Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Cam Gordon and Steve Pratt: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1864

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

In this 1864th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Cam Gordon about his new book Track Changes before they're joined by Steve Pratt, who helped grow an online community at CBC Radio 3. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Nick Ainis, and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail].

Hi, it's Cam Gordon here. The author of the new book, Track Changes, the origin story of Canadian music on the internet, 1990 to 2010. Look forward to talking to award-winning podcaster, Toronto, Mike Boone. Did you put that in ear quotes? Well, that's your nickname, no, Toronto. Okay, I thought you were like, I was from Mississauga.

Yeah. And they passed us Toronto. First name, Toronto last same night. That's what the government knows me as. I'm letting this run for a moment because I actually don't know what number this is. I want to get it right. Here we go.

Welcome to episode 1,864 of Toronto Mike. An award-winning podcast, proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. Order online at great lakes beer.com 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 Visit palmapasta.com for more Fusion Corpso, Nick Aenees He's got an event with Bradford on April 2nd Be there, support FOTM Nick Aeinis

Recycle My Electronics.comitting to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. And Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. Joining me today, returning to Toronto Mike to talk about track changes. It's FOTM Hall of Famer Cam Gordon. Mike, it is so good to see you. And I was thinking on the way over here, do I still have the most all-time appearances on Toronto, Mike? I believe you do.

Because there's no way Stu could have caught you. You still come over every quarter for FOTM cast. Yeah, like it'd be like Rob and Bob and a few other names. They're still distant. Wise Blot was the guy, right? I think, and then I think you and Stu became one, two. Yeah. But you're definitely one.

Yeah. Well, you do find interesting that I'm still at the top. top of the list. And this one could argue is the first time I've ever come over for a purpose. Because I'm actually like, I have a reason. I'm on a press junket as you called out with my friend

Stu Stone earlier today with this new book on flying off the shelves. Well, listen, we're going to talk about this book. I have questions. I read this book. You're in the book. I'm in chapter 11. It's in the book. You're in the book. We're all in the book. Sto's in the book.

Well, Here's the big question. So I'm doing some math in my head. I think about four hours ago, I rapped with your friend, Stu Stone. I heard. This is a weird happenstance where you both came over on the same day, but, you know, not together.

Yeah. And I've gotten a few texts just to clear the air. Stu and I are good. We're not mad at each other. I know there's some rumors swirling out. Laney gossip has been all over this story. Is she nice? I don't think I've ever met her.

I just assumed you ran in those circles. No, I feel like I've been at an event where she was there maybe, but no, I don't think I've can't get a good read on her. Like she may be the most loveliest, funniest, most delightful person. I just can't get a read on her and I've never met her. Yeah, she's had a good run. I don't know. She's been on that, what's it called?

The social. The social, yeah. The social for many years. And I don't know. I mean, I think are you going to be on the social to promote track changes? I may have reached out to some producers. I'm not sure they're going to have me on, but I did think, you know, the social,

there's a social media element to this. I think you'd be perfect for the social. I also think you'd be an ideal guest for Dina and Tim on breakfast television. Yeah, absolutely. Well, maybe after that Paken time slot, you know, five days a week. His seven minutes, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

But no, I have some PR cooking, as you mentioned. You've probably seen a few. Yep. You were on with Connie Thesson. I was on with Connie Theson. I was on with Amber MacArthur. I just did her podcast. That's fresh.

That's a big deal. I didn't know about that one. Who else? Like, where else should I be looking for Cam Gordon appearances? Well, if you all see where everything is the easiest way, go to the Instagram account. Track Changes underscore CA. Go to like the link tree. I'm just, I'm almost trying to like, because you have to go through where all the places to buy the book.

so maybe I'll just like buy a few copies along the way. But I actually have all the different press hits listed there. So there's a few. Okay, and every time you appear somewhere, I'm guessing you post about it on Instagram. Yeah, like every few days all updated. I was in the Georgia Strait. There was a really nice article.

I told you this. It was with a guy who's like writing from them now, but he was actually the music editor for the Edmonton's son in the 1980s and 1990. So I had a really good chat with him. We actually hung out then for about 90 minutes. after we were just at a coffee shop in Vancouver. And he's telling me about like going all these concerts at the Northlands and the 80s and stuff

like that. So that was really cool. So yeah, yeah, I'm getting out there trying, working on a few other things. But anyway, this is always my favorite media opportunity because you're obviously to MSM here.

You say that to all the podcasts. No, no, no. That's why I've been here so many times. Now, I'm really curious since I, that's where I was going when I said,

Stu Stone was here mere hours ago, but have you had a chance to listen to the previous episode with Stu Stone. I listened to about the first 45 minutes. Good. And then I did see that there was some book talk at the end. So I fast forward into the end. And I listened to about the last 30 minutes. I did hear about that the Stu's podcasting years. And again, I feel like ties into some stuff we're going to be talking about today. And that was a missing link for me, which it never, believe it or not, even though Stu's been over here a hundred times. We had never dove into sort of like his role in the, the, the, the podcast industry and those missing,

missing years in California. The wilding years. Yeah, like, and, you know, I always knew he was friends of Devin Sawa and Fival goes west and these people, but I didn't really connect all these dots till today. Well, it's why I like you, Toronto, Mike. It's why I like Stu. You guys are just, it's in the book. I heard Stu read it.

You guys are both curious and you're just always doing new stuff. You're always, like, Stu. had 10 different careers and just such a creative guy just so I feel like both you guys if you ever stop moving and stop creating you'd literally probably drop dead like shadow to really funeral. Exactly.

So I know you, this has been spoiled for you because you skipped ahead. You couldn't show the restraint required to listen proper. I'm going to play two minutes for you from Stu, okay? And then we can address this. So let's listen. Any words for your friend,

Cam Gordon, as he launched is his very first book. I'm surprised that this is his first book because Cam has always been a person that has been a very creative guy and rather shy about his creativity growing up. And I'm happy to say that with the help of this very platform that he references in chapter 11, and, you know, myself and you, I feel like Cam came out of his shell in almost his late 30s, early 40s were transformative years for him. that maybe would have happened for others earlier in life,

but I think it happened for him. Now, this is a guy that was the head of communications for major companies, and I'm saying this about him, he was a shy guy. And so the fact that when I encountered Cam as an adult and found out that he was head of communications, you can imagine I was a little bit like, wow, that's Cam doing that? That's crazy.

But it's not crazy because he's always had it in him. It just took a guy like Mike Boone and a guy like Stu Stone to help him feel comfortable in the, to bring it out. And I'm so happy that he's not only become one of the best podcast co-hosts. You know, he's obviously kept up doing appearances here on this show. He's a Hall of Famer. He's hilarious.

But his writing, he's always been a great writer. And the fact, he's always written cool blogs and made really cool posts and observations. Very detail-oriented guy. Even back when we were in high school, like when we would do fantasy baseball stuff, he was overly prepared for those drafts as far as like looking under the hood of like what each player brings to the table. So it doesn't surprise me that Cam wrote a book. It surprises me that it took this long for Cam to write a book. And I'm excited for him to have success with this book and future success with future books.

So Cam, Gordon, the author, congratulations to him. And he should be very proud of the accomplishment. And I wish him continued success in everything that he does. And it's about damn time that he wrote a book. So congrats, Cam, and I love you. Oh. How would you like to respond to Stu Stone? I'm like speechless.

I do, like you said, you know, it took you to take me out, get me on my... We're taking out of our shells, as it were. Out of our shells. Yeah, but no, that's very kind of Stu to say. And yeah, I mean, he's not wrong. And, you know, some of this got, not to go full Kippery, I said it does allude to some of this in the book,

but I've always, you know, done, you know, school newspaper, campus radio, blogs, GeoCities websites. I just had Liz Worth over here. She talked about you at Exclaim. It was actually the spill. Oh, the spill magazine. Yeah, yeah. She misremembered, I think.

Yeah, yeah, but it's all good. But yeah, I mean, you know what's like you just sort of keep up with the media and just always be creating. And I don't know, like I always, also never really had the guts to pursue any of this as like a career too, which is probably why you end up in PR. but I think this book also proves that there's actually a lot of continuity between the two. I say that. There's a lot of PR people who know nothing about the media too.

I'll say that and maybe we could do another podcast on that some other time. I need names. Yeah, yeah. But again, like I've always liked to think professionally I've always been like a good friend to media too by not totally stonewalling them at every opportunity despite some of, you know, I've represented a lot of high profile clients over the years. So to balance both. And I mean, you've, you've, you've, you've not a few PR types on your show.

You got Eric Alper and, uh, the other cam, Cam, uh, Cam Carpenter. Carpenter, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I think it's going to be at the book launch. You just had who at Gordon Lightfoot's like publicist. Yeah, Victoria Lord. Yeah, so we're not all, we're not all evil. Would you count Richard Flo Hill in there? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah, might have been the right Richard Flohill, but, uh, yeah,

anyway, thank you, Stu. I love you too, buddy. And, uh, yeah, thanks for the words. I have some questions about the book, but may I crack. open a fresh can of Great Lakes beer. Absolutely. I'm going to do that as well. What do you got there, by the way? So I've got the premium logger.

You're going to love it. Okay, on the mic. Three, two. Okay. Cheers. All right. Here, cheers. I see friends drinking beer.

How do you do? Mike, before you go into your questions, I have some questions for you about some stuff in the book. Stop the music. Like I said, I have some props here. Oh, I'll make time for that. I'm going to try to put the, which camera is it here? Yeah, it's this one.

Yeah. Okay. This phone. What is the historical significance of this phone? This is an LG cell phone. Oh. It's like a slider. I'm going to guess you were doing PR for LG when that was launched.

I was. And I'm going to guess. Yeah. You had a rad event with cool people and I was invited. I feel like the very first. first email I ever sent you was to a launch event for this phone. This is the LG Shine phone. This phone I still think is pretty fucking cool. It's like metal. I actually use this for a while. Here, why, why you play with that for a while while I describe it? Better late than never, right?

Yeah, but we did a really cool event for that. I have it. Do you want me to, I have it now. And we're going back, by the way, 2007. Yeah, within the scope of the track changes. So I thought this tied together. And you were Cameron. Oh my God. Yeah. Okay. What's that phone? That's amazing. Okay. You are cordially invited to an exclusive experience. The latest in luxury, LG Shine phone, and Burke's newest diamond collection. Ceteak, I guess it's called Cotique. I can't even say that word. Please find your invite to this exclusive engagement below.

It's like the what, the when, which was October 11th, 2007. Yeah. It was at the Burke's Toronto Manulife Center. please RSVP to Cameron Gordon and then your corporate email at the time and there's a phone number and another woman's name and her email and her phone number

this is where I tapped out I'm being very honest I know myself I didn't even reply but this is the line where you completely lost me okay and then you were completely ignored this line. PR people listen up

cocktail attire for women jacket required for men no shorts allowed so one I'm being very honest you could be giving away Rolls Roy's card Okay. Yeah.

If I'm invited, and then maybe this makes me a dick, I don't know, I think it makes me true to myself or whatever, but once I see jackets required for me to attend your event, so you could show me this fucking phone in the hopes all write about it and talk about it as an influencer, I'm out. Okay. So, Phil Collins, no jackets required. 100%. So I may, I know I read this.

I read every email I get, okay? So I read this email, and I didn't know who you were, so there was no, like, friendship. Almost 20 years ago. October 10th, 2007, which is almost, you're right, that's about 19 years ago. And knowing, I would, I would react the exact same way today. So it didn't matter that it was an exclusive event. I also don't respond well to words like Birx. I know that sounds like.

What if was that Ellis Burks? With that interest you. I hate bread socks. Fuck those guys. He's gone, right? Isn't he dead? Is he dead? Ellis Burks?

Why do I think? Oh, God. Maybe it's green. Maybe there's another guy. Mike Greenwell. Mike Greenwell. That's who I'm confusing him with. My apologies.

If I caused any panic, I don't want to spread these myths, mistruths. But I'm looking now, and it's a lovely, there's a cocktail. I just, that's what happened.

So do you, obviously I missed out on a great event, but, I mean, I got invited to an opera and I wore my shorts. I biked over in shorts. And there were people

dressed to the nines. Yeah. You know, give me that back. That belongs in the museum. The museum of Cam Gordon P. But it might be making a pierce a couple of weeks. last thought on this. Until they discontinued the phone, I actually rocked LG phones.

Oh, yeah. Well, I was honestly very lucky to do PR for LG. I was working for an agency called High Road Communication at the time. Big time. Yeah. And I'll just say this. They were spending so much money. So not only did I get to go to all these incredible events at Berks and elsewhere, I went to Las Vegas to CES. I went to a press junket in Paris because we wanted to show like five Ontario or? No, no, in, uh, in, uh, you know, it's called France. Yeah, in Europe, uh, you know, over there. Um, over there. Yeah, like, we were taking the journalists out for dinner. We were, it, because they wanted to show the journalist's steam washer. So as I'm trying to remember was on those. I didn't get anybody. You're not on, but like city line was there and Shadeline.

