Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - 12:36: Toronto Mike'd #731

Episode Date: October 5, 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 731 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. Pumpkins After Dark, save 10% with the promo code MIC m-i-k-e-d cdn technologies your outsourced i.t department write barb now at barb at cdn technologies.com sticker you.com create custom stickers labels tattoos and decals for your home and your business. The Keitner Group. They love helping buyers find their dream home. Write me and let me introduce you to Austin Keitner from the Keitner Group.

And Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. I'm Mike from TorontoMike.com. And making his highly anticipated return to the backyard studio is Mark Weisblot from 1236. Okay, what do we got, Mike? It's our August recap episode. It might as well be because I think in the world in which I operate, just like for the kids, March break went until September.

We're kind of in a state right now where it's always August. We haven't had that rebound into autumn that you usually feel with a lot of the subjects that we talk about here. And I'm not just making an excuse for the fact that we missed one of our deadlines for a monthly recap episode. I was struggling a little bit with some ocular issues that were rather complicated. Ocular, that's a big word. I got over it and seem to be on the mend and some other stuff is now delayed until 2021. But look, I'm in sync with everybody else, right? Every tour, every movie, every event,

anything that anybody would want to get together for is not going to be happening until calendar flips over. Fortunately, we're able to get together in the backyard over here. Although I was thinking about the fact that as I spent, what, two, three, four years coming over doing these 1236 Toronto Mic'd recap episodes. It was once a dream, the fact that your son James had this little bedroom in the basement off in the corner, right?

At one point, we were imagining, wouldn't it be easier for me to just sleep over here rather than take the subway down, rushing over on a winter afternoon? Wouldn't that be a possibility once he was out of here, 18 years old, off to university? That's actually happened. Yep, he's there right now. And theoretically, I could quarantine myself with your family, right? Yeah. I could have made a home for myself in the basement while you were doing most of the

podcast in the backyard. Right. And I think I safely could have been around in order to do that episode at the end of August and also meet the deadline in September. But we didn't go for it. Didn't seem within the realm of possibility. A little inconvenient. And so we had to wait for today for me to get out here in New Toronto again.

You mentioned that dream. Here's a little dreams. It's funny, like that, you know, great song. I guess you could call this is a song by Boomers. And it's very song by Boomers, and it's very popular with Boomers. And going viral, moving

back up the charts, thanks to the guy on his skateboard drinking cranberry juice. I thought, was he? Okay, I thought the original guy was drinking like Sunny D or something. Did I miss, maybe I watched it wrong. I know that the Mick Fleetwood was drinking

cranberry juice, but they were drinking something. Anyway, that was what? Ocean spray. Okay. Cran raspberry juice. All right. A little bit diluted. He did the video on TikTok. So Fleetwood Mac, they're

big with the millennials now and younger perhaps. This guy's older than that. But the kids are loving Fleetwood Mac's dreams because of this TikTok video. And Mick Fleetwood did his own little homage

to the guy chugging the cranberry juice. I don't ever go on TikTok, but anything like that that takes off on TikTok, I see it on Twitter. Like somebody just takes the TikTok video and tweets it. So it's just, you know, there's some cross-pollination of the social media networks. But, you know, shout out to Fleetwood Mac

for making their big comeback here thanks to TikTok. The guy's named Nathan Apodaca. He had been on TikTok for a while. He was known as the stoner uncle you never knew you needed on social media. He was bringing back all the old school jams from Wyoming. Right. And he's the one that seized upon the TikTok generation. And here's the song, Dreams by Fleetwood Mac,

that he brought back to the forefront, I think, here, going into October and autumn leaves falling from the trees. Stevie Nicks trying to sequester herself in heavy-duty quarantine because she doesn't want her career to end before she's ready. She thinks that if she got sick in any way, that would be the end of her voice. And there was a wistful article in the LA Times catching up with Stevie Nicks. And the time was right for this 15 seconds of dreams by Fleetwood Mac. John Gallagher would love to tell you

a few Stevie Nicks stories, but you've probably heard them already. Oh, yeah, a bit of TMDS gossip. Where is John Gallagher of Gallagher and Gross Saves the World? So he went, you know, there were a couple of false starts during the summer

where Johnny was going to come in his backyard and record four or five episodes with Peter Gross, who was gung-ho the whole time. They never materialized. Johnny has some issues and stuff he had to kind of wrestle with. But I was talking to Peter, who I talk to often. And Peter was like, I haven't heard from John in like six weeks. And I thought that was pretty strange. And then because I saw it was

the one-year anniversary of Gallagher and Gross Save the World, I sent an email to John and Peter just saying, you know, happy anniversary. It was one year ago today. And I got a reply from John Gallagher, who was hinting at something he was working on with Michael Weckerle and the El Macombo crew. And I don't know if that was like this idea that, you know, TMDS will lose the great John Gallagher to the production studio that is the state-of-the-art studio in El Macombo. I have no idea. I just said exciting, and I have no further updates. So I don't know.

I don't know. All right, but over at TMDS, business is going okay. Despite the pandemic, you're lining up new podcast personalities. A couple of, there's a few podcasts launching this month, there's a couple featuring uh fotms people know uh dana levinson has a podcast called on the dl where she it's kind of like it's basically it's uh it's real talk for like we say

real talk for a woman is basically how i would you know spin that one. And since you're Toronto Mike, you say woman rather than women. Okay, that one. Yes, absolutely the latter. And I was just on the phone with Lorne Honickman, and we're going to launch his legal podcast this month as well. So lots going on. But if I haven't said so yet, Mark,

I just want to say how great it is to see you. It's been over two months since your last, I feel like this confessional booth raised Catholic. I know this vibe. It's been over two months since your last backyard visit. It's good to see you. I know

you're not 100%, but still, you're here. You're going to bring the goods and we're all going to benefit. I'll do what I can, including the return of our monthly recap of the people who died. We can't go through every

famous name in that time, but I think that's a good thing because it became an issue here doing these episodes that people were saying the obituary segment was going on too long, that you were hearing that from listeners, that it wasn't just you, Mike, who was wondering, you know, how many hours am I going to hold you captive until we go through all these names?

It was a while ago that we started doing that, right, as a feature here every month. Sure. And it was inspired partly by the fact that you always have done the Deadpool at Toronto Mike dot com. And also, I think, an homage to the old school radio style where when people would talk about how they got their break in a small town, small time AM radio station, that the radio station was so small that they would read the obituaries on the air. And I grew up sort of understanding that to be the worst case scenario if you were on

the lowest rung of the hierarchy of radio, that you would talk about the people who died. Now, you and I see it differently. That, in fact, remembering the people that passed away is some of the highest forms of discourse that you could possibly do, because we bring out a lot of trivia and interesting angles.

It becomes a structure for the show. We celebrate a lot of the particularly local folk that aren't getting the big write-ups they might have got in the past at the Toronto Star or Globe and Mail or whatever. You really highlight some of those lesser-known people who have passed on,

and we can properly memorialize them. I want to say right off the top, because just before we get to the deaths, I'm going to shout out Ridley Funeral Home again, because they're a proud sponsor of your visits. And Ridley Funeral Home heard you were coming by today at 4 p.m. And Brad Jones himself paid a visit here about an hour ago to make sure he gave me a gift for you. So, Mark, I'm going to throw this. We're 10 feet away. I'm going to throw it to you. Okay. I'm now the proud owner of a toque from Ridley Funeral Home since 1921. Now, is this something that the staff of the funeral home wears?

I don't know. Is it a thing that they do for valet parking when a funeral is taking place? Does it relate to the job of... Oh, because they go by grave sites in cold weather, so maybe they're... Digging the graves? You wear a Ridley funeral home toque? No, but for the burial,

you go to the grave site outdoors in cemetery. There's some outdoor activities for a funeral director to participate in. But you, you can wear that. We'll see how long we can stretch the backyard sessions. I got a backyard heater. I didn't bring it out today because it feels pretty nice, but you know, as it gets colder, I'm going to stay out here as long as I can. And well, until the gear will suffer, like I got to stay, I can't stay out here if it's going to, you know, mess up with my gear. By the way, lots of low flying helicopters. It feels like

the end of Goodfellas as we record here. So I don't know what that's about, but enjoy your gift from Ridley Funeral Home. It's a nice green toque. Well, no, it's gotten cold. Well,

when it gets cold enough outside, I'm going to break out the Ridley Funeral Home toque. Okay. Do you think you can? 1921 next year marks a century of business for Ridley Funeral Home. I hope I live long enough to see it. I hope so too, man. When it comes to catching up on the episodes back here,

we made a resolution to do something for the second year in a row. And we tried it last time in late 2019. I think we can do a better job this time around. in late 2019. I think we can do a better job this time around. And it's an addition to the rotation of Toronto-miked panel discussions, right? You have the sports media panel. That's usually with Hebsey, right?

Definitely with Hebsey, yeah. And lately it's been Milan, Telsenia for the past time. Milan, the last episode, the last one you did in the summertime, it built up, accelerated to this crescendo, talking about the woes of Sportsnet fan 590 and Rogers Media trying to figure out what to do with this hockey deal that they were stuck with. And I thought that was an epic episode.

And you've got, what, a few other different rotations? Sure. Traditional things going on here that you do with people? Well, there's like the Festivus episode with Elvis, and there's, you know, Retro Ontario and his Christmas crackers. Okay, and add to that then our November State of the Podcast Industry Address, where I will come over and we will talk about what's going on with TMDS, right? Oh, yeah, great.

A little boosterism for the home team. Yeah, I'll give an update. And my perspective of being the most prolific podcast listener, if not in the entire world, then certainly in Canada, that I've managed to subscribe to so many of these shows and keep track of what's happening in the business and, I guess, lay out some of the perspectives

from paying so much attention to podcasting over this pandemic year uh looking forward to what's ahead so mid-november yeah somewhere around mid-november so you'll be back here again uh around halloween for your october recap so right around the time of pumpkins after dark now that my now that my face is no longer doing an impression of a pumpkin. Oh, I want to see that. With a bloody eye falling out of my head. Oh, my God. It sounds serious.

But, okay. I think I'll be in a good state to come back somewhere on Halloween. Okay. Amazing. I look forward to it already. A couple of quick housekeeping notes. One is that I want to thank Tim Perkis because I totally forgot to thank him during the Bruce Croxon episode, which was very well received. That was Saturday. Bruce came over and that was all basically Tim,

who's a great FOTM. He basically arranged that whole thing. He said, here's Bruce's address. I talked to him. He'd be down. And I just had to write Bruce and schedule it. So Tim Perkis made all that happen. So I'm sorry, Tim. I'm sorry to Tim that I forgot to thank him during the Bruce Croxon episode. And one more housekeeping on that one. So during the Bruce Croxon episode, he said I should get David Chilton, the wealthy barber.

He said he's funny. He would be great on the show. And due to that wonderful recommendation, I then reached out to David Chilton, who said, is it David Chilton? What's his name? Is that the right name reached out to David Chilton, who said, is it David Chilton? What's his name? Is that the right name?

Yeah. Yeah. David Chilton. Who's the guy from Much Music? Lance Chilton. Who is now a real estate agent. Okay. Right?

He went from Much Music, City TV, to the new VR. Forever on the new VR. And like a number of other people in broadcasting, moved on to a second career. Like Jim Taddy did, like Brian Master did, you know, like Sammy Cohn. And his only career, a shout out to Austin Keitner. So we're doing things a little different this time. If you're looking to buy and or sell real estate in the next six months,

write me an email, mike at torontomike.com and I will happily introduce you to Austin Keitner. He's the man. Just have a little chat with Austin. So that's what we're doing now. None of this texting this to this number. Write me and I'll introduce you to Austin. So okay, to finish up that thought about David Chilton, the wealthy barber, in a nutshell, he said he gets approximately 50 podcast requests a month, he tells me. And he says nobody has ever come up to him and said, I heard you on a podcast. He says they all hear him on a CBC.

It's always CBC, CBC, CBC. So he's decided to not accept these podcast invitations and to only do CBC things. So it was nice for him to phone me to let me know you know voice to voice that he will not be appearing on toronto miked i'm just one of 50 people who've asked him this really yeah is that interesting this is not the plot twist that i was expecting in that the wealthy barber maybe that's how he got wealthy uh he's basically i guess it's not worth his uh time and effort to do toronto mik. And I appreciate that. I only reached out because when Bruce, Bruce Croxon,

who I hit it off with and I quite enjoyed, he highly recommended him. And I'm like, I like good guests. And if Bruce says to get David, I'm going to try to get David, but that won't happen. And one more thing,

Mark Weisblatt, finally, I have a lot to say because I haven't seen you in a long time. Our morning show. Have you been listening to the B-Team on 102.1? Well, yeah, because they started putting their stuff on a podcast. And it helped me catch up in the usual double, maybe even triple speed. They went for a few months, I guess, because they weren't in the studio.

