Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Dave Rosencrans from Sub Pop Records: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1977

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

In this 1977th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Dave Rosencrans, former International Product Manager of Sub Pop in the 90s, about Canadian bands signed to the label, from Eric's Trip to Jale.A version of this podcast without programmatic ads is available to all Toronto Mike'd Patrons at patreon.com/torontomike.Toronto Mike'd, an award-winning podcast, 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]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

representing subpop, the cassette fanzine, the radio show, the record label, and singles club, inventors of grunge TM, home of losers, and pirates upon the Bay of Fundy. I'm former international product manager and future FOTM Hall of Famer, Dave Rosencrantz. I like that swagger. You got to come in with ambition, man. Doing a debut is table stakes. You know, this is the first step in the marathon. Uh-huh, ha, ha.

Dave FOTM Hall of Famer. Welcome to episode 1,977, 1997, of Toronto-Miked, an award-winning podcast, proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. Order online at Great Lakesbeer.com for free local home delivery in the GERN. G-T-A. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh. Homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Visit palma-pasta.com for more.

Fusion Corpso, Nick Iienes. He's the host of Building Toronto Skyline. And Mike and Nick, two podcasts that you ought to listen to. Recycle MyElectronics.C.A. Committing to our planet's future means properly recycling. our electronics of the past. And Redley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921.

Joining me today, making his Toronto Mike debut. It is indeed. Dave, am I allowed to say your last name, sir? Oh, yeah. Okay, Dave Rosencranz. Is that correct? You got it.

Okay, I was worried at the end there. I was looking for like Rosencrantz or something here. But what a pleasure it is to meet you. Hey, you as well, you as well. I love this show and I'm honored to be here. So many questions. Flooding to me right now, Dave. But first thing is, where do you, you're from Seattle? You live in Seattle? Yeah, you got it. I'm from Seattle. How long you, so you're American. That's right. Get the hell out of my basement, Dave. I know, I know. We're going to litigate that at some point, right? And I see you're wearing the subpop sweater. So you're not seen on the video, but I can see you.

Will you still take that photo with me by Toronto Tree? Oh, yeah. And you. And you're You can put me on the live stream video. I just don't want to be on YouTube. Yeah, see, I used the same. It's one of the same. So the video, just me, everybody, but handsome Dave to my left, how old is that sweater? Just a couple years old. It looks like it's a 70s carpet stuck on a sweatshirt, right?

Can I touch that? Oh, yeah, you can. You can't. If I can touch your hair, you can touch the sweatshirt. You know what? I'll make that trade. All right, man. All right.

No, but you can take a picture at the tree. I love those tree photos. Okay, so what was your, obviously we're going to cover a lot of ground. I got music loaded up. We're going to talk about, quote, unquote, the grunge heyday, 1991 through 1996. When you were running international for subpop, you were overseeing the Canadian operations and the Toronto office and distributions.

And I know you've got great stories about subpop's presence here in Canada. And I'm going to, like the maritime bands, I got it all loaded up. Get ready, Jimmy Moore. We got maritime. bands coming up. But how did you discover Toronto Mike? All right. Let me give you that story.

And first we got to pop a couple beverages here, right? So you've got yourself a hot pop. Yeah, actually. Here, let me, yeah, I didn't even get myself one. Okay, so on the mic, Dave, three, two, cheers to you, future FOTM Hall of Famer. I love that. Right on.

I love that swagger. Okay. So I first found out about Toronto Mike. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, hopwaters are just like, craft beer. Hop waters are not all created equal, and some are not good.

This is really good. Okay. That's good to hear. Yeah, GLB, hitting it out of the park here. So the thing I will say, though, disclose here, is I don't believe they make the hop pub at the Great Lakes Brewery location where they make all the beer. So short bike ride from here is Great Lakes Brewery. Down the street from the Costco, 30 Queen Elizabeth Boulevard, and they make all the beer there.