So again, like, and actually, let me, spent the bucks. Yeah. Just so I don't bury the lead. There's a copy of a book. That's for you to keep. I know you've, you've, you've, well, I have question. I know you're still, you're asking me questions, right? So that phone was the first ever email I got from a Cameron Gordon. I don't delete g-mails. I'm looking at it right now. So, okay, here's a question. This will get into some of the stuff I sort of want to ask you, but that was 2007.

So Torontomike.com was what? Oh, four years old? No, no. No, I guess longer. So Torontomike.com launches as a personal homepage in 1999. Okay, so you'd been on like the blog. The blog, it's switched from personal

homepage to a blog. 2002. Yeah. But like I think that year is really interesting because prior to that, I don't think we're inviting respectfully bloggers to these high-end events, but then slowly a little Toronto Mike and a little Zach Bussy and a little Casey Stewart. And FOTM, Ramey the Minks. Ramey the Minks was in the mix.

And Lauren O'Neill, Lauren O'Neill. And then we got, you know, Evan Carmichael and, you know, a real cottage industry. And this is all really at the dawn of like, social media, too, like MySpace was kind of popping at this time. I think Facebook was around. I think Facebook is 2006. But it was really before like the influencer era as we know it. So were you getting, if you recall, like, were you getting invited to other stuff at this time? Were you starting to? Were people starting to take notice of what you're doing? I was definitely getting invited to stuff at that time. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I felt like the,

it started cooking in 2004. Anyway, I thought bringing that phone tonight sort of ties together. I love it. I wish I got to keep that phone. No. It would have a home in the studio here. Stu likes how it's authentically collected itself. I'll take some pictures of the book. Amongst all the brick-a-brack with a by-way bag and Georgianimal steel. So do you want to take turns asking questions?

Like I have a, I wanted to, because I read the book. Yeah, ask me. So I'm now, I've got a copy because I had a PDF and now I have an actual physical copy. So if you don't mind if I just reread chapter 11? Go right ahead. What did you think of Stu Stone? in his reading of chapter 11. So not all of chapter 11,

but he did read the first few paragraphs. And if people want to get, like, you know how you give a little taste of a book? Yeah. Stu Stone read the first few paragraphs of chapter 11. Yeah. It'll be the audio book.

Maybe we'll get that gig. He's trying to get that gig. Yeah, he did a good job. I mean, fastidious is tough for Stu. It is, yeah. But anyway, people have to read this.

You can hear sort of what I said about Toronto Mike and Stu Stone on that. But I do think that anecdote, that whole chapter is about blogging. But right. That's where I show up. That's why I'm focusing on. This is right in the same era. You know, I'm emailing you.

Do you want to come to the LG event? This is right around the same time. You're also blogging that. Oh my God, Martin Streak is no longer with us. And you became the source of the truth. We've talked about this before. You've blogged about this many times. But again, that's a real turning point when like bloggers were the tip is a spear for like actual

news cycles. And I feel like you've said before. I feel like you said that was a big traffic driver to your website. Oh, my goodness. Yes. Yes, it was. Yes, it was. And it was, it's also frightening as fuck because, you know, I'm, I'm basically corroborating best of my ability.

I'm not going to report somebody's dead. If it's possible, they're not dead. Sure. But it's still scary to go first when somebody's dead. Yeah. And plus, just this huge wave of traffic that you probably weren't used to. And you certainly, you know, this wasn't the era now where you have like hours and hours and hours of video online. Sure.

The way it had historically worked would be I would be the first and sometimes only person to write about. about a popular DJ getting fired. Like this was over, over it. So to this day. To this day, actually, yeah. So one example, because I'm now working for the man, but in 2006, I wrote about Humble Howard getting fired,

and I had this story about for the first time in his life, believe it or not, Humble Howard had been fired because Nick's 99.9.9 had turfed him a year after they turfed Freddie P. I also wrote about that, but that didn't get the traffic that the Humble Howard firing got. And I think it's because Humble Howard was the morning show on Mix 99.9. And there became a time when people all went to Google and threw something keywords to this effect.

It might be, uh, where's Humble Howard? Or Humble Howard gone from Mix or Humble Howard fired question mark. Things like that were being searched by, you know, thousands of people. Where's Humble Howard? Because they don't announce Humble Howard's gone. Plus, frankly, there's just way less websites back then. Yeah. And I would rank very highly.

In fact, I ranked number one for that. So all the traffic. And then people would leave comments and that would sort of fuel other keywords, right? This is back pre-AI day and everything when somebody would leave a comment with content. And that would be, you know, for SEO purposes, that would attract people looking for that kind of thing. So it became like sort of a self-fulfilling one-stop shop for the truth. Yeah. Because there wasn't mainstream media focus anymore on radio like in the past.

Yeah. I mean, that time on the internet, and again, this is in the book, but kind of the pre-everyone's on social media, but post some, you know people that still don't have email. That in-between period where, like, everyone's online, but Facebook isn't quite Facebook yet. Right. And there is no Twitter yet. Yeah. I mean, that was a great time. This was like RSS feeds. There's blog aggregators. You know, I'm still RSS guys. So it's funny to read your book. I really loved your book. one point before you can go any further is that I, and you have noticed and you wrote about it in your book, but the old internet is disappearing. I mean, that's a key theme in the book. I mean, it took me a long time to write this, as you know.

Like, I think it was like seven or eight years overall. And once I was done and once it was done and dusted, it's like, fuck, almost everything in here is gone. I actually went back and I rewrote the entire final chapter because of that because I started writing, or sorry, I started reading about, these can't become buzzwords, but like link rot and digital decay. You've seen some other articles about this, about how just like websites are disappearing left in, right? You know, our phones, like this phone is, this is like a kid's toy at this point. You know, it's almost like, recycle my electronics. What's that?

Recycle my electronics. dot C.A. Yeah. And like, you know, you think YouTube, you think Facebook, you think TikTok is always going to be here. it's probably not. Very few things are forever and certainly not in the technology world. So that's a big theme in the book.

And, you know, the number one sort of entity, and actually I'm not going to say this, because this actually gets into something I'm going to ask you in a bit, but this will get around. But, yeah, it's a good reminder. Like, don't take for granted that any of these things will be around or also just, like, be mindful of how much time you're spending on any of this. Like, think of, I don't know if you were, like, on iTunes.

I spent hours, you know, Oh, the metadata. Yeah. And what do we have to show for it? Like, Jack shit. I don't even know what it is. I can open this drawer, Cam Gordon, and show you the physical hard drive that still holds my, you know, six billion MP3s. But all that metadata, I took great pride in making sure it was to my standards. Yeah. Yeah. And it was probably kind of fun and it's fun to catalog. And that's totally cool. Is it tragically hip or the tragically hip? Or is it tragically hip? Or is it tragically hip comma the?

Yeah, exactly. So, but again, what do we have to show for it? I don't know. Is it Tom Cochran and Red Rider. Oh my God. Tom Cochran. Tom Petty. Tom Petty and the heartbreak. Elvis Costello and is it Elvis Costello? And the pastors and attractions or everybody.

So all of that was decisions, decisions had to be made. And I took that very seriously. But in your book, again, so the old internet's disappearing. But this book is somebody with a Canadian perspective. That's key. I'm going to visit that in a moment. But you took great effort over several. years to document this disappearing internet that I came of age in and many others did.

And I'm going to say right now, thank you for doing that. No, you're welcome. I mean, we've talked about this topic a lot with also folks like Jeremy Hopkins and Mark Wiseblot. To say nothing of AI and sort of the Slop Fest that we live in. But all of these like really shitty Instagram accounts and Facebook groups where we see the same photos over and over like Toronto memories and what like Jeremy Hopkins I feel like he's going to have like a he's going to go like completely postal if he sees like one more

of these groups if it's like oh there's Joseph Bluer you know I feel like I see that's a example yeah and it's just like there's no effort put into it so it's like the people that are actually I was trying to like actually do the work like this stuff is all hiding in it's not even hiding in playing but someone has to dig it up and polish it and then give it some context and then present it to the seeking public. Yeah. And that's why... Someone's got to do. That's work.

Yeah, but... Somebody's got to do it. Somebody has to give a shit enough to get that right and then put it out there. And I've been trying to do that since 2002. Yeah. Well, like, one thing I'm very happy about this book, this is not like an underground book. Everything in here is completely mainstream. It's all lived experience, but

it's all fallen out of sight because the, you know, the URLs are dead or the magazines or out of publication or the phones. We don't use the phones anymore. You're so right. No. You don't call me anymore. Call me maybe.

That's actually technically an FOTM jam, but you already know that. Yeah, the Marianas Trench guy. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Raynor? Josh, Josh, that guy. He was a nice guy. Definitely. I had a great time with him in the basement, and we had a great, great chat.

But I was going to say, like, for example, now magazine, okay, now, now, like there was a wealth of very important content. So, like, you're the expert. Can we still access all that content that was on the now Toronto website? Well, I mean, and this was documented when Brandon Gones bought it. One thing he did when he took control of now, you may recall, they actually had prior during the Michael Holiday or they had the first. they had the full archives of now online in PDF. So every single issue, hard copy issue, available in PDF format. Hook that to my veins, yeah.

Yeah. And then Brandon bought it and he took it down. And again, that's his choice. He's the new owner. It's, you know, it's probably a lot of server. It's like when Bell bought chum and they took down all the chum charts. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I mean, as far as I know the place that if I want to see old back issues, I hoof it down to the Toronto Reference Library, go on the second floor. I think I showed you some photos from this. It's still on micro-fiche. So you talk about, like, putting in the work. So I spent a few weekends just going through the micro-feesh of seeing all these old, you know, concert listings and all the Norm Wilner stuff and Glenn Sumi. And it's all there, but that's kind of what we used to have to do to research, too.

So even though it's like, it's not searchable unless you specifically know what you're looking for, it is there. But that seems like that's a really big part of Toronto's cultural. history that is really not accessible. And my worry is that's just going to like fade away. Like once that microfiche is gone, the whole thing could be gone, you know. We'll be old men under a tree somewhere telling, telling the kids about junkhouse.ca. Yeah.

But like here's it like, well anyone care. Like what's the Toronto Telegram, for example? Like we all know. Folded. Yeah. It's like, but you know, people are age. It's like, okay, we're aware it exists. And we even like history.

We're sort of the demo for people who should care about. I'm not going to go back and look what that's all about. Like, I might see it in passing somewhere or something written about it. And maybe I'll read it. Maybe I won't. Well, the first step in all of this is, like I said earlier, giving a shit. Do you ever worry about the fact that so few people care? Like, care about the fact that the old Internet is disappearing?

No. Well, it's, I've said this to you. Like, when I wrote this book, I really didn't want to be a book about nostalgia, which is really, really hard because it was very fun to write, and it's very fun to be on these old websites and playing with old phones. And, you know, speaking to people who, you know, were there. But I really just wanted to show like, this is what happened. I'm not saying it was good, bad, better, worse.

It was just different. But I think in writing the book, it did, like, really hit me over the head to, you know, whether you're like an AOL chat room or Yahoo group or WhatsApp group or, you know, a Twitter DM. thread. It's all kind of the same thing. It's just in different platforms, in different formats and different devices,

but it's all kind of just people talking to other people. And that's one of the great things about the internet. As much as it's a lot of it's kind of shitty, you know, to quote Cory Doctoro in 2026. Shittification. Yeah, perfect.

It's still kind of amazing, the internet. I was actually, it was in Vancouver. I also got to go visit the, I don't know if you know that this exists. The Canadian headquarters of the internet archive. Did you know this was the thing, Toronto? I did not know.

The only reason I found out that this place existed was, I think it was this past January. Do you know what Takar small? Do you know what that is? No. She's like a freelance tech journalist. She'll show up on CBC and some other places. She actually did a really good podcast for CBC. That was that crypto guy from Canada who disappeared?

And like all quadranga. Do you remember this? This was like a pretty big news. Yeah, at the time I do recall. Yeah, she did like a short form podcast series. It was really good. Anyway, so I know her just from like being around. And I saw on LinkedIn, she's like, oh, she's hosting a panel at the internet archive

Canada. I'm like, what's the internet archive Canada? I didn't know that exists. It's apparently in Vancouver. So I did some thing. I'm like, holy shit. And she was interviewing a guy named Ian Milligan. He's a professor at the university.

Waterloo. He actually wrote a whole book about our disappearing internet. The name's escaping me, but it's also a good read. I can drop it in the comment section after or something. So when I knew I had to go, I was in Vancouver for an event in late February, I actually reached out to the people right now. I got to visit. And it's kind of just an event space, but it's actually owned by the people who own the internet archive. It has a few servers. but it's kind of cool to have a space. And even if it was more symbolic, I took some photos of me of the book,

my worry is that I don't know how much time you spend in the Internet archive, like crawling old websites. Like I'm guessing probably like once in a while. Once in a while. Yeah. My worry is the Internet Archive is going to go away. Wikipedia is going to go away,

especially now with like... So you mean the Way back machine, right? Way back. Yeah, exactly. They run... But like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive is special. because they're non-profits, I worry that they're going to go away. Yeah, I have the same worry.

