Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Alan Cross and Rob Johnston: Toronto Mike'd #1197

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

In this 1197th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with The Ongoing History of New Music's Alan Cross and Rob Johnston and 30 years of the program, the CFNY documentary, and more. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Canna Cabana, Ridley Funeral Home and Electronic Products Recycling Association.

🎵 Welcome to episode 1197 of Toronto Mic'd. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times, and brewing amazing beer order online for free local home delivery in the GTA Palma Pasta enjoy the taste of fresh

homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville Electronic Products Recycling Association committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. Ridley Funeral Home. Pillars of the community since 1921. Canna Cabana. The lowest prices on cannabis, guaranteed. Learn more at cannacabana.com.

cabana.com joining me today celebrating 30 years of the ongoing history of new music is alan cross and rob johnston robbie j allen welcome well thank you for having us in your tiny little basement i appreciate it and you're a tall man, Robbie J. Remind us, what are you? 6'7"? What's going on there? 6'4", when I wear shoes. 6'3", when I don't. Okay. Neither of you, for the record, did either of you hit your head today? No, because we've learned our lesson from times past. Yes, exactly. Robbie, I was telling

Alan, because you're late. Alan was 24 hours early. Yes. That's impressive. You know what? My apologies again. I hate being late. And this city is driving me insane. You're an East York guy? Yeah.

I'm a 10-minute walk due south of Bingo Bob. I'm beaches, upper beaches, Danforth. And he works in Kingston, so there's his community. Yeah. I know.

It's a bitch for him. It's okay. Coming in from Oakville today. Yeah. See, Alan's smart. He's in the West End. It's no problem. You had to come across the city. I forgive you. And it's a bitch for him. It's okay, coming in from Oakville today. Yeah, see, Alan's smart. He's in the West End. It's no problem. You had to come across the city.

I forgive you. And it's worth the wait. But I do want to dive into it because we don't have unlimited time. But I do want to get to the bottom of Alan being 24 hours early. Did we ever resolve that? All I can tell you is if it's in my phone,

it's the truth. It's reality. And for whatever reason, reality got bent, and I showed up yesterday at two minutes after 10 o'clock, panicking because I thought I was late. It turns out that I was substantially early. I thought I had a delivery. There's a knock at the door.

I'm like, oh, it's another delivery. And then, of course, I see Alan there, and I have that moment of like, did I fuck up? There's that moment of like, did I screw up? But Robbie wasn't here and then I check my DMs of Robbie J and I see it is February 1st now Robbie's showing Alan

I don't know how that got into okay so we are going to dive into the 30 years of the ongoing history of new music I have a whack of questions for you guys firstly like congrats on the milestone. You guys should be proud.

I have no idea how we made it this far. None whatsoever. I like to tell people that it is the radio show that breaks all the rules. This host talks too much, plays a lot of unfamiliar music, and never mentions the name of the radio station in the body of the program.

Yet, here we are. I'm at home. What am I writing? Episode 970. Yet, here we are. I'm at home. What am I writing? Episode 970. No, I finished. No, 977 right now. Okay. We estimate 1,000 in,

give it around November. Mid-November, yeah. You know, 997 puts you exactly 200 behind me. I'm just looking. This is 1197. Of course, not a fair fight, of course. You guys are different. No, we're 977.

Yeah, oh, 77. So we're way behind you, but then we only do one a week. Right. And then we don't do anything during the summer because I need to regenerate. Well, we realized many years ago when we were doing 45, 50 episodes a year,

we thought, this is stupid. Nobody's hearing these. Why are we, what are we doing here this is insane yeah so we uh we we take the summer off and do a greatest hits thing which means people coming back from the cottage get to hear these shows probably for the first time right even though they may have run uh once or twice previously on a regular sunday night okay let me get like i'm a big fan of details here. I know, I was like, oh, details don't matter. I like the details.

I want to go to the very beginning. So, Alan, you're the original host of this program? Yes, it was assigned to me. Let me make it very clear that I did not want to do this program. I was very happy playing records from 2 until 6 o'clock in the afternoon, Monday to Friday. Wow. I had no interest in doing a long-form radio program.

However, we had some new owners who thought that, hmm, we're not going to flip the radio station to country. We're going to keep this alternative thing that's happening because we looked around and we saw Pearl Jam and Nirvana and Alice in Chains and Soundgarden and all that. So, you know, we'll keep this. But in order to educate this whack of new listenership that we expect to get, we need a program that's going to put all this music into context.

So they looked around. They found one guy on staff with a history degree, me, and they said, you're doing this program. What's it called? They say it's called the Ongoing History of New Music. I say, that's a stupid name. Nobody's ever going to be able to get it right, even after 30 years. And what you're going to do is uh well we're going to sever you

we're going to fire you from your uh afternoon position rehire you as a part-timer wow and an independent contractor the program will be covered under the independent contract and then the part time stuff means that you will be doing saturday and sunday mornings from 6 a.m till noon which meant that i had no common days off with my wife. And they said, this is your offer, and if you don't want it, we'll give you a nice packaging. We wish you well in your future endeavors. Now, I had just gotten married.

I had just moved into my first house, so what was I going to do? Now, the funny thing, before I forget this, the funny thing too was I was doing overnights on the Saturday, Sunday morning, covering Martin at the Phoenix and Deadly Headley from Club Max. I remember Alan started doing the weekend mornings. I'm like, what are you doing? He says, oh, they got me doing this stupid idea for this stupid radio show.

It's not going to go anywhere. It's going to fail. Is it, to be specific, was it Stuart Myers who tapped you on the shoulder and said you're doing this? Okay. Because there's a rumor I'm going to get now on the record. Finally, I get to ask this question. Is it true that this was going to be a Bob McElwitt Senior hosted program? Is there any truth to that rumor?

Have you ever heard that one? No, I've never heard that. Well, I suppose it would have been the, we had the studio up there at the time, the Caps studio. Because Bob was working for McLean Hunter. I forgot about that studio. I can't remember what Caps stands for.

It was across in the washrooms, that's all I remember. And it had the CD burner in it. Okay, the rumor I heard is at this time this is McLean Hunter that owns CFNY at this time, right? And Bob was working for McLean Hunter at this time. And there is a rumor you know, no one really cares about

these rumors except me, but that Bob Macko Sr. was going to be the host of the ongoing history of new music and then Stuart Myers assigned it to you, Alan Cross. That's the first I've heard of it. Well, you know what? When we do the Edge documentary, we can research

that one. Can I drain my CFN, oh oh the edge dog i see what you mean because the cfny doc i'm gonna ask about it ends around i think i was chatting with alan earlier but like 1992 ish okay so it's everything up to 1992 and this is uh an opportunity for the listenership here to get a thorough and i know you posted something on your blog which was great but we're gonna get a little more info about the the CFNY doc Humble and Fred a couple of guys I work with today uh gave me kind of a nice story about you know being interviewed by you at the Elmo for this documentary so where exactly is the CFNY doc at and then while you're answering that I want to know

who's paying for this thing uh we have a production company based here in Toronto and they have given us a very nice budget. Most of that budget is going to go to music clearances because you can't do a documentary like this without having... How soon is now? We don't know. We don't know what music we

need. We need a ton of Canadian stuff. We need a ton of US stuff. We need a ton of British stuff. Right. And we're going to put together a ton of U.S. stuff. We need a ton of British stuff. Right. And we're going to put together a wish list of what we want and then go to a music clearance person, who is one of our producers, by the way, and we're going to try and find out exactly how much this is going to cost us. But it's going to be a lot. Right.