I actually think somewhere else, the hot. hop pop is made and they slap the Great Lakes label on it. Like, I don't think they're brewing that at Great Lakes. I know, I shouldn't say that, right? They're proud sponsors, but I'm glad to hear it's good. That's what they sell and they stand behind what they sell. It's got to be their recipe, right? It's got to be something they stand behind and it's a good one.

It's good. Okay, I'm glad you're enjoying that. You're going to take home with you some fresh craft beer. I don't know if it'll make it to Seattle or not. But, okay, back to your Toronto Mike story. I'm loving this. This guy from Seattle, the subpop. Canada stuff in the 90s.

Hook that to my vein. We're going to get deep into it, Dave. All right. But so where did you discover Toronto, Mike? Did I miss it? You're building it. The first time that I reached out to you, I introduced myself as F-O-F-O-T-M, Don Pyle.

Yes. Don Pyle's an old friend of mine. The first time you had him on the show about two and a half, three years ago, talking about the music side of his career, right? he sent me a link to this and I checked it out and I'm like, yeah, this is good. And because I have a real long relationship with Canada and especially with Toronto, I got interested and I started listening in real time to you.

I started listening to old shows. I went back like I deep dive two or three years. Probably went back as far as Don Stevenson, another great Seattle guy who is now a buddy of mine in part. Thanks to you, Mike. Okay, that's a wild story. I got to thank Gare Joyce for bringing him over. That's right. And he busks.

He's one of the accredited buskers at the TTC stations. That's right. And he's like a legend that walks amongst us. And I actually went and saw him. I was here in May and I got a hold of dawn. And he's like, you know, I'm going to be at the Egglinton station this Saturday. Come on down. And I did.

And I watched him for about an hour. And, you know, that guy is fantastic. Moby Grape. So great. So great. But, you know, he does some covers of other people. He does some of his own material. His own recordings of recent years are great.

And so we, I listened to him for about an hour. And then we, you know, it was that Saturday in May, when you had hellish rain for like 12 hours, it was a horrible, horrible day, right? And so we actually just stayed down. What does a Seattle guy know about rain? Yeah, right? So we just sat down in the I sat down in the subway station

at a Tim Hortons and drank some coffee and chatted for about an hour and we've been in contact ever since and I'm pretty sure Don's listening tonight. I'm going to try to bring him out on Monday to TMLX. Okay, let's cover that right now. I was going to ask. So you'll be at TMLX 23.

People can meet Dave here from Subpop. Are you going to wear that sweater? I will make it easy for people. I will wear that sweater. Good, good, good. And then they can find me. So let me tell people if they want to come out and hopefully dawns there and hopefully everybody's there. This is 6 to 9 p.m. on Monday that is September 28, 2026.

At not the brewery, don't come to the brewery. You can come to the brewery, but I won't be there. It's the GLB brew pub. That is at Jarvis and Queens Key, okay? They're going to, there's going to be, it's a free event. So there'll be some grub. Your first beverage is on the house. but the most important thing is you get to meet other FOTMs, you get to network, mingle, catch up,

and of course, I want to meet you. So everybody is invited. David, it will be great to see you at TMLX23 on Monday. That's amazing. Yeah, I'm psyched. I've been hoping that one of my trips would coincide with this. And finally it does. So it's great because what I want to do is meet some other folks, some other FOTMs,

and some folks from the TMU. You know, one of the things that I love about coming here is meeting, new folks, not just like dwelling in the past, right, of what I was doing here 30 years ago. You got to meet Cam Gordon, who wrote track changes, and I feel like that's right in the wheelhouse. He sent in a note about you coming on, but yeah, he'll be there. Sweet. Yeah, I want to meet some of the music folks. I love all the history folks. Is Jayho here today? Jayho will be at the event on Monday. But he's not here today. No, he's only here once a quarter. In fact, we don't even, oh, I just mean on the live stream. Oh, you know what?

I have to check in. I haven't checked the live stream. Yeah, he might be there. We can talk about 1977. Okay, tell me about 1977. Okay, well, I'm prepared for this, right? Yeah. In case... The Blue Jays were born.