Yeah. And especially, you know, given some of the stuff that's happening geopolitically and you get in the wrong crosshairs of the wrong person, not naming any names, any remarkable figures. Those things could be gone overnight, really. Because again, they're not Google. They're not Microsoft. They're not Apple. They're like non-profits that have a lot of people who feel extremely strongly about it to their credit. But they're really vulnerable.

too. And with that, that's like a lot of like effort history that could just go like literally offline. So I'll tell you what I do, my little part is if there's something I think is really interesting or whatever, I will kind of regurgitate it on Toronto Mike.com as a blog entry because at least I feel until I die, and hopefully that's not too soon, at least I feel like I have some control over that. This tiny little slice of real estate, I can actually, I can keep this online. Like these comments on my personal website, TorontoMike.com, and these, whatever it is,

20,000 pages on TorontoMike.com, I can personally keep them online. So I can still pull up that post I wrote when I learned Martin Street had taken his own life. And I can still see the whatever, the 500 comments people left over the next 24 hours, shock, disbelief in love for Martin. Like, I still have that hosted.

Yeah. And again, like a footnote to that, that's why I listen to your podcast. if I hear something, that's like, holy shit, I didn't know that. I don't think people know that.

I'll go to my, fuck, I'm going to rip off the spider lady mass, the fabulous mula moment here. I am Rosie Gray Tio, let the record show. I've been referencing Rosie Gray Tio

on this program for years. I know. That's you? He is I and I. Wow. This is, that's like, do you remember Igor Gozenko?

Does that name anything to you? It does not. He would go on TV in the paper bag, and then it was like the outing of Igor Guzenko was. was like a whistleblower of Russian spies. Really? Yeah, this was a thing.

That's not like the unknown comic. No, that's a different paper bag. And shout out to you, Gore. Okay. And by the way, earlier, when you were talking about, did I know this woman's name or whatnot? And then you dropped a word that similar to jacket required that I tap out. You use the word crypto.

And once I see this is a podcast about anything to do of crypto or anything to do of crypto, I tap out. you're not buying the dip. So crypto, I have probably lost a fortune because of my allergy to this term crypto. Much like I probably missed out on many a great contact because I, you know, completely ignored all events that had a jacket required. Yeah. But again, you're, you're too busy like mining, you know, rather than mining Bitcoin,

you're mining like fun facts that people don't fucking like. And mine blows. Yeah. But by the way, like the other day, like Blair Packams on, he's just, casually drops out. We met with like hilly, Chris saw like, like 1982,

he's got managed to jitters. I'm like, you're, you're basically, were you going to tell us this? Like, holy shit. Yeah.

That does happen. So on this program that, even today with Stu Stone, he dropped a couple of things. And I'm like, haven't I talked to Stu Stone? Like, he's a long,

long haul guy. So if he's been over a hundred times and doing quick, like, haven't I had 300 hours of recorded conversations? He's like, we're at the water park with Jessica Alba.

She didn't know. That would be like the most interesting thing that ever happened. Like, really? These guys, I mean, I don't know. Is it my turn to ask you a question? Yes. So, joy the book very much. But would you mind, again, I know you're going to pull a Kiprios on me.

I should play that clip to give it some context. That's okay. Shout out to the VPS. Give it some freebies here. Because you'll be back for FOTM cast. I think that's an early April, I think. You and Tyler Campbell, the VP of sales, love it very much. For a couple of weeks, almost April.

Geez, I'm going to start recording. The Gondarva's song coming up next week. Oh, you know what? I'm a little ticked off, a little ticked off. I worked so hard to get Mr. Jaggo, I think it's his Paul Jaggo. He's a business geologist. I talked to his brother. I did the song for him.

And then I'm pretty sure he went on another podcast and I'm blanking on which one. But he made like a appearance on another podcast. And I was like legit pissed because I had put in literally years of effort and nobody on this planet was going to care more about that episode, that Gandarva's episode. Mike, like there's no way of knowing. There's no way. There's no whole way of knowing. Go puns some summer clothes. Downtown.

Downtown. What was the other big one? Yeah, downtime. Downtown. That was a great fucking nice. Maybe. Coffee song did. Like,

what, three jams. But Shedwoods of Gendarves. Guelph? I think so. Yeah. I think they're Guelph. I'm going to say Guelph,

but I, yeah, I think it's well. By the way, did you mention we have a special guest coming up in about, no, but this is your guest, and you're going to carry this,

and I'm going to listen and learn and ask some questions, but who is the special guest who's coming up? The guest is Steve Pratt. So Steve Pratt is someone I interviewed for the book. He's actually based in Vancouver. So Steve worked not only for CBC music in the 2000s, where a lot of those podcasts work with Grant Lawrence and some other people. There's a whole chapter in the book about CBC and their music stuff online.

That was really, really interesting. But Steve also worked for YTV. Steve worked for much music. And Steve also worked for AOL, if you can believe it. You've got mail. Yeah. So we're going to ask you about all this stuff. But I thought it'd be good to bring on...

What time is that? So it's 7.30 now. Yeah, so that's going to be about 15 minutes or so. Okay, I'm going to get to this. I have a couple of key things. So I read the book. Thank you. I felt like, oh, this is made for guys like me.

But there's a lot of guys like me. So how do people get it? I'd say just like Google it and you'll find it. All the major... Camgordon track changes. Yeah, exactly. But I'll say all the major online booksellers. I won't name names, the obvious ones.

Or you can also... I would recommend if you want, support your local indie, even if they don't show it on their website, ask if they have stuff through Ingram distribution. But if you do go to the Instagram account again, go to that link tree. It has all the places. You can order it from Book City in Toronto. So I did read the book and I did call out one spelling error. Am I allowed to say that?

Sure. Go right ahead. There was a reference to the great FOTM, Gino Vanelli. Yes. And I couldn't help but notice you spelled Vanelli wrong. 2N. Well, if nothing else, it shows that AI didn't write this book. Right.

So let me ask you about a source, a web space that you talk about in great detail. Sure. Slow net. Slow net, yes. I know we don't have a lot of time and it is in the book in great, great detail. But just for, like, give us a taste, what was Sloanet and why was it so important? Yeah, so slow net was a, I guess at different times it was a message board. slash mailing list. It started about

1993. So when you think of think of the Arcas Sloan as a popular band, they'd probably been fairly well known across Canada for not even a year at that point. Oh, so yeah. Yeah, like a year, maybe a year and a half, not even there. You know, people had seen underwhelmed on much music

or whatever. Yeah, so I mean, Sloanet was, it's really early on in the book because it's a really early example of fan community. And it's literally, it's like anything else on the internet. It's just you know, like finds like, you know, water finds water. It's just the fans found each other and it's people talking about Sloan. It's, it's typical stuff that people like a band or a topic, they're

going deep on the details. Oh, they're recording a new album. You know, oh, I saw them in Halifax, or I saw them in New York City or I saw them in Vancouver and the show was this and, oh, you know, my friend knows Jay and he said this and oh, what about these other bands? We got, you know, they were named after Tara Sloan. Yeah, so, exactly. So people talk about Eric's Trip and hardship post and Thresh Hermit and jail. Sure. Yeah, and all these other bands. So, um, again, it was a really good example.

I spoke to James Covey, who was one of the guys who, uh, started it. And it was interesting talking to him again in like 93, 94, how quickly he was able to the band. So he was like based in Halifax. And obviously it's, you know, it's a fairly small city relative to Toronto. Um, but the Sloan guys would, they seem like generally supportive. Like, I don't know if they like fully are. They still are.

Yeah. and it was all new. Like they didn't know. James didn't know. Nobody knew. But they said, oh, this is a good way to, you know,

kind of keep people talking about us online. And again, there wasn't that many websites. So one of the things, fun things about like going back on the internet archive, it's, it's, you know,

there's a lot of like before they were famous moments on that. So while I was going through like the old slow net archives, I saw there was a poster named Jeremy Garra. Do you know, do you know Jeremy Garra?

No, sir. So he eventually went on to become the drummer for, I think to this day, for the arcade fire. And he's just some guy on Sloanet. You know, he was asking about there was a concert called Woolstock, which was, I think it was put on by the Sonic Onion people. It was going to be like a farm space outside of somewhere like Flamborough Downs or like somewhere out there outside Hamilton. And he was wondering if it was going to be canceled because like the permit fell through and they moved it to like some club shows in Hamilton at X club and whatnot. But I found an old post from a pint-sized Jeremy Garah

just saying, is Woolstock canceled? You know, what do we do? And, you know, 10 years later, he's on Saturday Night Live. He's playing with David Bow.

Wow. He's playing with David Byrne and whatnot. So, again, it's these little archives. But your book also makes a great point that once Sloanet has these, you know,

Canadian music fans discussing new Canadian music, brave new waves can, you know, source, out new music from Sloanet. That's right. Yeah, yeah. So James, one of the guys who was behind Sloanet, he started to be pulled in by Patty Schmidt

and the Brave New Wave's crew is like the East Coast correspondent. And there was like a really early example of like, quote unquote, internet reporter of just talk about what's going on. And James, he worked in, I want to say like film production, he worked on like Pitpony. And I think he might help build one of the first websites for Street Sense.

Wow. Yeah, fit for the pit. Of course, Ken Pompadour. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, he wasn't a journalist. I loved that show so much. I still love it. It's great. Yeah. Benita Ha and Jamie. What a crush I had on Benita Ha.

Yeah. Of course, Jonathan Torrens. FOTI and Jonathan Torrens. Yeah, they're like, oh, you're on the internet. You're talking about this. How about you come on, you know, once a week or, you know, once a month or what I was that what's happening on the East Coast? You know, what's happening down at the Marquis Club and whatnot.

So, like, it quickly. and I'm not surprised because like Brave New Waves was very like, you know, that was underground music. So I'm not surprised that they were like early adopters and going to the net to find people. But yeah, it was a cool story. And it was a great place to start the book too. It really was, you know, this and now we're off. You know, we start seeing like stuff like that happening. Well, one, so I'm looking at my floating shelves or whatever the hell, Stu Stone called it.

But I got the new Sloan here. Yeah. And then a couple of spots over. I've got a classic junkhouse album and junkhouse.ca.cai was an early example. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it was interesting to see, I mean, because they were, God, I'd have to check which late, they were on one of the big meat.

I want to say it was like EMI. I mean, one of the interesting things about all the major labels putting together their first websites in the late 90s. This was also the time they were all getting bought and sold and consolidating and whatnot and all of a sudden like polygram and EMI are gone. It, you know, it kind of ended to the point where, like, there's really just the three now with, like, Sony, Warner and Universal. So I want to say, like, Junkhouse was, like, on EMI, but they, they work with, like, the label team.

And they put together, like, a really cool website. I actually had some original artwork from Tom Wilson, I know on there, which, again, like, think going on to the internet, whether you had AOL or whatever, around 1996 when I think, I think. I think it's Sony music. Was it Sony? Okay. That's my memory. Yeah. 93, they signed to Sony music. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's around the time, you know, a lot of people of AOL. Think of like getting like a really detailed website to even load at that time. It's got this beautiful piece of art that Tom Wilson did that just like the splash page. To get into their website, it looks great through the way back machine. But like, I'd be curious how many people could actually access that website at the time. So was Sony? at the time, they were also hiring like a lot of people from like the quote-unquote new media world,

which is where someone that came into my life later and yours to some degree as well, Jennifer Hollett worked for Sony on the street team that she was able to parlay into opportunities with much music and politics and obviously now the Walrus and just one of the good ones. Absolutely. Yeah. Big fan over here. Okay. And there's an event where you launch this book coming up, right? Like when is this event? Stu was asking me, what day is this book launch. Yeah, let the record show I totally told Stu about this. Okay, he didn't remember.

Well, he needs to check his text message. I know it's in my calendar because I'm going to be there. Yeah, you're going to be there. You're going to be a featured speaker. How long do I get on stage? Because you told me two minutes. We're going to talk about that after. I have to practice for my Elmo gig.

Yeah, so the event is Wednesday, March 25th. The venue is Handelbar in Kensington Market. That's at the south end, just north of Dundas. And what this event's going to be, it's going to be a book launch event. I'm going to have copies of the book available for sale. I'm going to say a few words, but I really, when I said, okay, if I'm going to do a book launch, I want to let the voices who actually did the work to, like, have their moment and to tell their stories. So the way this is going to work, there's going to be, well, you're going to do like a big opening.

Two minutes. Yeah, a big, two minutes. Do I have to wear a jacket? No jacket required for that one. So you're going to say a few words. I'm going to say a few words. Then we're going to have two panel conversations. It's going to be drawn from the,

I'm saying like the worlds of media and tech and music. So there's going to be some FOTMs amongst these two panels. Can I guess? Go right ahead. Alan Cross. Alan Cross will be there. Okay. I have another guess.

Who else? Who else? And then I'm going to have a question. You're looking at your screen, but go right ahead. Sammy Cohn. There's nothing here. It's memory. That's true.