They weren't able to do the show that they set out to originally create. Right. That was bad timing for them. Once they got their footing towards the end of the summer, started to do the podcast version. Right. And there you go. So how are they doing? When they first got hired, I was very excited because I'd followed

the evolution of Jay Brody by listening to him on Toronto Mic'd. How he set his sights on getting this job, the CFNY morning show. He was focused with his eyes on the prize that he calculated that the day would come that the job would be given to him. He visualized every step that he had to do along the way, which included the idea that seven morning shows would get fired from the radio station in seven years.

And that after that happened, they got around to him and offered him the job because he was already fronting this show over at Y108 in Hamilton, already working for this company, Chorus Entertainment. We'll talk about Chorus a little more later in a different light. And as a result, you've got these three people, right, on The Edge, Morning Show, the B-team. Can you name them? Chris, Shauna, and Jay.

Correctamundo. So I bring them up, and I wanted to hear how they're doing because all three are scheduled, weather permitting, are scheduled to appear in my backyard tomorrow morning. So they're going to do their Chorus Key Edge Show and then make their way west to the TMDS Backyard Studio, and we're going to do it all out here. So I'll live stream that, and that should be pretty good.

Well, then you'll have to hang on to that Fleetwood Mac song, because I think that was also a case of dreams being fulfilled. And I'll have to open, not a cranberry juice, but rather a GLB. What did you open, a burst? Burst. Okay, I'm going to open the same. I'm digging the burst, so. Oh.

Got a little bit on the mic here. That's okay. Yeah, the burst is now available year-round. So thank you, Great Lakes Brewery, for sending over some beers so it helps fuel the real talk. And they've been fantastic supporters. We're not live streaming this. But if we were, you'd see I'm wearing my Great Lakes hoodie, which hopefully you can see in the picture here.

Oh, my goodness. So here, I realize now I need a little... Here, I'll use my chair here as a table beside the Lysol wipes. All right. Where to begin? Here's one of the topics I've wanted to ask you about for a good couple of months now. Because I also got a very kind rejection

by George Strombolopoulos. So I invited him back. It's been five or six years. And I think I know why he rejected you. Oh, okay. You're going to tell me though? Let me play a little song. I actually do have it in.

You know what? I don't, I don't hear what. Give me a second here, because this song is that we played it recently on Toronto Mike. I know this is wonderful. Let's see if I have it here. Well, since I last was in your backyard at the end of July, one of the things that came up was a new opportunity for an old school FOTM, George Strombolopoulos. Go on.

There we play the rage against the machine because I think it characterizes the energy he's trying to bring to his new platform. And I was surprised. I mean, there was no foreshadowing of the announcement until the day they signed on in a Silicon Valley style. Apple Music Hits is the name of the online radio station that now has, in Toronto, a late afternoon, early evening show hosted by Straubel. And I think in this sense, when it comes to the topic here that we're dealing with, it might be better that I gave it a few weeks to marinate,

pay attention to what he was up to, because I think my appraisal of the show is a little more generous now than it might have been after the first couple weeks. So you've been listening to Strombo's new Apple Music show, which for us

in Toronto would be a drive-home show. Yeah, and it was announced on August 18th. So it was right at the end of the summer. Now, what I caught in listening to an episode of the Macco and Cause podcast was that FOTM Bob Makowitz as usual is right in there with Strombo as the producer of the show they're doing for Apple and one of the things he mentioned there on his own podcast

not only did Apple give him permission to continue to do his own show there with Matt Coz but that Mako and Strombo had like an NDA that they were signed to this deal with Apple back in the winter pre-pandemic.

And they could not talk about the show that they were going to do. And that's why I'm saying when you were turned down by Strombo, I think, because he was in that quiet period aggravated by the fact that the pandemic was going on, that let's say it wasn't so easy for him to leave the country in the interim, working there with these Americans in Cupertino, California, doing this Apple Music radio show. But that showed up there at the end of the summer. Now, at first, my impression of what they were up to was, even though it seemed to take advantage of the skills that these gentlemen bring to the table, that what we were getting from Apple Music hits lacked a certain authenticity. Let's put it this way. Let's put it this way.

I don't think anything is going to be said on an Apple Music radio station that's capable of impacting the stock price of a $2 trillion company. You got to be careful, corporately speaking, with what you do and what you say and what you play on Apple Music Radio. So if Strombo had signed an NDA, then the worst place for him to go is my backyard.

Like, I would be like, my advice to him, if you were my buddy, would be like, that's a bad idea because NDAs don't mix well with the real talk. And I'm going to ask, he knows what I'm going to ask him all the questions. And what's he going to do?

Sit there and say I can't say anything? There's something at risk. Now, what qualifies George to be the front man for this entire enterprise, given these constrictions? It's the fact that he has experience being the punk working in a corporate context. Right. is the fact that he has experience being the punk working in a corporate context. Right? That was his entire image, working at the CBC, at Much Music, at Hockey Night in Canada. And CFNY, really.

He was the, well, I guess that's a new rock station, but still, he has punk cred. But there he was, unchained from whatever obligations he had to getting severance from Rogers for what went wrong at Hockey Night in Canada. There was Strabo in an interview with my pal John Dekel. It was a story in the Toronto Star. And being candid about his experience at Hockey Night in Canada, the fact that, you know, in the aftermath of him being removed from the show in favor of Ron McClain, we not only had the Don Cherry scandal, and, I mean, how much time has passed?

It's been less than a year since the Remembrance Day, where Don Cherry managed to kibosh his career by saying the wrong words for the sake of Rogers Media. And, you know, following that, I think like a crisis of confidence when it came to wondering if the National Hockey League was sufficiently responding to the Black Lives Matter movement and other issues related to civil rights. You talk about that on Hebzeon Sports. It was really awkward for hockey, of all the sports out there,

to figure out how it would respond to what was happening in baseball and basketball. How did hockey fit into all of this? And even though, after they pink-slipped Don Cherry, they tried to accommodate him over the different roundtable discussion shows. Ron McClain got very stern and serious and started quoting Louis Lapham of Harper's Magazine over and over again. It was sort of a philosophical approach to what the realities were of discrimination in hockey. And it was Strombo who said, I told you so that this hockey culture needed some disruption.

I tried my best and I was right in the end. So, yes. And Strombo, again, I got a kind text to say, not doing your show, very kindly, and I have nothing but utmost respect for Strombo. Well, you better do it now because I think I was nice to say, no, I'm doing your show very kindly, and I have nothing but most respect for Strongbow.

Well, you better do it now, because I think I was nice to him in what I had to say. And since the show started, I noticed it has gotten a lot more looser, and the talk has gotten more real. I have to subscribe to something? No, it's free if you have the Apple Music app on a desktop, on your phone. Yeah, it's free.

Because I'm not an Apple guy, so I don't know these Apple things. Five years ago, they launched Apple Beats 1 radio. Remember, it was a big deal.

Apple was going to start its own radio station. Zane Lowe, who'd been at the BBC, was paid big bucks to move over to Apple. I don't know if this radio station

is really... So I can hear Strombo now? You can hear Strombo. Apple Music hits. Okay, I thought you can hear Strombo. Apple Music hits. Okay, I thought you had to be like an Apple Music subscriber. Doing the second radio station on the Apple platform. So the first one, Apple Beats 1, Apple Music 1, they call it now, Zane Lowe. That's supposed to be like the cutting edge of music, right?

This is where you're hearing what's happening now, what's of the moment. Right. The Apple Music Hits channel, by contrast, is focused on the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. So Stromberg is basically continuing his CBC Radio 2 show. Sort of something like that. Also, look, he's working for Apple Music. And I don't know, are a lot of people going to listen to the show?

I'm not sure. People would tell you from a certain perspective that Zane Lowe, Apple Beats 1, has been a flop that hasn't gotten the kind of traction that they were expecting. But at the same time, Apple's very much invested in the music industry, right? And it's like a $2 trillion company. And they can afford to do these kinds of projects on the side. And so in the process, Strombo is on there doing his afternoon drive radio show, and they've also got celebrity shows circulating on the station,

pre-recorded stuff, and Strombo is able to access, I would think, anyone that he can get, right? Right. He's got Macko there doing the chase producing. He can find people to appear on the air with Strombo if he wants to catch up with Howie D of the Backstreet Boys, who's also on this Apple Music Station. Just a phone call away.

Who would turn down that kind of access? LL Cool J on the show. Huey Lewis does a show on the Apple Music radio station. Okay, now the big question I have is, does this mean it's the end of Strombo's CBC show? Is that gone now because he's on Apple Music? Well, I think so,

but the Apple Music show is better. Because there's more freedom. The CBC show was working within this structure of trying to live up to this idea that CBC Music, Radio 2, is a non-commercial enterprise. And the thing that's on the Apple Music hits is you get the undiluted songs, right? So if they're doing an interview with Richard Marks, they will actually revere the music of Richard Marks. They won't just play a snippet and treat it like something kitschy. There's something genuine about the show that he's doing there. But the CBC show is gone because he's doing the...

That's gone. You weren't listening to it anyway. What do you care? I like knowing it was out there. Okay, so speaking of FOTMs, this is Hard Rock Town by FOTM Ray McLaughlin. Tell me about the success in the recent ratings. The great success. I'm dying to know how this happened,

but Q107 is bragging a little bit. Oh, now I get it. You're playing Hard Rock Town by Murray McLaughlin because on May 22nd, 1977, it was the first song played on CILQ 107.1

FM. You've had Murray McLaughlin on the podcast. Yeah, he's an FOTM. Did you talk about the fact that his song was the first one played in the history of Q107? I might have, and it might have come up in the John Donabee episode too, but definitely a cool, fun fact, that's for sure. And here we are now, 43 and a half years later, Three and a half years later, and Q107 is promoting the statistical conclusion that it's now the number one radio station in Toronto.

They are able to make this claim because they got the numbers back from Numeris covering the COVID-19 season of summer 2020 and the way it shook down in the Toronto radio ratings is that Q107, the most popular commercial radio station in Toronto is this old, dusty enterprise known as Q107. Is it because the people who were going to work weren't the office people it was the uh the construction guys and the uh the assembly line guys at uh ford like like like

how do you explain q107 getting such big numbers the the more cynical interpretation and it's come up here with a couple guests already is the the fact that they come up with these numerous numbers using the portable people meters with a sample size that's actually kind of small. And that it doesn't really take a lot of listeners to switch their allegiances from one radio station to another to make a difference in the points that it receives in the radio ratings. Oh, I think Mike Richards said it best.

He said if 10 people, if you can get to 10 of them. Was it even 10? I don't know. There was a pandemic going on, okay? But enough of a blip that it moved the needle and it's worth money to the prospect of selling advertising time, whatever advertisers are out there for terrestrial radio,

that they will move more of their dedication to Q107. But man, they are selling this thing as the biggest deal to ever happen to what was, for the most part, fairly forgotten about radio station. I'm sure it had loyal listeners who had that dial position set back in 1977. Well, Derringer still got his loyal fan base. Well, you know, they never changed a dial during all that time, their entire lives. There was like a thread on Facebook. I guess they posted one of those, thank you, Toronto, for making us number one.

And people were depositing their memories. Oh, you know, I love Q107 from the start. It's been a great station all along. I mean, think about all the nitpicking that goes on here on the podcast, especially from people that used to work at these radio stations, right? How nothing is like it used to be. And I don't know, ever since they got rid of Psychedelic Sunday, there's nothing left on the air in the spirit of the old radio station. But I don't know, ever since they got rid of psychedelic Sunday, there's nothing left on the

air in the spirit of the old radio station. But I don't know. You can find a lot of people out there tuning into today's Q107. You know, to them, it's the same radio station that's been with them their whole lives, right? Once it was established for them that this was the spot on the dial that was speaking their language uh there was there was no reason for them to ever change somebody mentioned in the thread i even put this on twitter kind of looking for an answer yeah i hadn't i mean what 30 plus years since john derringer would be on an afternoon drive and at one point he had a traffic reporter on who sounded like a 12 year old, and they called her 12. Like, that was her name, 12. Here's 12 with the traffic.

Now, you know, this might not have been the most progressive thing to do, but that was in the spirit of rock radio during that era. And then, you know, look, for a whole other generation, if you say Q107, they would assume this was like some kind of hardcore heavy metal radio station. Because that's what they understood it to be when they were in high school, when they were growing up, this raunchy stuff.

Scruff Connors and the Morning Show back in the first half of the 1980s. What Q107 became the last 20 years, ever since they hauled the Howard Stern show out the door, that was his longtime nemesis, a guy named John Hayes, who worked with Howard Stern at WNBC

and ended up being in charge at Chorus Entertainment in Toronto and took great pleasure in deleting the Howard Stern show from their lineup, putting in the morning show another guy named John Hayes. That's a wild coincidence. Yeah, John Derringer's a John Hayes. That's a wild coincidence. And he's been there in the morning ever since, and I mean, Derringer's history with the station

goes back to 12, the traffic reporter, and all the way back to the mid-80s. So the legacy that he wrote, I mean, it doesn't even matter what he's doing on the air. To me, it sounds like a lot more canned than it used to. That they're playing it safe in a lot of ways. That even when Maureen Holloway was on the air doing more of a female sidekick element than they've got there now.

than they've got there now, that there was more of an unpredictability to the program that she was able to bring to it with the segments that she was doing and since then things have gotten a lot safer. But look, this John Derringer figured it out, and it's quite something for him to be able to say at this point in his career that of all the commercial radio stations in Toronto that he's the pilot of the one that's at the top of the ratings heap.