In case... And so are the Seattle Mariners. There you go. Okay, we've got that. I was looking for great pieces of Canadian and American history. And you teed one up yesterday with a great episode

with Colin James Munn and the story of his mom in the spring of 1977, taking him down to the United States with an Ameripass and traveling around the U.S. and that having a big influence on what would ultimately become his music career. So anybody who didn't hear that episode yesterday should definitely check it out.

And just so, you know, Mike, that confectionery that he talked about in Vancouver in Gastown, I remember that very well. I used to go there when I'd go up to Vancouver for shows. Because, you know, when we lived in the Northwest in the 80s, like not many bands came there, right? It was all like heavy metal stuff and big bands. but if you wanted to see cool bands, they didn't come that often. And so you would take the opportunity to see them two or three times by traveling up to Vancouver or down to Portland. So I used to go up to Vancouver all the time.

And I know exactly that confectionery story he was talking about. And that, of course, is where he first heard Colin James on the radio. I think it was five long years, but I don't know if we ever clarified what song he heard, but I would imagine it was five long years. I think so. It's got to be. Okay, so thank you for listening to that ones. I record, so this week has been long.

It's not only Wednesday. I recorded that Monday. I did toast with Rob Pruse and Bob Bullett. And then like, like a fancy pants. A car came to pick me up. This has never happened before. I've never had a driver. But you know what a driver.

You probably know this as a subpop guy or whatever. Could you afford those cars? But this driver, he drops you off. I was like headquarters of Penguin Random House. Okay, they're Canadian headquarters. So I'm there. And then he's like, I'm going to be part. parked down the street here when you're done.

Like he just sits there and waits for you. So I go in, I set up my stuff, and I record an hour with Colin James Munn. And then I pack it all up. And I go to where he said he would be. And my driver's just waiting for me. I just didn't know the driver drops you off and then waits for you. This is all stuff I'm learning.

I never had a driver before. But yes. And then I recorded it two days ago. I dropped it yesterday. So it wouldn't be, you know, cannibalized by toast or vice versa. And then, yeah, very excited. And I'm sorry, at the end of the Colin James episode, when it was time to say what's up next,

I didn't have Wi-Fi and I didn't have my calendar. And I didn't promote you. But I can tell you when I told the FOTM group on WhatsApp what was going down here, there was a lot of excitement. And most importantly, I'm excited about this. Oh, cool. I am too. Yeah, it was funny. You know, when I listened to that episode really early this morning and I wasn't part of the forward promote.

You're like, oh, oh. Well, no, I emailed you because I do not want to be. a member of the club who shows up on the wrong day or at the wrong time, that is not where you want to be in the TMU for sure. No, you're here. You sound amazing in the headphones. And I know you brought stories, but I guess my question is,

before we get into it, I have songs loaded up in like chronological order. Do I just break into a song and then let you take it from there? Like, can I just start playing music? Well, I think it benefits from a little bit of a little bit of setup here. Yeah, please. Who the hell are you?

Let's set up about that. Who the hell are you, Dave? So there's a couple, there's really two ways that we can come about this as with any music industry story, right? There's the business side and then there's the music side. And I think the best way for me to try to tell this is to talk about the business side of this or at least start with that. Yeah, and even let us know, who the hell are you and how do you get involved of subpop

and just set the table, bring us back there. Yeah, yeah. Like you're going to be an unknown commodity. for a lot of listeners. We've got to like build the mystery, as Sarah McLaughlin would say. Right on, right on. So in the 80s, there was a great, great college radio station in Seattle, KCMU FM. And pretty much everybody who was in the mid-80s, early 90s bands, or working at the record labels,

were all passing through that radio station at one point or another. So I worked there for a few years, and along the way, I became friends with Jonathan Poneman, who's one of the two founders of Subpop. And long story short, at the beginning of 91, he invited me to join the company. And so January 1991, I started the company. And, you know, it was super small,

so this is, you know, almost a full year before Nevermind breaks out and all of this. I was originally hired to do radio and video promotion. I did that role for about a year, at which point the label was starting to explode. So we hired other people to do that. And then I took over for a couple years. I was taking care of all of the production. So the manufacturing, you know, mastering, manufacturing, all of those kind of things through throughout not only the United States, but through.