Okay. I'm not Stu. When I read these things, I retain it. Yeah. Sammy Cone. Real estate agent, drummer, amongst other things, will be there. He'll be on a panel about kind of a major label system.

Frank Yang. Frank Yang, yes. A key figure, one of, one of like the biggest bloggers, not just in Canada, music bloggers of the 2000s. Chrome World Wide Own Chrome Waves, yeah, like huge. And Frank, Frank was awesome. Frank also, like, wrote a blurb on the back of the book. And he's like a key part of this story, like a real innervair. And a guy similar to yourself, like, did it all.

himself. He just, again, go check out Chromeways. The archive's still up there. Okay. Any other names off the top of your head? I don't have it in front of me, but... Yeah, so we got Frank. We've got Tabasem, Siddiqui. She's been like a long-time music writer. We've got Ryan B. Patrick. He works for CBC Books. He's going to be moderating the second panel. Ryan also wrote for Exclaim. Their panel's fun, so this could be Ryan, Tabasum, Alan, and Frank. All four of them are also players prize jurors. So that could be very cool. That's rarefied air. Yeah, and then the first panel is going to have Tara DeShamp.

She's going to be the moderator. She's a Canadian press business reporter, as I know, and she's excited to come out. And yeah, Sammy's going to be on that panel. And then we're going to have Atlanta Shactor. She actually worked at Sony with Jen Hollid on the digital team, so worked on a lot of these websites. We can ask her about the junk house website.

Maybe she worked on that. And then we have Pete Watson. He worked, I want to say, at Warner. But he was actually in a band, the crawling king snakes. I don't know if you remember this band. I sort of remembered like kind of a bluesy. I have their entire catalog over here.

No, I don't know this band. Maybe they're on that hard drive. You got, uh, so he was, he was actually in that band. Then he worked on like campus street teams. And then he was actually recruited to go work for, I think MCA, which was working for MCA.

That's a Skinnerd song. Was that? Okay. There you go. But he was sort of one of these guys. He's on the street team, but he also kind of gets computers. So he started working on a lot of the early website.

for MCA. He actually did stuff with the Watchmen when they were on that label. Okay, can I okay, you finish, I don't want to interrupt this promo for this event that I'll be at. Yeah. And Alan Cross and us and I might throw down. I cannot wait. That's the perfect venue. Why don't you put us on stage to

kick things off? Put us on together. Again, the Joe Cap Angela Mosque moment. That's all I can think about it. Anyway, this is a free event. Everyone's welcome handlebar. Come check it out. It's going to be a fun night. Also, happy hour, drink specials at the bar. I learned to

happy hour is here. Yeah, so it'll be something for everyone in there. I'm looking at road apples on vinyl over here. That's Little Bones. Okay, let me ask you just one last question about Sammy Cone, who gifted me this Brian Brian Linehan. He did. Photo over here. Out on tour this summer again, the Watchman

play some shows. I saw them, I saw them last year. I can't remember when that was, but I saw them at the Danforth Music Hall. They still fucking rock. I fucking love that band. And then I did see at a big rec show, I saw Danny Graves open, like just solo. Sure. And, you know, he played a TMLX event. You did.

Are you going to be at the Elmo gig on May 21 when I'm on stage? I'll have to check my, the social experiment. I have to check my calendar for that one. Okay, because that's a big fucking deal. Just want to make sure it's on your radar. I want you to tell me a bit about the 1996. And by way, my personal history is, I did not see the internet until university. Yeah.

And then I went to U of T. so I didn't see it in high school. At U of T, I don't have any internet memories from year one, believe it or not, but year two, I made daily trips to the library at U of T where I would check my email and log on to sites like CNNSI and these different websites and different forums. And I was online pretty much daily by second year of university. And let me see, I graduated 93. So 95, I'm saying, around there is.

94, 95 is when I get on. online. Yeah, like it's, again, it's hard talking about this stuff without lapsing back into, back in my day, we didn't have this and stuff. But the whole concept of like leaving, it's like, I want to go on the internet. Yeah, you got to go to a station. I'm going to leave my house. So one thing, one thing I touch on is there's a lot of like moments that we don't really

talk about, but we're really important. And there are just these things that sort of happened in the background, but actually fundamentally change our relationship with the internet. So I'm just going to rattle off a few here. So this is actually something we're, hopefully we'll still get to play a bit of word associate. Maybe we can bring Steve into word association too. Bring them in.

Yeah. But, you know, when your internet went from like five hours a month to unlimited. Like we, I don't know about you. Like we grew up. We had,

my first time in the interview was like AOL in high school. You know, we had a little floppy. Okay. So you're, you're like indie. You're like more punk. They came up because I was,

I was married very young. We were living at like Charles Street and Young, but we were pretty close to campus. And they were, like, they were getting students into student plans dialogue at first. But it was a company called ACC. Yeah. Now, do you remember, was it unlimited or did you have like a finite? I do know, because my mom had a count that was definitely limited. Yeah.

I think mine might have been unlimited. Okay. It was dial-up. Interesting. Because I don't really remember the moment, because I'm like you. I went to McMaster. I was there from 1996 to 2000. My first year I was in residence.

I was one of like maybe five people on my floor at a computer. So like I would, our room would almost be like the computer lab. I'd let anyone use it because no one had a computer. And I had like an AOL account, but it was like 10 hours a month. So like, you know,

like the schmuck down the always, like I want to go in the chat room and like raise hell or whatever. Like fight cyber fights or whatever, you know, 19 year olds on the internet are doing. But those hours would be like, like they'd be gone, you know, after that. So I think when like it became all you can eat, that was a really big step.

Sure. The proliferation of Wi-Fi was huge because you can all of a sudden you can take your laptop. You're not just like. Oh, but before that, I feel like when we got, it was sympathical from Bell and at home from Rogers. When you had the, that, the speed difference. Like, suddenly you can go on Napster and get your, get your, get your MP3s in a very reasonable amount of time. Yeah. So there's a lot of stuff because this gets into Napster's like a good tip you off point for

the next one, which is also when like CD burners became like standard issue, you know, because it used to be like an external thing, but then there became a point where like it, all of a sudden it's in every CPU or it's in every laptop. Right. And then like the burning of CDs became rampant, but even the

burning of CDs era was pretty short because then the iPod came and guess what? Now the iPod's gone. So this gets back to like, this stuff is not around for long. None of this stuff was around like Napster was not alone. It was what, like a year and a half? Or something, the iPod was six years, even something like the Blackberry.

Less than a decade, you know, it's sort of heyday. So again, the fleeting nature that's like really hit home writing this of like all this technology. And I documented it. So back when I shouted out Sammy Cohen for gifting me, this Brian Linehan picture, it's because I just wanted before I check in in our guest and see if we can bring in our guest. 1996, there was a webcast featuring The Watchman. Of course. You covered it in pretty great detail in track changes.

But what was significant about this, you know, concert by the Watchmen that they streamed online way back. Yeah. In 1996. Hard to believe. If you go to the Instagram account, I actually posted an article about this monumental event that was in, excuse me,

it was in RPM magazine. You burping on Toronto Mike? A little bit. Are you going to tell me, did you burp with Connie Thesson? I'd have to go back and listen. Anyway, so this concert, this was in 1996. And again, everyone's on dial-up. A lot of people only have five hours a month or whatever.

But they played a live concert on the internet. Now, something that you might not know, Mike, maybe I don't know if I mentioned this. They actually recorded this at Mantas Sound. Tears are not enough. Thank you. That's my sound, man. Yeah, but this was co-presented with Now magazine and Sam the Record Man was involved. So like everyone, Alan Cross,

It was just like a greatest hits, like the Coachella of this time. But it's nothing hopefully like Pete Watson will be able to talk about because he actually worked on this live stream. And just hearing some of the stories about how almost like rickety the internet was. Like it was it was like this, like this tangle of wires. And it's, you know, it's, you know, going in from like the lamp post to get electricity. Like it really was a real. People using real player? Like how the hell were they pulling this down?

I will talk to Sammy. I don't know, but they... That's the real player era. Yeah, but they somehow like pulled it off. The fact they would even try it is almost admirable. Yeah. But I think back then, regardless of whether it worked, the fact that it existed was kind of the story. The fact that it's like, look at us.

We're MCA and we're cutting edge. Yeah. Being the first. It's exciting. Any truth to the rumor that Sammy Cohn, he took a limousine to that mantis. I would be shocked. You know, those Winnipeg boys are far to. This is going to be a podcast award-worthy segue.

I'm pissed off that I can't seem to get Mark Holmes on Toronto mic, and I'm really pissed off. And I think it's just because I just want to talk about that limousine. It was for famine relief in Ethiopia. And he took a limo. I say between that and, of course, Joni Mitchell, her famous comment that her stomach was growling and she was starving. She was recording it's like...

She had just heard about cows from Jane Sibory for the previous hour, right? Yeah. You know, because Jane's at that doc that we all watched. And by the way, it was the anniversary of the tears are not enough deep dive that you and I did. And I feel like that contribution, putting that into the World Wide Web where people can search it and transcribe it and they can listen to it. I think that was important. Well, we've seen that. The updates from that episode show up in like articles.

But we, and Dean McTaggart, did you, is it Dean Mick Taggerd or Teggert? Mick Taggered. Okay. Did you, did Rosie Gray Tio, now that we know that was you, that's the mind blow from this episode? Sure. Because it is on Wiki that he was there, but he says he wasn't there. Yeah, I mean, and I saw it somewhere else. So if he said he's not there, it's also like Barry Harris was listed on, there was some article. He was like, did he in diapers? Yeah.

Why do we bring in Steve? I think he's waiting in the room. I feel like we can cover a lot of the same ground. Look, if he was waiting, I would have let him in a long time ago. He's not in the waiting room. Oh, weird. I don't know what Zoom he's on. Did I create two? Yeah, I think you might have. Okay, well, geez, then I will exit this one. Let's do this in real.

I like seeing how this cake gets baked here. So, because I've been looking for him. So let me end this Zoom. Why don't you do your sponsors? I'll send it to you. Could we do that? Say, yeah. Oh my goodness gracious.

Can I do the sponsors? Palma pasta has sent over a lasagna for you, Cam Gordon. Delicious Italian food from Palmapasta. my daughter's 10th birthday party this past weekend. A good time was had by all. We love Palma Pasta. You're already drinking some Great Lakes beer. I have more for you to take home with you.

You can even give a couple of cans to the lovely M.F. Whoever that may be. I'd also like to give some love to Ridley Funeral Home. Brad Jones was here a couple of hours ago, and we recorded a new episode of Life's Undertaking, and we talked about a song that was his wedding song and at a Rod Stewart concert yesterday in Hamilton. Jody, who is Brad Jones's wife,

she learned what the song was really about and they've been married 34 years and she just clued into something thanks to Rod Stewart's big mouth in Hamilton yesterday and we had a pretty great chat about that. Shout out to Rod Stewart. And of course we already shouted out Recycle My Electronics.com.

and Nick Aienes who has an event in April. April 2nd. He is interviewing Brad Bradford. Another Brad. I'll be there recording it. Mayoral candidate. Is he? Is he running?

Brad Bradford? Yeah, I'm just fucking with you. Okay. Yes, Bradford. I'm trying to get the Zoom to work. Well, I can just search my email for, did I send it to you by email? Yeah, here.

I'm going to, this could be a bit weird. I'm going to send this to you by DM on Instagram. Because I don't, I don't, I don't think you're on the... Do what you got to do, I don't think you're on the bird platform anymore. I'm not checking it, but I haven't deleted it, but I'm now on Instagram.

I'm now going to... Check your DMs. I just slid into your DMs. Check the OR. You like it so far? Check the OR. There you go. I see a little message has popped in.

Why did you send me a dick pick, Cam? That's not a cool, better. That was a bonus. That's for later. That was a bono. Focus on the Zoom. Did you say that was a boner? Okay.

So I'm now going to start the Zoom. And see who's in there. We'll apologize profusely that we had a Different zoom open. Let's see who's, let's see who is in the Zoom room. Oh, Steve Pratt is here. Should we let him in?

Excellent. Yeah. Oh, should I let him in? Oh, what the hell? Mr. Pratt, I presume. Yes, how's it going? Good.

So you can't see Cam, but here, here I am punching him in the nose right now. Yeah, I'm just off camera. Sorry about the mix-up, although maybe it's appropriate, Steve. We're talking about the history of the internet and we fuck up the zoom.

Well, I did have A-Zo-Zo. zoom open. I just had the wrong zoom open. That's okay. There's so many links. Anyway, we found you, Steve. Thank you so much for joining us. And it's great to have you here. We've just done about an hour or so on the book. And we did sort of set you up

your background with the CBC and other companies. So how do you want to just, Mike? I think maybe I'll just ask Steve a few questions. And you just jump in. And I'll just chime in. And I'll listen because I'm very curious about this. And I'm honored that Steve Pratt is now an FOT.