So anyway, we have this production company, this good budget. We have done eight or nine days at the El Macombo with local interviews. I just got back from a tour through San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, where we were doing more interviews. Part of the crew right now is in Vancouver doing some more interviews. And then on the 13th of February, we've got five days of interviews in the UK. London, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpoolpool so you can see that we're pretty serious about this yeah and we've got some really good guests so far for example yeah uh we

went to uh bruce coburn's house we uh talked to murk mccuriatus who is the guy buying up all those catalogs for the hypnosis song fund he we were at his house the day after he bought the Justin Bieber catalog for $200 million. Wow. We talked to Lowell Tolhurst, drummer of The Cure, drummer and keyboardist of The Cure. We've got Peter Hook from New Order coming up, Jim and Charlie from Simple Minds, one of the guys from OMD,

and a lot of other artists that we want to get from that area. I'm working on Depeche Mode very hard. I'm trying to get Jerry Harrison or somebody from the Talking Heads. So, you know, we're trying to make this a definitive story of CFNY during the Spirit of Radio years, which runs 1977 to, like you said, 1992-ish. 1977 to, like you said, 1992-ish. So the David Marsden era and, you know, back then with all those, the freeform era of CFNY.

And we want to document some of the things that we did, some of the things that we managed to influence, and some of the repercussions that still linger today from that period of Canadian radio. So Chorus is not paying for this? Nope, no, no. They did give us permission to do it because... So they blessed it. It is their intellectual property.

All right, big question, Alan Cross. Does Chorus have to bless the final product? I'm not sure. I don't think so. Because this isn't going to be anything critical. This is a... It's a celebration. It's a anything critical. This is a celebration. It's a love letter. We're not going to apologize for that.

So it is going to be a loving look back to a time in Toronto radio that will never be repeated. Robbie J wants to know if Bono is going to be interviewed for this project. I did what, sorry? Bono? Who's Bono to know if Bono is going to be interviewed for this project. I did, sorry? Bono? Who's Bono? Oh, Bono. Oh, that guy.

Bono, Bono, you know. We're trying. We're trying. Alright, now you talked a lot about the great musicians that'll be a part of this, but I'm going to get back to the talent that we heard on the radio, like yourself. So, firstly, did you interview yourself? Like, how did that work? Well, there's no narrator for this.

Generally, most of the interviews will be conducted by me off camera. Where I can't be conducted, the director or the assistant director will do it or Scott Turner will do it. Oh, very good. But for the most part, it's been me. And you're doing the heavy lifting.

I know Ivor Hamilton, is he a part of this yes he he's he is he's a good egg and you mentioned scott turner so has any talent said uh politely or not so politely declined a few have uh simply because they don't remember the era and they don't think that they can offer any anything of substance well if you can remember the era you weren't there. Well, that's it. It's funny. We talk to some people and they go,

you know what? It was pretty fuzzy back then. There were a lot of drugs. Now, there's a gentleman who would be, of course, you desperately would want to speak to for this documentary, but I encountered something similar that you're encountering right now where I was trying to get Chris Shepard on Toronto Mic'd.

I know in 2016, that's going back now, like eight, what is that? Someone do the math, seven years. It's, well, yeah, okay, that's a while ago. But Chris Shepard did make an, oh, maybe it's 2014, made an appearance on Humble and Fred show. And then I haven't found any evidence

of him making a public appearance since. And I had people like Ivor Hamilton and Scott Turner and a bunch of other people who were friendly with Chris Shepard trying to find him, even for him to say no, like I'd be fine, okay, no thank you, that's fine. I couldn't find him. I did a podcast about this on Toronto Mike.

I blogged about this. Have you had any success in locating Chris Shepard for this documentary? None. We've narrowed him down to someplace in Central America, maybe Costa Rica. I've heard that one too. That would make sense for Chris that one too. That would make sense for Chris. It would.

That honestly would make sense. So the doc should just be finding Chris Shepard and you fly to Costa Rica and ask the locals about him. Well, that may be the second doc as a matter of fact. Yeah. That's a doc. That'll be the one that comes between the Edge doc and the CFNY doc because it actually is the nice transition piece between the two. It would be. Right.

Oh, that Edge doc will be interesting, too. The weird thing about now, here's the thing. How many people know that the name The Edge is 30 years this year? That's true. It was January 1993. And this was an American brand that they didn't have the copyright in Canada? Is that the story? I think

so, but... It would have been The Edge out of Dallas. It would have been the only one I could think of. The J-Core stations out of the U.S. had trademarked the Edge for the U.S., but I don't think they trademarked it for Canada. Amazing. Because they didn't think about us. We're in the attic of North America.

You know, one of dozens of people, literally dozens of people who live outside the U.S. So we're going to dive deep into the ongoing history of new music, because it's turningS. Right, exactly. So we're going to dive deep into the ongoing history of new music because it's turning 30. And, oh yeah, before I... Because that was all

part of the rebrand, right? Mm-hmm. So it was CFNY 102.1, the leading edge. And at exactly the same time we started doing that, ongoing history shows up on Sunday nights.

That's right. Now I have like old tapes of like Freddie P with Scott Turner and some with Humble and Fred from the early 90s where it's modern rock. That would have been

the transition point between the Spirit of Radio and The Edge. Yeah. So Spirit of Radio becomes maybe, yeah, modern rock and then that transition. Well, there was always this thing

about what to call the music the station played and this goes all the way back to the late 70s. Nobody wanted to use the word alternative for the longest time, for decades decades so it was modern music that was with david marston it was modern rock it was dare to be different it was uh you know the spirit of radio and then in january 1993

it was the transition so it was cf and Y, 102.1, the leading edge. With the triangle business cards. With the triangle business cards that did not fit in anybody's wallet. And that's when the colors were the purple, the black, the white. Right. And then it became CF and Y.

No, it became. The leading edge. We dropped the CF and Y. CF and Y was 102.1, the leading edge. And then just 102.1, the edge. Yes. And then at one point for a while, it was Edge 102. It was, because that went implanted in my brain.

Yeah, I know. But there are still people of a certain age, oh, yeah, CFNY. Yeah, yeah. You know, with the state, 30 years up the edge, and people insist. Twice the length of the spirit of radio. Yeah.

It's funny. Yeah, well, legally, technically, still CFNY, right? Yeah, let's call it. Once an hour, you hear that. You got it, yeah. Okay, so we're going to get back to ongoing history and new music,

but I'm going to read a note that was posted on LinkedIn this past week. Okay, and then at the end of the note, I'll tell you who wrote it. You might already know, and then we can just discuss. But here is, I can't do his voice, but I'll just read it here.

Well, folks, I can't even say the word folks. How am I going to read this letter? Well, folks, after trying, trying, and trying again, today is finally the day I have been secretly telling myself for a long time that radio is in my past and no longer in my future. Unfortunately, I was given another, we're leaning in a different direction.

With that, it's time to move on. I'm good with that. No hard feelings. Being fortunate enough to have 26 fun and fantastic years and four horrible ones in the business was an incredible ride. Thanks to Ivor Hamilton, the late Don Burns, the late Reiner Schwartz, Jeff Woods, and Chris Dunner-Duncombe for allowing me to work in both Toronto and Vancouver. Thanks to all the incredible staff at both CFNY and CFOX who challenged me to be a better broadcaster. Thanks to Alan Cross for letting a kid drop into 83 Kennedy Road South and realize his dreams could become a reality. It was also Alan who always said as a broadcaster,

you have a time stamp on your forehead from day one. I hope any young broadcasters who are reading realize this and have a plan B ready. Chances are you'll need it at some point. If you're ever in the neighborhood, stop by and say hello and we'll shoot the shit about the great times we had and what lies

ahead in the future. Just don't ask me if I heard what they said on the radio cheers anybody know who wrote that neil morrison neil morrison aka brother bill brother bill any thoughts on that i uh what's kind of sad to uh here he's uh that's that's a very good run nobody gets in this business to being in for 27 years or however long it was um it is unfortunate you know this is one of those businesses where there is a lot of staff churn it's always been that way and unless you get extraordinarily stupidly lucky like me um there is that time stamp on your forehead that best best before date. Unless you're Marilyn Dennis. Well, there's a few of us.