It's a big deal to him. I don't want to distract from all that, even though it's only this past January that we figured out when Neil Peart died and it took an hour for them to acknowledge it on the Q107 airwaves. And maybe the radio we're listening to today goes through certain filters that make it less live than it used to be. And if you wanted any evidence of that, it was the fact that they're one of their main dudes. I mean, the drummer of their flagship band died.

It took an hour for Keith Richards dying or something like that. You've got to be on that right away. Well, ratings are better, and maybe they can afford having somebody on the ball for next time. I don't know why this has happened, but I probably deserve it. I tried to do my best, but you know that I'm not perfect. I've been praying for forgiveness. I can't say I've heard this song.

It hasn't been in my circle yet. Maybe if I play it for my daughter, she'll tell me that I'm an idiot for not knowing this song. Where would you have been, Mike? I don't know. You know what the problem is? I missed a month of coming over to catch you up. What was hip with the kids today? I mean, you've

got one son off to university, your teenage daughter busy in high school. Maybe they don't have the time to tell you about things like Taufu, which is a 21-year-old guy named Isaiah Faber.

And this song, Death Bed, Coffee for Your Head. With the singer, Beba Doobie. Taking goofy videos and walking through the park You would jump into my arms every time you heard a bark And you, I want to share something I learned, which is not going to be big news to you, but we haven't brought it up yet. It's that FOTM Barry Davis is no longer on that Mississauga station.

That 960 Saga 960, he's been replaced by former Q107-er and an FOTM John Scholes, if I'm getting all my facts correct here. Oh, one thing with this Paufu. Paufu. Paufu kid. You're Canadian, right? Yeah.

Are they Canadian? Well, yeah, from Vancouver. It's a fact that he's like a second-generation Canadian rock star. And there was considerable fascination by the fact that his father was a guy named Dave Faber, the frontman of a band called Faber Drive. Do you remember this Faber Drive? I've heard this name before, but I couldn't name you a Faber Drive song to save my life. Okay, think back to like the mid-2000s.

This was the heyday of bands like Headley, Simple Plan, Mariana's Trench. This was the point in time, I think, when much music was still trying to do like a simulation of its glory days of the nation's music station it was still kind of nurturing these talents that got this national exposure on much music with with music videos and i i think the whole idea that the that these bands were putting on like the posture of punk the music they were playing was you know very much like prefab pop music.

But, you know, if they were packaged as punk bands in the spirit of the strokes, then they could, like, pass themselves off as being compatible with the alternative nation. Like Good Charlotte. Yeah, Good Charlotte, definitely one of them. Now, okay, if people, I don't know, would people have, how would the young fans that Faber Drive supposedly had as they toured the hockey arenas of small-town Canada, if they knew this guy, Dave Faber, you know, was married with a kid, right? Because he was trying to be like a young stud leading a Canadian rock band.

But, you know, it turned out he was a young father. And in fact, he had at least one mouth to feed. And, you know, who would have thought, like 15 years later, it turned out to be a son, Isaiah, who had the bigger head thanks to TikTok. And that's pow-foo, deathbed coffee for your head. But yeah, I think based on clicks I got from the 1236 newsletter, some response on Twitter, you know, here this Faber Drive, who were connected Nickelback.

It was Chad Kroger who discovered them. I mean, that's important. Sure. And that no one would have believed, right, that this teen idol of the early 2000s was actually maybe not the real deal, that he was somebody's dad, and that now he's managing his son,

who had a bigger hit than he ever had. Right. Well, yeah, apparently. And I just missed it, but I'm catching up now. A couple of quick hits on radio before we get to some cancel a couple of quick hits on radio before we get to some uh cancel culture uh real quick hits uh talk to me about the syndication that's flying around like Roz and Mocha who are both FOTMs by the way they're now the morning show in Edmonton

that's a long time ago now they were FOTMs like how long ago how many hundreds of episode numbers I actually remember the number for Roz. I think he was 120. Like, I think it was a number like that. Because I remember taking mental note that Custom has a song called 120 on Fast. And we were both Custom fans. That's what bonded me and Roz West in there. Yeah, Roz and Mocha.

They put them on Edmonton. Because the station that they were on, what is it, Kiss? You know, same branding on Edmonton radio. I guess they figured that rather than hire somebody new, it was easier for them to just plug in the Toronto radio show. But at the same time, you time, they're hanging around. The time zone's a little bit different. They can do little shout-outs to Winnipeg. Even the mayor of Winnipeg got in on the act,

congratulating them. I mean, you would think he would be seen as a traitor to his own local radio personalities. There he is praising Roz and Mocha. But the way that everything is on a... It's Edmonton, right? Not Winnipeg. Oh, did I say Edmonton? I think you said Winnipeg.

I said Winnipeg. But isn't it Edmonton? Oh, your notes say Edmonton. Okay, so... Oh, well, don't give away that I made a mistake in the notes. Oh, I thought it was Edmonton. I was more excited when this was Edmonton, but this is Winnipeg. It's not Edmonton.

It's Winnipeg. Okay, now I'm catching up. I'm sorry. It's been a long time. Listen, I was going through a thing, okay? If I got something wrong in the notes... Okay, it's Winnipeg. Okay, Win I'm catching up. I'm sorry. It's been a long time. Listen, I was going through a thing, okay? If I got something wrong in the notes. Okay, it's Winnipeg.

Okay, Winnipeg. Mayor of Winnipeg. Made sure to give a shout-out to Roz and Mocha. We're so excited to have you here on the radio here in our city. And you're from Toronto, and you're better than anybody else. And I don't know if it matters how well they do or not because the station is falling behind in the ratings and there's not much to lose if it doesn't work out.

But when everything, everything is on a hard drive, right? So you can insert different elements to make it sound like they're talking to the city that not all the bits are originating from. And here we got Razamoka, part of a trend where we've got other radio morning shows that are being beamed into

Canada from the United States, specifically from iHeartRadio, Premier Radio Networks, that's the name of the company. So we started with The Breakfast Club. Yep. And that found a home on Flow 935, kind

of a saving grace for the Toronto Hip Hop Radio Station, Really like a last chance to see if they could do something with the format by putting this American show on. Guess what happened when the first ratings came out? I have no clue. I'm going to say they spiked. People love the US content.

Not at all. Goose eggs way down in the basement just like didn't register at all. Nobody tuned away from Q107 to the sample what was going on with the Breakfast Club and Charlemagne. I always find this indication curious because I'm old enough to remember when Humble and Fred did a show in Kingston, Ontario

from their Toronto studio. I was part of the program when this was going on. And Kingston really seemed to hate them. They despised the fact these Toronto guys from their Toronto studio. This was, I was part of the program when this was going on and the Kingston really seemed to hate them. Like, they despised the fact these Toronto guys were trying to be

the Kingston morning show. Even now, Humble and Fred broadcast from Etobicoke here, South Etobicoke, and they go into Hamilton and they're the morning show for a Hamilton station,

820. That's happening now. Like, it just seems like, why would Edmonton, like, why would Edmonton accept Raz and Mocha

from Toronto? No, you mean Winnipeg. Winnipeg, right. Okay, but by the way, they're also on in Edmonton. Let's get this straight. Before we leave the topic behind, they're on in Edmonton in the evening. They're on in Winnipeg

in the morning. Let's just call a spade a spade. All this is to save money for these cable companies and conglomerates. They're all just trying to save a buck. Saving money compared to what? They wouldn't even have a live voice on at all if they weren't running these radio bits. And maybe better for these shows to recognize this nationalization is the future. And if it's a Toronto-based show, you might as well give a shot at seeing if it can get some traction with advertisers by being a national franchise. And Raw Eyes and Mocha are two talented chaps.

They're the ones getting the opportunity. Canada, whereas the top 40 CHR hit music radio show from New York City, Elvis Duran on Z100. That one's coming in to Toronto via Proud 103.9. Do you even know what that is? Well, I've actually been there. My friend Bob Willett was the program director for Proud 103.9. You've been in there. You produced a show out of there a couple of times they haven't

had a full-time live voice on the air in three years and that's because the owner wow evanov radio group uh just spent all this time tangling with the crtc trying to swing a deal where they could move their Orangeville radio station, Z103.5, to a bigger signal, which would then override 103.9, which they also own. And then the smaller radio signal would satisfy their requirement to do something for Orangeville. And in the process, that would have been the end of this idea that they had for the first LGBTQ, as they call it, radio station in Canada, which they got the license for because, technically speaking, they were kind of entitled to it, and the CRTC wanted to make good on this idea. They could give a frequency to an audience that wasn't being served by anybody else.

Now, what constitutes a gay format radio station in the world of commercial radio? A lot of what? Dance music, disco divas. It's Rainy Men. You're close with Bingo Bob, right? He was in charge of programming the station. Right. When it first went on in 2007, they put a genuine effort into it. They hired Ken Kostick.

The late Ken Kostick from TV's What's For Dinner. His sidekick, Mary Jo Eustace, ex-wife of Dean McDermott, who left her for Tori Spelling. And it's up to, what, five, six, seven kids at this point in time. It's our Iliad. It's a great legacy of Toronto celebrity gossip all wrapped up there. And Dean McDermott and Mary Jo Eustace in 2007, they figured they could make a go with this. And I think it was Mary Jo was quoted in an article

that she realized that things weren't going to work out when they couldn't pick up the radio station in the car outside of the radio studio. That you actually couldn't get the frequency on the car radio right next to the place where they were broadcast.

Wellesley and where are they again? College and Wellesley area there. What, Church and Wellesley? Church and Wellesley. Okay, so the whole idea that this would be like a rainbow of diversity brought to the airwaves, that fell apart pretty quick,

although they did some kind of format on the, I don't know if it was all that much different from what you would have heard on Chum FM, okay? But whatever, it wasn't working out. They were trying to play games with the CRTC, right? They figured they could make a case for the idea. They could cancel this gay radio station idea, and they could boost their signal for Z103 into Toronto,

and the CRTC kept turning them down, said, look, you're a radio station licensed to Orangeville. I mean, what do you what are you doing trying to tell us that you have to broadcast into toronto for we're not gonna let you do it now it's gotten to the point where i i'd imagine giving it one last shot they're bringing in this elvis duran from new york city saying i am so proud to be on proud 103.9 i i've been listening to this radio station for years. What is he talking about?

Because all he would hear is like an autopilot hard drive music stream. They've been running for at least three years, maybe four or five. I had no idea. How long ago was it that Bob last worked there? But it is a way of saying that there's another American radio show coming into Canada, another one. So there's now two. We now know of two. American radio show coming into Canada. Another one in P.E.A. A third one also from the same iHeartRadio is called The Woody Show.

And that's a modern rock alternative format radio show from Los Angeles. And that one airs in Peterborough. That's not Toronto. Well, they could get clearance on there, but it's an infinite dive. And it's a freak.

90.5. At one point, it was a sports format on the station. It wasn't the Humble and Fred show even airing on this radio station in Peterborough. Okay. Bubba the Love Sponge. I don't know, syndicated sports stuff. Now it's classic retro alternative. And this Woody show.

I like that format. I like classic retro alternative. What all these show... I like that format. I like classic retro alternative. What all these shows have in common, syndicated by Premiere, is it's some attempt to bring the culture of podcasting onto morning radio. Because they do these talkative segments that never seem to sound too time sensitive.

It's just like a lot of lifestyle banter, people talking with one another about their relationships. I don't know how much of it tends to be scripted. You don't hear anything going on over the airwaves that would be constituted as offensive or unfriendly to the family listening in their car. You know, and that they found a level, like with all these formats, the Breakfast Club has a little more bite to it,

but just a way they could export these shows to smaller market radio stations and reinvent the idea of national, even international, into Canada morning radio shows, cutting out the need to hire these local personalities. Which is sad to me. It's a twilight of a whole thing here, right? That if you're a radio station on a level, there's a lot of consolidation going on, right?