I am. Yeah, welcome. And Steve, there you go. I'm excited too. I can't believe we actually have not done this or met before. I know you have like a prolific podcasting history and, you know, blogging. Well, that's my oversight. Listen, I have a few glaring oversights and that's one of them.

I was going to say this is like the Spider-Man meme, like the two podcast gurus like pointing at each other. Like meeting. So Steve, where are you dialing in for just for the listeners? Where are you joining us from today? I am coming from my basement in Vancouver, British Columbia. I'm in my basement. Look at this, the Toronto Mike basement. Toronto, Ontario.

So, yeah, there you go. I don't know, I dug this out just for today. This, I don't know if you can see this. This is like very small, but this is like an old CBCC Radio 3 hoodie from the mid-aught. Oh, my God. I'm fully decked out in my old gear. That's awesome. I did, we spent some time talking about.

about the internet archive and the way back machine. And in my research, even subsequent to me chatting with you, with you for the book. I did see some photos you with Grant Lawrence and Lanagay and some of the other greats from back in the day. But see, why don't maybe just to set this up,

God, I'm trying to think when I interviewed you for this, I feel like it was probably like three or four years ago because I did take me a while to write this. But why don't at least for the CBC chapter, tell us how you fit into this whole story and the stuff you and I chatted about in your time at CBC. Just in terms of like career path sort of thing in terms of how I ended up there? Yeah, yeah.

I know you were there for a while. But why don't I why don't we start talking about CBC music, but then also maybe like layer it with your entire CBC journey. Because I know you did a number of different things over there. Yeah, sure. So I guess I joined in fall of 2004. If I recall correctly, and I had been dying to come out to Vancouver. I'd worked out here before and I'd gone back to Toronto a few times. And I had been working at much music.

And I told Sukian Lee at a party, like I'm dying to get back out to Vancouver. And she was the host of definitely not the opera at that point. Of course. And so she put my name in as a referral for. a new job as the director of CBC Radio 3. And I met with Jane Chalmers and Krista Harris and Jennifer McGuire at CBC Radio and hit it off with them. But it took quite a while to figure it all out. And I think the reason that they were posting it and looking for it was that they had applied for the satellite radio licenses for CBC.

Of course. And they really wanted to dig into Satellite. light radio is kind of a future of where radio is going and certainly a big part of it would be Canadian music and that they saw Radio 3 because it had had these sites like New Music Canada and you know, we artists kind of, it was almost like a MySpace site for Canadians who own their own rights. You could make your own artist page and upload your own music. And they'd recorded a bunch of like, you know, in studio CBC sessions, and I think they had another site called Roots Music, Canada, and anyways, there's a whole suite of sites that had lots and lots of amazing Canadian music on it.

And they're like, this is the right unit to think about the future of radio and the future of Canadian music. So I kind of got hired with the mandate to say merge all these sites into a single music service and make basically an innovation lab to bring new listeners into the CBC, like younger listeners who might not ever listen to radio or watch TV. Right. And champion new Canadian music, particularly indie music, and help make it easier to have a, you know, to make a living being a musician in Canada. So it's kind of a dream gig.

Yeah. And of course, you know, the punchline with all that is like CBC Radio 3 was not a radio station traditionally as we know it. And why don't we come back to CBC in a second? But you mentioned your much music. Why don't we go back actually to like your full origin story, be it on the internet or elsewhere? Are you from Vancouver originally or you mentioned wanting to get back to Vancouver? Like what's what's kind of your initial entry point into this media, digital world that we're talking about? Yeah, yeah. I moved around a lot as a kid, but I, you know, like high school and beyond was kind of in the,

the Toronto area, actually. And then I, I went to McGill and got an English degree in Montreal. Okay. And I, ironic, but sure. I know, right? Yeah.

And it was kind of weird. Like I, ended up doing like a lot of improv comedy and stuff at McGill. And it just made me really interested in doing more creative storytelling stuff. Like, you know, entertain people. Yeah. And I ended up getting a summer job at CFTO and agent court.

And I had this amazing boss named Liz Lancaster and she just let me go. It was this show called Eye on Toronto. Okay. Yeah, of course. It was like a daytime talk show. And she was amazing. She just let me go out and basically be a reporter and just do all these weird stories. Yeah.

All around Toronto. And so I kind of got the media bug through that. and eventually got a job at what became e-talk. It was like a weekly half hour called E Now. It's like Dan Duran era. Yeah, Carla Collins, Dan Duran. Yeah, yeah. So I was working in the background as a junior producer back then.

That's amazing. And it was really funny. Like I had this bizarre career meeting that sent me to Vancouver where I was deeply interested in doing comedy and they just had the comedy network. in agent court. And I got a meeting with Yvonne Fitzon, who was like the head of the network. And it was about whether I was going to do comedy

or whether I was going to go keep doing entertainment journalism out in Vancouver. And he was like, basically in like a three-minute interview, he's like, you're never going to be funny. You're going to Vancouver. And so I picked up and moved out to Vancouver as this brand new TV station that was a startup from zero called Vancouver.

television and it was like the best assemblage of people like it was it was such a great thing to be part of a startup TV station from zero so it was also this amazing introduction of Vancouver and I've yeah never wanted to live anywhere else even like I've kind of had to go back to Toronto a few times for work and was this a CTB own station or this was an independent station when you describe this time like we're talking kind of late 90s when all those like new licenses and like these specialty channels were coming in and there was just all of a sudden there was this huge need for content like i remember this very well with like crtc really opened things up yeah it's going to be i'm going to butcher this um but i think at that time baton broadcasting

which is called bbs yeah um owned cfto and they may have owned ctv but they were not one in the same i think yeah that sounds right there was already a ctv station in the lower mainland in BC, which I believe is now global. I'm not sure. I'm probably watching this. I don't know. And so they went in and they opened an independent station called Vancouver Television, which is this really progressive, innovative style of thinking about how to do local TV. Like there was the closest equivalent would be something along the lines of a Vancouver inspired version of something that would be a bit more like city TV. I was going to say this sentence.

But wasn't there of Vancouver, that's where Monica D'Oll went, right? Yeah, she was the 6 o'clock news anchor. Okay, so wasn't that owned by Chum City? No, there was a second TV station, KVU, that got turned into a city TV in Vancouver later, and Monica actually later went to host the 11 o'clock news there. Okay, okay. It's deeply confusing.

We've had a special FOTM correspondent Dan O'Toole, talk about going to the opening of the Vancouver City TV in which when Moses made sure everybody was well-plied with white powder. Okay, so I was not there for that, but I actually worked with Dan O'Toole because I worked at City TV in Vancouver for a little bit, and I was doing sports there, sports and entertainment. I was like, yeah, he's great. Yeah, at least he was supposed to be on Toronto Mike yesterday. and then his schedule got weird

and we had to push it a couple of weeks. But was Dan dating like a, some type of, some kind of model of some sort? I'm trying to remember the details. But there's some great Vancouver Dan story about who he was dating at the time. I don't know, unfortunately. But I, that's why we brought you on, Steve.

Who is Dan? And that. The dating lives of sports anchor. Fuck this internet stuff. Who is Dan O'Toole? It's funny. Funny, though, because I, like, at Vancouver Television, I met and worked with James Duthy. It was like an unbelievable sportscaster.

Who's an Ottawa guy? I went to school with Jay Onright, and he's a good friend. And then I ended up working with Dan O'Toole. I'm like, I've never worked in sports. Could have been on sports. But all my friends are sportscasters. That's amazing. I know that Jay is an Athabasca guy from near Edmonton, Alberta.

But James Duffy is so tied to Ottawa. Yeah. It's like C.J.O.H. Is that right? Yeah, I know there's a tragic story of how he got the sportscaster gig. There's an infamous murder. Do you remember this story? Sportscaster got murdered outside the studio.

Yeah, yeah. And then James got that role. Just slid right in there. I'm not going to say anything further because I know James was very close to that port area who got shot. He's one of the nicest, most talented people, too. Like, he could do like 10 other jobs equally as well as he does all the sports stuff at TSN. He was one of the best news reporters I've ever seen. It's just a creative storyteller.

Well, Steve, he's the only member of the TSN team that Rogers tried to recruit when they got that 12-year, the initial 12-year deal for hockey night in Canada. Like, they actually ended up going of George Strombolopolis. But that's only because James Duthy wouldn't, was unpoachable. He stayed loyal to Bell Media. They, they upped them. And then his buddies got upped as well, even though they weren't, you know, tapped on the shoulder. I'm thinking, you know, this is James Duthy, not James Dutthee, Darren.

Dutthian. No, not Dutition. Dregor. Dregor. Dereg. And, of course, Bobby, Bobby, the great Bob. Who's the guy who's retired now? Bobby Cox.

Oh, Bob McKenzie. Yeah, Bob McKenzie. Of course, yeah. It's late in the day, Steve. It's like 805 over here, and I'm drinking my GLB, and I had a monster marathon episode of Stu Stone well before we came got here. So my apologies that I can't remember the name Bob McKenzie. All is forgiven.

So Steve, was this kind of that, it sounds like perhaps this is setting up the pathway to much music. And again, why I think of much music in that era, I think like Terry David Mulligan, I think much West. This was a bit pre-Nard-war. What era are we talking about? What era? So I went out to Vancouver in 97 and I was there for like a year and a half and then

moved back and this is so weird, but like, I worked at YTV for a while. Okay. And there was a whole bunch of like pop musicians that would come through there, like early Jessica Simpson and early Christina Aguilera and boy bands and stuff. Yeah. And then it ended up that there was a guy that I worked with at Vancouver television named Chris Nelson, who ended up being the host of Much West at Much Music.

I remember that guy. And he was one of the guys who referred me to Much. And he and I actually worked together. He was the West Coast guy and I was doing like much news. with Strombo when he started putting Nardware on MuchMusic. And he and I were both,

I think the two most excited people about Nardwar back then, just being like, oh, please, more, more, more of this. This is like the greatest stuff. And so Chris would ship me all these tapes of, like,

of Nardware interviews at Much Music. And I would just kind of go into a hole and figure out how to like put them on air as much as humanly possible. Yeah, yeah. So this was obviously before Much got, acquired. The big chum.

Yeah, this would have been like 99 to 2001 or something like that. Yeah. Okay, amazing. So some of the names you mentioned Strombo. So this is, I'm trying to think was Jen Hollett there yet? Or did she come later? What about Hannah-Sung? Was Hannah-Sung there?

Yeah, I actually was part of hiring Hannah-Sung. And she is still a good friend. She is also just an unbelievably smart, wonderful, talented person. I love her. Yeah. What about Ed the sock? Yeah, yeah, I know Steve from that time. It's funny, we had this ridiculous thing where much music used to do these like spring break event things.

And there's one called Snow Job. Of course, of course. And we went out to Cam Loops and it was Chris Nelson from Much West and Ed the Sock and I don't know, like Bradford and Howe and stuff. But like I did a whole bunch of shoots with Ed the Sock. and Chris Nuss at Snowjob and it was bananas

like it was a lot of weird stories would you have like great bands like Gob playing there yeah well you know I remember at

snow job the one that I remember the most was Len the Len had like a ski chalet up there and was hosting parties

and we would go and get invited to their their chalet and get demos of new tunes they were working on. I think he was working on like some disco themed stuff.

I just remember like, oh, this is pretty neat. That makes sense, right? Because the loop that Brendan Canning brought to Len was more, more, more, how do you like me? How do you like me? Like very disco. That's what Steel My Sunshine is built on. I feel like Rusty

played a snow job as well. I feel like I've seen a Rusty out on the bottom of the slopes. I always remember those, that they would, nobody would be wearing jazz. up on stage. I'm like, oh, my God, it looks so cold up there. But I guess when you're like rocking out that that hard. So what, um, on the much side. So were you doing any, because again, you became like super internet guy eventually. Were you doing anything on the website? It sounds like you were doing mainly sort of news production, sort of more like traditional media stuff at that point.

Yeah, it was mostly doing, uh, the news. So it was originally called rapid facts and facts on the weekends and it was much news and much news weekly. Sure. And I ended up producing a lot of specials and kind of live stuff in the studio. And, you know, I think we kind of, like, there was a really progressive early web team at much back then where we put up the news, like we put up all the news updates and tried to get stuff up. But it was, it was, it was my primary focus was not the web at that point. Yeah. Yeah. It was kind of still the glory days, like the glory days of live television. Like, it was really a fun time. Yeah, I remember there was somebody,

when I started working at Twitter, there was someone who worked at, for the CFL. She was like head of digital, but she worked much for like a long time during this era. You're talking, I'm trying to remember what, Kelly Sholdice was she? Oh, yeah, she's amazing. Yeah, we work together.

Yeah, totally. Yeah, because I'm together at rapid facts of much news. Yeah, because like one day she came into like the Twitter office and like her and Jen Hallett knew each other really well. and like Jen, respectfully, it's not a big sports person. I'm like,

how do you guys know each other? She's like, oh my God, Kelly and I worked that much. I'm like, okay, yeah, it's, you know,

one degree of, wasn't she? Yeah, that sounds right. So, yeah, crazy. So,

okay, so that's much music. I, but I, for a man, these snow jobs, I remember them very well, but they're all like,

this is like the brainchild of David Kines, or is he just simply at the helm when these things, uh, take off. I think they predated me when I arrived. So I would just kind of, they were just part of the culture back then.