There's a few of us. Marilyn, me, I mean, I'm in year 41 of radio. So, no, I'm year 42, sorry. 42, the answer to all of Universe's questions. Now, Robbie J., what did you think reading, or I don't know if you saw that before, but reading that note from Neil Morrison, a.k.a. Brother Bill, because you're a man who literally left the industry and then they kind of sucked you back to a podcast channel. Well, I didn't leave.

Well, yes. Okay, well, you tell us now. I mean, Neil and I, Brother Bill, we've been in contact many times over the last number of years and and he's you know reached out and asked about you know people and whatnot and I think yeah you know it was a hard thing to accept that this day would eventually come but I I think I know uh Neil and that well enough to know that if he's made this decision he's made it because he's comfortable and he's confident and it's the right thing to do and he's given it a hell of a kick at the can and he's tried different angles and he's he's you know he's he's probably very content with it and he's living it a hell of a kick at the can and he's tried different angles and he's probably very content with it and he's living in his place in White Rock

and enjoying looking up in the morning and seeing the Pacific Ocean. But did you reach the same point when you were working for the post office? You know, here's the thing. Neil Mann had a really good quote once where he said, I love radio, but I'm not sure radio loves me. Because Neil had gone

through a number of jobs in different PD positions and got, you know, moved out a few times, unfortunately. And he's a great guy too. And I thought, geez, that's a really interesting point because in 2015, when they paid me not to come to work um which was really odd yet i could kind of see it happening at some point in time it was like okay do i want to stay in this or not and then you get this opportunity to try different things and see where you want to go and you know full credit to alan because when i was cut he said to to chris eisen okay well here's the thing i need rob to keep doing the ongoing history, so you need to figure out a way for us to compensate him because he does things

and I don't even have to think about it. When was the last time we saw each other in person? You don't have to. Oh, no. It's all either Zoom or through email or Dropbox. How long has it been? No, actually December, I think. But before December? Oh, God, I couldn't tell you.

It's been a couple of years. That's a good point know i just take for granted that periodically you guys uh have face to face but why you don't have to and we already established how difficult it is well i'll tell you i'll tell you a funny thing so when alan uh left to go to uh y95 back in whenever that was 2001 or two or something you know we were like oh God, how are we going to do this show? And then he said, well, I'll just, I'll come in every couple of weeks and we'll knock off a few episodes. And then after that it became,

I can just do this at home. And then it became, I'll just post it to Dropbox. Then it became, I don't have to see you anymore. Yeah. This idea of us having to be in one place at a given time to record this. Really? How old fashioned and quaint.

So to get back to your question um yeah i mean i i i guess and i i did some stuff with some people over after that you know with doug and the crew in in uh rock 90 out in oshawa and i think you know i just didn't really have that passion for it and it was changing the whole business was changing and then i thought you know i kind of had my foot in the podcast door anyways doing various things in different have that passion for it. And it was changing. The whole business was changing. And then I thought, you know, I kind of had my foot in the podcast door anyways, doing various things and different projects and new media projects.

And there you go. And Bob's your uncle. They, they, they pulled you back in like Godfather three there. That's what my nephew says. The, the problem is that once you get into radio and a lot of people will tell you this is that you will be a radio person for the rest of your life,

whether you're working in the industry or not. It's, it's true. But I will say a thing. I mean, the edge, I'm an edge guy. I'm not really a spirit of radio guy because I came in during the modern rock time, but I'm a CFNY person through and through, and it's within my DNA.

I can comfortably say, you know, I still, it is the place I'm most passionate about, I suppose. Now let's go and do the ongoing history of the ongoing history of new music here. So we established Alan Cross is the original host of this program, which is, what is the exact birthday

that it turns 30? February 28th. Okay, what it turns 30? February 28th. Okay. What is it now? February 1st. Okay. We're in the month that the ongoing history of new music turns 30. But as we'll walk through this, we'll learn it wasn't exactly a straight line here, but

okay. So who is the original technical producer for this program? Because it's not you, right, Robbie J? No, it's Craig Venn. Yeah. Craig Venn was. FOTM. FOTM, Craig Venn, Mr. Cross.

Pardon me? FOTM, Craig Venn. Friend ofenn was... FOTM. FOTM, Craig Venn, Mr. Cross? Pardon me? FOTM, Craig Venn. Friend of Trump. Oh, I see. Educate him. Sorry. All right, Craig Venn. Yeah, so when the show was started,

one of the first things I sort of sputtered out was, I can't do the technical production because I just don't have the chops. I need somebody to help operate this. Right. And then, oh, okay. Venn, take Venn. chops i need somebody to help operate this right and then oh okay um uh vin take vin so uh we work well together for the first 110 shows and then he moved on to do something else and uh now what oh him okay rob was always hanging around as an operator and he was trying to

convince the head of production at the time that i could do your job i could do production i could do and they went no no no you're just a kid you can't do it you can't do it no no no and then one day all of a sudden rob's in production friday the 13th january 1995 it's the only friday the 13th i ever remember um jim mccordy leaves a note in my bunk and he says i was going to to do some production, you know, op some shows at night. And he says, so Craig's leaving to go produce the morning show with Derringer up at the fan.

And I need someone to come in and I know you're interested in this. So I'll give you a shot. And with that came the ongoing history. I thought in the back of my mind, Alan's going to go, Oh great. This guy. Oh great.

Here we go. The guy who started off answering my phones during the lunar or whatever. Frankly, I didn't care what I wanted. What somebody get the show done you gotta get it done so how do you give me some nuts and bolts of especially going back then and then how it evolved but like like do you alan do you just say here's some raw thing i recorded go clean this up well music like i know you run through your part okay so, so there is... How does the script come about back there? There is an established routine, but it has evolved over many years so that it is a well-oiled machine.

So the way it works is that I, over a period of time, collect information about a certain topic in a folder, in a series of folders on my computer. When I have enough material, I have enough to write a show. It takes me anywhere from five to ten hours to write it and voice it. And then what I do then is upload it to Dropbox. I record it in my home studio, upload the raw audio and the script to Dropbox, and then the easy part comes

into play um i'll get to that part but here's what happened in the beginning so in the beginning in the beginning in the beginning in the beginning as the bible said let me take you back to the to the analog days so alan would would probably scrounge through newspapers and it was microfiche microfiche and archaic websites and compuserve when we started in 1993 there was no internet there were no books on alternative music there were no biographies and alternative bands almost none uh so it was like newspapers press releases magazine articles you scrounging i remember sitting down with a a yellow pad at my house up near Orangeville to write the first show, and I still remember looking at this blank pad

saying, what the hell are my, what am I going to do? And it was just a horrible, helpless feeling that you had to push through. Again, for music, we would have to scrounge through used record stores. We would have to go to record shows. We'd have to order stuff on these hideous imports for like 40 bucks. Whenever I went on vacation, I'd go to a record store looking for, you know,

compilations with music that we could use in the show. I mean, it was incredibly... Napster was our best friend. After a while it was. Yeah. And then iTunes. God, if iTunes ever stops selling music,

we're doomed. So Alan would, at six o'clock on a Wednesday, Alan would finish his show up at Kennedy Road and he'd wander a couple doors down to the production side. And we would record the voice track for the dailies, the seven, five or seven dailies. We did seven at that time. track for the dailies about the seven five or seven days we did seven seven that time seven ongoing history dailies and the full half hour or full hour radio show which was about a half hour voice track that would be recorded on a two-track analog tape

the two-track analog tape i would then play back and edit out all the error you know i'm assuming alan you'd read your script and if you blew a line, you'd just repeat that line again. Yeah, just repeat it so I'd go back and edit that all out. Robbie's got to leave the first one, right. I'd take that all out so that would come down to a two-track. And then that two-track would be laid down onto an eight-track multi-track tape. And on the eight-track, I would

lay in Alan's voice track plus the music into that. All of this is in real time, keep in mind. So half an hour for his recording, about double that to edit it, another half hour to load it onto the multi, another couple hours to load on the multitrack. Then you would mix it down to two track and adapt master.

