Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - 12:36: Toronto Mike'd #795

Episode Date: February 3, 2021

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

Welcome to episode 795 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. CDN Technologies, your outsourced IT department. Contact Barb, She's Barb at CDNTechnologies.com Palma Pasta Enjoy the taste of fresh homemade Italian pasta and entrees

From Palma Pasta in Mississauga And Oakville StickerU.com Create custom stickers, labels, tattoos And decals for your home and your business ridley funeral home pillars of the community since 1921 and mimico mike learn more at real estate love.ca i'm mike from torontomike.com and joining me for his January 2021 recap. A little bit of February thrown in the mix.

It's 1236's Mark Weisblot. Mike, I did not want to do an episode by Zoom. I wanted to get to the backyard. I needed to feel the energy of taking that trek out to New Toronto and feeling the vibrations that come from being in your presence. But I don't think we could get the weather to cooperate. Part of the problem is that you live down by the lake. Right.

And when it came time to the deadline to decide whether we were going to do this recap close enough to January, I think I had to succumb to the idea of doing it from the same couch where I sit day and night, doing it from the same couch where I sit day and night, working on my 1236 newsletter, other journalism media projects going on all around me, but I've always got time for Toronto Mike. And here in the winter, I think we just passed Groundhog Day, right? We got to wait six more weeks, I think. Is just passed Groundhog Day, right? We got to wait six more weeks, I think. Is that what we learned? I never know. Until we'll start to feel the freedom of the

possibility of having the sun on our faces as we recap what's been going on in the month of media, along with reviewing all the people who died. Now, Mark, I'm sure the March 2021 recap is in the backyard. Like, I'm confident that's going to happen for sure. I don't know about the February 2021. That might be another Zoom. But I'm of the thought that, like, a Zoom with you is better than no you. Like, this is an episode I look forward to every month, and I'm just glad we could do it, even if it's remotely this week.

Here's a jam for us to kick things off. Now I see on the video here, you are dancing in your room. This is Dancing in My Room. Who's the artist recording this song? What's this kid's name? 3-4-7-Aiden, a 17-year-old from Cambridge, Ontario. He was on TikTok showing off his big Amazon Music billboard in empty young Dundas Square. But as with an increasing number of these TikTok rock stars, what you think is just some kid dancing in his room on his own,

in fact, has the backing of a major multinational record label. And, you know, it turns out that kid is signed to Columbia Records. That's like when they used to market Fruitopia as some kind of independent product and you found out it was bottled by Coca-Cola or something like that. It is the oldest ruse in town. And yet we're seeing that with 347 Aiden, another teenager, Tate McRae from Calgary. She's signed to RCA.

There's this Disney star, teenage girl, Olivia Rodrigo. Have you heard of her from your teenage daughter a song called driver's license and then then you find out that she she signed to geffen records they revived that old record label uh again as a way of trying to project some sort of uh artistic integrity uh on the on these teenagers who are using TikTok as their platform for the kids to discover them and, of course, make these dancing in my room videos of their own.

I always like to come to you, Mike, off the top with something that the teens are listening to today. It makes me feel with it here in my fifth decade of living. Did you have a birthday recently? Let's not get into that. You brought it up. I don't. Well, just in case you might have had a birthday.

I'm falling off a cliff. Happy birthday to you, Mark Weisblatt. Whenever that birthday was, I wish you another great year. And thank you for what you do for us. I just want you to know I know of at least three of us. I know I love it. Cam Gordon loves it. You know, I guess those who love it, love it a lot. But what you bring to the GTA

zeitgeist in terms of what you observe in the media and what's next with the different tech channels, etc. Like, to me, as you know, and I've been telling you this forever, you're a key part of the cog in the wheel here. We're lucky to have you. Okay, doing my best.

I mean, one of the projects here going to 2021 was playing a role in relaunching the Canadian Jewish News. And that's a work in progress already with a newsletter out a few times a week and some podcasts on the way. But also this year, I think, I mean, we were anticipating this more of a tipping point for email newsletters, Substack, that it's become a household name this newsletter platform and just uh at the end of january we had twitter getting into the game by launching something called review this get on your radar mike i yeah i know you were upset about periscope going offline it turns out they sacrificed that in favor of adopting this newsletter platform from

the Netherlands. And it's early days, like literally just a week in since they took this thing over. But there's some belief here that through email newsletters and even the ability for some uh subscriptions to take place where people will pay to get a written out version of what folks are tweeting that there's some sort of business model waiting to happen there we also hear a lot about clubhouse have you heard about clubhouse being like a disruptor no of podcasting where it's these these audio meetups that take place and it started off as an exclusive invitation only thing but uh i guess people can invite their friends and it goes viral and more and more people are hearing about it. And what this really comes down to is the idea that like if Elon Musk wants to do an audio chat room with people and this actually happened, he would log on to Clubhouse. He wouldn't have to start his own subscription podcast.

his own subscription podcast. He would be able to use Clubhouse as a way of getting people to gather around, ask him questions, and then maybe turn that into an audio file that could be archived. So we've got Clubhouse, I think, seen as a bit of a threat to the mind share that was taken up with podcasts. We still have to do that state of the podcast industry review.

And another thing, of course, we can't stop hearing about GameStop, how that relates to the Robinhood stock trading app. I think these have all been unique stories here in January 2021. Things that weren't contemplated as much at the end of 2020, going forward into this frightening new post-pandemic world. What's it going to be all about i mean you know there's so much dystopia that goes along with all these potential platforms but email newsletters something that i got started with now like five and a half years ago if you hang around long enough, it turns out that some notion of a business will start to circulate around you. And the assumption is that, much like podcasts, the advertising industry will start to discover this platform. other notions of what could be done in terms of email content,

perhaps with St. Joseph Communications Media Division, who I've been working with on 1236. We will finally get some developments here in 2021. And I think the lesson learned here time and time again, month after month, month after month, episode after episode, as we are no doubt going to be talking about, is the future belongs to media that you can make on your own. Okay, let's talk about this, because I think the hot topic of the week anyway, so I know we're doing a January 2021 recap, but we're actually going to talk a lot about these first few days in February, because here we are. I don't know when Let's Talk Day was for Bell, but it was

not that long ago. It was last week. Usually around my birthday, just to make me feel extra blue. So your birthday comes, Bell Let's Talk. It was everywhere as it is usually every year. And here we are a couple of days removed from that. And I guess it started in Ottawa, but it made its way to Toronto yesterday. And it's still kind of in Toronto, like a dark cloud. But Bell Media is making some substantial cuts to their employee roster here.

So I'll tell you what I know, and then we'll find out what you know, and then we'll discuss what's going on there. So, and again, dozens of quality people whose names you don't know because they work behind the camera, but not behind the mic. These are the behind-the-scenes people. Lots of these people got let go over the last couple of days, and it sucks to lose your job, and I feel bad for everybody. of these people got let go over the last couple of days and it sucks to lose your job and i feel bad for everybody the names that you might know who lost their job um barb de julio fotm barb de julio who had a uh an evening shift on 10 10 news talk 10 10 she got her notice yesterday that her

services are no longer required and after a good decade doing weekends, Ted Wallachian, who's also an FOTM, he got notified his show had been canceled as well. So those are a couple. And then in addition to that, and then we'll turn the mic over to you, Mark. In addition to that, I heard the entire, like the entire news team at 1010, the news division of 1010, gone,

like completely wiped away. What have you heard? I think there still might be some form of a radio newscaster all of a sudden uh an alien voice showed up on uh on the old cfrb doing these newscasts oh from ottawa right from ottawa uh you know it sounded like a voice that maybe wasn't schooled in the style of the radio station. Colton Prell, I think he worked at Global before that. And it was Montreal where they initially wiped away a lot of the newsroom that hung on to – Oh, Montreal, right, not Ottawa. Two of those newscasters. And then they must have figured something similar was coming to Toronto as part of this whole consolidation over at Bell Media.

I mean, where do we begin? It was announced at the beginning of the year that Randy Lennox, the president of Bell Media, would be stepping down. And it sounded like he was doing an adequate job, but all of a sudden, I don't know, was there some drama behind the scenes, some turmoil taking place that was affecting his ability to perform? I heard a little bit of buzz that maybe he was requested to make some severe cuts in 2021. And he wasn't up to the job.

And he would have rather stepped aside than stuck around wielding the axe all around Bell Media. Randy Lennox, he came from the music industry from from universal music where he'd been in charge and bell media had some turmoil of its own because they had a

a uh previous president uh kevin kevin crowe got fired for meddling in ctv news for instructing the newscast about how to report about the interests the telecom business of bce and he was out the door in this multi-million dollar a year job he ended up uh with some kind of soft landing at Sprint. It was a merger with T-Mobile. He made all sorts of money, and I guess, like all great American businessmen, initiated his retirement by tweeting angrily in defense of Donald Trump. That's where Bell Media began.