the rest of the world. So then the next logical thing for me to take over for the company was all of our international product management. So that is primarily working with each and every one of the distribution networks and partners that you have outside of the United States and determining what records are going to come out, what's going to be prioritized in terms of promotion and all of those things. So that was really my role by, say, 1993. blows my mind that you're at subpop in January 1991. We all know what's about to explode. Like Seattle's about to be the center of the musical universe. It was amazing. What an amazing jersey. You know, and it actually reminds me of, you know, again, Don Stevenson, another Seattle

guy, a couple generations earlier than I was, you know, he went through the late 60s, you know, played Monterey Pop. And I had a similar kind of experience going through that grunge era, right, where it's like all of a sudden the entire world's attention is focused on sleepy little Seattle. I have my V8. Around the corner I could grab it. I have my VHS copy of hype. Beautiful, beautiful. I was the executive producer of the soundtrack on that. Great soundtrack. Amazing movie. I'll tell you, you know, we can talk about this off show, I guess. I can tell you a little bit about how that thing came about. You set it up. I'll be listening. I'm going to get my VHS copy.

Yeah, all right. All right. All right. The thing to know about hype is that that was, that film was, the footage in that film was largely filmed in 1994. Oh, good. You've even got the VHS, nice. 94 or 95. And it was basically, you know, a couple of great filmmakers from documentary filmmakers who were based in California, wanted to do a film about this scene. And so all of the club footage was all set up.

So it was all the bands that, you know, had been hugely popular. And they all did nights at some of the classic clubs like the Central Tavern. And but then there's also great footage in there. You know, I think the two best clips in that, just, you know, wait, I'm going to back up and say, I try to stay away from talking about what I think is best or better. I'll just talk about what are my favorites. Okay. Right?

Because it's subjective. I think the two best things in there are actually not subpop bands. some velvet sidewalk do a track called Mousetrap. They were on K Records, absolutely unbelievable. And then the GITS footage that closes the show, they were a CZ band. Those two cuts are my absolute favorite things in that film. But for anybody who was not of that era and has not seen hype before, it is available on DVD at least.

I don't know about streaming, but that is a great piece of documentary filmmaking. Now, I can't watch this because I don't have a VCR anymore, but I only kept select few VHS tapes that I cared about. And I loved hype. Like, I just, I loved all about it. And I'll read in the back of it now is you got your first ever performance of smells like teen spirit. There's an interview with Eddie Vedder on this thing. There's live concert performance in interviews with Soundgarden, of course. And you got more footage from Mudhoney and the Melvins.

I mean, you know, if you're into the scene, hype is a great, it's a great way to. And, you know, it's funny you mentioned that first performance of smells like teen spirit. I was there. You know, this is a bit like your stories of, you know, who was actually at the horseshoe for the police, right? It comes up a lot. You know, how many people were actually at the okay hotel for the very first performance of smells like teen spirit.

And, you know, the band hadn't played in Seattle for a few months. months. They'd recorded, never mind twice, right? Because it was recorded once for subpop, the version that did not come out, and then they signed to DGC, went and recorded it again with Butch Vig. And during that time period is when Dave Grohl joined the band. So they played this show, OK Hotel, which you can also see in singles. There's some footage in singles of that. And so it was the first time that some of us who'd been seeing the band for years, right? in these tiny little clubs, it was the first time we're seeing them with Dave Grohl. And that alone was a monstrous change in the quality of the band, right?