Then you would take the two track and put it in the record. So by the time I finished an episode, I had heard it four to five times at that point in time. It was onerous. Those were the good old days. Those were the good old days so

obviously along the way as we get 30 years down the road a lot of technical advancements have oh yeah now it is but but what was the biggest jump like you know how like i always think of a computing because i was i remember the day that i had windows 95 and it felt like okay windows 95 was the biggest jump to this was the biggest jump which is what pro tools and editing on not not just that version of Pro Tools. When I could get onto the version where I could render the show and I didn't have to master it in full time,

I could just render the segments down. So a 20 minute segment, I can render down in about a minute and a half. Right? So I didn't have to fully listen to the show all the way through. And it was funny. I was thinking the other day

when I was cutting the podcast version, I thought, my God, how arduous would this be if we didn't have, if we were't have if we were still in that kind of archaic analog time so now as alan said he puts it to dropbox i grab my thousands of mp3 files that we've accumulated over time i put those in you know i could be sitting on the dock up north in the summer not that we had to do shows but you know what i mean

like it doesn't matter where you're anywhere be done. Yeah, anywhere with a good internet connection. I've edited the show, you know, on a flight back from Edmonton, editing stuff like that. So it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. That right there, the revolution of the digital and the Dropbox and the movement of content has just been a lifesaver. Unbelievable. I mean, I've done shows in airport lounges, hotel rooms, and it doesn't, you'd never know. What's the biggest mistake that made it to air?

Oh, there's one that still has to be edited out. I talk about Eddie Vedder playing the guitar solo in Thriller. What episode was that? I can't remember. I don't remember that. Instead of Eddie Van Halen, I said Eddie Vedder. There's been a couple like that.

Well, that's a mind blow right there. Again, it's a brain fart for both of us. We're hearing so much audio, something goes by. Usually Rob catches it. Sure, but I could see that one slipping by. Oh, yeah. There's been a few others where you get an email immediately. We have never, ever promised to be experts.

We're just music geeks who really love the storytelling aspect of it. We've never, you know, we're not the final word on anything. We try to be accurate. Do you consider yourself, Alan Cross, a musicologist? Some, other people use that term. term me i'm just a music fan telling stories i would rather

be known as a storyteller no okay this came up on toronto mic recently when mike daly was here because mike daly is dr mike daly with a phd in musicologist and he expressed a little bit of uh he doesn't want it used by people who don't have the phd designation you know i understand that i you know i've never i don't think i've ever referred to myself as that i'm just a okay well i'm a music historian there's one yeah absolutely okay uh just curious about that one now uh in a moment so you mentioned the podcast version robbie j so obviously forever this was a terrestrial radio program that went over the air and at some some point you said, hey, let's repurpose this and use this as a podcast. Oh, listen, we were pushing this for years.

Yeah. Years. Oh, no. So was I, by the way. Well, I mean, the thing is, it's an original podcast. It's the original idea because it comes back from those old days of documentary radio, which we're the beginning of radio, right? And I think our biggest struggle is figuring out,

A, where do we put it? B, who's hosting it? And C, like hosting it platform-wise. And C, how are we going to do this with the music? Because we can't run the music. So honestly, we are running extremely close to the sun, even the way we do it by putting in the 15 second hooks. May I add a little seasoning to that topic right there?

Okay, because I produce a show for Peter Gross called... By the way, Peter Gross used to work at CFNY. Yes, he did. Let's get him on the interview list. That'd be great. He tells me when he was let go,

he wasn't there very long, his severance check, which was like only for, I don't know, a couple weeks pay or something, was delivered by Billy Vann. What? Yeah, this is...

What, like, hilarious House of Frankenstein, Billy Van? The Billy Van, yeah. I guess he had a side gig as like a delivery guy, and he delivered the severance check. That is weird. But, you know, Canadian showbiz and all that. Okay.

So Peter Gross used, like, I think he used about 25 seconds of a Rolling Stones song in one of his episodes about horse racing. This podcast is called Down the Stretch. It's about Ontario horse racing. And just this week, because I'm the email attached to the podcast because I help them and I produce it, I got the email from Spotify that we all dread that just says basically, here are your options. You're using this.

If you have the license, then click this box and tell us whatever you've licensed it. If you haven't tell click this box to say you're going to replace it or whatever and i don't know how i don't get one of these every single day and i don't know how they haven't de-platformed me yet because i know what i do and i violate these rules all the time so does this worry you guys like one day you'll just wake up with the email that says you're being de-platformed by spotify because spotify seems to be the only podcast aggregator that seems to have uh beef with this at this oh if you were to post these on on youtube it would happen no i mean podcast aggregators yeah youtube would um well there i read a stat somewhere you know 15 to 17 percent of all podcasts contain

clips of music yeah that's a lot yeah and i a lot. And I think the issue is that there is no body anywhere in the world where you can go and license music for a podcast. It does not exist. And I could go into why and how difficult that would be, but right now the music industry is turning a bit of a blind eye unless you're using you know full versions of songs and and so on so we again we're part of our corporate entity we want to do we want to play nice so this is what we've determined we can do what is that what is

it robbie j how much of a song will you play i've 10 10 12 15 seconds of a hook i mean the thing is this okay we've been very up front with the band with the bands and the music labels from the very beginning right about what we're doing and the thing about the ongoing history is uh and i've had people ask me this before because i will often edit out a song i'll edit it down to two and a half minutes right we don't really need to hear the last two and a half minutes of Smells Like Teen Spirit. I think we know where we're going. The ongoing history isn't about the music. It's about the stories that lead into

the music. So by putting in a 15-20 second hook, it kind of gets the point across and we're referring to something. I think you were about to say this, but this is a guess from you guys, right? You're just guessing. We have no answer. Technically, you can't play five seconds of a song. Technically, no. You can't play Technically, you can't play five seconds of a show.

Technically, no. You can't play anything. You can't play a second. So we're up to episode, I think today was 275 went out. Of the podcast. Yeah, of the thousand. I'll probably answer a question here that somebody's asked, like why aren't all the shows up there?

And I'll be honest with you, because a lot of them suck. They suck in the aspect that the quality is just bad. The fidelity. The fidelity. It's dated content. The storytelling, the writing, you get better as you go along. Some of those early shows

are pretty crap and pretty embarrassing. We get to the point where I would love to run an episode about I'd love to run an episode about, you know, I've, I've loved to go back in the vault and run an old episode on a sound garden. Well,

it's kind of hard to do that now because of the things that have transpired. Yeah. The, the patches, as we might call it in the software world, that would be required. And then it would sound different.

You might as well just do the whole thing again. You do. I've got a Chris Cornell show coming up before the summer break. Yeah. So, I mean, if I was to look at the list here before the summer break. Yeah. So, I mean, if I was to look at the list here of the ongoing history shows, there's probably of the 975 we've done,

there's probably 20 on Pearl Jam, probably 15 on Soundgarden. Yeah. How many on Nirvana, right? Well, exactly. Right.

You know, so, so over time they, they, they come on the go. So when, when we get requests for older versions as podcasts, we try to accommodate it as best we can.

But the challenge is the content might not work. Because not everybody knows this was a radio show. That's the irony. They think it's stuff that's coming up brand new every week and it's not.