Like, there's only so many ears paying attention to what's going on with the radio dial at this point in time, and that there's not enough money to go around like there used to be. A lot of these radio owners are over-leveraged, they're in debt, I don't know, they're looking for a way

out of the whole deal, and just doing like a plug-and-play morning radio show coming out of you know some central location where the the discussion that goes on the air is not localized uh it's it's not even specifically american it's just people like on the air bantering with one another about what's going on their lives and maybe not expecting the people listening to pay too much attention to what they're saying on the air. So there's really nothing happening here at all, on any level,

except just going through the drill of being able to tune in on a morning show. You know, they'll have a local voice there, doing like little enrichment, right? News weather and sports. Traffic and weather and all that stuff that has to be local. And that you could like have these voices on the air and it's considered as good as anything you come up. All right. I think it's,

I think it sucks. I think it sucks. These are, these are the culprits creeping into Canada. I think we're only going to see more of that. Okay. And, and,

uh, again, because so much of it is, is, uh, computerized, uh, that they're able to,

you know, come up with different segments. If you listen to a Woody show, right, they'll say, Hey, all you listeners in Peterborough, the Peets are on a winning streak. They'll throw in these little elements that if you're tuning in and not paying that much attention,

you don't know that this is a show coming from somewhere else. And there's no reason why anyone, outside of someone who would be listening to Toronto Mic'd, would pick up on the fact that these were not local shows. True, I always think every listener is as savvy as I am, but come on, that's

impossible. So you're right, you can fool most of the people some of the time. Alright, I want to do quick hits here because I need to get to some COVID-19 culture and then we're going to get to the memorial section. But what can you tell me about what's going down at Chorus? You mentioned, so Chorus.

The dark side of Chorus Entertainment. Yeah, like there's something, I know a GNR, as I call it, GNR fired a host in Edmonton, and Charles Adler is canceling the conservatives, and there's a whole bunch of controversy around global. Tell me what you can. Well, Ryan Jesperson, who most definitely was a guy who was on the air in Edmonton, talk radio host.

He was doing one of his rants on the air where he ended up calling the staff members of a city councilor chimpanzees as a way of describing them, I guess, monkeying around and taking whatever orders from their trainer. This this particular city councilor, Mike Nickel. And this was a conservative politician responding to a liberal critic on chorus radio and recognizing that we're in a golden age of being able to weaponize when somebody says something about you that you don't agree with. He actually drew attention to the fact that this chimpanzee's reference was specifically insulting to members of his staff who were not white. Now, I don't know what he was projecting.

Is this what runs through his mind when he hears the term chimpanzees, that he's thinking of these people that are working in his office, that Ryan Jesperson, who was on the air, was making like a targeted racial reference to these people working for him? So just to be clear, though, he has people of a variety of races working for him, right? Yeah, yeah, as you would expect. And that he figured if he was referring to chimpanzees, that it was a specific racial insult directed at his staff members. Again, if you're keeping score here, this was a conservative politician complaining

about a liberal radio host. And they fired him. That particular pejorative. Yes. Why? Because things are getting cautious over a chorus. Right. And because they didn't fire Mike Stafford for saying worse than that.

Well, did he say worse than that on Twitter? Did somebody specifically say that it was directed at a particular person working in their city hall office? I don't know that I was a defender. I don't know. What was that road that we went down? The cancel culture... But it wasn't on the air.

Okay, it's reached a point now then, the absurdity of it all, that they've gotten real touchy at Global. They've been accused of discrimination on multiple levels. They have got rid of different employees on the grounds that they said offensive things that were insensitive to the identities of people who were working there. This guy, Ryan Jesperson, puts out a tweet after he loses his job and says, I'm talking on the air in defense of Black Lives Matter.

And I don't know. Yeah, he's one of the good guys. Equity in the workplace and transgender rights and all of the above. And this conservative politician complains about me, targets me for cancellation, and now I'm out of a job. And I don't know what you think of all this outside of the fact that I guess things have gotten real raw here in the year of the pandemic. And if the radio station gets a complaint like that, oh, your radio host was racist towards people who were working in my office, do they feel like they have any recourse except to get rid of the guy?

Because he was out the door on record time, and he was out of a job. Brian Jesperson at Chorus in Edmonton. And I think that was an egregious example of cancel culture in 2020. But that's what things came to over chorus. At the same time, Charles Adler used to be like an arch conservative. Right. Did you ever listen to Charles Adler on the air?

He was on the Mojo radio, right? Mojo back in the day. He was on 640. He was on 1010. I remember him being on Mojo. He was on CFRP over the years. He was on 640. He was on 1010. I remember him being on Mojo. CFRB over the years. He was on Chorus. He was in, yeah, he was based in cities all across Western Canada.

I know of him. Like Jody Vance talks about him a lot. He was an ex-DJ who followed on the coattails of Rush Limbaugh. He kind of talks like this. Am I correct in the way he delivers his lines? Recognize that maybe there was a role in the marketplace for him to bring that kind of bluster to talk radio. And back in the

day when this genre first got going, where you had these characters like Wayne McClain, the late Wayne McClain from CFRB. He was also like a top 40 rock jock. And of all the people that I ever heard talk about this stuff, he was the most articulate and he was the most honest about it all,

where he said, you know, I'm just doing what I was doing before when I was spinning records. I was playing the hits, right? I'm a DJ on AM radio station, except now we don't play records anymore. What I'm spinning are different topics. And the perspective that I take isn't about what I think, what I feel about anything.

None of this is genuine. I'm just a disc jockey doing what I love and hanging on to people's attention. Every show is exciting because doing these hot topics on talk radio is the new top 40. And I think Charles Adler also fell in line with this thinking. And if you then heard him on the air talking about how, you know, God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, that he was provoking people, like, just to get ratings, just to stir things up on the air. And that no one took it all that seriously.

The whole idea was you were listening to the radio station. You would get riled up and indignant and call them on the phone and get into an argument on the air. The sparks would start flying, and that's what it was all about. Well, Charles Adler has seen the light coinciding with the uh reckoning in the media and maybe uh fearing that uh being too right wing uh on the radio in the age of donald trump wasn't the way to go and over a period of years i guess he underwent a conversion to to seeing things from a more liberal side, following in the footsteps of Michael Corrin. Right. Yes. But but again, being more more blustery in his whole approach.

Well, somewhere down the line, there was an issue of a conservative MP who shared a meme about George Soros. And Charles Adler said, I'm putting my foot down. I've had enough. George Soros and Charles Adler said, I'm putting my foot down. I've had enough. I am no longer a conservative by any measure. I have now completed my conversion away from this belief system upon which I built my career. And as a result, the fact that he made this pronouncement,

it got more attention than before, even though he was already going down this road. It was like fighting with Alberta Premier Jason Kenney. And I don't know. OK, so he saw the light. He seized the moment. Carpe diem. I am not a conservative anymore. And I don't know, a day or two later, he said, but I'm not a liberal either.

I abhor labels. I don't go for one thing or another, and I think his head exploded because at some point, like, he just quit Twitter. He's not even on there anymore. I mean, what is he going to do it for? It's just sabotaging. It's just increasing the chance

of him losing his radio show. And at this point in time, he's been around for a while. I think it's more important for him to get behind that microphone every night than anything related to the paycheck. Although the paycheck might be nice, too. And this is, again, this is part of what was going on at Global. We talked earlier in the summer about the fact that it was a global television of all media entities in Canada

that seemed to be like the target of the most complaints about discrimination in the workplace. I talked on here about how I think that was a feature more than it was a bug about the way they were operating, that if people felt that there was racism in the workplace, I think that was symptomatic of the fact that it just wasn't a very well-run workplace. And there wasn't any specific agenda, even though you could also spin it that way. And Vice wrote an article where they started looking into this, you know, can you connect all these events together? started looking into this, you know, can you connect all these events together?

And the reporter from Vice, Manisha Krishnan, she got in touch with Troy Reeb, an executive at Global, who replied to her, you know, journalist to journalist, whatever you write is biased because your friends got laid off from here. They were the ones working on that. Wait, there's more podcasts. Right. And nothing you write can be trusted. And your reporting is all wrong. And blah, blah, blah. You should just cease and desist immediately

looking into what's going on here at this company, this whole line of inquiry. You're coming from a perspective where you've already got the story written out ahead of time. Even though you could have a genuine argument on those grounds, still, this is a large Canadian media company. They are supposedly in the business of journalism. They are susceptible to being investigated and reported on. And I don't know if they really came to any conclusion

besides the fact that we went through that little wave of people who were making out like Global News, Global TV, Chorus Entertainment was, you know, some kind of company that was like dedicated to the revolution and that the audience that was nurtured for global was such that they wanted to hear this radical kind of content. And I don't know why they developed that sort of delusion when you associate the global brand

with a certain mass, milquetoast, mainstream way of doing things. And maybe they're just better off reverting to that and playing it safe. And, you know, Global's walk on the wild side has now come to an end. The fancy car that we arrived in We never really saw Beyond the blue horizon All we had were the songs Can you name that tune, Mark?

I recognize the artist's name, but the voices seem a little different. What's going on with this channel? Well, I've activated the Shazam feature on my phone, and I'm getting nothing here. It doesn't seem to recognize the fact that this is the Guess Who? Wow. In a song called, what, Playing on the Radio. I guess we figured that out from the chorus. Oh, this is Sass Jordan's

husband, right? Am I right? Am I in the right band? D Sharp. Derek Sharp. Him and Sass Jordan have the same hairstyle. They were made for each other. Soulmates. Canadian band The Guess Who.

If I play this or something, hey, who's this? Nobody would say The Guess Who, right? They're listening for some burden or some balkman or a coming, sorry. who? Man, if I play this or something, hey, who's this? Nobody would say the guess who, right? Like this is, they're listening for some burden or some Bachman or Cummings, sorry. Here's the thing,

crank it up a bit. If you were going to have like a 60s revival band playing songs that people recognize, you need your own theme, right? It's like, hey, hey, we're the Monkees. Right. Okay, yeah. And the Guess Who wrote this one to perform in their live show,

even though the guys that are in the band, the Guess Who, outside of the drummer, Gary Peterson, are not the same folks that people would know from Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings. How did the name ownership go? It's a long story, but it has something to do with the fact that the original Guess Who was not Bachman and Cummings, that it was a different band all together.

Right, Chad Allen. Yeah, Shakin' All Over, as I remember. Different ownership,. It was a different band all together. Right, Chad Allen. Yeah, Shakin' All Over, as I remember. Different ownership, different rights. Shakin' All Over. Even though they had reunions along the way. There was one in 1984. There was another around the time of the SARS stock concert, right? The guests who were back together.

But, of course, it became the stuff of friction. Like, there's this Guess Who that tours all around America. Even though they're Canadian, I don't think they can get arrested up here. You can't get away with it. But you can, you know, if you're playing in Sturgis, South

Dakota at the annual motorcycle rally, and you're building a concert by the Guess Who, and they've got that logo with a maple leaf in there, and the guys in the band are generally Canadian. There's some other guy, the keyboardist, he also was still around, like with Bachman and Cummings.

So he earned his stripes in the genuine Guess Who, but Derek Sharp, husband of Saz Jordan, and that was back on August 8th. It was the day that the Guess Who? performed live at a super spreader event. One of the few big rock concerts in the time of COVID-19 that happened during this motorcycle rally, where to no one's surprise, they traced what? I don't know, hundreds of thousands of possible infections that came out of this gathering of people that get together on the motorcycle rally every year? I saw footage of that event, and let's just say, yeah, a blatant disregard for this pandemic.

Yeah, I'm not surprised. Yeah, no time left for you. It wasn't just a lyric to, I don't know, however many people in the audience. Although I think there might have only been like one death that was specifically attributed. Oh, because, okay, that's surprising because you'd think that'd be an older crowd, There might have only been one death that was specifically attributed. Okay, that's surprising because you'd think that would be an older crowd,

a 60-plus crowd coming out to the Sturgis. You know, I've decided that even if I got COVID right now, this is controversial, of course, but I'm here to spread controversy. I will probably survive, but I decided I don't feel like rolling the dice and finding out what this virus does to me. So I'm going to try to avoid it. That's my take on this. I'm going to try to avoid it. So that's why you're 10 feet away right now.

I'm not going to see you in the Freedom Rally marching through downtown Toronto. No, I won't even go in a restaurant. I don't know about you. Mothers Against Distancing. You're not going to be joining. Because you know what they found out? This Chris Sky who started Mothers Against Distancing. I mean, first of all, he're not going to be joined. Because you know what they found out? This Chris Sky, who started Mothers Against Distancing. I mean, first of all, he's not a mother.

Or a father. Yeah, he doesn't have kids at all. But he's the one that started this group making a spectacle of himself. And he came back. He was supposed to quarantine. They caught him in the march. I heard they spied him a few bucks, like 5,000 bucks or something. Yeah, marching around the street.

Real talk, Mark. Are you going into bars or restaurants? Inside. I'm not talking patio. Are you going inside to eat? I generally don't. So, no. But it's...

If I said meet me in the keg or whatever, would you dine with me? It depends. You don't want to confess that you've been doing anything where there's any possibility of being susceptible to catching the coronavirus. Right? You don't want to give any impression. I think everyone is going through this at this point in time. Right?

You don't even want to say, like, okay, you know, I was hanging out in the backyard with a bunch of people. Well, I had TML at six since you were last here. There was an actual event. Okay, well, how would you have felt if that ended like the Sturgis South Dakota motorcycle rally? We were all outdoors six feet apart. It couldn't. It just couldn't. We're at the point now where the contact tracing is now

your own responsibility, right? Had someone gotten sick at TML at six, right? Oh, yeah. They TMLX 6, right? Oh yeah. They got in touch with you about that. You would have been expected to contact everyone else who was there, even if you didn't know their real name. I'd tweet them. Johnny O!