Bell Media came out of CTV Globe Media. CTV Globe Media, which was partly owned by uh by woodbridge thompson family and tor star and the teachers pension fund had a piece of that that was a the 2000s decade idea of this vertical integration but bell media as we know it is about it's about 10 years old which is where uh the media ctv uh all those radio stations they snapped up from chum and astral the pay tv services hbo and the movie network and it's now streaming on crave all all, all those are tied into the stock price of BCE. Now, we tried to warn you. Well, actually, we didn't. Canadian telecom media content thing probably wasn't going to end well in the sense that the

day would come that these giants that were into selling subscription services, peddling your overpriced cell phone and internet packages were not going to be a good fit for where the media was going, for where people like podcasters were steering the ship. How were Bell and Rogers and Shaw, which is tied to Chorus, how were they going to fit in with all this? Like how could one of these one of these big telecom yachts, you know, compete with the speedboats that were circulating all around from people who were doing their own thing? And in the process, you know, any time you would tweet about commercial radio, invariably there would be people who would say, like, who listens to this stuff anymore? Why do

you care about the comings and goings at these radio stages? Well, first of all, it's entertaining drama, involves names and faces that a lot of people recognize. It's worth charting the history of how these things happen every time there's another round of layoffs. But I think we're reaching the point where BCE, Bell Canada, their media division, they just weren't in the mood to suffer the kind of losses that came from commercial radio anymore i mean there's no cheaper content than playing records on the radio this other layer that they inherited from these stations like cfrb and cjad and cfra and audible Well, this is a costly format to execute. And while initially when they started flipping the formats

over to More Talk Radio, it might have carried its weight and made some money. There's a lot of competition out there. There are a lot of people yapping away online. And as you discuss here with guest after guest after guests and when you talk to people like hebsey about what's happening in sports radio the center cannot hold and at some point i think it was inevitable that there was going to be some kind of purge at a station like News Talk 1010. Unfortunately, for sentimental reasons, it means that whatever they were trying to do to simulate the legacy of CFRB by having like a

full news team doing updates every half hour, reporters in the field, somebody at City Hall, another reporter at Queens Park, when they've got a whole CP24 CTV Toronto News operation happening right down the hall or in the building across the street, the bean counters are wondering, what do we have to pay for all of this anymore? So we said as a result, yeah, here yeah, here are the kind of changes that happen. Okay. So basically, the legacy, I keep hearing, it wasn't my station or anything,

but I keep hearing about, and I'll have conversations with people like Dave Hodge, for example, and we'll hear about this robust, big CFRB newsroom. And I guess even, is it Dave Agar, who when he retired, they named the newsroom after him and trying to keep keeping that legacy alive. And it sounds like gone, all of it. I think Dave even asked his name get removed.

And I think they might have done it already. Like no longer is this newsroom. Yeah, take my plaque off the wall right i don't want to be i don't want to be associated with a newsroom uh that has no newscasters working so good for dave that's a that's that's a cool move by dave there so it sounds like at least look at least this dave agar got in the wave which is now over where he got a send off. He got to retire. Right, right.

And the current newscasters, they let go of most of whom were not there for very long. I mean, look, let's face it. A lot of people headed for the hills before figuring this day would come. It provided an opening for some younger people to get a break in the big smoke. I mean, that's the upside. They got themselves on the radar. They got a taste. Yeah, to get hired somewhere else in Toronto if that could happen.

But it goes back again to the fact that Randy Lennox took a hike. From what I could tell, it was his decision. It was a voluntary move. He wanted to do other things. I think he was a clever guy within what you could do with a telecom-owned media monolith. He came up with some interesting ideas. Let's face it, this is the network of Ben Mulrooney and formerly Jessica Mulrooney. Not a lot of room for snark and cynicism.

You know, anything that he was going to do was, was going to be positive, enthusiastic, you know, supportive of creating a Canadian star system. Randy Lennox leaves. A guy who comes in, has been with BCE, with Bell, for, I don't know, 15, 20 years, Wade Osterman, but this is a guy whose expertise was in selling cell phones. Like he was the guy that had built up that side of the Bell business,

like this Kevin Krull character that came before him. It was somebody who made a lot of money in telecom and was rewarded accordingly. And with Wade Osterman coming in, like entire levels of executives, you know, the whole like C-suite went out the door. Some pretty clever characters on the radio side. Rob Farina, a guy who was the program director of Chum FM for about a decade beforehand, and he was in charge of the iHeartRadio strategy. He's no longer there. Tyson Parker, who came in from the music industry side, they put him in charge of podcasts. Not too sure exactly what he was doing.

He was trying to find a path for this kind of programming at Bell. You got to support the guy. You figure it's good for podcasts if uh uh traditional talk radio stations are trying to convert people into that style of listening so you had to back them up in that regard but we're hearing they don't want anything to do with that they're looking to emphasize paid subscription services and get something like this crave tv on par with netflix and try and scale it up to the point where they've got that many subscribers. And in the tradition of any telecom company, develop more things where people send you money, recurring payments in the mail each and every month.

They see more of a future in this than a commercial-supported broadcast industry. But we've talked about this many times. And then remind me to get back to another name at 1010 before I talk about a couple things at CTV there. But why is Bell in the business of owning these media companies? It sounds like Bell should sell these media companies to an owner that can focus and give a shit about content etc you would think so but uh i guess uh that's how things built up all these companies doing battle with one another the whole idea that's it do they have to be there because rogers is there like how much of this is like didn't we hear it 20 years ago content is king right um you know at the beginning of the year 2000, when AOL Time Warner became a thing and right.

Global Canwest Global started snapping up newspapers. As I mentioned, Bell Globe Media was a structure in which into which CTV was folded along with the Globe and Mail. Okay. I mean, there was money in it. Like, it was just like, we got to own, you know, we're going to own the sports franchises. Well, they are making money, right? Like, this is a fact.

We're going to own the play-by-play people, the sports networks. Okay, Mark. From top to bottom, end to end. Now, Bell Media, they just received a $122 million. They got, I guess, the federal government was given out pandemic labor subsidies,

and they got $122 million. Yeah, yeah. Mike, what do you think? Which optics are worse? Let's Talk Day happening right before these layoffs or the $122 million emergency wage subsidy and paying dividends to their shareholders? attention to these things. That's the thing. I always have to remind myself that the average consumer of this media just doesn't know or care about the... They don't know how the clock is made.

They just want to know what time it is. Yeah, but they know mediocrity. They know what they're not. Do they? Well, look at the numbers. I mean, the attention is slipping away, and having one of these incumbent platforms, I guess, is not the advantage it used to be. Right. You know, he goes off on his own. He gets Uber as a sponsor. He gets, what is it, Moet, Hennessy, you know, like high-end sponsors to back essentially what's like a YouTube version of a community cable access show.

I'd rather have Great Lakes beer and Palma pasta behind me, but please continue. We take what we can get in this world, Mike. I mean, that was a signal. Look, there's a smart, savvy young dude that figures he can go out on his own. I don't think there's any downside because even if it didn't follow through doing this stuff on his own,

he would be respected, I think, in the world of these telecom media companies for as long as they last and i like the idea of somebody going out and rolling their own like it's just i just uh happen to root for that like i mean i'm doing it i like the idea of being an independent you know production house and good on gones i hope it works out for him but one more name from 1010 before we move on this name i have not so on toronto mic.com i've been documenting when i confirm these names people know that are no longer with the company uh like barb and uh ted and a couple of names i'll mention in a minute at ctv toronto news but uh one name that people have

been sending at me like he's gone and i think everyone's basing this like based on the fact that this gentleman's show was not on today and And they're hearing about firing, so they assume it's him. But now none of my sources have said this name. But what do you know about the status of Jim Richards? What do I not know? A cliffhanger, perhaps, to be solved after a recording is done. We'll pick it up next month. Okay, well, stay tuned. Let's hope Jim's okay.

To the best of my knowledge, you're finding another role for Jim. Okay for jim okay so barb julio i enjoyed hearing about her journey from all those years on on the fan 590 going back to 1430 right how she tried to get respect as a as a sports radio host and they kind of relegated her to sidekick traffic reporter. And after they decided they didn't need her around, landed on her feet at the old CFRB. And I think that that's unfortunate. They didn't figure they had any more use for her on the air. But I think a clever young guy, Jamil Javani, making waves there with the show at 10 o'clock, I guess you would describe his point of view as anti-woke. You know, he comes

from the perspective of sticking up for all the racial minorities who don't subscribe to leftist orthodoxy. I think that is an increasingly popular opinion to take. And they must agree with it at Bell because they've now given him like a national 7 to 10 p.m. time slot. Will Jim Richards show up somewhere in that equation, let's say, later on at night. Stay tuned. And that would explain why he's not on any of these lists I keep getting sent to me of victims. Maybe he's going to resurface somewhere else at Bell Media. A clever news guy, Dave McKee, he's the one that got smacked down from the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council on a newscast, ironically enough, for suggesting that regulated Canadian content is something that people don't

want to watch. He editorialized to this effect, and some troll complained complained and the station had to run this this regret like a censure that this was this was uncalled for uh i thought that was brave of of dave uh they the station defended his personal brand he would do this this newscast 6 p.m with uh with mad dog jay mad dog Mad Dog, J. Mad Dog Michaels, Ryan Doyle, both FOTMs. And I thought, in the tradition of the old Howard Stern roundtable newscast with Robin Quivers, which they don't even do anymore. Really? When did that stop?

That was a casualty of the new Zoom era as soon as quarantine kicked in. That was the end of the Howard Stern news. So I think they were inspired by that. They were doing that at 6pm. I thought that was the end of the howard stern news so uh i think they were inspired by that they were doing that at 6 p.m i thought that was one of the best things happening on toronto terrestrial radio guess what it's over because dave mckee is out of a job there two other daves at 10 10 who moved over to 640 did you know there were three daves on cfrb i had no idea i don't know that i could tell them apart they're

all newscasters dave mckee dave woodard and dave bradley no i you could have put a gun in my head these are the daves i know um i think two of the daves are among the ones that saw it coming and moved over well i was thinking of FOTM Siobhan Morris because, of course, she was a longtime member of that CFRB newsroom, and then she kind of just recently got an opportunity at CTV Barry. Hopefully they're not getting the cuts tomorrow, but so far so good for Siobhan. She dodged that bullet.

Okay, look, we went through all the stories here about the great media reckoning of 2020. And you can even stretch back to the Don Cherry when he got fired after his poppy rant. What's the conclusion we came to? Some of this commotion over at Chorus and Global. These telecom media companies are just not equipped for any form of free expression. I mean, it's not a realistic part of the business model because it's never going to help the stock price. Now, you know, Jessica Mulroney was, quote unquote, vindicated by this long, drawn out National Post article by Barbara Kay, who might have been like a family friend.