But yeah, David. I think he's taking credit for them anyway. Yeah, okay. Well, he's, he's such a great guy. He's so funny too. Like I, yeah, I would not be surprised if he was the one who came up with it. There's great. They were very good.

Like, they had honestly, I think one of the best teams of live event production for TV on the planet at that point. Like, they could just run and gun and do stuff on the fly. And, you know, David was kind of running all that. with a guy named Neil State. They, they, they're just like the masterminds of big live TV stuff. I, I feel like they were also very good at just getting stuff that was like, set your watch in the calendar type stuff. So you'd have snow job in the winter and then you have the MMVAs that I feel like was

always like back to school, but then shifted to like more summer because I feel like so they could do it all outside. And like just total like myth making for such a long time, even when I feel like, even by the time Moses had started to step back a bit. it's just it's so interesting all the people I know who work there back in the day because a lot end up in PR and other places and you know smash cat to like 20 years I'm like calling you like out of the blue just like hey I'm gonna add you on LinkedIn and I'm gonna ask you a random question you want to talk about CBC radio but just like the the talent pool that worked there was just like

incredible it was a very it was a very surreal place because like you know I know there's a part of the the whole point of it but like just that your office is a live TV studio yeah and that there would just be bands playing like 10 feet from your desk while you're trying to do work and stuff like that. In my first week of work, I think I had Britney Spears and Kid Rock and the tragically hip. And two of them were, I think Kid Rock and the hip were playing with a garage doors open and crowds all over the street. And the other one was just Britney coming in for an interview and I just kind of passed Britney Spears in the hallway. I'm like, this is a really weird, awesome job that I've got right now. It was pretty.

surreal. Well, it's also, you made the point of, you know, Vancouver, this station you worked at and I think of like Toronto One and a lot of people tried this sort of thing before and it's really, really hard to pull off properly because it just gets like super cringe really quickly if you don't sort of nail it. But like much, I don't know what it was. They just, they knew the formula. It's Moses.

Yeah. Yeah. Like Moses, like for all his faults, Moses was a visionary when it came to this, what you're describing. The city is your newsroom and the environment is always in kinetic motion. And that's why we watched CityPulse. Yeah. Well, the fact that was... Everyone else, too, I think they did a really good job hiring people who loved music and that were comfortable just being themselves on air and not trying to put on like a personality of like, this is what an on-air host looks like. Well, enough about Kim Clark Champness.

Nice. Steve, God, I feel like we could just talk about how much music for next two hours. But before we get to CBC, I believe you worked at AOL for a time as well. I did. I work at AOL for like a year. And that was my last straw in Toronto where I'm like, I knew quickly that as soon as I got back to Toronto. I was like, oh, I think I need to go back to Vancouver. And that was where I talked to, you know, at that period was when I talked to Suki.

in, but I was actually doing, like, there's like a content team at AOL. Yeah, yeah. And so I was in charge of a bunch of channels of content at AOL that included music and entertainment and things like that. And it was, again, like a very progressive, like way ahead of its time for just things that they could track and how they thought about programming things and monitoring click-through rates. and it was almost like this you're going to laugh but but it was almost like a pre-Buzzfeed buzzfeed in the way that the editorial team worked around thinking about like making

listicles and photo galleries and things like that you're like this it was a really like from going from all traditional media to a place that was just pure digital it was like drinking from a fire hose of just learning so much about digital audiences and metrics and what worked in formats and things. It was pretty cool. Honestly, like the people I talked to who worked at AOL or Yahoo in the early 2000s, it's so similar to the, you know, the salespeople we had at Twitter in 2015 through like the 2020s.

Like it's all just like content plays. There was actually like a number of people who worked at AOL who ended up on the Twitter sales team. Massive Toronto Mike fan Ivan Payhar, amongst other names, who did some time at AOL. So like it was a big deal. I mean, Yahoo's an interesting one. Like, I don't know if we'll get to in the scope of this chat, but they're still sneaky relevant to,

I feel like they're almost under-remembered and just their influence on the internet as we know it because they still have their lanes. But I feel like a lot of this stuff, Yahoo was doing really predicted, you know, Facebook and social media with like groups and real-time information and integration of news. And they totally botched it in some ways.

But they had the same thing. They would bring in like Hollywood people they were on Mercer-Mire and that didn't really work out. But again, it's a big diva thing to Mike. Like a lot of these things is just like a lot of this, even though like the technologies go away, there's so much history repeating and technology. Like everything's just a version of a version of a version.

Yeah. Like it like you look at like Facebook Messenger and all the like all the messaging stuff that's going on right now. Like AOL Messenger was like well it was hardcore back then. It was insane. Yeah. And it's really that different than you know WhatsApp, or, you know, Snapchat, like, there's, there's, there's tentacles of like what was in

all these platforms. Um, so we, I feel like we'll do like Elaine Benaz, yada, yada, yada, yada. So, maybe AOL in the interest of time. Eddie, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe before we get back into CBC, just for the listeners, maybe just you sort of alluded to it, but what exact, how would you define CBC Radio 3 when you joined? Because again, it really was this aggregate of three websites. And then also, this is right at the time.

It sounds like when, you know, satellite radio is coming in. We got serious. We got XM. We got these other totally different technologies. So what was CBC Radio 3 when you jumped in? It was honestly, it was this really progressive media lab. And it was a collection of different sites. I'm probably going to butcher this.

So like I will do my best. But they did this really brilliant award-winning Flash magazine that was this just, just digital storytelling, you know, kind of at the edges of innovation, just celebrating a lot of different types of Canadian art, whether it was photography, you know, they feature visual artists, musicians, writers, all of it. Can I just interject for a second? Just related to that, did you in Locke Dow overlap at all? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Locke and Rob McLaughlin and some of the other people that you, you may. mentioned the book or we all overlapped for a period of time. Because Locke actually, he sent me some of the flipbook, for lack of a better term, where I actually put some on my Instagram account, and then Locke actually put some of it on YouTube. And it's incredible to look back, especially thinking, like, oh, my God, like this was

on the internet in 2002, like really, really ahead of its time. Yeah. And yeah, the aesthetic of it was like incredible. Yeah. It was a really fascinating blend of like aesthetics and taste and curation, but also technology that they had all these brilliant developers programming stuff in Flash and making it, you know, they actually had a, this was before my time, but there's a thing called home delivery that they did that was kind of an early big media dump where you could kind of subscribe

and it would just download stuff to your computer like a whole episode or a package of rich media that I think was kind of in some ways, like almost like a predated podcast of some sort. They also had a late night show once a week on Saturday night on CBC Radio 2, which was back then a classical music station. And then it would just be interrupted every Saturday night. You know, and Grant Lawrence and I think Alexis Mazarin and other people would take over and do several hours of kind of indie music programming there.

Yeah, yeah. And then there's some of the other music-related websites. Yeah, like recording original sessions and concerts. I think just, just concerts.com was that? Yeah, just concerts.com. I'm trying to remember where the sessions were held. Yeah, there's a Roots Music Canada. The new music Canada was the big one, the magazine, all of it.

So it was quite a collection of properties. And the thing I was hired to do was to kind of make it a cohesive music service. which, you know, in full honesty, it was a very hard transition because the magazine could not, like with the resource, there were not enough resources to do the magazine and a music service and all these other things. And it was a very painful thing to actually have to go through and stop the magazine. Yeah. Yeah. And did you find, because Rob and Locke, I think, both mentioned this. And maybe you did too when we chatted. But the fact that you guys were all based in Vancouver gave you a bit of breathing room from the mothership. you know, you still, even by time you joined, you had some time to experiment and then, you know, you obviously, when you joined the podcast era, started shortly thereafter. I'm curious how much like

back for the folks in Toronto, like how much oversight or were you guys, was this still the sandbox when you were able to jump in? It's like, I have to give the Toronto CBC management team like huge props because they really did trust us to go do our own stuff in, and it was, it's this giant. concrete building in Vancouver. And we were in the basement. And it felt like a skunk works operation. And everyone there was young and cool and hipsters and, you know, web programmers and music

programmers and half of them were all musicians themselves. And it was just like, oh, this does not look or sound like CBC so much. But it was interesting. Because at the same time, there was a similar group of people on the TV side doing, a show called Zed out of Toronto. And so, or out of Vancouver. And it was very much like,

you know, the TV and radio versions of kind of innovation labs there that both flourished in Vancouver. It was neat. They put out the Zed sessions. I remember there were some CDs that I reviewed for Chart Magazine

where like they'd have the weaker than's in and all the great Canadian acts of the era. It's a great time. Like it was a great time in Canadian music. Wolf parade, I'm sure, came in and new pornography. It also coincides, you know, with just like an incredible time in Canadian music with just all these like amazing bands that I think have all really stood the test of time. Do you want to one of the crazier things about Zed too?

And this is again, like ahead of its time, a bunch of these things at CBC were ahead of their time. Zed had a website where you could upload videos before YouTube. Any public person could upload videos and they started getting hammered by people in other kinds. countries like uploading soccer highlights and things like that and had to kind of reel it and shut it down because it was designed for uploading Canadian like film and and video and stuff and people are starting to you know abuse the fact that there was a site to upload free video and it was like oh and then YouTube came out after that it was um it was pretty amazing I was I was going to say they could have sold that to Google for like a billion dollars less one dollar

and beat the YouTube guys yeah I know like it really like they built it it was Yeah. Well, that also, you mentioned New Music Canada. That website was such an incredible resource at a time again when there wasn't that many websites. And I forgot, again, was it Locker Dow that I said this to? For the longest time, I never knew that was a CBC website. Because the CBC branding was very subtle. And what those guys said, that was actually by design because they wanted to give it a bit of a better breathing room. It was funny. When I got there, that was fascinating too because they're like, there's no marker on here. There's a CBC like, oh, yeah, it's on purpose because we want to make sure that people think it's a really cool thing and then they'll find out in CBC rather than have it as something. That's the I Weekly move. Let's hope people don't think we're affiliated with Tor Star. The Toronto Star. Exactly. So, Steve, I know you mentioned Grant Lawrence and some other names. When do podcasts start coming in? Like, you know, Grant has like, you know, some of these stories about those early, like viral podcasts that CBC was doing,

again, at a time when only Ricky Jervais and, you know, maybe a couple other people, the Niven Toronto Mike had a podcast back then. When did podcasts start to become more of a focus during your tenure? Well, so, yeah, I started in 2004. And then we started having to, like, start making a lot of these changes and trying to figure out what it was and started building a website to put all of it together as a music service. and we had about a year to wait until satellite radio was actually launched, like to go through the whole CRTC and actually launch and do it.

So we were targeting kind of, I don't know, end of 2005, I think, for launching satellite radio was the, what we started as a target date. And as we started looking at New Music Canada, there were, you know, like in the same timeline, there's this guy named Adam Curry, who used to be MTV. Vee J who with this guy named Dave Winer started putting out a show called The Daily Source Code.

And it was about podcasting. And it was all this stuff around the future of audio and how you could make your own shows. And it was democratized and the democratization of production and distribution that anybody could make it for free. And you just kind of, it was much more complicated back then of like how you actually had to do it and plug in an iPod and download it. like side-loaded into your pod, into your iPod and stuff. But I started following it pretty closely because it felt like

what a digital innovation lab in audio should be doing. And they had all these things talking about, oh, we need pod safe music. And it was like Creative Commons and things like that for licensing music. But they talked a lot about how hard it was to get music and podcasting. And I was kind of like,

oh, well, we have all these artists. that own their own rights and they've signed a waiver saying that they own all their own rights. I wonder if we should try piloting a podcast for music. If we don't commercialize it and it's really for the benefit of promoting the artists, this would be a really interesting thing to try. And so I went to, there's a music rights person in Vancouver named Bridget Lumhol-Smith, and I went to her with the stuff because she'd help build the waiver

for New Music Canada. And we spent a whole bunch of time doing this thing around trying to make a waiver that would be, you know, in favor, like give the artists full permission to say yes or no. You don't have to do any of this stuff. But if you want to be considered for podcast, here's what it is.

And we're not going to commercialize it and blah, blah, blah. And we put it up on the website and got the music director at the time, James Booth, who's still there. like just another ex much music guy with like fabulous, fabulous music taste to this day, to kind of reach out and start talking to some indie labels and artists about doing this thing. And we piloted a show and put out this thing with Grant on it. And it was like, oh, this is really cool that we've got this thing called a podcast.

And it was before Apple had even put podcasting in iTunes. And I think it was maybe like three. or four months later that they put it in there. And they featured CBC Radio 3 very prominently on their launch because it was one of the only music podcasts out there, like maybe the only legal music podcast out there. And it just went bonkers. And, you know, part of it was, it was rare and new, but a huge part of it, obviously, there's such a good music at that time.