Johnny O! Johnny O, get your ass to a testing. Jake the Snake! Yeah, well he's a Hamilton guy. He wasn't there actually, but there were a couple of new people. So, I know you couldn't make it because I stupidly scheduled TMLX. Really? I thought you were being anti-Semitic.

Are you kidding me? I'm the least anti-Semitic Gentile you're going to meet. You have the most Jewish media company in Canada at this point in time. Yeah, I just added Dana Levinson and Lauren Honigman, please. And there's Hebsey and there's Ben Murigy and there's Gross. Are you kidding me? Of course I'm being cautious and careful. I just spent like a month bedridden for a whole other business.

I was just curious. I don't want to go through this all over again. I realize now I'm running out of Coney Hatch. Well, yeah, Coney Hatch. Oh, well, yeah. Coney Hatch were at the El Macombo. And the El Macombo owned by Michael Weckerle, where John Spike Gallagher might be two-timing you. Yeah, that's

what I actually told Peter Gross on the phone last night. I said, take the money and run. I gave my blessing. Take the money and run. Coney Hatch were one of the acts to perform at the El Macombo, right, where they spent, I don't know, five years building up to the grand opening.

Is Coney Hatch a... I have to plead ignorance. It's not on my radar at all, Coney Hatch. Like early 80s rock band. You had to be there, right? You had to be there. Well, they were in the gas works. They were in the universe of anthem records. Kim Mitchell, FOTM Kim Mitchell, in the universe of anthem records.

Kim Mitchell, FOTM Kim Mitchell, he produced one of their records, right? Okay. I think. Coney Hatch, yeah. Is that their big Q107 hit? That's like the only song I know by Coney Hatch. Andy Curran, the guitarist from Coney Hatch.

I know him well. He did a bunch of projects, Andy Curran. I think he did something with, ready for this? Duncan Fremlin, F-O-T-M, Banjo Dunk, did work with Andy Curran, I believe. He's been a musical gadfly for a whole bunch of years. Yeah. But his first opportunity was being in a hard rock band.

Yeah, it was Alert Records was the label they were signed to. Of course, I'm looking up on Wikipedia just to make sure I've got my facts right. Andy Curran is working now with Michael Weckerle at the El Macombo. Like he's the general manager or something of the kind. Okay, cool. And so, you know, they had this whole buildup with Michael Weckerle. I'm going to get the Rolling Stones. I've flown to Prague to personally plead with Mick, Keith, and the boys

to reopen the Elma combo and, you know, we'll get Justin and Margaret Trudeau to show up. And it wasn't meant to be, of course not, with the coronavirus. Bad timing for the Elma. And when it finally opened, it was Big Wreck who played on the opening night. Is it the original lineup?

I need to know. Is it Ian Thornley? Was he the singer for this Big Wreck version? Do you know that? Well, one guy from Big Wreck died. Remember? We talked about that in one of the obituaries here. Terrible, terrible news there.

But to me, there's two Big Wrecks. There's Ian Thornley in Big Wreck, which is my big wreck, which I quite like. And then there's the Sands-Ian Thornley Big Wreck, for what it's worth. But very different than the Guess Who. But sorry. Okay, Ron James did a show at the Omicombo, FOTM Ron James. Shout out to Ron James. Carla Collins had a couple nights there.

Future FOTM, Future FOTM. Future FOTM. And because he works in the place, Coney Hatch had a reunion show. Okay. Andy Curran, I haven't Googled it yet, but he was part of a band I enjoyed. I just can't remember which band Andy Curran was in.

He's been around for a long time doing lots of stuff. But how about this? Do you want to give us a Marcella update and I'll find out what Andy Curran band I'm thinking of? Oh, Marcella! Yes! I almost forgot. You know, it's been so long

since I was last here. There was a whole scandal involving Marcella Zoya, chair girl, and it involved the fact that on Instagram, she was sharing what looked to a lot of us out there, including ace reporter Siobhan Morris of

CTV News in Barrie, as real time snapshots from a trip to Tahiti and Bora Bora. There she was, I don't know, drinking her morning what do you drink? I don't know, drinking her morning.

What do you drink? I don't know. Mimosas? Yes, mimosas. Margaritas. It's mimosas. That's the morning drink. Morning mimosas.

And, you know, what seemed to anybody who was following her on Instagram, like she was sharing these shots in real time. And then it seemed like Chair Girl was back in town, back in Toronto again, after a week of sharing these vacation snapshots. Did Chair Girl leave the country, come back, and violate the Quarantine Act?

That was the stuff of scandals. We were trying to decode what was happening there on Instagram. Like, what was this sequence of photos that she was sharing? Anyone paying attention would have thought what was happening there on Instagram. Like, what was this sequence of photos that she was sharing? Anyone paying attention would have thought this was happening in real time. We've got to go by Marcella's word

here that these, in fact, were throwback shots. Remember this happened before she was accused of partying? Here's what I've learned. A lot of Instagram influencers do this trick. Like they go bank a bunch of stuff from one trip or whatever and they, for the next 10 years

it looks like they're returning to that exotic location. Okay, okay. Well, Chairgirl's lawyer, Greg Leslie, was back on the scene. Right. Contact being asked questions here. Did Chairgirl leave the country and come back and fail to quarantine?

Are you up to date with Toronto Mic'd episodes? It's okay if you're not. You've been under the weather. You have all the excuses. But which... A recent FOTM is buddies with that lawyer. Like, they're good buddies. And you don't know.

You don't remember. Okay, continue. Please, I'm taking you on. Who, who, who? Now I gotta find the episode! I was hoping you'd remind me. But, yeah, I learned this in an episode that somebody who came on the show

in the last couple of months is good friends with that lawyer. Sorry, I know. I've got to find it myself. Go back and listen again to like 20 or 30 episodes. How could there have been a chair girl reference on Toronto Mike that didn't involve me? A little scandal there a chair girl reference on Toronto Mike? That didn't involve me. A little scandal there for chair girl.

And yet at the same time, her rapping sidekick, Kromaz, has a new music video. Oh, I have it. I have it. Okay, let's hear a bit of this. Let's Go. But that's not Cheergirl singing right there, is it? I know romance from when I say hello Can't get to Nina, be in my zone

She does a shout out to her friend Marcella somewhere in the lyrics. Do you know when? No. Okay, because I don't know. Mike, I've been under the weather. You you know when? No. Okay. Because I don't know. Mike, I've been under the weather. You're asking a little too much. You're off the hook.

It's amazing you're here. Marcella has a cameo in her video. Okay. And they're riding high through the parking lot of the Yorkdale Mall. And I've got to say, I mean, look, Yorkdale has been around since 1964. I remember the original iteration of Yorkdale. I went there as a kid every week. And there's something to be said for the fact that they managed to modify Yorkdale a couple times over the decades to retrofit the place.

That it could pass for a shopping mall in Hollywood. You've got the Cheesecake Factory, right? Right. Big sign of the legendary restaurant. They've added a whole bunch of glamour to the place to the point where when you see Cro-Maz and Marcella strutting through Yorkdale without their masks on. Right. Priscilla strutting through Yorkdale without their masks on.

Right. Stranded here in Canada that what's going on in Yorkdale could pass for Hollywood glamour. I cannot believe that Cheer Girl would disrespect the virus this way. Like, I am shocked. This is like finding out Mr. Rogers was an asshole. That would be something I couldn't take. Okay, well, once we went through the drill of trying to figure out whether she went to Tahiti without quarantining on the way back,

the idea that there's a few seconds of chair girl in a music video without her mask on didn't even register for me as as much of a scandal okay mark here we are we're about to embark well unless you want to do can you do a quick quick quick synopsis maybe on uh because i saw my story on Schitt's Creek is this, uh, many, many, many months ago, I sat down with my lovely wife to watch the first episode of Schitt's Creek and about 75% of the way through, I decided, uh, I'm not feeling it. And I bailed and I never went back. And now it is, is the talk of the town. It cleaned up at the Emmys. It set records. I clearly bailed early.

I feel silly. I should return to Schitt's Creek, but the first episode didn't capture my attention. What can you say about Schitt's Creek? It didn't do it for me either. And guess what? I watch every episode of SCTV to the point where I can recall entire hours from memory.

Right. And Schitt's Creek, the whole thing. I'd watch Eugene Levy read the phone book. Well, maybe it was because it's Dan Levy being synonymous with the Hills After Show on MTV Canada. I just couldn't find a way into it all. But in the process, now that they won all those Emmy Awards, seven of them, a big comedy sweep at Casa Loma.

I was watching that. Does that count as watching an episode of Schitt's Creek? No, no, no. I was paying attention to the award show. Yeah. And in the process, I saw something of greater interest to you and me. Okay. It was some indication from somebody,

it sounded like they knew what they were talking about, that Martin Scorsese decided he didn't want to work on that SCTV documentary anymore. Okay, but we noticed it never got completed and released. We know it was recorded at the Winter Elgin Garden Theater, whatever it's called. And I wondered what happened to it. Like, I think I heard something like he was busy with that, the really long, what was it?

The really, the, the, the, the, what was a really long Netflix movie he did recently? The Irishman. The Irishman. I was going to call it the wind, the, the painters. No, the Irishman. Yeah. Okay. So is he going to ever finish that up?

What happens to that documentary? The indications seem to be that he's handed over the recording that they did of the interview at the Elgin Winter Garden Theater in Toronto. Yeah. And that it's back in the hands of Second City to figure out what to do with it on their own. That includes Andrew Alexander, who was the founder of the Toronto Second City, who owned the company, who ended up stepping down this summer after he was called out

for running a workplace that was not friendly to people of color. And he said, okay, it's time for me to step aside and hand the reins here over to somebody else. My time is up. Give it to Ed Conroy. Let's get this finished. Yeah, but Andrew Alexander said in that Globe and Mail article, he's working on the

documentary, putting the pieces together here. The reason he mentioned it in the article is, in fact, it's now his responsibility. Okay. And it's no longer the job of the great filmmaker Martin Scorsese to figure out what to do with it. He did his part. He set up the live

interview show, and whenever we'll be seeing this, 2022, 23, 24, it's not going to be much of a Scorsese production after all. Bait and switch here. And that's what made people appreciate it more. They thought it was subversive, right? Like that Martin Scorsese was such an SCTV fan, that the show was so layered, had so much nuance to it, that even someone like Scorsese could get into the show.

I'm disappointed. I've got to say that right now. And I don't know if that's floated out any further. And poor Rick Moranis. Rick Moranis. I heard about Rick Moranis. Nicest guy you'd want to meet, right? Sucker punch there on the Upper West Side.

That might be the last great thing you could do in New York is go for an early morning walk around Central Park and fell into some physical misfortune there. And, of course, protect Rick Moranis. Got to get better. Yeah, disappointing to hear that. That was terrible news. Now, okay, so that's great exclusive you just gave us there, Mark.

We've got to find out what's going on. Oh, and Steph Curry and his wife, Aisha. Who's a Canadian, right? Aisha's Canadian? Yeah, and he was quasi-Canadian, right? Okay, his dad played for, he grew up here. He was an American with Canadian connections. Like Miley Cyrus.

It's faded. Like Miley Cyrus. Yeah, the fact, remember when Kamala was first in the running and we did like a list, a recap of celebrities? Humble Howard tells me his ex-wife was like her buddy in college or something. They were buds

or something, Kamala, in Montreal. Humble Howard's ex-wife. Westmount High. Yeah, that would probably work out in terms of how old they are. So they were in Toronto, and just like Chair Girl, people were trying to figure out, did they quarantine? Like, were they given some kind of celebrity pass, right, to, like, be able to freely roam through the streets?

Because there they were during the film festival at TIFF. What was it, the David Byrne movie or the Halle Berry movie or whatever it was. They were at the City View drive-in at their car, and they put a picture out. They get into Toronto. And later on, I found out where they were staying, where they rented a house. Where? I want to go stalk them for the bushes.

I don't know if they're still there or what. It was in the Toronto neighborhood of Bathurst and Shepherd. And as soon as it was, like, figured out that they were staying there in this house, you had, like, a mob scene out on the street of all these neighborhood kids in that Clanton Park neighborhood. So there was a little paparazzi action happening where you would least expect it in terms of Toronto. But that's where they were. That's where they would have maybe been quarantining at the time that somebody figured out that they were inside there. But that's where they were. That's where they would have maybe been quarantining at the time that somebody figured out that they were inside there.

But their 14 days were up. And we find out today from the 1236 newsletter that The Man from Toronto, a movie starring Woody Harrelson and Kevin Hart, is actually going to be shot in Toronto during the pandemic.

They're lining up filming. All systems are go. So is that deemed essential travel? How does it work? I guess you can fly in there? They're here to do business. I mean, they're here to contribute to the economy. They scheduled this shoot.