The radio show now is a compendium to the podcast. Interesting. So, because, you know, I've been listening since day one to this ongoing history of new music. I love it. And I also subscribe to the podcast, and I thoroughly enjoy that as well.

I love it when it's like a current episode, and I'll hear Alan say, follow us on Google Play. What was it called? Plus. Google Plus. Google Plus. And I'm like, oh, the good old days. Google Plus was going to replace Facebook.

That was going to be great. Okay, so what is the, other than the fact the songs get shorter, is there any other, is it like, what is the practice involved in taking a radio episode and making it a podcast? Anything else there, Robbie? Oh, well, so I mean, what I do is, you know, I just basically save a different version of it and I just go and edit it down.

It's, you know it's it's it takes me maybe 20 minutes to do the podcast version because I do the full length version first and then I just telescope it down nothing nothing um nothing script wise gets removed the only thing that may get taken out is music but sometimes I will say this sometimes things that don't appear in the radio show appear in the podcast because on the radio show, we've only got 52 minutes of time to work with. So there could be a really good story in a song and I'll email Alan and say,

oh, by the way, in order to make this work, I'm going to kill this, but we'll throw it back in in the podcast version. Very interesting. So the only incentive for actually tuning into the radio version is the full version of the song. Yeah, I mean, it's something that you, yeah, you can tune in on when you're driving.

I mean, it's one of the few appointment listening radio programs left. When does it air? 7 o'clock Sundays on the Edge. And then there are, how many, about a dozen affiliates from Victoria to Halifax, and they air

it at various times over the weekend. Okay, I'm going to get to a question from Stuart Bailey about metadata, which I'm always interested in. But first, I want to just, we have to talk about some gaps here, okay? So, Alan, you haven't always worked for the company that owns CFNY. No, there was a time in 2011

when they decided that I needed to see other people. 691 and out is what we said. That was the last episode. Yeah, we got Gaz Whalen, the drummer from the Happy Mondays, to give us a couple of shows on the history of Manchester music. And then, poof, that was it for me for three years. And I walked around the wilderness doing a variety of other things, including joining up with Indie88. for three years and I walked around the wilderness doing a variety of other things including uh

joining up with Indy 88 um this is a interesting piece of trivia the first voice that you heard on Indy 88 was me in the meantime we partnered up though with our friends up at Orbit with Leslie Soldat, Heather Edwards, Jean-Marie Heimrath, and we took and created The Secret History of Rock, which was basically ongoing histories reworked into a two-hour show. And we did a hundred of those. So we've theoretically done a thousand episodes. So those don't fall under

the cake, because to remind our listenership, Chorus owns ongoing history of new music. Correct. So you can go do a music documentary show. You just can't call it that. I guess you can't use them. Yeah, I mean, it would be... We could, but I mean, what would be the point?

Well, I don't know, because I was in the room when somebody at Chorus asked Humble and Fred for $5,000 so they could transfer the name Humble and Fred to them when they started their podcast. Listen, these are legal. It's intellectual property. And whoever has something trademarked whoever's have something copyrighted that's theirs i think you know in 2011 there was an internal conversation that

will just continue on with the ongoing history and bookie did some dailies with the ongoing history and i never got into the whole mix of this. I just remember saying, guys, I don't think this is going to work because I don't think you understand what goes into this. It's fascinating to me to think that they could just swap out Alan Cross for, I'll make it up.

Well, they tried. They tried. There was also some idea of holding a contest to find a new host. But they didn't understand it's not the hosting part. That's the easy part. But in 2011, at least Wikipedia exists. There's all these different online resources. No, it's not the same.

But for a reasonable facsimile. But still, I think it's the cadence and the tone of Alan's voice. It's so, uh, connected to this program. Like it, it's, I,

I think it would be widely rejected by the listenership. It would be kind of like, Oh gosh. I mean, there was Casey case in doing American top 40. It took a long time for people to get rid of him and think about Ryan. So I can see Chris. Yeah.

What does shadow Stevens do? Did he do something in the... I think he did. Or he did... There were two competing top 40 shows and I think he was on the competition. This, we'll call it like Kirkland brand ongoing history of new music, okay?

What was it called again? The Secret History of Rock? Yes, Secret History of Rock. That's the one that was... You would hear it on Boom 97.3 and CFRB. Yes. Okay, Secret History of Iraq. That's the one that was, you would hear it on Boom 97.3 and CFRB. Yes. Okay, so 100 episodes of those.

Yep, two hours each. So remind me, of course, on Toronto Mike here, we were very interested when Indy 88 showed up and I think your title was Guidance Counselor? Yes.

That's right, I was the Guidance Counselor. No, I was a paid consultant. Sure, I know, I like that title, guidance counselor. So Indy 88, you're there for that period of time. In fact, we've talked many, many times, Alan, on this program in the past, but you're a big reason that the aforementioned Dave Bookman ended up on 88.1. Yes, when he was let go by the Edge, I said he is the number one indie guy in the city. You would be a fool not to hire him.

And it took a little convincing, but eventually that's where he ended up. And all this time, of course, you can't use Robbie J for Secret History. What? Oh, no, no. Oh, okay. What?

Who? Okay, so that's interesting. Okay, but in 2011, you're still at Chorus, right, Robbie? Okay, so you were just freelance. Yeah. Okay, so that's interesting. But in 2011, you're still at Chorus, right? Yeah. Okay, so you were just freelance. Yeah. Okay, okay. You never heard my name on the show. Okay, so...

Okay. So then Alec calls me in the summer of 2014. He says, you'll never guess your call. The same guy that let me go is bringing me back. And he's like, okay. And I get to dictate the terms and you're ready here we go okay okay so that's 2014 okay but in these this from 2011 to 2014 so we were used to hearing in fact i used whenever i think of the name rob johnson i always say technical production

by rob johnson i've instructed my family to put that on my headstone by the way like in that cadence and uh it's you know i think rob in your first visit, we played that actually, Alan saying technical production by Rob Johnson. And it's key to remember it's John Stunn. Because many a person has come on this program and talked about Rob Johnson. No, not all he is. Never worked with him. No, there's a T in there.

But you're secretly doing it. And Alan, maybe out of respect for your livelihood at Chorus, has not dropped the technical production I wrote. Well the point is I couldn't do the program without him honestly so We're like a married couple. We are

and I knew all the people at Orbit anyways because I had done some work with them through shows with you know through Chorus and album premieres so we all know each other so it was just easy There's no secrets at Toronto Radio and I'll tell you the funniest through chorus and album premieres. We all know each other. It's a small world. There's no secrets at Toronto Radio. I'll tell you the funniest thing.

When I was paid not to go to work, I remember one of the first things I thought to myself was, this is a very small business. As pissed off and as angry as you may be, just let it go. Don't make any enemies because you never know what could happen down the road. Don't burn those bridges. No, because they have a really interesting way of coming around and butting you

in the ass and let's face it guys outside i mean although you know against uh indy 88 is a kind of a smaller outfit but typically if you're outside of cbc there's three companies owning all these radio stations like it's bell it's rogers and it's uh chorus and stingray and stingray which has boom right and if you go west you got patterson patterson and there's vista, it's Rogers, and it's Chorus. And Stingray. And Stingray, which has Boom, right? And if you go west, you've got Patterson. Patterson, and there's Vista and a few others. Some others out there, okay. But you don't want to burn bridges. It's a very small lot.

Absolutely not, especially since the number of jobs within the industry is shrinking. Right. And on that note, Alan, I couldn't help but notice, you had a 7 o'clock show in the lineup that seems to have disappeared. What happened to your 7 o'clock program? Oh, no.

It's a 7 o'clock show in the lineup that seems to have disappeared. What happened to your 7 o'clock program? Oh, no. That was something that was started in 2016 as a placeholder. It was only supposed to last for a little while. Okay. But then it ended up lasting almost 1,500 episodes. And we're just about to sign. I'm just about to sign a new contract with Chorus to get me there for another five years.