It wasn't clear what the connection was. You know, this thing was posted online. It was the back-and-forth direct messages with Sasha Exeter. I don't know if you even clicked on this story at all. No, I heard about the story. It was really hard to get through it. And there's some curiosity even from Jesse Brown. He was thinking what was going on here,

that this story didn't get any Twitter attention from the Canadian media party. It was because it was almost impossible to decipher what was happening here. It was just sort of like two influencers, decipher what was happening here. It was just sort of like two influencers, you know, a cat fight on the Instagram DMs. And, you know, I guess there was like an undercurrent here of talking about racism, but that wasn't necessarily the reason that they got into this argument and it turned out that Sasha Exeter kind of leveraged Jessica Mulroney's tantrum to post something that ended up getting her CTV show canceled. I do redo. Right. redo, right? They couldn't move fast enough to take that thing off CTV this summer as soon as

Ben Mulroney's wife was branded some sort of racist. And Ben goes on the air and makes this scripted apology. It sounded like it came from an expert team at Navigator or one of those one of those damage control crisis pr firms i i love i love my wife we played that right on on an episode oh we did it was a highlight mark it was a highlight and uh you know and therefore i'm stepping aside from one of my jobs right and i'm throwing it over to tyrone edwards uh and and he'll be the one doing these sycophantic interviews with the stars after I've just put in my 18 years. I'm voluntarily moving on, and I'll just be on this morning. News show. What's the point of it all? I mean, look, CTV, Bell Media, they couldn't even stick up for their own biggest star. Ben Mulroney, his wife was sacrificed here as a result of having to figure out how to navigate

this new world. Global News Radio, we talked about Supriya Dwivedi handing in her resignation for what she said was harassment on behalf of the listeners who were coming at her with some rather nasty stuff and her claiming, actually filing a complaint with the Human Rights Commission as the employer that they didn't do enough to protect her. And then another host there in Alberta, in Edta in edmonton calgary danielle smith who was a broadcaster and politician turned talk radio host again she announced she's leaving with great fanfare and flourish because of cancel culture um that she's a real right winger and she does not believe based on some of the things that have happened

with other hosts uh that they would have her best interest in mind and stick up for her anymore so what can i say i mean the look the hotline to toronto mike digital services may be ringing off the hook like never before okay speaking of... We find the number of experienced broadcasters who want some advice, right, on what they can do on their own. Well, yeah, reach out if anybody wants some advice at TMDS here. Yeah, reach out, mike at torontomike.com

and we can have a chat about it. Now, before we let Bill off the hook completely, I just want to put a bow on that by saying... Oh, we'll never let them off. Because I have a Rogers thing to ask you about. What else are we going to talk about hook completely, I just want to put a bow on that by saying... Oh, we'll never let them off. Because I have a Rogers thing to ask you about, of course. What else are we going to talk about? Well, I want to... Yeah, I want to...

So, again, yesterday, radio seemed to get it in Toronto, primarily 1010. And today, CTV News gets it. So the big names I know of are Tom Brown and Anwar Knight, who is an FOTM. And they're weather people from CTV News, so I guess they're going to get their weather somewhere else or someone's going to read the weather, but they're gone, those two gentlemen.

So I don't know if you have any Tom Brown or Anwar Knight. Wasn't Tom Brown from Toy Mountain? I used to see ads. Again, I don't watch CTV News. I don't know these people but i do know he seemed very uh exuberant i always felt like he was really like excitable so uh had a lot of i seem to have a lot of energy positive energy and and so is anwar knight i don't know if these are the kind of characters that have a place in this world of telecom media anymore um and i remember anwar going back to

energy 108 right and even um even easy rock and easy 97 cjez right uh i'm a big i'm a big uh anwar historian it was only last february I checked it out because when I learned he was a victim of these cuts, I said, when was Anwar here? It was February 2020. So just before the pandemic kind of hit full steam there. But let's talk about Tim and Sid here for a moment because a lot of listeners are interested. This was like sort of the old news.

This is actually January 2021 news here. So as I understand it, and again, I don't know Tim and Sid that well. I've had like email exchanges with Tim, but I've never, neither of them have made the trip here to be on Toronto Mic'd for some reason, but Sid60 is leaving Tim and Sid so he could

co-host Breakfast Television with Dina. So therefore, there is not going to be a Tim and Sid. It will be Tim and whomever they rotate in and out of there. And Sid's going to do mornings. Okay. So those were, those were two old white guys sacrifice to make way for Sid Sixero.

Right. We had Kevin Frankish. Yeah. Prolific FOTM who was, I guess, delivering the real talk even before he got kicked in the crew. That's true. He was surprisingly candid. Like he knew that day was coming with the Rogers ownership.

And then Roger Peterson moved in. But I suppose there seems... No, Sid Cicero, for the record, he's a white guy, right? Oh, I know. Are we allowed to have opinions on this? for the record he's a white guy right oh i know are we allowed to have opinions on this i feel like he's a white guy uh i think he might be of portuguese descent possibly i don't i don't know but i think he's okay well he's a little bit younger early early to mid 40s uh the tim and sid act okay the irony here is Tim and Sid were strategically positioned to be the air appearance to our favorite topic of all, Bob McCowan, the Bobcat. I put on my shades for the Bobcat talk, even though we're not on video here anywhere, but just so you got your shades on. All right, let's talk about this Bobcat individual.

Well, Bobcat. Did you hear, stop the presses. Did you hear he put Perkins and Elliott on his podcast? That's what I do on Toronto Mic. I put Dave Perkins and Bob Elliott on Toronto Mic. Okay, Bob McCowan, who thinks that he can instantly replicate the success of the Joe Rogan experience by flipping from AM radio to digital platforms, even though we saw him flail and flounder with, okay, you've got five minutes.

Right. And okay, he had 500 viewers on YouTube. Now, a little more of a traditional podcast rhythm going on. But his belief that he's in Canada and he can make 10 percent of what Joe Rogan makes after after Joe Rogan built up this this capital online for 10 years, like instantly, you know, we've we've talked time and time again, and you on your sports media roundtables look. At the end of the day, Bob McCowan benefited from the fact that people get in their car, they would switch on the ignition and he would show up on the radio. Right. And from that, he was guaranteed a certain kind of audience until the end of time. It was Roger's decision to get rid of him and eventually replace him with Tim and Sid

after, like, first they put Tim and Sid on TV up against the Bobcat and then flipped the switch on the radio. I guess it hasn't been working out that they don't have the audience share that they lost. Well, it's possible that Sid... To TSN, Overdrive. Yeah, well, Overdrive seems to be gaining some momentum here.

But it's possible Sid Sixero goes to his bosses and says he wants to do something else. Is that a possibility? I mean, we don't know what happened. Yeah, something about morning national television on Rogers, another telecom media company. At the same time that Bell is laying people off, I think Rogers might have more job openings than ever.

Except I'm not sure what everybody exactly is expected to do or what the attraction is supposed to be. But that's the story right now of state of telecom media. And all I see Painted faces Feel the places I can't read You know that I could use somebody You know that I could use somebody You know that I could use somebody

It's the cover you didn't know you needed. Use somebody. You and all you know and how you speak Oh, these are friends of Drake. It's called Division. DBSN. And

I think playing a bunch of drive-in summertime concerts around Toronto revealed that they're actually kind of popular with this quiet storm sound. Is this the Farley Flex

Ontario Place shows? They might have been tied up in that but I think they figured out how to make a bunch of money on their own. Like Drake, they don't need that Canadian content welfare. Speaking of Canadian content. Division

used somebody and by covering a rock song that a lot of people know. I think it's an easy way to get into this R&B act. And it was one of the songs that I caught on CBC Music, the FM radio station, as they debuted their first ever black music show called the block which now runs in the early evenings with um with angeline tetueo who used to be on on the flow 935 where she was just miss ange

On the flow 935. Where she was just Miss Ange. CBC gave her a surname and an FOTM. JJ Laborde. Is that how you pronounce it? Yes. Who I suggested at one point should be doing like a morning show. Right.

On CBC Music to liven it up with a little bit of that uh high wire act he seems to be uh jj and mel jj and mel seem to be uh allied somehow with uh the dean blundell yeah i think that hurts you most of all that's an fotms i'm can i you know when Dave Agar said remove the plaque can I remove the FOTM title from those two people okay but I know JJ is involved in production of this nightly show on CBC Music

so as we speak they've done two episodes I listened to them both and I think I learned a lot about what was going on yeah with the canadian r&b music scene this is exactly the type of show that the cbc music station should have been doing all along i made a point of putting on twitter just because i think about these things what other kinds of shows should a national public radio pop broadcaster be getting into? Now it's like, I don't know, 12, 12 and a half years since they moved into this new era,

moving away from classical on CBC Music. This evolution is kind of slow i don't even know if i'll live long enough to see them fulfill any of these things but you know i think they should have uh like a retro show where they are self-deprecating about the history of can con i think like a scott turner might be a good person to bring into the cbc uh maybe like a live free form weekend experience like fotm ralph ben murgy used to do when he was on nightlines out of out of winnipeg right back in the back in the mid 80ss. Why not something like that? I think they should have a show that explains the young people's music of today. To those of us who are getting on in years and want to learn a little more about it. Why should it be left to me to bring the TikTok hits to your podcast?

I think what would go a long way, and i was once involved in pitching a show like this uh for gene volitis to host wow although that didn't get very far but uh look it was a brilliant idea then and they they should still do it now tune in to cbc for an hour and they'll give you a crash course for all you aging gen xers everything you need to know about what your kids are listening to. That's another service CBC Music could provide. And I think they should just bring right back Brave New Waves with Brent Bambury, who is already on the CBC payroll. I think they will get so much goodwill if they just put that show back on. And I know like Michaelael barclay who was

involved with it during its death throes uh you know i guess a bit of personal disappointment that they didn't back up the idea after it'd been around for for decades uh they were like cowardly about doing that adventurous late night programming there but why not bring back brent do do new episodes of brave new waves and and dust off some of the archives there are my there are my other ideas for music which i think will will mostly just continue as a figment of my imagination as i as i listen to radio stations from elsewhere instead now someone based on twitter that i know does a lot of listening like me to non-commercial radio stations from other cities and countries errol nazareth who chuck d spoke about in uh his uh toronto mic appearance and uh errol's attention is diverted from the CBC, knows that you can't subsist on Canada's public broadcaster alone.

