find, trying to find, trying to find, trying to find, trying to find peace of mind, trying to search all the time, trying to find, great God Almighty, been a long time coming. We lost the architect of rock and roll, Little Richard. Last month, we mentioned that no one more famous than the reclusive Bill Withers had died in the month of April. Well, it looks like in May, some people who were a lot more famous did, and that included Little Richard,

who, however, just like Bill Withers, spent the last decades of his life being a recluse and uh he was no stranger to kind of disappearing because after he invented rock and roll and uh he was the architect of so much uh but even after tootie fruity and long tall sally it was a little richard who decided that he had found god and he wasn't gonna be playing rock and roll anymore. Now, by that point, he'd already established his influence, already had Pat Boone covering his songs and whitening them up for the audience. And, you know, always sounded like he he had a genuine grudge, although he also camped and amped it up. Right. They never got the credit that he deserved. But, look, little Richard

himself also kind of went down a road. Things got a little wacky, not just with religion, but also his drug-taking. He tried to return with a psychedelic sound, and I guess

he disavowed homosexuality, even though it was generally presumed to be the way that he swung. Somewhere in the mid-1980s, though, we had Little Richard doing cameo appearance in Down and Out in Beverly Hills. That's where that song came from, right? The only Little Richard hit during our lifetimes was Great Gosh Almighty. And I think it's a unique subgenre. It's like that Leave it to Beaver updated theme song.

How 1950s music was interpreted in the 1980s is a category all its own, right? is a category all its own, right? Where it was like they were trying to update that old sound and you end up with this like weird synthesized style of 1950s music. And that little Richard did his little part with that comeback of his. And the last song that people knew was a theme from the kids' TV TV show The Magic School Bus

starring the great Stu Stone as Ralphie is it Ralphie? I get my characters mixed up I think it's Ralphie but yes and I did not know that until there was a pandemic Friday after Little Richard

passed when Stu let us know that was Little Richard doing the Magic School Bus theme. So what do you know? All roads lead back to Toronto, Mike. Gjørens i just want to wrap over this now, but Breezin'. I don't know. We might be in our 80s before we finish this 1236 recap episode. Are you worried about that, Mike? I wanted to note the death of Joyce Davidson,

who might end up being the most famous Canadian, English Canadian, who ended up dying due to COVID-19. And a real tragedy here because he died in one of those infamous long term care homes that was investigated by the province of Ontario for its terrible conditions. And there she had spent something like the past eight years. So once upon a time, though, Joyce Davidson was a huge star on Canadian television, that she was a single mom from Saskatoon. She had had a couple of kids when she was still a teenager and breaking out on her own from Hamilton, Ontario. First got a job at CHCH Television, worked her way up to the mothership CBC. She was on a show called Tabloid. And guess what?

In 1959, you were not allowed to say on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that you were indifferent to a visit by the Queen. that you were indifferent to a visit by the Queen. And she got hounded off the air because of the fact that she dared to say that she did not think that the British monarchy was anything that Canadians needed to care about. Can you believe that? Once upon a time, that's what you could be cancelled for. Well, it ended up working out in her favor because she moved to New York City and got a contribution gig on the Today Show. I'm sure the fact that she got hounded off Canadian TV had a lot to do with this level

of attention that she received. Met a talk show producer in New York City named David Susskind. He was also on camera, interviewer of her own. They ended up getting married. And Joyce Davidson had a pretty glamorous life in New York City. Came back to Canada to tape the Joyce Davidson show

on CFTO-TV. That was a theme song, Breezin' by George Benson. We had that once before when we mentioned the death of one of the producers of the show, Sandra Fair. Right. That was last year. Joyce Davidson was a big deal who curiously didn't really get much attention when she died. Ultimately, there was an obituary that ran in the Globe and Mail and kind of into the early 21st century.

You know, she would make the rounds on the Toronto social circuit. But there she was suffering from Parkinson's and due to the conditions in this long term care home. Joyce Davidson dead at 89 in May 2020. The crazy wild and the rough and rude The dean don't like their attitude That animalist fraternity Well, it could mean Michael Simmons of Delta House, but it's not Michael Simmons who passed away. Who passed away, Mark?

It was his father, Matty Simmons, who was, among other things, one of the co-founders of the very first credit card. The Diners Club credit card was the co-creation of a guy named Matty Simmons who ended up connecting with some humorists at Harvard. And he had his own publishing company and started a magazine called National Lampoon. And he had his own publishing company and started a magazine called National Lampoon. And there he was in charge of this magazine, which was so influential as far as the world of humor was concerned. A movie called National Lampoon's Animal House, which everybody knows. But he clashed with the editorial staff. And when it came to the success of Animal House, there was an opportunity to do a sitcom spinoff called Delta House. That was a theme song by his son and the whole National Lampoon

franchise as we knew it sort of fizzled after that. But you can't discount the fact that this guy and the money he made from the original credit card was such an influence on comedy. Maddie Simmons dead at 93. Three. Maybe things weren't right When I was tossing and turning Turning and tossing Tossing and turning all night I kicked the blankets on the floor Golden Oldie, tossing and turning. Bobby Lewis, you always want to end on the oldest person I can find who died on April 28th.

We lost Bobby Lewis. He made it to age 95. 1961, his hit song Tossin' and Turnin'. This is a I think it was on one of those Golden Oldies cassettes That I got from a gas station In the early 80s And later Covered by Peter Criss The drummer of the band Kiss And out there you can find Kiss

Doing their own live version of Tossin' and Turnin' It's like their most punk rock song. And that's all I got. And we didn't even cover everybody, I think, who was worth mentioning who died. But that's it for the Ridley Funeral Home 1236 recap of people who died in May 2020. 36 recap of people who died in May 2020. We might have to do a spinoff, like, where there's one show where we talk about all the stuff that happened in the month and a different show when we do the memorial.

Like, we might need to break these two apart because they're exhausting. Like, I can't imagine listening to this. I just listened to it and I need a nap. Well, Mike, if anybody made it this far, then what they wanted to hear was the entire 1236 recap for May 2020. I can't believe it either. I would rather be sitting there with you.

What? The countdown starts now to see if it can happen. rather be sitting there with you what the countdown starts now to see if it can happen if you people haven't subscribed to Mark's excellent daily newsletter at 1236.ca

then there's no way you're still listening like there's nobody who went this like almost three hours and isn't subscribed to 1236 so I'm just blowing in the wind here and that brings us to the end of our 658th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike.

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