So we're just, it's an opportunity to reset the table for things going forward. I'm still there. I'll still be doing lots of stuff. It's just I'll be doing different stuff. Okay, because I did see a Tyler Lynch, this is a Seafox show. So we now have,

I'm kind of curious of your take, and I realize you both get checks Lynch. This is a Seafox show. I'm kind of curious of your take, and I realize you both get checks from Chorus, and you might want to be careful. But it's up to you what you say. But I find it interesting that here we are in Toronto, this big station, 102.1. What a station. Capital, I won't say capital, but the biggest city in the country. That's a fact.

And we have, from 7 to 10 p.m., we have a Seafox show airing here. That is an interesting sign of the times. It is, but at the same time, what you want to be able to do is bring the best in radio content to the Toronto listenership, wherever it may come from.

They've had success with them doing this in Winnipeg, and it fills a gap, and it's better than having anything voice-tracked. Rob, are you going to chime in in or are you going to be careful? It's not my area. It is not my area. Okay, I like it when our shows are live and local. I prefer the radio shows here to be live and local.

Although your show can't be live, but obviously. Yeah, but for the most part, it really is. So this is just a really- Syndicated radio has been going on since the beginning of time. Ever. Since the beginning of radio. Forever. And it's an efficient way to bring high-quality programming

to stations that otherwise may not have an opportunity for, for whatever reason. And it could be financial. It could be financial it could be you know other reasons radio is is is um there's no big secret here is that it's it's fighting against the digital world and you have to find efficiencies i'm gonna pepper because i see i got about 20 minutes left and i have a bunch of questions here i'm gonna pepper you guys with questions one is about... Sunday Night at 7, the ongoing history of new music with Alan Cross.

It's about the music. So we have this bed of music that we've been hearing for 30 years. Where did... And I played the stinger off the top, which is like Pavlov Dog. You hear that, you know what you're getting next.

But where did the music come from? You want to handle that or should I? I think you know it you're getting next but where did the music come from you want to handle that or should i it i you think i think you know it better than i do but nobody has a definitive answer that's the challenge back in late 1992 when the station was about to relaunch as the edge management brought in this producer named amin batia Amin is extremely accomplished. He's a mad scientist in the studio. And he was the one commissioned to come up with all kinds of new imaging for the radio station, including a theme song for this new program

that they had just assigned me. And that's Amin Batia's work. And it's a hybrid of all kinds of sounds and songs and this and that. Okay, let me do the stinger again here and you gotta remember it works this was built during this combination of analog and digital days like oh i don't think we had anything digital he might have he might have i mean probably did would have had a real like a pro tools version four if that and then he would have had his his moogs and and keyboards and his guitars yeah i have i i'm assuming i have been told that uh he

was the one that uh composed the whole thing so that's original and then batia material that i'm so glad i asked okay Okay, Stuart Bailey, he says, for your interview with Alan Cross, could you ask him about how he manages his metadata? I've heard him do one or two episodes on Ongoing History of New Music where he talks about metadata used to track song plays, charting, or formats, for example, MP3.

But given how much he has talked about music, how does he manage it all? I'm a bit of a library nerd, by the way, and thanks for all the shows you do. I think that's me he's thanking, but he's probably also thanking you. All right, Alan, metadata. Well, there's two questions there.

The metadata would be the songs that I have, and those are all carefully cataloged. What do you do if a band like the Tragically Hip, is it the Tragically Hip, or it the Tragically Hip or is it Tragically Hip, the? The problem, whenever there's a band with a the, I tend to remove the the, because in the way iTunes, for example, organizes things, they will have all these the bands all together.

Yes. That is a problem with the database. So in the interest of having everything nicely alphabetical, I dropped the the. What about a perfect circle that's still A? That is definitely an A. I'm asking you all the questions because I'm a big metadata nerd.

The way it goes is numerical characters first, then alphabet, then symbols. When I worked at HMV 333 Yonge Street, it was fun when people would come in and look for Led Zeppelin under Zed. In the old days of DOS. There's a substance there, I think. In the old days of DOS, we would make sure that songs were cataloged properly by putting an underscore between the words.

I mean, I will admit, the library of music is quite the dumpster fire. Oh boy. Because just the way everyone is titled songs over time, right? But do you ever think like, do you ever think to yourself, I'll go to YouTube, get a good YouTube, but just rip that to MP3 or whatever?

You know what I will do? I will do, I will use a program that I have called Audio Hijack. I have that too. And I will rip, I will play a version off of Apple or Spotify and I will play it as an AIFF file. See, these are the hacks.

I love it. Retro Dave wants me to say, he goes, Hey Mike, looking forward to hearing your upcoming podcast with Alan Cross and Robbie J. Retro J. I got Robbie J. in the hacks. I love it. Retro Dave wants me to say, he goes, hey Mike, looking forward to hearing your upcoming podcast with Alan Cross and Robbie J, Retro J. I got Robbie J in the house. Can you please ask him if he has an update on the Martin

Streak documentary that was announced a few years back? I just got an email yesterday. So this would be January 31st. I got the email from Will Dunlop, who was the guy doing it. And he asked me when I would be ready to appear for an interview. Now, there is a little bit of a hurry up and wait thing going on there,

because I feel like, I hope this is finally happening, but maybe the pandemic and stuff interfered. I did an interview with Will last summer, and I think he was, at that point, it was post-pandemic, getting things back on the track, on the rails, everything was moving forward because it became a lot easier. Oh, I guess, I don't know the legalities

of the documentary world, but you're doing the CFNY doc. So you had to get, like, I'm always curious, like, why did you have to get Chorus's permission? It's their intellectual property. But you can do, I mean, you can do, I could do a documentary about Coke versus Pepsi, like in the Cola Wars, and I don't need to get sign off from Pepsi.

Well, we just want to cover our bases so that nobody comes after us. Well, we'll have to do that. I guess I'm wondering. I honestly don't know. Although it is about Martin Street, not necessarily about the station. Okay. 2014, you mentioned you got the call to come back, Alan. So the same person who said, we need to see other people back in 2011, in 2014

said, Alan, would you come back at that time? You're at Indy 88. Was there ever a, like a, did you have a hesitant moment of hesitation? Like I'm gonna ride this out. I, this was another one of those pivotal career moments. You have to make the right decision.

So, um, I spent some time thinking about it, talking to my wife over it. And, um, in, in the, it was like, I can't remember who, somebody said, look it, who are you kidding? This is where you belong. That wasn't me, by the way. No, I don't think it was. It sounds like Robbie J was saying that.

But somebody said, you've been there for so long, well, why wouldn't you go back if they want you back? Okay. And that has been a dozen years ago. So the ongoing history of new music, not the secret history of rock, the ongoing history of new music, was it,

it was dormant essentially for that period of time. Okay. It did not get any, it just went away. So no, no Jeff Woods or Dave Bookman. Woods was doing, you know,

the legends of classic rock. Which was basically like for like, the Q version. Yeah, for Tom Petty instead of Anthony Kiedis. Which needed to happen. Right. Okay, cool. Now, there's a gentleman named Karim Mosna,

I hope I'm pronouncing that right, who wrote in, Hi, Toronto Mike, I've followed your podcast and blog for years and I see you have Alan Cross and Rob Johnston coming on the program tomorrow and that you are inviting questions for the show. I wanted to ask alan about when crafting ongoing history on an or any on-air shows are you always communicating to a music aficionado or are you also keeping in mind those who may not be really into the music as well can this be

challenging as well i'm curious to learn more about rob's role we're kind of doing that now but what does being the technical producer of Ongoing History entail? Thank you, Karim. The answer is, it's all about a good story. And you can't get too nerdy about it because you'll end up excluding people

and they'll feel like, oh God, I don't understand. They're talking above my head. I feel left out. So I've always maintained that the stories have to be wherever possible accessible to anybody who is interested in a good story the biggest compliment the program can get is i didn't even think i didn't think i would enjoy this particular topic but i got so sucked into the stories that I sat in my driveway waiting for the show to end so I could see how things worked out.