So I know because he's always sharing these tips about what he's listening to elsewhere. paying Canadian for my public broadcaster to try and wrangle my attention away from radio stations in places like Minneapolis where I'm tuning in to stay on top of what's going on. But Errol Nazareth

doing what he can. They gave him his own national one-hour show. He was already doing one locally in Toronto. He's very good. Frequencies. That's the name of the show he's doing. I really like Errol Nazareth and listening to him talk about music. So there's an endorsement.

An opportunity for him as well. So look, I mean, it's great, long overdue to bring in these ideas like more multicultural approach to music programming, enough of like Kathleen Edwards and Sarah Harmer. I don't think we need that as a full-time radio frequency experience. There are other sounds, other things to get into.

And I would have higher hopes for CBC music, but at the same time, look, as far as you hear at a CBC and what's going on with the CBC president, Catherine Tate, who was caught by Canada land, slumming it in her, in her house in Brooklyn through the, through the summer and fall to, to take care of, of her, of her ailing husband. But, but at the same time, you could, you could tell there was a

bit of a cover-up going on because they they tried to rationalize what she was doing there what she doing running the cbc from a from a brooklyn brownstone and then there was a story in the past month of uh i mean this was this was even more elaborate than the uh jessica mulrooney drama involving the cbc winnipeg manitoba reporter who uh lost his job after he tweeted about uh don cherry did you were you able to follow any of this no off my radar missed it amar khan um he's the one that they got rid of and they they did an investigation and it it turned out that behind the scenes it was a conspiracy involving like multiple employees of the canadian broadcasting corporation who were trying to find evidence that would back up the idea that he was uh he was a rogue journalist working at the cbc and through these private whatsapp messages they dug up about him

on his work computer uh that these various levels of management and a colleague of his were trying to make a case to snitch on him and get him fired. And now the original snitch behind it all did not lose his job. And, you know, I don't want to get too conspiratorial from my end, but I think it has a lot to do with the fact that the CBC doesn't want to discourage people who work in their ranks, like rooting out rogue employees, and that you should actually say something if you see something. And if it turns out that somebody in your ranks is being offensive, that you should report it to your manager and your manager's manager. It's all a mess. And you read and take in this story and you think, who would want to work and have anything to do with these people? Mike, I'm willing to sacrifice

all my brilliant ideas for CBC Music if it relieves me from ever having to work in an environment like this. Mark, I'm going to cheer you up here with some good news from Great Lakes Brewery. So that's our favorite craft beer. And I don't know if you caught wind of this, but they're going to open up a second location. This is big news.

So the one and only location for the past few decades has been in Southern Etobicoke. Now, I always say down the street from the Costco near Royal York and Queensway. And they're going to open up... They're at Adamson Barbecue. Yeah, that's right. Down the street from the barbecue joint.

But they're going to open up a new shop. It's like Lakeshore and Jarvis. Probably they chose Jarvis because that's my youngest son's name. I think that's probably the reason. But this is kind of exciting to have a second. And I like this location because it's, you know, it's east of Yonge. So you're on the other side of Yonge. And I like this location because it's, you know, it's east of Yonge.

So you're on the other side of Yonge. But it's still, because it's nice and south, it's a very easy bike ride for me. So shout out to Great Lakes. We'll have more news on the new location. And I'll find out if when, you know, this pandemic gets the, you know, fuck out of Dodge, if we can have a TMLX at the new location, which would be kind of cool. So stay tuned, Mark. I know when you're back in my backyard,

I'll have some cold Great Lakes beer for you. Who else? What else? I got more stickers for you. StickerU.com. They're in Liberty Village, and they're online at StickerU.com. Get your decals, your temporary tattoos,

your stickers, your badges. Just an amazing company, great people, and quality stickers, like just fantastic quality. So thank you, StickerU. Thank you, Palmapasta, as always. Support Palmapasta at palmapasta.com. They're in Mississauga and Oakville. Here's some exciting news for you, Mark.

There's a new sponsor of Toronto Mic'd. We're on the third day of February, and this is the third episode I got to mention. Mike Majewski, he's in the know in Mimico. He's a real estate agent with Remax. If you visit realestatelove.ca, you can learn more about Mimico Mike, as I call him, and reach out to Mimico Mike and tell him Toronto Mike sent you. That'll really help the show. Barb Paluskiewicz has a podcast. So if you're interested in Tech Talk, they call it No Tech Talk. No is K-N-O-W.

So subscribe to No Tech Talk. And it's a great podcast. I listen to it every week. And Mark Saltzman was the most recent guest. So check out Barb talking to Mark. He's a future FOTM, by the way. We're working on him coming on this show.

Last but not least, Mr. Wise Blot, Ridley Funeral Home. You, my friend, no one can see this but me, but you are wearing the Ridley Funeral Home toque. Finally! And I'm not even outdoors. So hopefully you'll have it on when you are outdoors with me, and hopefully that's at the end of February or early March. Let's hope Mother Nature cooperates.

But Ridley Funeral Home, fantastic partners of Toronto Mic'd. They're at 3080 Lakeshore. That's at 14th and New Toronto. And you can pay tribute without paying a fortune. Learn more at RidleyFuneralHome.com. Here we begin the memorial section of Toronto Mike. This is brought to you by Ridley Funeral Home. And here's some nice jazz. Tell us who we lost.

Oh, I think the first Toronto celebrity death of 2021. January 2nd, a guy named Larry Green. He was a DJ for the first decade of Jazz FM, 91.1. But I first knew who Larry Green was from CFNY, because back in the day when they had to do all that specialty music programming and jazz instrumental radio shows that, through a few different iterations at one point. Larry Green, who was the head of promotions at Warner Music Canada, who had worked at one point beforehand as a DJ at Chum FM, hosted one of the early music shows at City TV. And there was Larry on CFNY somewhere in the late 80s, early 90s,

doing his show called Out of the Blue. Out of the Blue. And so with all his history uh behind him uh working for warner music uh he ended up uh around 60 years old i guess when he turned to radio and did that every day in Toronto on the old CJRT because he was considered the successor to Ted O'Reilly of the jazz scene. And it was Larry whose voice we heard on there. And that's somebody who was heard and heard about a lot in Toronto. And I'm not saying, look, he got a tribute article in the Toronto Star.

One of those full-fledged obitu obituaries are back to doing those again. But a life well lived in the Toronto music industry. We lost him January 2nd, age 80 out of the blue, Larry Green. You're not shy, you get around You wanna fly, don't want your feet on the ground Just stay up, you won't come down You wanna live, you't move to the sound.

Got fire in your veins, burning hot, but you don't feel the pain. Your desire is insane, you can't stop until you do it again Sometimes I wonder as I look in your eyes Maybe you're thinking of some other guy But I know, yes I know how to treat you right That's why you call me in the middle of the night You say it's urgent So urgent That takes me back. Foreigners urgent.

Foreigners Urgent. Michael Fonfara, a Toronto keyboardist who played with Lou Reed for a bunch of years. That was, I think, in the lead of his memorial on a website like rollingstone.com because I think it took a certain intestinal fortitude to work as the band leader for Lou Reed. It's a job that only the strongest could have survived from, including Barenaked Ladies, the artist Kevin Hearn from Toronto. But before Kevin had the job in the late 70s, it was Michael Fonfara.

So here was a keyboard player who headed from Toronto to Hollywood and toured, recorded with the electric flag. There was also Supergroup, Elektra Records, uh rhinoceros and uh they had a hit single called apricot brandy which had a co-writing credit for for michael fawn farah rough trade the original incarnation of rough trade had him as him as the keyboardist at the time. I think he left a dispute over money, wasn't getting paid, went back to work with Lou Reed again.

But then came the opportunity to do the keyboard textures on the Foreigner song called Urgent. And so there's a little piece of Toronto on this. Did you ever know that? No, this is the stuff I love, so I had no idea. No idea. And look, I mean, Foreigner, like this track, the credits for it is a whole

super group on its own. You had Junior Walker with a sax solo, and the other sax parts played by Mark Rivera, who was Billy Joel's sax player, still is to this day. Thomas Dolby, who was the keyboard wizard on that Foreigner 4 album. Michael Fonfara in there as well. So it's like not only did you have the group Foreigner,

but you had this whole other band responsible for this song, which maybe helps explain why it's so awesome. And look, to this day, Foreigner is still doing concerts, at least pre-pandemic, and sometimes doing shows with no original members at all. And Mick Jones sticking up for the fact that this was his vision for these types of songs, that he chose, he orchestrated, he's responsible for his hand-picked successors on the group, that they're going for it to be like the first band that carries on with no original members.

to be like the first band that carries on with no original members we'll see if if mick jones ever takes to the stage again he did well enough well enough to retire so michael fanfara uh returned to toronto and uh in the 21st century uh a lot of performing with the down child blues band so there there's a line between apricot brandy by rhinoceros lou reed and rough trade uh into downchild in the toronto blues scene and the foreigner song urgent so michael von fara died january 8th at age 74. Now, because you mentioned Down Child and you mentioned Rough Trade, I'm just going to shout out yesterday's episode of Johnny Dovercourt

because we did this great walking tour, in our minds, of course, of some Toronto venues, past and present music venues, and those two bands got special shoutouts yesterday, so tune into that. Alright, we're going to try a few new weekly segments now

on the show, and this one, we're calling it Blog Off! It highlights two of the best blogs in the world. Now, a technical difficulty, Mark, is that i see now i had only 16 seconds of a much longer clip but uh you want me to uh grab a longer clip it only take me a few seconds if you want me to yeah give it a shot look that was that was kathy shadle who uh died tragically in January. Here we go. All right, we're going to try a few new weekly segments now on the show, and this one we're calling it Blog Off.