And then in the middle of this show, they whip out this song. And none of us have ever heard it before. And we're all looking at each other like, holy... You can swear. Oh, I know I can. But it's... They can't read your lips because the camera's not on you. Yeah, I know.

but it's almost more impactful than not swear, right? It's like dub music. It's what you leave out. You're right. You are. You are heavy. You are correct. It's funny.

This is a very strange. Usually I just record and drop, record and drop, record and drop. So I mentioned on Monday I went off site to record of Colin James. And then yesterday I recorded episode. This is kind of messed up. I'm not to say who it's with because that's the big surprise for the diehards who will be at TMLX 23. But I recorded 1978 yesterday. But I couldn't drop it because it was 1978,

and I needed to record at 1977 first. That's you, Dave. So tomorrow morning, I'll drop 1978. But in that jam kicking, that is 1978, the episode number of Toronto Mike, we absolutely, we kick out wood by Allison Chains, and we talk about the single soundtrack, one of my all-time favorite soundtrack, singles.

Right on. Right on. 1978, the year that Rush dropped Hemispheres, which is my favorite Rush album of all time. I just saw the premiere at Tiff of the new Neil Peer documentary. I'm dying to see that. I was there Wednesday. And, of course, Alex Lifeson and Getty Lee were there. But Chad Smith was there for Red Hot Chili Pepper.

He's in this dock as well. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we're 20 minutes in. We haven't in K. So you've got as much time with me as you want, Mike. Okay. I've got to find out if I can still make it to my daughter's final house league soccer match at Rennie Park here.

Well, that's more important. Because I've got at least nine more episodes, so we've got plenty of time to... Let me play some music. Yeah. If you don't mind. And then more stories will spill out of you because I'm very keen to learn more about the Canadian angle of all this. So when you get that job for international, you're looking at Canada, I guess. Well, more after this Eric's trip.

Okay, less Mike, more Dave the rest of the way here. We got Eric's Trip. All right. So Eric's Trip were the first band that gets signed to Subpop from Canada. They weren't the first Canadian band to release a record. That was a split single the year before by Mechanormal and Crevice from Vancouver. And Mechanorma's still going. Gene Smith still got that band going out there in Vancouver.

But Eric's Trip, this is really the key to the whole connection between Subpop and Cana. Canada. And to tell that story, I have to tell the story of one of my colleagues. Most people who are familiar with the sub-hop story know about Bruce and Jonathan, Bruce Bavitt and John Poneman, who were the folks who founded the label and basically ran the label. I started at the beginning of 1991. Toward the end of 1991, we decided that we needed to hire someone to be a retail promotions manager for the label. And a retail promotions manager, again, because we're setting the table here, Mike,

for folks who haven't done the music industry. I love the details, Dave. I know you do. I know you do it. Boy, have I brought details. So I don't know, well, let's see, first to explain what that role is. In the music industry, you know, distribution is everything.

It's like the liquor industry, right? There's a middle person in there between the maker and the consumer, right? And in the music industry, that's the record distributor. And you need, as a record label, you need strong retail promotion people to drive those distributors and to drive those record stores to place those records and push those records over everybody else's, right? So we figured, okay, this is what we need because our distributor at the time kind of sucked. And so I don't know. how this person came across our radar, but we heard about a woman out in the Boston area, particularly the neighborhood is Dorchester. Her name's Joyce Linnehan. I don't know how we found out about

her. She had spent a little time managing the lemonheads. She'd had some involvement with the pixies early on before they blew up. And so we reached out to her and started talking about having her come on and be both our retail promotions director and also the person who would run an East Coast office for us out of her home in Dorchester. And, you know, Joyce was nothing, if not forthright. And she said, you can hire me to be your retail promotion director. But I'll tell you right now, I don't know a damn thing about that. And I probably won't do that.

But you can hire me, right? So, you know, subpop being subop and doing everything backwards, you know, to our own great benefit usually, we thought, okay, well, the person who doesn't want to be and doesn't know how to be retail promotions directors exactly the person that we should hire. So we did that. And Joyce quickly evolved her role, quickly evolved into being much more of an A&R person and a promotions person.