And sometimes we don't know what's going to hit. I'll tell you a story. So we've done a series of shows called The Kings of Quirk, stuff like this, like just bizarre music, right? And I guess it was December, I was putting a re-roll podcast in because we sometimes do some re-roll ongoing histories and I have to, when I

put the pod, okay, let me backtrack here. The podcast version that goes out is the version of the show from the preceding weekend, okay? So today's version, the one that dropped this morning is Connections, which is the one married to the show that aired last Sunday. So what happens is every once in a while we'll have to fill a gap and I'll put a gap in.

So I put a show on called the Quirky Music, I think it was. I can't remember. Outsider Music. Outsider Music. Right. Outsider Music. And the response we got email wise was overwhelming.

It just, I, it is the most listener unfriendly music ever recorded yes i i listened to this yes and yes the like please more more yeah yeah so you could do a dozen shows on eddie vetter right but you do a show on this yeah and it's like you know so that's the that and honestly that's the brilliance about it yeah you have no idea what is going to resonate what you think is going to be a home run falls flat right but then you look at the downloads for the songs for the uh the programs that you thought yeah this is okay let's face it i'm i'm grasping at straws this week and then boom it goes nuts. You mentioned the Connections episode,

which I listened to, actually. It's interesting to hear you, Alan, talk about how that show, which was just, that was an amazing show, Connections, and how that inspired your, James Burke, your style on ongoing history of music

was inspired. A lot of it, yeah. I mean, I was such a big James Burke Connections fan because I just loved how he style on ongoing history of music was inspired a lot of it yeah i mean i was such a big james burke uh connections fan because i just loved how he wove together all these seemingly separate things into a common thread common thread yeah it was it was brilliant it is brilliant okay i'm really going rapid fire now um alan who else, uh, and if there's anyone else besides yourself is tweeting from at Alan cross.

Cause I, I've noticed that it's like, it's, uh, it feels to me like maybe you've got a team there. Is it all just you? No, there's, there's no one. It's me and Rob. That's it. I don't, I don't even have it. There, there used to be, I used to have some, some help, um, with some tweets, but that's

long, long gone. Right. Well, this is high praise for you then that you're doing all that yourself a lot of activity there but you're and by the way there this you are in this room you have the entire staff of ongoing history there is no one else gonna get to that okay so every so so if anything happens to us now that's it for ongoing history that's it bomb goes off in this room it's over let okay. So speaking of things that hopefully never happen, let's, I'm going to say this because I'm hoping it doesn't happen,

but let's say Anthony Kiedis dies today. Okay. Tragically. Terrible. What does that, for you, Alan, what exactly would happen to the rest of your day if Anthony Kiedis died? Well, it would collapse.

Everything would be called off. I would end up doing a TV and radio show. I am obituary, man. Yeah. Whenever anyone in the music world dies, I immediately started getting phone calls. You and Eric Alper are the two guys. Okay, can I talk about Eric for a moment?

What are your thoughts on Eric Alper? Because you're right, I see him all the time now popping up when someone dies. Great. Yeah. So the more, there's no, hey, get off my turf, Alper. you're right I see him all the time now popping up when someone dies great yeah yeah so the the more there's no uh hey get off my turf no no no no if if they call me I'm available okay fine if they may call him and they may if he's not it just I don't care so you know you're both sweethearts well Alan will spend the next 48 hours doing show doing stuff about Anthony Kiedis right

but what we'll do for the ongoing history is is we're not going to rush out a show. We'll step back and we'll look at it and go, is this a one, a two, or a three-parter? And then maybe a month later, three weeks later, we'll slip in the one or the two because we have a theory that our schedule is set pending asterisks.

And the asterisks are usually, unfortunately, people dying. Yes. Right. Because I was thinking of, yeah, like, you know, Chris, you mentioned Chris Cornell earlier

and I think he's up for, I think he's nominated for the Hall of Fame or something. Yeah, Soundgarden was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So will that, like, that's not a death,

but will that spiral Alan Cross as a talking head talking about... No. Right now, what we'll do is, it's, well, if a big alternative act dies, we will immediately...

Or calls it quits. Or calls it quits. We'll do something. I have a whole bunch of pre-written, pre-voiced obituaries that will run on Q107 because I'm the imaging voice of Q107. Yeah, sorry, you should mention that. And so I've got about 75 obituaries ready. You know, Mick, Keefe.

It's the oldest trick in broadcasting. Just so you have something on right away. So that's, and newspapers have obituaries, like the Hazel McCallion obituary had been written for about 25 years. I was talking to my neighbor recently back in the fall, and she works for one of the newspapers and they had been working on a queen elizabeth for years updating it every dating it

all the time yeah so you know the the problem now is that we have so many rock stars that are in their 70s and 80s yeah and they are going to be shuffling off this mortal coil over the next five years it's going to be a mass extinction extinction event off this mortal coil over the next five years. It's going to be a mass extinction event. And at some point in the next five to seven to ten years, we are going to live in a world where there is no living beetle. And there's no Bob Dylan. There's no Mick and Keith.

There's no Jimmy Page. There's no Robert Plant. So that's something that we are probably going to start to deal with with ongoing history podcasts not for the radio show but for the podcasts without a doubt and you know we you know i used anthony as the example because that's a big uh alt rock uh superstar we would we would do something you know as uh if we have well yeah i know what you're what you're going to say. You're going to say, we'll go back to the vault and we can, if it works. Yeah.

But sometimes it's better to actually take the, here's the thing with broadcast. Everybody wants something right away. Yeah. And while that's good to do for the context of a show, like the ongoing history, it needs time and thought. Yes.

You can do a, you know, if, if somebody big like that were to die, I think the best way to handle it would be to have the live announcers talk about it and play music. That would be the best way. And then say that, you know, ongoing history is in production. We are going to do a retrospect on, insert name of artist here. Can you, you know, with the automation software, how much, can you break in right away?

Like, you know, if Anthony Kiedis dies, you can break into that automation software that's playing the music. You know what, I don't know. No idea. It's not our thing. I was just looking here at the schedule. So Bowie died the beginning of January 2016.

We did our episodes the 14th and 21st of February. So a month later. And what about artists that are like influential, important artists, but aren't names that the average Joe knows, like a Tom Verlaine, for example, from television? Well, that is going to be, we started handling that this year. I've been trying to put it off, wanting to put it off for so long, but there's no way we can do it anymore,

is that the first show of any calendar year will be an in-memoriam show from here on in. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we did one, the first in-memoriam show for 2022 in January of 2023, and we will continue to do that going forward. The other way we can do it, and we've done it in the past,

there's a series called What's the Big deal about blank so what's the big deal about tom verlain and what tom verlain would be is the the beginning the nucleus and then right what came from that right right like here's pavement and this is the influence whatever okay amazing uh by way, I just yesterday dropped the Ridley Funeral Home Memorial episode for January 2023. People we lost. I remember people like David Onley, et cetera. And I want to shout out Ridley Funeral Home.

By the way, if Anthony Kiedis does die in the next couple of days, I'm getting the blame. So I'm hoping he lives a good long time. But shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. You guys enjoy Italian food? Yes. Oh, there's a palma near my house palma pasta has a large lasagna for each of you you're each getting a large their lasagna have you tried their lasagna oh the meat lasagna is i i'm i'm i last time i was here

was pre-palma pre-palma okay i'm glad you're back no no no they they're oh no no no well listen it's fantastic. It is fantastic. Alan's right. And you're not leaving here without one. Good. Oh, they actually put meat in their meat box. Oh, yeah.