It highlights two of the best blogs in Canada, Five Feet of Fury and Blazing Cat Fur. And believe me, millions of people over there are going to these two blogs. They're extremely influential the five feet of fury herself is our special guest kathy shadel hi now this t-shirt is brand new apparently yes i just got it yesterday in time to wear it on the show and i i took it i walked all the way across downtown toronto and i only got one response and it was a cute blonde young, young construction worker going, right on, which is the only time a construction worker has ever even looked at me sideways in 50 years. Yes, and apparently he's outside bound with that tape,

and you're taking him home with you. Oh, yeah, totally. It's not racist if it's true. Well, there you go. I mean, there's a reason that Germans are the ones bailing out the Greeks and not the other way around. Who gave us democracy? Okay, Kathy Shadle.

Okay, now there's Michael Corrin on Sun News playing the character of Michael Corrin that Michael Corrin himself today regularly disavows. In fact, Michael Corrin is so embarrassed about how he acted in the Toronto Canadian media for so many years that he will never stop apologizing

for it. But once upon a time, he was one of the primetime anchors on the Sun News Network and somebody that he brought on the air was a woman that was known for being a blogger named Kathy Shadle. She is not someone who is easily revered in polite company due to her inflammatory political rhetoric.

And guess what? She perfectly liked it that way. And that was part of what she perpetuated, I think, as a real media pioneer. But again, not in a way that was going to get her a lot of cocktail party invitations, a way that was going to get her a lot of cocktail party invitations saying a lot of the kinds of opinions that people would not want to publicly endorse um but she had her own style very much influenced by punk rock that she would speak about growing up in hard scrabble hamilton and being inspired by listening to the sex pistols counting down the days to turning 18 and getting out of town i i think uh she spoke often about how her her ideal dream life was one where she never had to leave the house, that she could just sit there all day on the computer, not have to interface with society in the process. She was a perfect fit

for ghostwriting, the Weekly World News columnist Ed Anger. Now, if you were into tabloids, if you were someone like the movie director John Waters, who discovered the black and white weekly world news, that we're talking about the newspaper that was famous for Bat Boy. Right. And, you know, the exaggerated legacy of tabloid journalism. Well, at one point they stopped printing black and white paper. Nobody was buying it anymore. They tried out a website. And I think, yeah, it was maybe a case of getting in on something a little bit too late, but Kathy would have definitely considered it an honor to take over the job of ghost writing this curmudgeonly column by Ed Anger. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and at that point wrote that

she knew that she had limited time on this obituary on her website, which I guess she wrote herself. Kathy did not lead a particularly quote unquote full life, her existence having been compromised mostly of a series of unpleasant surprises. And that consisted of struggling with lupus. But at one point she tried to become like a professional Canadian poet, underwritten by grants from the Canada Council. And I think much like Michael Corrin switched teams from right to left, Cathy had a lot of fun, I guess, Kathy had a lot of fun, I guess, reflecting on the fact that she would be showing up at these 1980s protests against nuclear war. And that ultimately she saw herself as a hypocrite and took comfort in this world of inflammatory web logging. And so I would say it might be dangerous to pronounce her as an influence on my world view, but I'd say I got a lot out of reading Kathy Shadle and even getting to know her a little bit.

Kathy Shadle and even getting to know her a little bit. Mark Stein, the columnist of multiple accents at once. He also took her under his wing and she wrote movie reviews for his website. But look, I mean, I know, Mike, this is not really your taste. This is like, you know, the danger zone of libertarian right wing politics. But it was it was sad to hear that, you know, one of the people that that was a pioneer in making this world click in Canada for so many years, uh, got really good at fighting online. Uh, Kathy Shadle, uh,

who died at age 56 on January 9th. Thank you. There's no point in asking, you'll get no reply I've just seen it, but I don't decide I've got no reason, it's all too much They'll always wonder How too much. There are white wonders. Not too much. We're so pretty, oh, so pretty. We're vacant.

We're so pretty, oh, so pretty. We're vacant. Don't ask us to retain, because we're not all vacant. Okay, so that's for Kathy Shadle. Pretty vacant by the Sex Pistols. Another media oddball, I think, who we lost here in the first month of 2021. It turned out he was a writer in the big leagues. A Toronto star television columnist named Jim Bodden. Firstly, I read his blog and I loved him in Star Week. Jim Bodden originally got the TV, the TV beat, in Hamilton, Ontario, at the Hamilton Spectator.

I think before he was just, you know, in the glory days of 1960s newspapering. He broke in, work, the amount of manpower that was required to generate a daily newspaper from the perspective of somebody who creates a daily media product, multiple ones, from sitting on my couch. We will never again get to experience this idea of a big Globe and Mail newsroom with hundreds of people clickety-clacking away to work on your morning newspaper. But Jim was anonymously one of those young guys. The Hamilton Spectator needed a TV columnist. I think it was Jack Batten was the guy that the star hired and that created an opening they needed someone new and Jim got the job and spent the

1970s in Hamilton Ontario as the go-to guy on the TV beat at the time just like today when Hamilton Ontario had exactly one television station, and best known for a show like

Party Game. Actually, I have, yes. I'm sorry here. This one came in late here, but I do have the Party Game opening for us here. Stand by. Hi, Billy! Hi, I'm Hi, Billy. Hi.

Do you think this will spoil the illusion that I'm doing 45 miles an hour? Boy, you wrecked the whole thing. I worked on this all night. Saved that all night. It's time for a television zaniest half hour, Party Game. Now here's that Party Game man, Bill Walker. Thank you. Thank you.

Welcome everybody to another edition of Party Game, Wednesday to be exact. Now, in a world where a charades show on TV with Billy Vann and Dinah Christie was the local idea of showbiz, maybe you had to get a little more creative when it came to the idea of being a television columnist and covering the media. the media and so it was through fotm bill brew that i learned a little bit more about uh how jim bought in kind of pioneered the idea of flying down to hollywood and crashing uh the american television critics press tour and the reason they let him in was because they thought okay you're in hamilton you're close enough to buffalo that you're considered part of that market for channels two, four, and seven. And as a result, he was able to be invited to all these junkets that they did every year and seemed to gravitate towards those old stars

of 50s and 60s television over whatever was happening. At the moment, he spoke excitingly about having been invited to dinner at Lucille Ball's house one year, rather than hobnobbing with the stars of Three's Company that he preferred living a little bit in the past. As a result then, when he got called up to the Toronto Star to become their prime time columnist, as someone who would have been familiar with his writing back to the 80s and 90s, I would have figured Jim Bodden for a lot older than 75 when he died. Right. Because his tastes really belong to the past.

That doesn't mean he was out of touch and on hip. In fact, it was Stefan Brogren, Snake of Degrassi, who credited Jim Baudin with saving the show from this like Sunday afternoon, CBC obscurity and turning it into a primetime hit just by championing it in the newspaper by saying, you know, this is a show that deserves more attention and more exposure. Jim Borden was right.

If I'm connecting the dots here, we owe the presence of Drake to Jim Baudin, if I connect these dots. You might as well. Give him some credit. And look, I mean, he was doing this blog up until the month that he died. And yeah, in this old school, newspapering way, a lot of anecdotes living on there at jamesbauden at blogspot.com Oh, I enjoyed it.

Like it was, I subscribed to the RSS feed and you know, I loved it when I saw there was a new Jim Bauden thing because I just think he, he was, you know,

a guy covering all that stuff I still give a shit about. So just, Well, a lot of nostalgia for what, what used to be and the way things were. Now,

you know, we talk here all the time about Star Week and how, like, I guess it was a ritual among a certain type of young man. I've never heard a woman say that she read the TV guide voraciously. But I think between you, me and Ed Conroy and Stu Stone and Cam Gordon and Tyler Stewart. I don't know. We could we could we could recite everything that we memorized from right from reading the newspaper TV Guide and Jim Bodden, his junket interviews figured in there. But, you know, a lot of longing for how things used to work when it was a much smaller scene, when he would have that kind of clout. As a guy writing about TV and the newspaper, I also keep in mind that, you know, he got packaged out of the star. At least, you know, he got a proper farewell around 2008. Around 2008, it was my pal Vinay Menon that had replaced him as the Daily TV column, although I don't know that Vinay was as much into doing it. Keep in mind, we're in this era of peak TV. You've got to give a lot of bandwidth in your brain to be able to have an informed opinion about so many shows that are going on right now. I saw a promo for this online chat that the Globe and Mail was doing with John Doyle and Bill Breu.

And once again, when you talk about media stereotypes, these are guys of a certain age, a particular disposition, but they might be the only professionals in town who have stayed on the job with that dedication, right? Like sitting down, if you hand them a screener for a binge watch TV show that takes 12 hours. These are the guys that are willing to do it. I mean, I don't, I, you know me, I can't last more than five minutes. You've watched all of The Wire. Yeah, I'm on my third round. I could barely get through one episode. Oh, I'm on my third round with my oldest.

It's fantastic. Hey, Mark, I gotta ask you though, you're lying down now, is that right? No, I'm not lying down. Okay, just because now I've noticed the mic is brushing up against your collar a little bit. So I just want to make sure people hear these words of wisdom here.