And because of her location in there, she was hip to Sloan, right? And generally hip to what was going on in the Maritimes as that scene was beginning to take off. And again, you know, Sloan was taken. They almost weren't taken for a little while and almost bounced to sub-pop. I've heard all of your different Sloan episodes.

There's a lot of them, yeah, yeah, there's like five, six. I'm mildly obsessed of that band. Yeah, I am too. I'm looking, you can't see, but I'm looking at their faces right here. My three favorite Canadian bands of all time, all right? The band. Okay.

Rush. Yeah. Sloan. Okay, that's a great trifecta. It's pretty, darn good, isn't it? Canaan Canadian music. No Rusty in there, though, because you know, Jim Moore's listening. I, yeah, I knew Rusty was coming in here at some point. The real question is, why didn't, you know, Rusty ever have a subpop single in the month?

That's what you should be pinning me down on, but I don't know the answer to that one. So Joyce was super obsessed with what was happening in the Maritime, since she knew there was some great music happening. Sloan was already taken, and so quickly, she figured out, ah, we forget about Halifax, you know, that's the place that everybody's calling the, you know, the new Seattle and everything. I'm going to focus on Moncton, New Brunswick. So she started poking around Moncton, New Brunswick, and came up with Eric's trip, right? And so Eric's trip were the first signing to the label, all right?

Their first records for us came out in 1993. but one thing happened before that. Joyce was, you know, I cannot emphasize enough how critical in the first half in the 90s Joyce was to the development and the growth of that record label every bit as much as Bruce and Jonathan in terms of what bands were signed, how they were promoted, etc. Joyce was amazing, a dear colleague, and she made that record label so much fun. She understood that first and foremost, you know, pop music and records and everything is about having fun. And she had a wild hair up her ass all the time, great ideas.

And she started pushing this maritime thing. And she said, you know, okay, well, we can't have Sloan. We're going to sign Eric's trip. We need to do something to celebrate the Maritimes. So the idea was we will kick this off by having a split, a double split single, four bands from the Maritimes. And we're going to push this out in early 93 as an EP called Never Mind the Mullusks. Now, here's where, you know, when you come to someone's home for the first time, and even though this is a home basement, are we going to get some Iday Dune Nord? Are you kicking off the Aday Dune Nord?

Let's listen to that. And then I'll continue the story. iodine eyes from Adé Dune Ord. Now, you know, I have to point out that they were not a Maritime's band. They were from Montreal. And I don't, you know, Joyce would have to answer this question. I'm not sure how they exactly got in the mix of these four bands. But what was interesting about the never mind the mollusks is, you know, usually when

compilations or split singles are done or whatever, you know, bands just send something in that they've got in the can, right? already. They agree to do something and they, you know, donate a track or give a track. We did it differently. Again, SubBob did everything, you know, goofy. So there was a producer, a guy named Bob Weston, who had played in the Volcano Sons in Boston. He was transitioning into being a recording engineer. He ended up working for many, many years with Steve Albini, there at Chicago recording. So when it was time to do the Nevermind the Mullusks, we actually had we had Bob Weston come up to a studio in Halifax for a weekend in January of 1993

and record all four bands. So it was actually kind of like this large group recording session, and the photo on the liner of that single actually is a photo of all four bands in the studio together, which is super cool. So how we got a Kebacua band in there? I'm not exactly sure, but they were more than welcome, and this was a great track. And who are the other two bands? All right. So it was Eric Strip at Daydunord, who we heard, jail, who we're going to get to in a moment.

We're going to hold on to jail for a little bit. Yeah, you just touch your nose and you're going to get it. There you go. And then Sloan, they kicked it off with a track called Pillofite. And, Mike, you know, you never come to a person's home the first time. And even though this is your basement studio, I'm in your home, I come bearing a gift. Wow. I dug around in my basement. I found a cassette copy of the advanced promo.