Lots of meat. Delicious Palma pasta. I also, I know, Robbie J, you're a big fan of Great Lakes Brewery. I think you live near Troy Birch, I want to say. Yeah, I see him every, I see his vehicle every once in a while. He's north of Bob. Okay, he's north of Bob. But we're all on the same line. We're all just off Woodbine. Map it on my map here. Yeah, I see him every, I see his vehicle every once in a while. He's north of Bob. Okay, he's north of Bob. But we're all on the same line.

We're all just off Woodbine. Map it in my map here. Yes, exactly. But you got some fresh craft beer from Great Lakes going home with you. Thank you, Great Lakes Brewery. Thank you, Palma Pasta.

Thank you, Ridley Funeral Home. Canna Cabana will not be undersold on cannabis or cannabis accessories and there's over 140 locations across the country. And my final minutes here,

Alan Zweig was just here. We were actually saying it it was gonna be alan week because we had alan zweig and now i have alan cross alan zweig did a fantastic documentary on vinyl i'm sure alan you've seen that documentary mike wickham writes in and says please ask about the cfny music library i if i remember correctly, Allen and Iver, he says Ivan, but I know it's Iver. Iver Hamilton have the bulk of it. Well, here's what happened. In 1996, the radio station was moving from the Strip Mall at 83 Kennedy Road South to

No. 1 Dundas. And at the time, if you remember, vinyl was considered to be evil, awful, horrible, dusty, dirty, moldy stuff. We're getting into the age of the internet. If we need any of this music, well, we'll just find it online. So there was no plan to move all the vinyl from Kennedy Road South to One Dundas. They were just going to throw it out.

Wow. Now, the staff would have none of this. So by this time, we were almost 100%. Well, we were 100% digital. Yeah, we had moved over to the DCS system at that point. Right. So everything was digital, and we had all this vinyl. And they were just going to toss it in the dumpster,

and that was going to be it. So the day, so the staff started going through grabbing stuff. Did you grab anything? A few pieces. Yeah. I think I got there, though, after you backed up the U-Haul truck and emptied out the vaults. I actually rented

a Ryder truck, backed it up to the radio station, and took whatever was left. That's about 7,000 acres. Did anyone film that? That's the documentary. No, no. That's a documentary. You realize now, especially with that Beatles dog from Peter Jackson, we should be running a video of everything.

Everything's a potential. This is before smartphones. Yeah. I mean, the funny thing with the ongoing history, the ongoing history vault itself lives on DAT at Chorus Key. The first 200 and some shows. And then it went to CD for about 200 shows. And then everything else lives on my hard drive.

Digital. Lives on the cloud. Lives on Dropbox. Lives on Dropbox. So if you, by the way, back to those records, if you grew up listening to CFNY between 1977 and 1996 and you wonder where all those records that Chris Shepard and Earl Jive and everybody else played on the radio,

they're in my basement. That's amazing here. How's Mary Ellen Benninger doing? She's working for the Ontario Energy Board, and she's fine. She's good. I love the fun fact that Alan Cross married Mary Ellen Benninger. In fact, if you listen right now, there's a commercial about scams on PSA. That's her.

She's on the radio. Amazing. And Robbie J sent me the fun fact, as we wind down here, that when Ongoing History of New Music debuted 30 years ago this month, Bill Clinton had been in office, what, for just over a month? Is that right? Yeah. And Groundhog Day was the top movie.

Yeah. It's bizarre. It's so bizarre. It's such a lifetime ago. I mean, I have to be, you know, the thing is, when the show started, I remember when it started, I thought I would listen to it. And then I was, I have to be, you know, the thing is, when the show started, I remember when it started, I thought I would listen to it. And then I was, I got to admit, I was intimidated as hell to take over the production side.

Because I knew the work that went into it and what Craig had done. And Craig spent so much time on it. And the first episodes, the episodes he did are incredible. Because of what went into it in the analog days. Right. Right. And, you know, full praise to Craig. And, you know, he's the OGT,

TP, if you will, technical production. Right. Learned a lot from Craig. But yeah, this Craig, Alan, myself, it's the core. That's all there's ever been. I will, now here's an Easter egg for all Ong all ongoing history podcast subscribers

yeah on the 28th of February I will drop the first episode that's never been it's never okay that's amazing yeah I will drop one you know Craig Venn tells me a story where he was editing something for

Ted Wallachian and he didn't quite put the right one on the air. No, no. That's a famous one in CFMY lore. And as an editor, that is your greatest, greatest fear. Yeah. Yeah. That's like a poster child for, don't do this.

And then the other one, of course, when Martin Streak, I guess he can't go to a concert. I want to say it was Tool? I want to say or Nine Inch Nails? No, no, it was Nine Inch Nails. Okay. And he drops the big F-bomb with Pete Fowler. Shout out to...

I'm wearing today for the photo. We're going to take it now because Alan has a heart out here. But my Lost Indie City T-shirt here is a tribute to Pete Fowler. And yeah, Pete was on the air with Martin when he dropped that F-bomb. Jason Barr was producing the Thursday 30 that night.

I was coming in to do the overnight, and Jason says, you'll never guess what happened. But what's amazing is that I have the, the audio has survived, and I have it. I think Brother Bill had that. Shout out to Brother Bill.

So happy anniversary, guys. How long will this show go? Like, what is the plan? What else are we going to do? You know, I'm at least another five years. You know what? Honestly, the podcast audience has kept it going. We're getting hundreds of thousands of downloads a month.

How many total downloads? Close to 20 million, right? Yeah, somewhere in around there. And this is a program that comes out once a week. Yeah. Well, it's a very good program otherwise you wouldn't have so many downloads and I enjoy it myself

and I think of us as like even though you're it's a chorus production you two are the only members on the team or whatever like Toronto Mike ongoing history new music both part of your

daily podcast diet here we're all in the same we're in the same boat here but thanks so much for doing this again don't leave about the lasagna. Make sure we get the photo before Alan drives away in his shitbox out there.

So Alan was 24 hours early. My wife was working upstairs from home and she asked me she goes, whose Porsche was that? Well, Alan was here. He'll be back in 24 hours. And that brings us to the end of our 1197th

show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Alan is at Alan Cross. Robbie is at Robbie is at underscore J. Underscore J. Don't forget the underscore. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Recycle My Electronics. They're at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta.

Recycle My Electronics. They're at E-P-R-A underscore Canada. And if anyone, especially you, Robbie J, you have any old tech that has lived its life and needs to be chucked, don't throw that in the garbage. You go to

recyclemyelectronics.ca. Find out where you drop that off so it can be safely recycled. It's really important. There's a lot of chemicals and stuff in there, as you know. Well, please back a truck up to my house. I've got a whole bunch of stuff for you.

We'll take care of you. Ridley Funeral Home. They're at Ridley FH. Canna Cabana at canna cabana underscore. We will see you all Friday when my special guest is Dave Charles. Because everything is coming up rosy and gray. Yeah, the wind is cold, but the smell of snow warms me today.

And your smile is fine, and it's just like mine, and it won't go away. Because everything is rosy and green Well, I've kissed you in France And I've kissed you in Spain And I've kissed you in places I better not name And I've seen the sun go down On Chaclacour

But I like it much better going down on you Yeah, you know that's true Because everything is coming up Rosy and green Yeah, the wind is cold But the smell of snow warms us today And your smile is fine And it's just like mine The wind is cold, but the smell of snow warms us today. And your smile is fine, and it's just like mine, and it won't go away.

Because everything is rosy now. Everything is rosy, yeah. Everything is rosy and gray, yeah, yeah