Wouldn't it be funny if I did this episode actually lying on the floor? I was trying to find out what happened. I thought maybe gravity was bringing it down. I thought you were lying down. What's going on? Mike, I'm saying important things here. It's disturbing to me that they weren't all picked up. What I'm trying to say is just like my other advice for the future media, I think there's an opportunity here for a younger person to become a television critic in Canada by virtue of the fact that it's only those guys, Briou and Doyle, who are willing to do it at this point in time. But it does require an attention

span that I do not have. But if somebody decided to start their own thing on Substack or whatever, reviewing television in an arch cynical way, I think they would get somewhere. I think there's an opening. And it's not just because Jim Baudin died on January 24th at age 75. The dance tools are cranking And someone needs a spanking Speaking of poor quality audio, here we are. Were we supposed to do better than that? I thought to commemorate the electric circus that I found the theme song from the show on YouTube. We might as well have played the electric circus cowboy,

theme song from the show on YouTube. We might as well have played the Electric Circus Cowboy. Kay Pompei. Summertime, Summertime. Why? Because the legacy of the Electric Circus, the man responsible

for bringing that brand into our lives, a New York nightlife impresario named Jerry Brandt. He died of COVID-19 on January 16th. Now, the Electric Circus, 1967, New York City. It was this concept for a psychedelic nightclub. City. It was this concept for a psychedelic nightclub.

And he ended up exporting the idea to Toronto. And you know where the electric circus was located. Can I guess? 99 Queen Street East. What later became the home of

City TV and the first few years of much music originated as this hippified environment that was

in fact brought to Toronto courtesy of Jerry Brandt because he figured Toronto was becoming a hip and happening hang out in this go-go environment. John Ruddy, he wrote that 99 Queen Street East is not to be confused with 999 Queen Street West. Which is, I guess, a joke you could get away with. I feel like at some point... Back in 1969.

Yeah, at some point they actually changed that address to 1001 because there were far too many jokes, I think, tied to it. Yeah, what is now Cam H. Right. And so they're, you know're hanging out with all the young hippies, some of them scantily clad.

Toronto, I guess, got a little taste of the kind of environment that would have been synonymous with Andy Warhol out in the East Village of New York City where all these rock bands played. Certainly the smell of marijuana was prominent in the air at 99 Queen East back then as Toronto got a taste of the electric circus and so uh isn't it funny that um that that name lingered it it hung over city tv for all those years that when they moved to 299 queen west one of the first new shows that they instituted there was called the electric circus and that people by that point of a certain age i think i think i would have known what that was they they under

they understood they understood the reference like the show with monica deol and george log And George Logajanis was with its Euro dance, Euro trash music, like a reincarnation of what was originally attempted by Jerry Brandt going into the 1990s. And that brings us to Great Lakes Brewery brewing an electric circus beer with Kay Pompei, the cowboy on there. Would you say that the electric circus beer was a byproduct of Toronto Mike? Oh, 100%. Absolutely. For sure. The obsessions that we talk about here culminated in this brew. Oh, without a doubt. I'm taking full credit for that one. The Summertime Summertime Exposé

with, you know, Dalton's dad. Yeah, Kay Pompei. And yeah, that's absolutely 100%. Even, of course, you know, he blessed the cover of the Electric Circus beer. And I'm also taking credit for all those deep dives with Joel Goldberg,berg etc uh and maestro fresh west on the uh the origin of uh electric circus without a doubt but maybe there were not

enough freaks to make the electric circus work in toronto because it was it was relatively short lived yeah i mean i don't remember the electric circus at 99 Queen Street East. Like, I don't. Oh, well, look, for your time and mine. OK. So over over a over a half century ago. Right. And, you know, along the way, like they renovated it, they tried to make it more of a draw. But, you know, from from 19 1968 until 1970, that was the run of the electric circus in Toronto. But look, Jerry Brandt, things turned out better for him because he opened a more legendary nightclub in New York City called The Ritz, which became a rock club synonymous with new wave acts like Duran Duran.

Anybody who is breaking on MTV, that would be the first stop on their tour to conquer America. And, and the Ritz, the Ritz nightclub, and the Ritz nightclub, which carried on through the 80s and into the early 90s. So Jerry Brandt, dead just before he would have turned 83 on January 16th. The other day, a gentleman walked into the store by the name of Mitch Silverstein, CA founding partner of SBLR, accounting firm, I guess. That's

who they are. Chartered accountants. And he says, will you give me a plug? I've been buying you for five years. His son, Brandon walked in and he says he was finally thrilled to meet me at great Corey's men's clothing store. So he brought his young son in and he was eventually his son. I'll come in and buy too. That's what we built. Father, son, grandfathers, it's all part of the business. And when he bought, basically our Roberto suits suits looked after by Jerry Baker because he knows it's the best deal in the country. And he's a good CA and a good partner. And you can do the same thing. When you come in here and buy those suits at two for $7.98 or two for $8.98 if you're a size 48 to 54, made in Canada, the best. And if you don't want to buy that, go up and buy a boss suit.

They're on sale. Go buy a Canale. Buy anything you would like. The heat is so hot. Business is good. I keep telling people, buy shirts for Christmas. 1530 off, some at half, put them away. Corrie's, ready for you. United Greek Town, 569 Danforth Avenue, Corrie's.com. died when? At the end of January at age 86. The Duke of the Danforth, best known for buying all that radio airtime where he would just riff on whatever. That was, I think, the only spot of his that was preserved on YouTube. It was whoever he was name-dropping in there thought it was important to upload the spot. Right. And I don't know if it mattered if you could even keep track of what Saul was talking about. He was doing these commercials to, I guess, excite the people who he was mentioning. And if nobody else understood what he was saying, he didn't really care.

There'd be another commercial another day. And he did these commercials for decades. And they came out of him being invited on 1050 Chum on the John Gilbert talk show that there was Saul Corman with his with his suit store for men that, you know, he set up as the young Jewish tailor in Greektown in Toronto that he that he took over this business from his dad. And he realized he had a taste for this idea of going on the radio and taking calls and giving men advice on how to dress and how to shop. And the Taste of the Danforth Festival, which, well, I mean, like everything else, we missed it in 2020. I think it's the kind of thing when the pandemic ends that all those haters of Taste of the Danforth

will suddenly appreciate the experience of cramming onto the street to see Frank D'Angelo blasting a few of his crooning tunes and eat some overpriced souvlaki. But Saul was big on championing that neighborhood. And, you know, he was into the Greek style, what it represented. And it was all good for business because we heard him on the radio so many times that everybody remembered the address.

569 Danforth Avenue. Without a doubt. I listen to a lot of fan 590s, so I heard a lot of Saul Corman coming at me here. Yeah, there was an example of personal branding. He also bought and paid for his own newspaper column. He also bought and paid for his own newspaper column, ran the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Corrie's Comments.

Again, more name dropping. A certain style of business that we may never see again, although it's maybe not that much different from what people are expected to do today on social media. maybe not that much different from what people are expected to do today on social media. He's just the one that used the old school radio and print to make it happen. And so right up to Toronto Mayor John Tory, who I heard going back to the issue of the Bell Media layoffs, it was John Tory addressing them with Mike Stafford on AM640. And John Tory said Saul Corman was a reflection of the power of the medium. Now, John Tory also said that the Bell Media layoffs were like a temporary measure. And as far as he could tell, everybody who got laid off from radio newscasting

will be able to get their job back someday. Right. I think that might be a long shot. But Saul Corbin, the kind of guy who believed in a style of broadcasting, and I think a lot of people in radio owe the fact that they got a paycheck to his specific advertising style. We lost Larry King. Larry King was like Saul Corman if Saul Corman had a show on CNN rather than selling suits.

They seem cut from the same cloth, except also in the case of Larry King, we had a serial monogamist who might have been the most frequently married man in America. I mean, is there anyone else who could say that they were married to seven, seven different women? And yet, and yet his, his final wife,

Sean Southwick, he ended up married to right until the end, but not without its share of tabloid drama. Involved allegations involving Larry and her sister, about Sean and the Little League coach, and that they had legally separated but never divorced, which allowed her to play the role of the widow along with their two sons who were in their early 20s. So Larry, along with being married multiple times, having multiple generations of children in a way that puts Toronto Mike to shame. That's for sure.

I mean, to the point where two of Larry's older kids died in the past year, along with the fact that he was having all sorts of health problems and ended up in a coma. Not a great time at the end there for Larry, but he kept on broadcasting. He even adjusted to this era of doing these Zoom interviews about the U.S. election right up until November, but ended up with COVID-19, although it wasn't what he died of at age 87 on January 23rd. Here's my story about being in the same room as Larry King.

He gave one of those luncheon speeches in Toronto in 1993. And as a cub reporter, I managed to crash this thing. My dad was one of those people, and they all kind of emerged after Larry died, who had these memories of listening to his all-night radio show on the Mutual Broadcasting System, to his all-night radio show on the Mutual Broadcasting System, where he would do his open phone America late into the night, 3, 4, 5 a.m., for all the insomniacs out there like my dad, who got into this idea of Larry on the radio. And Mike, you talked about that with someone else. When going to a call, not naming the person, but naming their city. Right. Yep.

And the previous host passed away. And on the overnight show, there was Larry who put in like 20 years of working in Miami, was radio station janitor and just threw him on the air one day. Long John Nebel, he dropped dead and they gave the show to Larry King, 1978. And then the rest was history, that he did this all night show.

Larry King also appeared on CNN there he was doing double duty and uh quite dramatically uh in uh in the late 80s um well while he was at work uh ended up having a heart attack and maybe that was a reflection of the fact that he that he was he was burning the candle from both ends and at that point i think larry uh larry pulled back from this idea that he'd be on cnn and then subsequently go to the studio washington dc and do this all night radio show 1993 larry comes to toronto to do one of these speeches that he was no doubt being paid uh well to five figures four and i think it was typical of his style i don't even think he gave a speech right just like i'm here answer i'll ask any question i'll give you an answer um you know being paid like hundreds

thousands of dollars a minute and in the in the process of of introducing himself, he announced the fact that he had just gotten engaged to the woman who would have been wife number seven. Her name was Rama Fox. The people were applauding in excitement, Mazel Tov, Larry King is getting married again. I don't think the irony was lost. These Larry King is getting married again. I don't think the irony was lost. These Larry King fans might have known that it had happened many times before. Rama Fox, who was some kind of spiritual priestess or something, they ended up breaking up. And she gave an interview in which she said that she dumped Larry. And Larry turned around and sued her for saying that

because he wanted the world to know that he dumped her. Quite a character. And there you go. I was in the room when Larry King announced his engagement to one of the women who he did not end up marrying. What are the odds of that? That's like one of those Twitter threads you see. What's your loosest claim brush with fame?