Movies, TV shows are back in production. And I think whatever becomes of this comedy action movie that they're making, I think it's going to be legendary. The whole idea of this one Hollywood movie that was shot in the streets of Toronto during the second wave peak of the pandemic. And they might have the run of the place when it comes to location shoots, right?

You don't have to clear off as many streets. You don't have to shoo as many people out of the way of the financial district as you would have before no for sure there's an there's a cbc show executive produced by bruce mccullough from the kids in the hall called tall boys i don't know if you've heard of tall boys but they've been filming in my hood uh quite a bit the last couple of weeks the tall boys but uh i think it's a sort of like kidsisna Hall in that it's a sketch comedy, I think. But okay. And a bit of suspense then.

If we're going to come back later in October, somewhere around Halloween, don't want to pin down an exact date. We got to talk more about the Canadian cancel culture. Summer of 2020, right? Rosie DiManno, Wendy Mesley. What happened or what didn't happen? But neither were canceled

because they're both still there Dan O'Toole he's not cancelled either so let's do a cliffhanger we'll get to that next time I want to recap these experiences that we had because I think that's as good as it got when it came to covering

the media here in this midpoint but those three names those are big names you dropped there Wendy Wendy Mesley, Rosie DiManno, and Dan O'Toole. All three of them, none of them have been cancelled because they all have their gigs right now. So, more to discuss at the next month.

Oh, and Adam Wilde. Oh, Marilyn Dennis' son. FOTM Steve Dangle on the podcast with him, right? Along with Jesse Blake. He's like the third wheel on the podcast with him, right, along with Jesse Blake. He's like the third wheel on the podcast. Jesse Blake? Is that the name?

Yeah, he's also on the Virgin Radio Morning Show. Okay, because I know there's a woman named Dax. Or am I Jax? Jax. You're here to educate me. J the Jax and TJ they're the ones on the poster and Jesse is the guy who I guess uh works the board on the morning show but then he's also on the Steve Dangle podcast okay well Dangle yeah he's an FOTM digressing all over what's going on with uh Adam Wilde we gotta talk about it here because honestly nobody

else will I was really into the fact okay I'm enough of a fan of Adam Wilde. We've got to talk about it here because, honestly, nobody else will. I was really into the fact, okay, I'm enough of a fan of Adam Wilde. Like, I'm listening to these Virgin Morning Show podcasts. I'm keeping up on what they're doing there. That's why you got sick. I'm impressed. I mean, just like the B-teams. Just like Jay Brody and that show there. You know, I've got to know what's going on on the morning radio in Toronto. I like Jay Brody and that show there.

You know, I got to know what's going on on the morning radio in Toronto. I can mainline these things on triple speed. I can keep up with what's going on. And on the radio show and on his podcast, Adam Wilde kept making reference to the fact that he's now a single dad and that he's doing, like, online dating. And he wasn't being specific about how any of this happened. Because at one point, he's all on

Instagram. I mean, that's part of the appeal. He made his wife a character in what he was doing on the air everywhere, and suddenly he's talking about not being married anymore. And it was fascinating for a few days how cryptic it was. Because he kept on alluding

to it, but he didn't actually give it away. And I think it boiled over to the point where people on Reddit or whatever, Twitter, they started asking, like, what's going on here? All of a sudden, because you can't talk about your wife, wife, wife, and then talk about being a single dad.

You need to tell your audience, oh, the marriage ended, or we're separated or something. Look, Adam Wilde, he's a pro. He was born into a radio family. His mom is the first lady of Canadian lifestyle television. I think he knew exactly what he was doing because it reached a point where on the Dangle podcast,

he revealed the whole story that his marriage actually ended even like, even before the pandemic. This had been going on for a while, and, you know, he just thought he would, like, gingerly introduce the discussion. Right. You know, without, like, coming right out and saying it over a period of weeks.

I actually feel Wilde's pain. I feel this pain because I was in a similar boat in that, like, you know, on the blog, I would blog about my, my marriage and I was married for 15 years.

And then it's like, how do you segue over to talk about your girlfriend? Like there's that moment of like, Oh wait, like the, the, the audience thinks I'm married with two kids here. And now I'm, I'm dating someone with a different name.

Like, it's almost like you have to, I remember like I had an episode episode, episode four, I think, where I needed to update everybody where we're at so I could continue sharing because it's like the audience needs that segue. I totally know what I want to go through. And did you feel that you owed people that much

and they were paying that much attention to you? Well, yes. Because you were the one that, you started the oversharing, right? Well, I don't overshare, i don't know but you never had to mention your wife in the first place no of course that's voluntary like no one forced you right to do blog posts where you were talking about like hanging out of course with your wife and of course but once you know you do that for uh a decade let's say and then suddenly you're blogging about

dating somebody seven years younger or whatever, like there needs to be that, you need to kind of explain why, because it sounds like you're cheating on your wife. You need to explain and you're right, it's all voluntary. If you don't share in the first place, you don't have to update. But I felt, yes, I absolutely felt like I needed, I owed an update so the people who had been, you know, following along could get on the proper page and realize I wasn't actually cheating on my wife. I think it's something you can talk about here with other people that, like, have these big radio TV platforms. Because Dan O'Toole, I think, also went through a bit of that when he put on Twitter, on Instagram, that his baby had been abducted. Oh, big time.

People were then going after what was his ex-wife, assuming that she was responsible for the situation. Which is quite the leap, by the way. That he was drawing attention to. Okay. All I'm saying is, as soon as I got the whole story from Adam Wilde about the fact that he was now separated, maybe divorced, not married anymore, whatever he was going to talk about, you know, his online dating, swiping on Tinder was going to be part of his shtick on the radio. Oh, I missed that.

And as soon as he came clean, I wasn't interested in the story anymore. It was only interesting to me when it was mysterious and I had to figure something out on my own. Okay, Mark, before we get to the memorial section of the podcast, I need to thank a few people. I want to thank Austin Keitner from

the Keitner Group. And this is a very important message for all FOTMs. If you or somebody you care about is looking to buy and or sell in the next six months, please let me introduce you to Austin Keitner or them to Austin Keitner. Send me an email and just say, hey, Mike, can you introduce me to Austin or whatever? And I promise to do so. And you can have a little conversation with Austin. No obligation to go any further than that. I'd appreciate that. StickerU.com.

I know Mark Weisblatt has so many StickerU stickers at this point, but they're still kicking ass in Liberty Village here in Toronto. You can go to StickerU.com and upload your image and then get any quantity you want of a variety of wonderful things, from stickers and decals to temporary tattoos and badges, a lot of cool stuff. So go to Stickeru.com for that. Pumpkins After Dark,

it's all October and this is the month. Like a lot of people are suddenly realizing, I've been talking about them since July, but all of a sudden people are like,

oh my God, this is October and I haven't booked my slot. Heck, my wife was looking to book a slot yesterday and she's like, oh,

a lot of these good prime spots on Fridays and Saturdays are gone. Well, that's what I've been trying to warn everybody about. Wait a second. Are you telling me that even Mrs. Toronto Mike cannot get to the front of the line of Pumpkins After Dark? Yeah, I'm just a person. I'm just a regular person. It's funny, you know,

Stu Stone, real quick, because I know Stu wants me to mention it. Stu Stone's movie, he told me uh you still listen to pandemic Friday episodes of Toronto Mike I'm doing my best okay well Stu Stone's got a new movie called Faking a Murderer and it's on Hollywood Suite and he said you know you can stream it via Prime Amazon Prime you can actually subscribe to Amazon Suite and do a trial and then watch it long story story short, I actually asked Stu, I said, Stu, hook me up with like a

I know they have like links for reviewing like to review the movie and publicizing and stuff. He couldn't even hook me up. So I actually watched it as just a regular person. I felt like at the end of Goodfellas, like I felt like I'm just a regular person. So yes,

the Pumpkins After Dark slots. This is a great event, a drive-through event in Milton, Ontario. Go to pumpkinsafterdark.com to learn more. But these slots are almost gone. You have to book now. This is a very stern warning. And when you book, and you can thank me for reminding you to book because you're going to save Halloween for the kids or the grandkids. Use the promo code miked, M-I-K-E-D. It'll save you money and it helps the show. And of course, you want to help the show. So do it now. And last but not least, I want to give a shout out, of course, to CDN Technologies. They're there if you have any computer or network issues or questions. They're your outsourced IT department. You can call Barb at 905-542-9759 or write her right now.

Barb at cdntechnologies.com. You got your toque there, Mark? You don't have to put it on right now. It's not very cold. But that's your Ridley Funeral Home toque. They're at 3080, so 3080 Lakeshore. That's at 14th Street here in Mississauga. Where do I live, Mark?

In New Toronto. Brad Jones, of course, a tremendous FOTM. He actually showed up at TMLX6. It was great to see him there. Pay tribute without paying a fortune. Learn more at RidleyFuneralHome.com. I can see her lying back in her satin dress In a room where you do what you don't confess. Sundown, you better take care if I find you've been creeping around my backstreet.

Sundown, you better take care if I find you've been creeping around my backstreet. She's been looking like a queen. Kathy Evelyn Smith died on August 16th, 2020. One of those that we missed in not having an August recap episode. But there was the famous song that she inspired by Gordon Lightfoot, Sundown. Now, my own interest in the world of celebrity tabloids pretty much coincided with the death of John Belushi. And it was in that era, around 1982, when Kathy Evelyn Smith went to the National Enquirer and in exchange for a sum of money,

she confessed to being the one who injected John Belushi with a drug overdose that killed him. And so here this Canadian woman who had been a backup singer and a rock groupie and a drug dealer. She was a consort of Levon Helm with the band and then moved on to working with Gordon Lightfoot and became his mistress on the road with him and then played a role in Lightfoot's marriage coming to an end, what at the time was the most expensive divorce settlement in Canadian history. But imagine how much Gordon Lightfoot made off of writing this song. Right.

It might have all balanced out. And Gordon Lightfoot, it's a manager that says, you know, he looks like death, but he's in great shape and he's ready to go back on the road in 2021 if they'll have him again. Massey Hall and beyond, you know, there he was. He dusted off some old tapes

that he found in a box in the basement and, you know, figured he had, like, another run left in him. And here the basement and figured he had another run left in him. Here, the life and legacy of Kathy Evelyn Smith, who died at age

73. The fact that there she was synonymous with Levon Helm, with Gordon Lightfoot, and of course the tragedy with John Belushi ended up after she served Yvonne Helm with Gordon Lightfoot. And of course the tragedy with, with John Belushi ended up after she served some time, spent the last three decades or so living in Vancouver,

sort of a hard life, you know, far beyond any rock and roll glamor she was associated with. But the Globe and Mail, in fact, broke the news of her death in very elaborate obituary. And that's the least that she deserved. Kathy Evelyn Smith. How can I understand all those things that you do to me When I just don't think it's right When I look into your eyes I gotta run away from them Cause I just can't win this fight Quando olho para os teus olhos Tenho que ir para o lago

Porque eu só posso vencer Este fogo Eu não consigo até te encontrar Mas você vai ouvir O que eu tenho a dizer Um mais Tente esquecer Porque agora Brighton Rock. Kevin in Alberta on Twitter said, Make sure Mike doesn't leave this one on the cutting room floor.

Not knowing it would take me another month to get here to talk about how we lost Jerry McGee, who was the front man for this Niagara Falls, Ontario rock band called Brighton Rock. Now, they were one of the bands that was discovered through the Q107 Homegrown contest. Around that time, it was Honeymoon Suite that was seen as the most successful one to come out of winning that contest, being on one of those albums. And the Partland Brothers were another that had a little American hit. But Brighton Rock signed to WEA, Warner Music Canada at the time.

And the band that was originally known as Heart Attack changed its name, given a name change, maybe reflecting the fact that Jerry McGee was a Scottish lead singer. Is that close enough, right, for Canadian high school geography? And through Brighton Rock, I guess Canada had its very own hair metal band

that could tour around and play the hockey rinks. We talked about the band Faber Drive in the 2000s maybe had that demographic sewn up. But it was Brighton Rock that gained that level of attention in the 80s with these songs. I don't know if any of them were really good enough to make it outside of Canada. But this one, One More Try, was, I think, the closest they came to, like, the big power ballad hit. And notable for the fact that then, at the time,

supermodel of the world, Monica Schneier, had a role, remember all this, Mike? As like a video vixen in the Brighton Rock video. They got some bold face headlines out of that one. Yeah. Never achieved the success

of Alias or Sheriff but in that vein, right? I don't know if the material was all that great. It's not a bad jam though, this one. This one's not bad. It's muscular vein, right? This song's got a hook to it. I don't know if the material was all that great. It's not a bad jam, though, this one. This one's not bad. It's muscular enough, right? Like, the girls and the guys could get into this in equal measure.