And a whole bunch of artists said yes, very early on. And so we found. you know, after that iTunes exposure, it just spread and spread and spread. And there were people listening all over the world. And, you know, Grant had a map of the world in the office. And he would every like week that he, an episode came out somewhere new came in. He'd put like a little pushpin on the map of like all the people listening. And oddly, like a bunch of them were A&R reps in different countries who were thinking like what's going on in Canada

and hearing all this music that they wouldn't have heard in other places. I don't know, it was amazing. I'm trying to remember what the number was, but at its peak, it was getting, man, something over 100,000, 150,000 downloads a week, which today would be a huge number for a podcast. But this is, you know, back in 2005.

So, like, it really took off. And it kind of led to this piece of like, you know, almost like a radio three really becomes, the headquarters of like podcasting at CBC of trying out a bunch of this stuff. And we had an early podcast network where we, we had a session show. We had an interview show. We had a track of the day podcast. There was a heavy metal podcast called full metal podcast or something like that.

We had a chart show that became a podcast. we ended up having a fake radio host named Sunshine Dick Johnson, who had a show on the radio called The Sunshine Show, and he had a podcast. And then we actually, this thing that's been happening in the last little while, the idea of like kind of an aggregated feed for a network, where people will have a big feed right now, and then they'll start putting other shows in it,

so you kind of subscribe to the feed. Right. We had a CBC Radio 3 super feed where you could just subscribe and just get all music and all this stuff for a long time. And also, weirdly, we had one of the very first music video podcasts, a thing called R3 TV that this just amazing director and comedian named, and storyteller Jordan Koch made. And I was so proud of that also.

Like it was almost like a little sitcom around the Radio 3 office and a bunch of musicians that all went out. It was like that really crazy timer. It was almost like satellite radio took a little bit of a backseat because the podcasting thing exploded so much. Yeah. I mean, satellite radio, it's, I mean, it's interesting this happening at the exact same time that, you know, satellite radio was going to take over and CBC that they had the stuff with them, Galaxy and whatnot. but like sound like radio I feel like as they envision it never really happened and now it's it's primarily something I think people listen to in their cars primarily but it's interesting you give that example and I feel like that is in the book about the podcast ending up when they did add it to

iTunes they had like a real prime real estate it also reminds me of you can't really undersell surface ability and just let's just call like product placement whether it's intentional or otherwise I remember why I started at Twitter, like we would do these lists of, Mike, I'm sure I pitched you on some of these. Like back in the day, like most followed athletes, most followed teams,

most followed politicians. And I remember one of the most followed athletes was always Nick Swisher. Do you remember Nick Swisher? I don't know who that is. He was like a guy who's sort of a serviceable player. He was on the A's and then he was on the Yankees for a bit, but like not an all-star,

just sort of a guy. Like, I'm a big sports guy. So I'm like, this doesn't make sense. It would be like Mike Trout, you, you Darvish, like all the Japanese players were really popular and then maybe like Bryce Harper and that would be like Nick Swisher. I'm like, this doesn't make sense. So I asked like the sports

lead is like, oh, it just because for the first three years of Twitter, like Nick Swisher was just one of the recommended accounts with like Obama and like New York Times and like messy and whatever. And like I think Nick Swisher's actually done like interviews about this too. So sometimes it is just like happens and especially at that time. And like there's no, there's no reason. It just kind of happens and then off you go. Like stuff goes viral like very, very quickly. So with what was sort of the evolution and maybe your outro point for CBC? Because again, you were there 10 different years.

Like your role more on the website. Like how did that evolve as you as you went on? Well, you know, it's funny. The one thing I have to say that, you know, with the podcast for a big deal, the thing that evolved because the podcast kind of dipped for a while before they got hot again. when like YouTube and Facebook picked up. And this is, there was a really magical period with satellite radio

and the website of Radio 3. And the web team, I gotta say, I give them just like massive props. Like it was a really weird thing to have like a full development team at your disposal to build a music service for a radio station. And we had this choice with satellite radio where it had, It had a lot of like very high Cancon requirement levels and things are like, you know, how new artists could be and how new the songs and albums could be and all that sort of stuff.

So it was still very, you know, primed for new music and new artists in Canada. And when we launched, we were still playing a decent amount of international music. Like when we didn't, when we didn't have to play Canadian music, we would be playing subpop artists and things like that, right? And we hit this point where we're like, you know what? we have all this music that has been uploaded to the website from only Canadian musicians, and we have these podcasts that are only Canadian that are doing well. What if we made the satellite radio station only Canadian, and all the music played on satellite radio was also the music that had been uploaded to

the website so that if we had a stream of the Radio 3 thing on the website, you could click on every song that was playing and add it to an on-demand playlist or share a song that's playing live on the radio as an on-demand track with other people. And you could have like a community conversation on a blog on a live radio show while people are doing that sort of stuff. And they built it. Like they built a thing that would like just things talking to each other. Like we're like having to get like a music scheduling software to talk to a website

to talk to the display stuff that would go out on your serious Canada display on your screen to connect all these different pieces together and build a thing where you could add on-demand tracks and make playlist and save playlists.

There was a period where there were a ton of people who had really big on-demand playlists on CBC website. And that got a ton of traffic. And people would show up from satellite radio who were listening in the state,

and would come in and participate on the website. Like they found it on satellite radio and heard all these conversations happening about Canadian music and went in and it just became this like really unbelievable online community. Like it wasn't like there's, the music was amazing. But then there's this amazing fan base and community

that came around it. And I think that, you know, part of it was the podcast, but there's a gathering place with this, the website and the radio shows. and the stuff that happened from that, like, man, like, people would go to shows together. They'd, like, travel across the country and put each other up. A couple got married. There are people who have, like, Radio 3 tattoos and license plates and things.

Like, it was a really unbelievable community. And there's still a Facebook community where they still get together and chat and go to shows and things. It was a really special time. I was going to say, I mean, this just sounds like social media, you know, whether it's like a message board in the 90s or a Yahoo group in the early 2000s or, you know, the Radio 3 community or like a Slack channel or a Discord channel in the present day. Yeah, Reddit.

Like it's just, it's all versions of the same thing. And for you, I mean, you, you really built, like you built a career off like podcasting now. Like, why do you, why don't you tell us a bit what you're doing now? Because I know you're like all in on podcasts and have been even for a long time post-CBC even. Yeah. So Radio 3 kind of evolved into this bigger thing of trying to say, like, how can we apply the Radio 3 stuff to other genres of music, which became that thing called CBC Music. So I did that for a few years. And then I basically got told at the time, like, your career is going nowhere unless you move back to Toronto.

And so I started plotting my exit so I could stay in Vancouver. And we'd been doing some stuff at radio, or I guess at CBC, music with sponsors. Like we did a, with Grant, we did a like a Volkswagen Beetle Fender edition road trip where he like drove across the country with his producer Chris Kelly and they documented it all and did podcasts and recorded bands and things like that. And there's one with via rail and anyways, it was interesting being like, oh, this is interesting that brands are sponsoring and bringing to life really good content.

And then I saw Red Bull starting to do a lot of stuff where they were just bypassing media altogether. Yeah, yeah. And building up their own audience and making stuff that was better than what SportsNet and TSN are putting on for snowboarding and things like that. And so I was kind of like, oh, maybe we'll go out and start a company to help brands think and act more like media companies and start making things that people actually like and want to spend time with and let them build their own audiences and just.

bypass the media companies. And very soon after starting it, cereal came out. And it was like the second wave of podcasting just exploded. Right. And so I had coffee with a woman named Jenny Awano, who was running stuff at Zed at CBC. And we were both talking about podcasting

and kind of brought her into this company because we wanted to be like, let's just be the only company in the world that does podcasts with brands. but we don't make infomercials. We actually help them become media companies. Yeah. And so, yeah, I did that for about eight or nine years and became like an even deeper podcast nerd.

Yeah. Again, I feel like at that point, too, everyone had a smartphone, you know, it was kind of the, the end of the iPod era to, you know, all these, the surfaceability of just having, you know, that podcast in your pocket was everyone had it, you know. Everyone, Blackberry was done, the iPod was done. We were in a like a totally different phase. And Mike, I feel like, again, that's when, like, when did your, I'm trying to remember what year your podcast started. 2012. Okay. So, yeah, like, right in sort of that ball part too.

It's just, yeah. And now here we are. And like, they continue to just accelerate. It's just, just like wild times. Again, like, I feel like a big theme in the book is, you know, how fleeting a lot of this stuff is. But everything you described, at least during your CBC journey, that you were in. Like, it all kind of made sense.

Like, it all laddered and sort of like built on each other. And for you guys, like everyone else, you're just trying to keep up like, well, people have, they might not have a laptop and they might have this Blackberry and they have this iPod. So it's like, okay, what do we do with this? You know, and this isn't going to be here forever. So you have to be constantly changing, as you know, Steve. I think there's also like a piece around curiosity, right?

is like if you're into this stuff, it's like a whole blank canvas to be like, no one's figured this out yet, right? Like at some point with TV and radio, it becomes very formatted. And it's like paint inside the lines. This is what works. And you get less room to play around.

And I think I was very lucky to kind of be at some of the places like much music, you know, when there was still a lot of freedom to be really creative and try stuff. Yeah. But for me, every one of these new opportunities in the digital space was like, we get to go figure it out. Like we made it like this is so much fun to go in and play in this and try stuff and see what

works. And I think, you know, even today, I don't know, like I, I feel like there's still a lot of people doing the taking the same mentality with like, and whether it's AI or whatever it is. But it's some people are going to use it to, you know, optimize it and make everything really efficient. I think other people are going to be like, what's all the weird stuff we can do with this that was not possible before that would be lots and lots of fun for people. Yeah. I mean, it's, if nothing else, it's it's another platform for creativity. And maybe a final question. I might throw this out to both you guys. At what point do you think we stopped calling podcasts podcasts? And a footnote to that point, I think this is on a recent Bill Simmons podcast

where someone just like asked them like, again, one of the originators of, you know, sort of these massively popular. You know, okay, so there's Bill Simmons podcast now available on Netflix. You can see them. Isn't this just a show at some point?

I agree with you 100%. Yeah, like, but it's such a contentious thing. It's so contentious. Yeah. What do you think, Toronto, Mike? When does the name podcast go away or does it? I think it has everything to do with the

XML feed. Like, so long as it's an open schema, an XML file that's driving the syndication of this audio content, it is a podcast. And once the XML is removed, like if it's just on,

for example, if it's just on a YouTube video show or on Netflix or whatnot, now you're just on a show. Yeah. But no one owns XML. Like it's an open source. No one owns it.

So I can go with Steve and build a podcast app that can parse XML and serve up episodes of any podcast that exists with an XML feed. To me, that's one of my biggest fear

you talked earlier, about the web disappearing. Yeah. And you're documenting it in this fine book track changes. Available now. Available. They're major booksellers. Buy track changes and buy tickets to see me at the Elmo on May 21.

Those are the two take away. We'll give you a package. Package deal. But I literally, Steve, this might, you might say, Mike, you're an idiot. But I still manually maintain an XML file for Toronto Mike. So I love it. I hand code the new item block for this. episode in my XML and I

upload it to my web server. That XML is what makes it a podcast. You're old school. Yeah, but when did you start recording them and streaming them on YouTube? Because I feel like that's a fairly... Is that a podcast? Is that a podcast? That content is the same, but that's not the podcast.

Why do you do that? What is the purpose? The purpose is I'm recording anyway and these cameras sit here and I just press a button in OBS and I record. So I am recording. And some people listen through... But it's interesting because this is where it gets weird is, you know, Google podcast disappeared

because Google likes to fuck with us. And then they said, okay, YouTube is now the podcast app from Google. Okay. So my XML file is indexed by YouTube. Yeah. And every episode YouTube will create a show based on my XML file. So that is the podcast. But exclusive, so not related to that, I also,

will record video, which I'm doing with us today. And I will upload that to my YouTube channel. So you will have two instances of Toronto Mic on my YouTube. One is actually the podcast. Right, right. The other is just the same content, and it'll sound the same. But it is not the podcast. It is a non-XML search version.

I just think it's notable that, you know, podcasts, big and small have, you know, in the last five years all gone. Almost they all look almost like a Tom Snyder show, where you have that sort of like closed. No, like you don't, you didn't get your hair done or makeup done. Like, literally, this is exactly how we did it. When did I start, 2012? So 14 years ago, it was the same place, same everything, different board.

But we recorded the same way. The only difference is I literally press a button, record button in OBS. And I also live stream it through the same software, OBS. Yeah. And again, this gets back to whether it's, you know, people talk, like, responding to like other bits of text on the internet or on cell phones or whatever or watch like video listening to audio the platforms change the technology's changed but the actual like act is not really that different from like even AOL um it's so crazy because like so i i agree with with you mike like that

for me as as like somebody who's been doing it for a long time like the feed is the thing that like if you really would want to technically define podcast yeah but pop culture has changed to this thing where it's just a chat show on YouTube that doesn't even have audio sometimes is a podcast or like, how is Kill Tony a podcast? It's a live stream video show from a comedy club in Texas

that is primarily on like a YouTube stream but it's called a podcast. Well, can you subscribe to this Kill Tony program, which I have not seen, but I've heard of? Can you subscribe to it in an app like podcast addict, for example? I don't even know. My hunch is... Is there a feed?