That's pretty loose, but I'm going to accept it. Larry King, what a character. But lived a long, long life. Interesting life. How old was he again? 87 years old. It was a slander lawsuit. I don't know how it ended up.

But, you know, it turned out he got married again to this Mormon lady. Had a couple of kids. And I think they got to live with their dad a lot longer than they thought. Not a thing that I have Not a thing that I see Till I fall on your love Phil Spector! A song called Try Some, Buy Some, which was his last attempt to make a record with his wife, Ronnie Spector.

Try Some, Buy Some. This was going to be part of her comeback on Apple Records. A song written by George Harrison. written by George Harrison. They were all lined up to relaunch Ronnie Spector and like so many other things that Phil Spector was involved with in his career, it came to a crashing halt, presumably due to issues with his own personality.

George Harrison reclaimed that song, Try Some, Buy Some, and put it out on his on his own album uh the following the following year but look i mean phil specter in addition to uh making those those little symphonies for the kids starting with to Know Him Is To Love Him, inspired by the inscription on his father's tombstone, and playing a big part in the pre-Beatles

era of American music that inspired them all the way over in Liverpool, ended up being the main collaborator of the Beatles for a couple of years. Starting with the fact they handed over to him the tapes from the movie Let It Be, much to the chagrin of Paul McCartney,

who still has not completed the process of avenging what they did to his idea. We're still waiting on that get-back movie, recut by Peter Jackson, coming out in 2021. This will be the last stake in the heart of Phil Spector to reclaim what he did to the Beatle records. But John Lennon, George Harrison took a liking to him, at least to the point where they had him in the studio doing whatever the albums, all things must pass.

And that primal scream, plastic ono band album and the, the John Lennon album. Imagine, imagine there is no heaven, which adopted the template of the long and winding road and became John's anthem. But those relationships fizzled out again because Bill Spector was a little bit of a loose cannon. And maybe a little bit too fond of firearms.

Yeah, maybe a lot of a loose cannon. And yet he made an album with Leonard Cohen, Death of a Lady's Man, which came out in 1977, counts as one of those cult classics. And maybe a reflection of personality clash. And yet they got a record out of it and working with the Ramones, but just generally kind of fading away and hiding in his house. And so when we heard that Phil Spector was charged with murder of actress Lana Clarkson, I don't know if it came as that much of a surprise. He claimed it was an accidental suicide. The evidence mounted to the fact that

Phil Spector was really into irresponsible use of the Second Amendment. Second Amendment. And the jury verdict found him guilty after years and years of trying to fight this in court and then, you know, spent the last dozen years of his life behind bars and died on January 16th at age 81. A lot of controversy out there, Mike, you caught wind of it. I mean, it was like, how much respect should you give with this guy? You know, when it came to writing obituaries and, and talking about his death, should a guy who was convicted with murdering a woman who he who he innocently had over to his house? Should you should you revere his resume in the same light as you would if none of this ever happened? Well, you sure can't bury the lead there.

Like, you know, yes, he was an accomplished producer and you could speak to those claims, but you cannot like sort of go with that as your lead story and then somewhere in the middle or at the end, oh yeah, and also he was convicted of murdering a woman. It's got to be, yeah, it's definitely one of those great questions. to be yeah it's definitely one of those great questions like just the do you disregard the art created by a person who has these uh massive uh flaws like so you got to give equal weight to to both columns i think well we've we've got uh the wall of sound heard on all those records like the righteous brothers and uh ike Ike and Tina Turner, uh, Phil Spector, who was, who was fond of, of recording, uh,

recording in mono unchained melody. I guess that would count as like his last hit record when it had a revival in 1990 from the movie ghost. Right. But then the righteous brothers did their own new remake version, again, maybe to disassociate themselves from Phil. At one point you had on the Billboard charts, on the top 40, there were two versions of Unchained Melody on the chart at the same time. And again, Paul McCartney reclaiming Let It Be.

They released that Let It Be naked album to get rid of the specterized part of the record. What can you say? A conflicted genius. And a lot of music and madness from Phil Spector, dead on January 16th at age 81. We lost Screech. Now, you were producing an episode for Dana Levinson with guest Dean McDermott of Toronto, and you mentioned there were some technical difficulties. guest Dean McDermott of Toronto when you mentioned there were some technical difficulties I wondered if his wife

Tori Spelling perhaps she was mourning her former co-star from Saved by the Bell yeah when you made that remark I had forgotten until that moment and I had watched my fair share of Saved by the Bell on Saturday mornings on NBC but I had forgotten that

Tori Spelling played that nerdy the nerdy girl in Saved by the Bell. And then I was like, oh yeah, that's right. Wow. Not a great adult life for Dustin Diamond.

It was one of those situations where there he was known as TV's Screech. And even though he carried over in the role to the new class of Saved by the Bell, I mean, Saved by the Bell, they released a revival of the show, an updated version. And the way that critics of a certain age, younger Gen Xers, the way they speak about this show, you would

think it was Samuel Beckett or something. I know, I know. It's like total trash. Complete trash. It's sort of like a cartoon but with live action, sort of, is how I would describe it. Not good in any way.

No. There was nothing going on there except it was a byproduct of the five-channel universe. Right. With the NBC network, like, deconstructing Saturday morning cartoons and putting on a live action show instead. And Dustin Diamond Screech not invited to the Saved by the Bell Next Generation reboot. He'd fallen out that much with the other cast members. That they just, they didn't, they considered him a liability to have him, have him hanging around.

Diagnosed in 2021 with a form of cancer. And after one round of chemotherapy died February 1st at age 44, rest in peace, Dustin Diamond, AKA Screech. You were my only friend But you broke my heart again When you did a jump through the TV screen I don't know if this love is right But I dream of you each night Well, I hope it's not as crazy as it seems

Whoa, whoa, whoa Whoa, whoa The Mary Ann The Mary Ann The Mary Ann Mary Ann The Mary Ann What generic punk rock band was behind the tribute there to Marianne from Gilligan's Island?

I can't remember. All I know is that on December 30th, 2020, shortly after recording the previous 1236 recap of Toronto Mike, we heard that Don Wells died at age 82. Okay, I'm going to have an answer for you. The band we're hearing... Squirt Gun.

I've never heard of Squirt Gun, but this is them. I think it's Squirt Gun. And they got Mary Ann, Don Wells, to be in the music video. Oh yeah, okay, good for them. Yeah, Mary Ann, big deal. You talked about Saved by the Bell, but, man, I watched an awful lot of,

in syndication, I watched an awful lot of Gilligan's Island. And another show that would never die, got revived in a series of TV movies, reuniting the cast most ridiculously, the Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island. How'd they get there? What's going on here? All these updates after, you know, the original show. Well, that's the show that made me afraid of quicksand.

I was sure I would encounter quicksand at least once or twice in my life. And it hasn't happened yet. But also as a work of art, not much better than Saved by the Bell. I think it just kind of stood the test of time. Like it moved over into the category of slightly more credible kitsch. It's debatable. For sure, it's debatable. They owed it all to Sherwood Schwartz.

And this was from the era also where they didn't get residuals for their work. And you would have to go to 1978, 79, when they started doing Gilligan's Island TV movies to try and make it up to these cast members by giving them some work. This was before they had fan conventions where you could get Bob Denver wearing that same Gilligan costume selling you an autograph for $500. Or you might have like a – I remember Back to the Beach, for example.

You'd have these movies come along and kind of throw these guys a bone. I remember Bob Denver made an appearance in Back to the Beach. All right. So long, Marianne. Now, we're whipping through these towards the end of the episode, Mike. Well, you're right. I have made, I guess I should disclose, I've made some editorial decisions because we're running way long on some stuff I have in the calendar.

But I've kept what I would consider, and also some of your February deaths, I'm actually pushing them aside for a next episode. So some of the very recent ones, you know who I'm talking about. But there are some four big ones here we're going to close with. Here, let's get moving.

Summer is a green and yellow light So sublime Wow. Wow. Face-off. Never mind. Face Off. You've done a few thousand podcasts about sports. Yes.

And how often has the movie Face Off come up in any of them? Well, Jim McKinney. I think Jim McKinney was an extra and it came up in that episode. But that's the only episode that jumps out as an episode where we kind of dove into Face Off. So Face Off, going back 50 years, feature film starring Art Hindle,

Canadian actor in his lead role as a hunky Toronto Maple Leafs hockey player, Billy Duke. John Vernon, later of Animal House. Before that, Wojack, he was in the movie. And in trying to be a realistic depiction of what it was like to play for the Leafs,

it was only a couple of members of the team who got speaking cameo roles. One of them was George Armstrong. And, of course, George Armstrong was at the front of the line because he was the chief. Yes. Captain of the Leafs over the course of what? How many Stanley Cups? A long time. I think four.

Four Stanley Cups. The 60s ones. Yeah, the 60s ones. And all through the 1960s. On some other podcast, you were discussing the notion that one of these days, somebody's going to get around to doing the recap, review, multi-part serial history of Harold Ballard. Yeah, like if it doesn't happen soon, I'm going to do it.