Okay, so Jerry McGee, he actually auditioned for Motley Crue when Vince Neil got fired from the band. Wow. Or did he quit? I don't know. Whatever happened didn't work out. And he subsequently ended up working behind the scenes

in the music industry. And most recently, Jerry McGee was at the forefront of pressing vinyl records in Canada. That he was behind the scenes of the printing plant

that was at the forefront of the vinyl revival. And unfortunately, cancer took the life of Jerry McGee, dead at age 58 on August 26. Salute there to Brighton Rock. I love her so. Now if I call her on the telephone, Angela, I'm all alone. By the time I come from one to four, I hear a knock on my door.

And even when the sun goes down, and there ain't nobody else around, kisses me, holds me tight, tell me that everything's all right, because I know, yes, I know, hallelujah, I love her so. Salome Bay. That's who this is, right? It's Salome Bay with her sister and her brother. And here was a woman who was born in Newark, New Jersey. And here was a woman who was born in Newark, New Jersey.

Andy and the Bay sisters found their way to Toronto in 1964 and played around the jazz clubs of Toronto. But Salome Bay made a name more for herself in the late 70s when she put together a cabaret show about the history of black music in America. It was called Indigo, and this thing played night after night, you know, big draw in Toronto because Salome Bay was a real deal that she had been there, you know, part of, as we hear, a very genuine 60s R&B sound, that she was able to bring that to audiences in Toronto, educate them a bit about the history of black music, popular live show.

As a result, and Salome Bay, who was suffering from dementia for the past decade, died at age 86 on August 8, 2020. ¶¶ begins and it may never end so cry no more on the shore of dream we'll take a side to see

forevermore forevermore Forevermore Close your eyes and see And you can dream with me Beneath the waves Through the caves of ice Long forgotten now This might be the first time this song has been heard outside of the 11 o'clock hour to fill some Canadian content time on a middle-of-the-road AM radio station

maybe 30 or 40 years ago, because that's as good as it got. Covering Boz Skaggs was Bruce Murray, the singing brother of Anne, of course, from Nova Scotia, from Spring Hill, Nova Scotia. All Canadians must know on the citizenship test, that's where Anne Murray was from. And her brother was a singer too, collaborating with her and also doing these yacht rock songs of his own, including We're All Alone, a cover version of Boz Skaggs when it was just kicked out by Ben Mergey, Boz Skaggs,

the other day. The Lowdown. This is when it was in fashion to just do like a Canadian cover version of an American song. Anne did a lot of that. Well, not just American songs, but she did a lot of that. British artists and stuff. Yeah. And there

was Bruce Murray, who had his time getting attention as opening act for Olivia Newton John, but then moved away from the music industry and became a teacher in Oakville, Ontario. And we lost Bruce Murray on September 15th. I'm We'll be right back. They say, hello. They say, haven't I seen your face before?

Weren't you the boy that used to live next door? Weren't you a television every night? Haven't I seen you around? We don't want to be. Not from Toronto or connected to Canada directly, was Ian Mitchell, the bassist for the Bay City Rollers. But I categorize this along with these other obituaries more connected to this city and the country

because Ian Mitchell was in the Bay City Rollers during, I think, the peak of their career when they initiated a teenage riot in Toronto outside of 1050 Chum at 1331 Yonge Street, carried over to Nathan Phillips Square. Roller Mania was in the air, and that was during Ian Mitchell's time in the band. And, yeah, 1976 would have been when he joined.

And then this song that followed Yesterday's Hero, which incorporated the sonic audience sound from the riot that happened in Toronto. That's how important it was to the career of the Bay City Rollers. Is this late 70s? When is this? 1976. And this song, he left the Bay City Rollers in 1977. What happened was he was unhappy being in this teen idol band and he wanted to get back to his roots,

even though he was just a teenager himself. And the band that he was in before got rechristened Rosetta Stone. In 1978, Rosetta Stone played at Massey Hall in Toronto. And there was roller mania all over again. By virtue of the fact that these same girls that came out to see the Bay City Rollers still remembered Ian Mitchell. He just had to milk that last little bit of attention that he was getting. Then he ended up parting ways from Rosetta Stone.

But that band carried on. And it was a Scottish rock band that ended up doing some songs that were written by Brian Adams and Jim Vallance. Wow. Like some cast-off songs that they were handing out to artists at the time, whoever wanted them. One of them was Straight From the Heart, which was originally done by Rosetta Stone, but Ian Mitchell was out of the picture by that point in time. But Ian Mitchell was out of the picture by that point in time. A lot of VH1 behind the music moments in the history of the Bay City Rollers.

And here this young bassist, Ian Mitchell, who they recruited to try and keep their career alive. They ended up getting their own variety show on NBC after that. I mean, you knew Roller Mania was on the wane when they started rebranding. And they were no longer the Bay City Rollers. Their albums were just the Rollers. It was a way to be taken more seriously as a rock band. I just missed this. A lot of the great boy bands out there. I barely remember it myself.

But I think it was significant for the fact that even in the brief time that he was a bassist for the Bay City Rollers, that he was in the group during the peak of those mob scenes that happened in Toronto. Right. I like to move it, move it. I like to move it, move it. I like to move it, move it.

You like to move it. I like to move it, move it. I like to move it, move it, you like to move it. I like to move it, move it, I like to move it, move it, I like to move it, move it, you like to move it. I like to move it, move it, I like to move it, move it, I like to move it, move it, you like to move it. I like to move it, move it, I like to move it, move it, I like to move it, move it. I like to move it, move it. You like to move it. All girls all over the world. Original, my stuntman, pon your case, man.

I love how all girls are moving them body. And when you move your body, you're gonna move it nice and sweet and sexy. All right? Come on and kill me. I know you know me. Original, you know me. You want me, come on and kill me. I like to move it, move it. This song, it meant something to you, to your kids? You would play this song?

Okay, I remember it very well because it was everywhere and it was a big hit. And it appeared in a movie, I want to say Madagascar. So I've heard it. The kids have watched a lot of this film where this song is heavily featured. So I've heard a lot of it lately. Yes. I think it's Madagascar.

Eric Morillo died at age 49 on September 1st. And a real tragedy here for this guy best known for I Like to Move It Move It? Real to Real was the name of the act that it was credited to.

This was, you know, back in the day when you needed like a DJ handle. So Real to Real was a guy named Eric Morillo. I Like to Move It, Move It. Right. But so I move it, move it. Right. But so I'm correct, right? There's a reel to reel was like just a pseudonym for Eric Morillo, at least for this project. In August, he was arrested and charged with sexual battery upon a woman for an incident that happened on New Year's Eve. He turned himself into police,

even though he denied the accusation and he was booked on a court date, but a few days before he was found dead. And so we've got Eric Murillo, a legacy of his own records and reel-to-reel and the strictly rhythm record label which was

responsible for a lot of this DJ dance music. I would assume this song made a lot of money for this gentleman because the way it was licensed all over the place and its appearance on the Madagascar

soundtrack, etc. I think he did quite well with I Like to Move It. I'm sorry to hear about this terrible actions at the end. There are alleged allegations of terrible actions. At least for now you can visit

an Eric Murillo way. A street in Union City, New Jersey, where he was from. As soon as they open the borders, we're going to head to... Yeah, only to find the sign that's been taken down. Right. Did he ever taste success? Is this a definitive definitive a good example of a one hit wonder was there a taste of success of any other single or is this your

prototypical one hit wonder I think it's a one hit wonder I like to move it I like to move it you like to move it, move it. You like to move it. guitar solo I'm an axe grinder High-heeled driver Mama says that I never, never mind her And no brains

I'm insane The teacher says that I'm one big blade I'm like a laser Six-string razor. I got a mouth like an alligator. I want it louder, more power. I'm on a rocket

till it strikes the hour. Bang your head. Frankie Benally was the drummer of Quiet Riot, who died at age 68, August 20th. Battle with cancer that he put a good fight in for over 16 months. But pancreatic cancer was the reason that we lost Frankie Benelli. There was a documentary about him and the fact that here was his band, Quiet Riot. The frontman, Kevin Dubrow, he passed away a while ago now.

A band that originally had Randy Rhodes, a guitarist who died in a plane crash at the height of him working with Ozzy Osbourne. And Quiet Riot was the band that was scouted by Sharon Osbourne to back up Ozzy in his solo career. Oh, I didn't know that. You're bringing the good stuff, Mark. That's what I missed. Frankie Minnelli was in there at one point, like, trying to work with Ozzy,

but ended up going back with Kevin Dubrow. And then it was another guy that followed who is currently, how's this for coming full circle, blowing your mind, current member of the Guess Who? Whoa! The bass player, Rudy Sarzo, also came back to Quiet Riot, disillusioned with what was going on

after his guitarist, Randy Rhoads, died. And before I get too confused, I'm getting in that fog here. Haven't quite finished that first can of GLB, but I've got to get all my facts straight. It turned out there was another drummer who died in September who played with Ozzy, a guy named Lee Kerslake, who worked with Ozzy at one point in time

but also incurred the wrath of Sharon and had a falling out with him subsequently, and he died at age 73. Sharon, Sharon, Sharon. And Ozzy is still with us. And according to recent comments from Sharon, they're still making love several times a week. Do you believe that's even possible?

I believe it's possible. I don't believe they're making love several times a week. But who would I know? Maybe they are. Good for them. So Frankie Benally lost his lead singer, but carried on with Quiet Riot, and ultimately the last incarnation,

the singer from another metal band, kind of early 90s band called Love Hate, a guy named Jizzy Pearl. Jizzy. He was singing with Quiet Riot and they say they're going to continue Quiet Riot with no original members. This whole concept that

Frankie Benally wanted to keep alive as the first heavy metal band to have a number one album on the Billboard charts. And, you know, they just did it with that Come On, Feel the Noise song.

Of course. The Slade cover. That's what it was all about. And they had that mascot and a guy in a straight jacket, right, wearing a metal mask. Come On, Feel the Noise was a big...

When I was in primary school, that was a big deal, that jam. You know, we used to change the lyrics to that song, and it was covered by... What's the Montreal... What band am I thinking of? Oh, Stereo Mike. Brand Van 3000.

Thank you. Brand Van 3000. Tonight, oh, this is the night, you'll see the light Tonight, oh, this is the night, you'll see the light My 16th birthday, I was so shy Not yet a man But ready to try Music playing People swaying I looked around

She caught my eye Won't feel alone I couldn't hardly see There she was Moving closer to me She told me her name Before I could speak Took my hand And then she said I think this song rocks even harder than Metal Health by Quiet Riot. And this one by Kool and the Gang.

Kool and the Gang, in 2012 2012 were taken on the road as the opening act for van halen wow the assumption was this is like a mismatch right these are strange bedfellows but if you are you if you actually are literate in the discography of cool and the gang you'd know that there are enough hits like this one, which would have made David Lee Roth jealous because they were able to hit with the jams that I think Van Halen could hardly pull off. They were tight. They always had a song in the top 40,

I think all the way through 1979 through 1987. That was when James J.T. Taylor became the front man. But even that was the second incarnation of Kool and the Gang. Because before that, they didn't have a central focus. They didn't have a lead singer. That's when they had these songs like Hollywood Swinging. You know, more of like a psychedelic sound.

Did you know that there were two iterations of Cool and The Gang? I think I knew that. I think I knew that. Jungle Boogie. That's another one you might know. Yeah, and they do Beyond Celebrate? Didn't they do Cherish or something?

Yeah, that came later. Well, that came later. Okay. So I'm thinking of my CFTR days in the 80s there. Okay. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. When they had the string of hits. Okay, I'm caught up now. And a lot of rock songs, including Celebr there. Okay. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. When they had these string of hits. Okay, I'm caught up now.

And a lot of rock songs including Celebration. Right. And how this relates to the fact that in September, September 9th, 2020, we lost Ronald Bell,

who was one of the brothers, the brother of Cool. That was Robert Bell. This was Ronald Bell, who, along with being in the band, had a lot of the credit behind the scenes, and that included a lot of responsibility for the song's celebration. And in his obituary, there was an interesting dissonance where you had Robert Bell saying Celebration was inspired by the fact

that we were at the American Music Awards and it was time to celebrate and we were inspired by all the excitement that was going on around us. And it was his brother, Ronald Bell, who in fact said, no, it was inspired by a passage in the Koran. And that was his religious influence as a follower of the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan. So I thought that was amusing that he went down that religious road. Given that song we just heard tonight is about a 16-year-old boy

losing his innocence on the occasion of his birthday. But that was what people grooved to at the time. I don't need this love I don't need your hand I know I could turn Make a new beginning Then I must be prepared Any time to carry on Would you classify this one as Yacht Rock?

A Temptations cover version of Minute by Minute? It sounds like Yacht Rock to me. I have to consult Stu on this, but I think so. What do you think? Well, the Doobie Brothers are certainly Yacht Rock, and who even knew that the Temptations were doing cover versions like this? But I think it's the same category as a band like The Guest Who. Because The Temptations are also down to one original member.

Right. Where it's like if you're the type of person that went to a Temptations concert in the 2000s, and The Temptations started doing their song, why wouldn't you think this was a song by The Temptations, right? Right. You've heard this song on the radio, minute by minute, it's a perfect song. Perfect, perfect Temptations song. I wouldn't recognize it from anywhere else.