Potentially not. Right. Well, that's not a primary place. It's like it's designed as a video show. Like it's, it's sure. I mean, also think, yeah. One of the big mind fucks is like ultimately it doesn't really matter. It's just it's all content, you know, it's, I always think like I always think in terms of like PR or like my speak at events and stuff where it's like media relations. Because like I've worked in communications for a long time and I spoke to a lot of journalists. I'm like, it doesn't matter if it's something on your app or it's something on the global and mail website. If you're not. you got one screen. What are you looking at the screen? Is it an app? Is it like on a browser? So it does matter, right?

I mean, it does. Like when somebody says, oh, if Spotify gives a bunch of money to some podcaster and we have exclusivity and you have to go to Spotify to hear this content or whatever, like that's nice for them and nice for Spotify, but that's not a podcast anymore. When it ends up on Spotify or something. Like if it's exclusive to one platform, like one tech giant has exclusivity. Like if I can't subscribe to it with any, uh, you know, half decent podcast aggregator.

Yeah, but isn't this the same as if you want to watch different strokes, you got to be on NBC. Like, is that in terms of perfect analogy? Love that fucking show too. Yeah, or like sports, right? Like take your pick. I mean, this is how like media work. So I don't know.

I mean, we're not going to figure this out. But I feel like this could go into all different. I want to let Steve know a fun fact before we say goodbye. First of all, Steve, you were amazing. Thank you. This has been a treat. And I should say, congrats on the book. Cam, like, I'm so excited this is out.

Yeah, no, thank you. Of course, thank you so much for making time. And, yeah, it took a while, but we got there. And it's great to have you part of it. I mean, it's a big part of that CBC chapter. Well, I'm going to say that's what I'm talking about. Steve Pratt is a big part of chapter 10. Okay, there you go.

In fact, chapter 10 closes with a quote from Steve Pratt. What? Yep. I don't know. Have you got a copy of this yet? I have a PDF for me. Okay. My other one is on, is being shipped in like a week.

Okay. I just got mine like a couple hours ago. But the bottom of the end of chapter 10 is Steve Pratt. And then the beginning of chapter 11 is Toronto Mike. There you go. Look at this. Look at this. So we, yeah, you lead into me and that is the great book track changes. And thank you, Steve Pratt. Yeah, one door closes another one opens. But it's hell in the hallways or something like that. Awesome. Okay. Steve, thanks for doing this, buddy. Hey, a treat to finally meet you. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much, Steve. We'll talk to you soon. Okay, take care, guys. Bye. Steve Pratt is now an FOTM. Cam, you made that happen. And yeah, I mean, that's a full episode he got. He got like 55 minutes. Yeah. Just before we go, Mike. This is where, because I'm going to fall asleep soon.

I was going to say, why don't we, you promise me we're going to play a bit of word association, right? Okay. Here's a trade. I'll play your word association. If you allow me to play 29 seconds from not the most recent episode, because that's Stu Stone, the episode before that with a country singer from Bowmanville who now lives in Nashville. So if I can play 30 seconds of that. That's a deal. It's your show.

Okay. Who's going first? Am I going first? Yeah, you go, because mine's a 30 second clip. I'm going to press play on. I originally, this game of word association had eight items. I'm going to pair this back to three. Okay.

You just tell me your relationship. Did you use these things? What's the first thing that comes to mind? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. The iPod.

I had a few iPods. Yes, I had iPods. Okay. Did you get one like right away where you like right in there? You don't start right away. No, I'm not a bleeding edge guy. Like I gave it. No, I didn't do it right away.

You're not lining up on the street. I had a, at the time particularly, I had a, I would just taste for like the proprietary nature of a Apple product. And I had, I had, I was. rocking an I-River. An I-River. So, I-River, which what I liked about the I-River was, yeah, I could give it my 1,000 songs would be loaded up and I could hear them, but also I could tune in FM radio. Okay, yeah.

And at this time, an iPod did not have FM radio. Yeah. And I quite liked that. So I rocked an I River for a long time before I eventually got a, I think my first iPod was a touch. Okay. But I was running in 2008, I was doing a lot of running because I wanted to run a marathon. Sure. And I had what's called a shuffle that I would wear on my arm.

And is this a company, I River? I River was like, I believe it was, maybe Rio was the company. I can't remember now. But I River was a app, it was not Apple. So it was an iPod competitor. Okay. Interesting. Well, around the same time, I was emailing you about those LG cell phones and you were ignoring.

Another big client of hybrid was Microsoft. And that was the era of the Zoom, which had an FM receiver in it, I believe, which is a big differentiator. And obviously... I didn't touch the Zoon. Did not work? It didn't smell good from the get-go.

Like, this was like, sometimes I can, I feel like something is a dog with fleas, and I just completely ignore it. Yeah, yeah. I feel like people could see that one coming from a million miles away, but they gave a shot.

I like this game. Okay, keep going. Okay, two more here for you. Okay, this is very specific. this could be a two-parter. HMV at 333 Young Street and specifically the listening bar upstairs or the listening stations. Did you hang out at these places? Yeah.

So, I mean, I was a regular visitor to 33 Young Street to go to HMV and the various floors. I spent a lot of time in the basement. Okay, which is where the hip-hop was. At this time, a lot of time down there. That's where I famed. ran into Kish. Of course. Where else? And working at the,

in the basement at HMB was the woman who played Kathleen on DeGrassey. Okay, of course. That was a huge deal that I could be listening to CDs and checking things out in the basement, checking out the BPM charts and all these different things. And there would be

Kathleen working at the register. That was exciting. Did you ever go to in stores at that store? I don't even know exactly what that sentence means. Like an in-store performance. They would have artists in to play a few tunes in the back of the store. No, I don't know why I didn't. Like, the closest I would get to that would be, like, I'd be made aware that outside CF and Wyatt, Shooter and Young, Sloan would be performing and I would bike over. Do three songs.

I was living it. Yeah. And I would bike over for that. And I did a couple of those. But I don't remember going any in-store performances at HMV. Believe it or not. Gotcha. I think the only in-store I saw there was actually the late great Joe Strummer. I do have a photo of me and Joe Strummer and he, I don't think I knew he was quite a diminutive man so as you can imagine I had about a foot on him I don't know where that photo is. It's somewhere. Most notably,

the only band that matter. The Pope for six months. Good Irish band. Yeah, so REP, Joe Strummer. And last but not least, and I actually have another prop that goes with this one. MySpace, Rion MySpace.

I was never. on MySpace as Toronto Mike or myself, Mike, I was on MySpace because I ran the custom MySpace page. So at this point, I was the webmaster for custom. Okay. In managing his email list. Sure. And managing his MySpace account. Okay. So we, people like DMing him? So I was, you know, because I was, I had the blog since, well, 2002 in the Toronto Mike.com since 1999 and it was exciting extension that in early 2000s, I want to say 2003 or four, when I befriended custom whose real name was Dwayne LaVold, shout out to Ridley Funeral Home, gone too soon. But not only would he send me a wealth of new material, but he basically explained

that the company had signed with, which I think was called Artist Director, or something like that, had gone belly up and he was sort of like a man without a country and he needed somebody who spoke the language of the digital marketing world to help him with things like his website and taking it over from Artist Direct and again, MySpace and et cetera, et cetera. And I was excited to do that. Excellent. Well, there's a bit about MySpace in the book about the custom stuff. There is.

If you come to the launch event, I believe we're going to have a former Myspace Canada employee there. That's huge. I won't sign her. I believe she's going to be there. And can I show you one more thing? Do you know what this is? Don't read the words on it. I do know who that is because there's an infamous photo where he's wearing a white t-shirt and he's looking over his shoulder or whatnot.

I know who that is. Yeah. So this is Tom, the famous founder of Myspace, where he's everyone's first friend. This is from a magazine I used to write. Have you ever seen this magazine, Peace Magazine? No, I don't recognize that. This is a magazine you could pick up it. They would sometimes have it at Future Shop or HMB sometimes.

It's a pretty, like, quality magazine. Nice Beastie Boys add in the back. Actually, oh, here's the, I actually wrote this article. Okay, look at you. Look at this. We're talking about remembering some guys. Yeah. Okay.

Alex Williams, yeah. Remember when he left Toronto, he, like, told some people to fuck off outside the wrong. Outside the ROM. How to, listen, that's almost as bad as asking me if I remember the Michael Johnson, Donovan Bailey, 100 meter race. But I remember when the, the, Jays played the Royals and he was on the team batting ninth and he got some hits against the jays.

That was very painful. Anyway, Tom came to Toronto, did a junket. There was like a two-page spread in here. See, I like that guy. He cashed out and he didn't become some evil presence in the world. He's probably traveling the world, photographing things and just being a good dude. Yeah, like every once in a while it surfaces like whatever happened to Tom. But he's also like not trying to be all high and mighty and like give his wisdom.

He's just like, right place, right time. probably worked hard. But this feature, the two-page feature, says absolutely nothing. It's unbelievable. But again, it was a different time.

These weren't companies. Like he just, you know, Rupert brought out came. He's like, yeah, can I buy this? I'll give you a few billion dollars. He's like, sure.

That's wild. All right. So you ready for the 30 seconds that conclude this country music rising star, nominated for a Juno, 30 seconds, and then we got to go

because I got to put my kids to bed. Okay, here's the 30 seconds. just before we say goodbye, I'll just let you know there is a tremendously talented CBC reporter that I follow very closely, whose name is Megan Fitzpatrick. And I used to see your name in the wild, and I'd always have this double take. Like, that can't be Megan Fitzpatrick. You're Megan Patrick. So I just want the listeners make sure they're not confused because Megan Fitzpatrick is a known entity on Toronto Mike.

But you are Megan Patrick. So I had a Megan Patrick on and we had a chat about this CBC reporter I follow very closely named Megan Fitzpatrick. She does good work. There's no one better. I think she should be anchoring the national as far as I'm concerned. Maybe one of these days. Absolutely. Okay.

I can't wait for your book event. Remind us when and where. Again, it's Wednesday, March 25th. I don't think I said the time when we're talking about it before. It's at 7 p.m. Okay. What time do I hit the stage? You'll be on at 6.59.

Wow. So that's the time to arrive, everybody. Kensington Market. Again, congrats on writing a book, Cam Gordon. That's amazing. Do I have an applause here? No, thank you for being part of the book. And you're an easy addition to it.

I mean, you're part of that blog chapter and really part of this digital story. We're continuing to write here in the basement. Well, I felt good about my role until you brought Steve Pratt on and I realize, I'm nobody. Oh, to your point, all the pieces matter. Okay, there's an MF on the live stream who wrote, oh, thanks. So watch out, Adrian. Listen, listening.

You know what? The CBC has ears. That's all I'm going to say. Be careful what you say. One, on our way, because I have 20 seconds. Who's the biggest, the most important person you wanted to talk to for track changes, but declined the invitation to chat? There's a few, I would say, John Sakamoto.

would have been huge. Honestly, mainly to talk about his work at Canoe and Sun Media, that website to this day is incredibly well archived, just an unbelievable volume of content. And I don't know, like, a very under-remembered part. And he was very polite, he just politely declined. And then the stuff he did with the star with the anti-hit list. Sure. I'm surprised he declined.

That's interesting. Anyone else? Yeah, there was a few others. I tried to get to Terry Riley from a network records. I just don't think he's doing media these days in the music. Like he would have been like a no-brainer. I did speak to a few other people that work for a network. Yeah, there's a few others that would have been nice to have. But those two come to mind as like big ones.

But I still feel like we did them well in terms of talking about their contributions and what they meant to this story. Well, you did this book well. Thank you. Track changes. Well is what I for. I don't know. What an awkward.

I think it worked out. I don't know if I'm going to ever get an opportunity to host the national. But you did good, man. Thank you. Enjoy. An important book. And thank you for the nice words about me in Chapter 11. And that, you know, the Stu Stone Cam Gordon doubleheader.

That's exhausting, man. It's a big day for you. No wonder your time. And that brings us to the end of our one. 1,864th show. Go to tronomomite.com for all your Toronto mic needs. Get a ticket or two to see me at the Elma combo on May 21st. Just do it.

Spread your cheeks. Whip out that credit card. Just do it. Okay? I don't want to be talking to an empty room. Come on. Where's my pride? Come on.

Much love to all who made this possible. That's Great Lakes Brewery. Palmapasta. You bring it home my lasagna for MF? Let's talk. I'll see how much I can fit in my back. Nick Aienies Recycle Myelectronics.ca

and Redley Funeral Home Fresh episode of Life's Undertaking In the feed right now See you all Well tomorrow Let me just see here quickly here Oh Jeff Viddler is coming on Jeff Viddler

We're going to talk about radio Radio ratings A whack of interesting things on that front See you all Then