Like this is where I'm at with that. I've actually had some DMs with Cam Gordon about ideas. But I really think I've got to do this. You've got the guy that put Harold Ballard's body into the ground. Right. You've got me who saw Yolanda Ballard, his quasi-widow sitting at Starbucks for two or three years. I've got Rick Vive.

Okay. I've got Gord Stelic. Oh, my goodness. I've got a good roster of people for this one. Okay. Well, the captain of the Leafs was a buddy of Harold Ballard as he moved in and took over the team. And I guess somewhere after he served some jail time in the turmoil,

Maple Leaf Gardens decided there would be no better hockey coach to save the Leafs in the late 80s, 1988-89 season, than bring it back Jordan Armstrong. Reluctantly, there he was standing behind the bench. You know, there's an image that guys are my age, guys and gals about my age might remember, of George

Armstrong at the NHL draft, and he does this maneuver with his dentures where he kind of pops them out of his mouth for a moment and then sucks them back in. That was a fucking big... Me and my buddies thought that was the funniest thing we ever saw. George Armstrong with his dentures. There you go.

That's my George Armstrong anecdote. Okay. George Armstrong, dead at age 90 on January 24th. Now, you mentioned John Vernon, so I just can't let the moment go by without pointing out the fun fact that Wojek was based on, or inspired at least, by the career of my client's father. So my client is Dr. Diane Sachs, and her father was Dr. Morty Shulman. So Dr. Morty Shulman inspired Wojek.

So how's that for less than six degrees of separation? I thought, Mike, you wanted to get to the end of this episode. We're going to do a three-for-one. Actually, we're going to do three-for-one. They're all from the same sport, but let's listen to this classic ad. That's me, Tommy Lasorda, before I lost 30 pounds in three months with the ultra-slim-fast plan. Now, that was last June, and the big news is I haven't gained an ounce back. The plan is easy. I had a delicious shake for breakfast, one for lunch, and then a wholesome

dinner. Isn't that great? And I'm never going to look like this again. Hey, if I can do it, maybe you can do it. Ultra slim fast. Give us a week and we'll help take off the weight. Ultra Slim Fast. Give us a week and we'll help take off the weight. Maybe you can do it. Tommy Lasorda on his Ultra Slim Fast commercial. I heard you mention this somewhere in the past month. I thought, hey, I was not the only one who noticed. Maybe was inserted later. Badly they dubbed in that little legal thing recognizing that maybe tommy lasorda's

weight loss couldn't be replicated by everyone who went out and bought these chocolate shakes you know it's all i focused on whenever that ad ran and it ran often all i could focus on was that they clearly added maybe in post. ADR, I think we call that. Tommy Lasorda, he made it to what? Age 93. He did well. Maybe a pretty old age, I think, given for someone associated with his temperament and reputation. So maybe pounding back all that ultra slim fast worked for him in the end.

And like Larry King was excited that, at least based according to his wife, he was excited in 2020 to see the Los Angeles Dodgers win a world series right um you speak sports uh a little better than me did was it was it so far back that it was it was uh it was kurt gibson tommy lasorda yeah there were world series in between well the world series win no you had to go back to uh kurt, right? So what is that, 80? I want to say it's 88.

Like, I'm doing this off the top of my head. But Kirk Gibson hits the walk-off homer on one leg. It's kind of a classic moment. And that, I believe, Orel Hershiser, I think, is on this Dodgers team. But, yeah, you had to go back to 88, I think, for the last one. Okay. Well, then, Tommy Lassois, synonymous with the LA Dodgers, I think it was kind of a mirror image of the New York Yankees in the days of George Steinbrenner, right? Where New York and LA, the late 70s, kind of powerhouse baseball clubs of their own, creating all sorts of back office drama that I would hear Mark Hemsher talk about on the radio.

And I still can to this day. Friday morning, we'll be there at 9.20. Let's throw in a couple other baseball Hall of Famers. So you got Hank Aaron. We lost Hamron, Hank Aaron, and Don Sutton. So let's

pay respects to all three of these. I got to say with Hank Aaron, of course, you know, 755 home runs and all that. But I also remember Hank Aaron, I think is being one of those,

one of those happy days, cameo appearances that signified the transition of happy days from being a show that took place in the 1950s or 60 from being a show that took place in the 1950s or 60s into a show that took place in the present tense. Because there was Hank Aaron meeting Richie Cunningham. Right, right. But it was Hank Aaron at the age that he was in 1980. And not 20 years before.

That's what was messed up about the Mork and Mindy stuff. Because Mork was clearly, clearly if about the Mork and Mindy stuff. Because Mork was clearly, clearly, if anyone watched Mork and Mindy, Mork was a guy from the mid to late 70s. But he was in this 50s program. Yeah, it was all messed up. The timeline's unhappy. They just stopped giving a fuck.

Right? And there was Henry Aaron along for the ride. It's a big one. Well, they're all big ones, but Cloris Leachman's a big one. Well, she hung around for long enough. I mean, she worked pretty much to the end. Died on January 27th at age 94. But the attention that she got for being part of the Norman Lear cinematic universe out of the Mary Tyler Moore show,

which included that spinoff called Phyllis and also movies with Mel Brooks and I guess more in line with our generation replacing Charlotte Rae in the death throes of the facts of life. Right. I brought that fun fact up on the last Pandemic Friday and Stu Stone seemed disinterested. But yeah, absolutely, that's where I was introduced to Cloris Leachman.

She showed up on Facts of Life, taking over for Edna Garrett. Yeah, sort of an easy gig for her by that point in time, approaching traditional retirement age. Easy for her to pick up a paycheck for. Dispensing advice to the aging alumni of Eastland High. What was the name of the store? They were well past, I think they were well past Eastland High.

Why do I think that they were running that store when she showed up? I don't know how much you remember Facts of Life, running that store when when she showed up when uh i know i don't know how much you remember facts of life but that store with that kitschy very 80s store into the mood or something what was it called that store do you remember the store over our heads over our heads that was the name of the store so i feel like uh they were running over our heads and that's when uh uh family's called the phyllis but that's when Cloris Leachman showed up to kind of work with that. I don't know.

I don't think she was working at the girls' school. I feel like we were beyond that. Life Well Lived and Young Frankenstein, I think, would be the movie where she kind of enshrined a certain sort of cachet, getting the joke. And Simpsons fans. She's a Cloris Leachman was the, uh,

crazy cat lady who made multiple appearances. What's left. What are you going to, what are we going to wrap it up? A little Miles Davis to take us home. And we had Miles Davis at the beginning of our recap. That was out of the blue. Right. Talking about Larry Green.

Bookends, you're very clever, Wiseblood. The FNY radio show. I don't remember if we mentioned. That was also Miles Davis. I go through all the trouble to bookend the death segments in an intelligent way, and then I forget to leave behind the Easter eggs. Did you know, like maybe...

Make people appreciate the effort. Before we disclose why we're playing this song and for whom, but did you know we kicked out this Miles Davis cover of Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time? We kicked it out on a Pandemic Friday, like within the last couple, definitely in 2021. Were you aware, Mark Weisblatt? the last couple definitely in 2021 were you aware mark weisblatt it's hard to keep track of the number of jams that you kick out with uh cam gordon and stew stone yet pandemic friday isn't

going nowhere and it's far outpaced the number of 12 36 episodes now in the Toronto Mike during this recording, I was getting text messages from brother bill because brother bill was sitting on our zoom, which is, which is scheduled for 5 30 PM tomorrow. But at 5 30 PM today, he was on the zoom wondering where the hell we were. He had his days mixed up.

And then he's like, he's in the, he's in the zone. He's in the mood to do it. And then he's like, he's in the zone. He's in the mood to do it now. I'm like, I cannot do a Pandemic Friday after a 12, 36-month recap because it's like I need to like, I'm just, you can't do those two back-to-back. You're just drained. You know, these are marathons, not sprints.

So tell us, why are we playing this wonderful cover of Time After Time by Miles Davis? Why are we playing this wonderful cover of Time After Time by Miles Davis? Cicely Tyson, another legendary actress who died on January 28th at age 96. Through the 1980s was married to Miles Davis and might have inspired there some of his forays into mainstream music. some of his forays into mainstream music, like right there covering Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time. But the two of them had a relationship that went back to the 1950s and 60s. And Cicely Tyson is the cover model

for a Miles Davis album called Sorcerer. And at the time, they said they were going to get married. They married some other woman. Two of them rekindled their relationship, and through the L.A. Times, I read an account of Miles Davis and Cicely Tyson's marriage. And let's just put it this way. She was not into the same things as him.

she was not into the same things as him that she was uh she was a straight edge actress you know trying to gain respectability in hollywood and miles davis was anything but ended up divorced in 1989 and miles davis died a couple years later in in 1991 so uh some some star-crossed lovers there with a with a history all their own as we remember cicely tyson Mark, you did it, buddy. Amazing. This, and as you know, the energy is very different on the Zoom. Can't wait. I cannot wait to have you back in the backyard so we can kind of recreate that magic.

That's just the way to go. But it just was too damn cold. It was just too damn cold to be out there with the gear recording. But hopefully it is warmer in a month. Well, look, New Toronto was wonderful at most other times of the year. And I think maybe we left enough

on the cutting room floor that this episode could use a sequel. Let's see where we're at. Let's see where we're at. Let's see what sort of Zoom I demand you to do to keep me from losing my mind

here another month of lockdown. And that brings us to the end of our 795th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Mark is at 1236 because he's 1236

and you should go to 1236.ca and sign up for the daily, what is it, your lunchtime burrito? Is that what we're calling it? It's great. Canada's News Burrito. Canada's News Burrito.

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Stu stone, who is going to be on the episode in a recording and we're kicking out. What are we kicking out? Brit pop. So join us next week or tomorrow, which is when we're recording that. See you then. This podcast has been produced by TMDS and accelerated by Roam Phone. Roam Phone brings you the most reliable virtual phone service to run your business and protect your home number from unwanted calls.

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