Right. Bruce Williamson Jr. was one of the lead singers in one of those later incarnations of The Temptations. And he died at age 49 on September 6th. Too young. Due to COVID-19. That's too young because I don't want to hear that kind of news,

people in their late 40s dying from COVID. But here's the thing. Most of the singers of The Temptations died around age 50. Wow. A bit of a curse there where you had this original lineup of the group. Like the Ramones, man. The Ramones have a similar curse. Well, that was Eddie Kendrick and David Ruffin.

And then, you know, later they moved into that psychedelic sound with Paul Williams. That was a singer of The Temptations with Ball of Confusion. Right. I only know the Genesis version, so yes. And he also died young. Wow.

Yeah, Paul Williams was in the original group, one of those members. There's one original member left of The Temptations, and that is Otis Williams. And he turns 79 on October 30th. And I noticed you can get an Otis Williams greeting video on Cameo.com. So if you want to check if the last original Temptations standing is still alive. What does that go for? Like 15 bucks?

What's that going for? I'm always interested in what different people charge on that cameo. Is Mr. Wonderful still charging the big bucks over there? 1,200 bucks for Kevin O'Leary. Still charging the big bucks over there. $1,200 for Kevin O'Leary. $150 for a cameo from the last original Temptation standing, Otis Williams.

Melvin Franklin, that was another member who died. I mean, not a great lifespan for that group, and sadly, he wasn't in the band anymore. Bruce Williamson. Bruce Williamson Jr., but yeah, one of the musical casualties of COVID-19. The kids are not the same The house is not the same The house is not the same Scooby-Dooby-Doo, where are you?

We got some work to do now Scooby-Dooby-Doo, where are you? We got some work to do now. Scooby-Dooby-Doo, where are you? We need some help from you now. Come on Scooby-Doo, I see you, pretending you got a silver. You're not fooling me, cause I can see the way you shake and shiver You know we got a mystery to solve So Scooby-Doo be ready for your act Don't hold back And Scooby-Doo if you come through You're gonna have yourself a Scooby snack That's a fact Scooby-Dooby-Doo, here are you

You're ready and you're willing If we can count on you, Scooby-Doo. Here are you. You're ready and you're willing. Scooby-Doo. If we can count on you, Scooby-Doo. I know we'll catch that villain. Don't tell me Scooby-Doo has passed away. Joe Ruby, who was a co-creator of Scooby-Doo, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? He died August 26. He made it to age 87.

And I think when it came to his obituary, working with Hanna-Barbera, that was the top line, the thing that he was the most recognized for, even though he worked a bunch of other cartoons. Do you remember any of these? Dino-Mutt, Jabberjaw, Do you remember any of these? Dino Mutt, Jabberjaw, and moved on to Mr. T, the Mr. T cartoon.

I think he was responsible for the Rubik the Amazing Cube cartoon. So 80s. These are like low end of Hanna-Barbera. I think Scooby-Doo. Not only the concept of Scooby-Doo, but the whole gang that was along with Scoob. Yeah, Thelma and Fred and what's her name? Josie? No, is it Josie?

Anyway, go on. As far as that intellectual property was concerned, he definitely landed on a gold mine there. Even if, like, the whole concept of Scooby-Doo, where are you, as they went to solve these mysteries and the mystery machine, it was always predictable. Like, you could always tell. No, it was the same formula. That got annoying as I got older, I realized,

wait a minute, this is the same episode over and over again. But if you're, you know, us guys of a certain age, we remember, of course, Canada's Wonderland when it was full of Hanna-Barbera characters. Like, that was the best, going to Canada's Wonderland and having Scooby-Doo was there, or Fred Flintstone, all these Hanna-Barbera characters. Okay, Fred, Daphne, Velma, and Shaggy.

Daphne. That would be the... Not Josie. Josie's from the Pussycats. The Fab Four of Scooby-Doo. Right, right. So we lost... Sorry, what was the gentleman's name we lost? I can...

What? Joe Ruby. Joe Ruby. Just so shout out to Joe Ruby. Now, this is... Normally, we like to finish with elder statespeople who have passed away at a nice old age, but this is a late-breaking one that'll mean a lot to people in this market here. So let's listen to this late-breaking one.

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Don't wait. Call 8. Salino & Barnes, the dynamic duo of personal injury law who had a tumultuous breakup over the last couple of years, which was just chronicled in a feature story in New York Magazine. And to the best of my ability to stay focused on what was happening here, you know, we get these long read articles and, you know, you're like, I don't know, one fifth of the way through reading like 9,000 words and you just forget where it started. You can't pay attention anymore.

Well, that was my experience with the story. But from what I could tell, it had to do with the fact that Salino and Barnes, From what I could tell, it had to do with the fact that Salino and Barnes, originally lawyers famous for working in Buffalo and then Rochester, expanded to New York City and beyond. And as the business grew, they had a greater difference of opinion about how it should be run. And the result was a breakup of Salino and Barnes, who were all ready to go and relaunch with personal injury law firms of their own. They would each get new phone numbers.

They were going to get new billboards. They were ready to go head-to-head, being competitors against one another. Sadly, it ended in a plane crash for Steve Barnes, the co-founder of Celino and Barnes, who died in this plane crash on October 2nd. Real tragedy there, Celino and Barnes. Electric Barbarella, nobody does it better. Baby, don't you know we put on a show. Electric Barbarella, nobody does it better. Make you lose control when you hit the dance floor. Zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom on my body, body. Zoom, zoom, zoom on my Ducati.

Flashing bright lights, prepared to party, to party. Yeah, my boots are laced up, we're pretty made up. Sumner Redstone, the CEO of ViacomCBS, a big power player in the world of show business. Pretty much everything that there is to love and hate about modern media can be traced back to his initiatives. He died with a net worth around $2.5 billion and spent the last decade in his life in a lot of litigation because Sumner Redstone liked the ladies.

because Sumner Redstone liked the ladies. That included being really horny for a prefab girl group called the Electric Barbarellas. And so, okay, Sumner Redstone, right, he made it to 97 years old. So imagine he's in his late 80s, and there he was orchestrating an MTV reality show with like a girl group of Lady Gaga rip-offs who he thought were going to be the next

big thing. And because he was the boss, because he owned the place, because he signed everybody's paychecks, he demanded that MTV put the Electric Barbarella's reality show on the air. Wow. And there were, you know, stories about a staff revolt. I mean, look, MTV at the time was having a renaissance with Jersey Shore, Teen Mom, 16 and Pregnant.

I mean, this was not a channel for Mensa members, but it was like a bridge too far that the electric Barbarellas were going to be given this airtime just because Sumner Redstone said so. And a lot of the fortunes of everything that he owned, CBS television network and Paramount Pictures and all these studios. I mean, trying to figure out whether or not he was capable of knowing what was going on with his money. Whether these different women that he was associated with were maybe benefiting from the advantage of being connected to Summer Redstone and him not being quite sure about where

all the money was flowing or going to. Was he recognizing these women at all? It was his own daughter, Sherry, who took this whole thing to court. Well, I mean, he hung in there. He said he was never going to die. But it was bound to happen someday,

and it was on August 11th that we lost Sumner Redstone. But until the end of time, we'll have the electric Barbarellas. Barbarellas. Sherry, Sherry baby Sherry, Sherry baby Sherry, Sherry baby Sherry baby Sherry, can you come out tonight Come, come, come out tonight

Sherry baby Sherry baby Sherry Can you come out tonight Tommy DeVito of the Four Seasons Harry, can you come out tonight? Tommy DeVito of the Four Seasons died of COVID-19 complications on September 22nd. But look, Tommy DeVito was 92 years old. Nice.

As we turn the corner here to what would have been the 80th birthday of John Lennon, we're kind of getting to the point where you got to measure, you know, who, who is the oldest living rock star? Oh, let me, can I take a stab at this?

I don't know. How old is Jerry Lee Lewis? Who's going to, but he's not active. He's not performing anymore. Right. Who's going to be like the performer that breaks through the- Tony Bennett's still performing.

Yeah, close enough. I mean, the octogenarian barrier. Who wouldn't call what Tony Bennett does to be rock music? No, no, no. But he was of the rock era, right? He did MTV Unplugged. He did a duet with Evan Dando and an album with Lady Gaga. So close enough. He did a duet with Evan Dando. Album with Lady Gaga. He did a duet with Evan Dando?

I didn't know that. That's cool. Lemonheads. 92 years old. And there's that famous album, Beatles vs. The Four Seasons. That came out of VJ Records. To capitalize on Beatles' breakthrough in America. It was a cash-in album from VJ Records.

And there were The Beatles and Four Seasons pinned against each other. You know, I didn't realize that. Here was Tommy DeVito of The Four Seasons. Like, he was of an older generation, right? The fact that he was like in his 30s by then made him an old man relative to the Beatles of 1963-64. But he made it to age 92, one of the Jersey boys who he lost, Tommy DeVito. This is the end You made your choice

And now my chance is over I thought I was in You put me down And say I'm going nowhere Save me darling I am down but I am far from over Give me something I need it all cause I am running over

Back in the race I'm moving in cause I am getting closer I'm digging in I want it more than anything I've wanted save me darling I am down but I'm just seeing how much of this you can take.

Far from over, even though I think this is where we'll wrap it up for this month's recap. Jackie Stallone, the mother of legendary actor Sylvester Stallone and legendary singer Frank Stallone, who collaborated on that song from the movie Staying Alive, the sequel to Saturday Night Fever. Right. And I would imagine this would have been like a good entrance song for a wrestler along the way, right?

Like this would have been perfect like wrestling entry music. I'm not saying WWF level. It would just be a way of showing your determination to make it through as many rounds as you needed to in the ring before getting a knockout. What a knockout

this song was. The producer of the song, Johnny Mandel, died early this year too. Suicide is painless. You learn a lot, don't you? In these obituary segments? Also, I know Robert Altman made a joke once, I always remember. He said his son wrote the lyrics to that song, Suicide. So Robert Altman, who directed MASH,

his son wrote the lyrics to Suicide is Painless, and Robert joked that his son made more money off the movie than he did for writing the lyrics to the Johnny Mandel song, which is a great jam. Jackie Stallone, I guess you would have seen her as an astrologer on American television? I've seen her whenever in the 80s when you'd watch, I don't know,

Phil Donahue or something like that, Harold Rivera or something, she'd be a frequent guest. I think she had her own 1-900 phone line. What's this guy's name? Frank Stallone? Frank, the other Stallone. Well, I always think of Norm MacDonald

because I think he made a few Frank Stallone punchlines in his time. And you know that Jackie Stallone appeared as a promoter in Glow, the glorious ladies of wrestling, like the actual Glow, not the Netflix reenactment. And Howard Stern would have her like on speed dial. Right. That she was always available. Well, Jackie Stallone, she made it to the age of 98 when she died on September 21st.

Yeah, just two months and a bit away from 99. So rest in peace, Jackie Stallone. We're starting it all over again. I should have pressed record the first time. No, I'm just kidding. I hit the wrong button. Okay, it happens. It happens.

Mark, you came back after far too long an extended absence. This is quite the triumphant return for you. A triumph over adversity, which will allow me to wear my Ridley Funeral Home hat rather than end up in a Ridley Funeral Home casket. It's cooled down a lot since we started recording this podcast, and I think you're going to wear it home. You've got to wear it in the picture.

We're going to be back, what, at the end of October. We're going to, I mean, you're, this is not like the old days of Toronto Mike to where you could schedule and reschedule multiple times. I mean, this podcast fills up fast

and with everything else going on at TMDS, I'm glad to see in this, in this pandemic year that it's continued to be a successful one here for the podcast and beyond. Well, great to have you back. Can't wait for the end of October when I get to see your beautiful face again. Now I got to go home and figure out what I'm doing for the rest of my life. More updates on that soon.

Everybody should go to 1236.ca and sign up for the fantastic weekday newsletter. It drops at 1236 p.m. every day. It's just awesome. I mention it frequently on this show and I really think it's fantastic. So keep that going. And that! And let me know

when you want your own podcast, but kind of in a weird way, I hope you don't because then these episodes will be less special. Like it in a weird way, I hope you don't because then these episodes will be less special. Like it's, you know, I'm conflicted. Well, look, I was kind of out of the loop

with you, right? I mean, we chat all the time about what's going on and there were a number of weeks when I was not in touch and I felt like something was missing. Right.

And all, you know, all those interactions we have are like a buildup to the monthly recap. I'm glad we're back on track to be able to cover what happened in October. Well, make sure you're tuned in tomorrow for the B team. Make sure you don't miss that one. We'll make sure we mention you.

And that, that brings us to the end of our 731st show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Mark is at 1-2-3-6. That can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Mark is at 1, 2, 3, 6. That's at 12,

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They're at Ridley FH. See you all tomorrow with the B team. This podcast has been produced by TMDS and accelerated by Rome Phone. Rome Phone brings you the most reliable virtual phone service to run your business and protect your home number from unwanted calls. Visit RomePhone.ca to get started.