You're kidding me? That's for you. I can actually play this because I've got a cassette player right over here. It'll start shedding if you do that, of course. SP198, released at the end of March 1993. I know you've got a lot of artifacts here in your studio and you can just add that. Listen, I'm honored, because this is not a, dupe, uh, replicate. This is the, the real deal? That is the real deal. From March

1993? You won't, you won't even find that on discogs. They won't even mention that. Because I do plan, at some point, I do plan to get the Sloan guys, I'm trying to get them all together actually, but get the Sloan guys back here for some follow-ups. I'm working on a Mike Ementry on Sloan. And if I could blow their minds by showing them what I have in my possession. You got it, man. I don't think there's too many of those flying around out there. It's going to be prominently displayed in the TMDS studio here. Thank you so much. Amazing.

And I love the title of that, too. Never mind them all. That, you know, again, that's like Joyce's sense of humor. She did another split single at one point early on with a couple bands from the Northeast region there called the Declaration of Techno Colonial Independence. And it was Six-Finger Satellite and Green Magnet School. Absolutely fantastic stuff. I'm loving this so far, Dave.

you're kicking ass, you're taking names. Please continue, and you just let me know when you want the next jam. I'm just learning so much. Hey, let's hear some jail. Okay, we can do that. Come on, Mike, let's go. You know, we're going to hear a little bit more jail later, and I actually want to draw a little bit of a contrast here. So this is Jail's first album for us in the spring of 1994.

It was recorded by Brad Wood, down in Chicago, who, although he may have come up to Palafax, I can't remember, though I think it was done at his studio, Itful Music, in Chicago. He was one of the it producers of the moment. He'd done the first Liz Phaira record and was kind of red-hot doing a lot of different folks. So we paired them up. Now, when I listen to this track 30 years later, it sounds good, but it also feels a little bit of the moment,

a little bit formulaic in a way in terms of kind of what that sound was at the time. And when we get to another track from theirs in a couple years from now, as we get a little further into the show, we'll hear something pretty different and a great deal of progress. So, yeah, so jail were the second signing to the band, to the label, I'm sorry. And, you know, here's another great Joyce Linehan's story. When this record came out for the release party here in Toronto. And this is an interesting thing, right? if you're a band from Halifax and you're doing a release party here in the big smoke, it's like maybe people don't know so much who you are, right?

So we, Joyce was always coming up with these crazy great events. And in this particular case, they did the release party, not at a record store, not at a bar, but a hair salon on Queen. And if I remember correctly, it was three or four blocks west of Ishpadena, a little bit beyond the Cameron House, I think, on the north side of the street. And it was like this old school beauty salon, you know, and you could go in, you could get your hair done, you could get your nails done or whatever, and the jail gals were, you know, signing records and the whole thing was being spun.

It was a great, great, great outing. That parking lot, that was, now it's a mountain equipment co-op where I go and buy my bike lights now. But there was a parking lot there. That's where Moberg in the pursuit of happiness filmed the video for I'm an adult now, and then they marched their tape over to much music at 299 Queen Street West. Where I'll be tonight, because after my daughter's house league soccer match at Reni Park, I promised the aforementioned Jayho, Jeremy Hopkins, and Cam Gordon, who was also mentioned, these guys were all mentioned organically,

but they're doing this thing outside of 299 Queen Street West. You should drop by, Dave. I think they're, I'm going to be late because I have to watch the soccer match, but I think it's like 630 to 730. But that's where I'm biking to from Rennie Park. And a long-witted way of saying that that queen and spedina location needs like a heritage plaque.

This is where I'm an adult now's video was filmed. Wow. I wish I could go tonight. I'm actually having supper with FOTM Don Pyle. Wow. That's better company. By way, I think the world, I've had two visits from Don Pyle

and each one left me feeling good. like they're smart, deep conversations. Like he's just so interesting to me. I can't say enough about Don and I can't say enough about this book, right? The rough description book that came out. You know, obviously I'm biased because he's a friend. But the thing that I love about this book is, you know, it's not a memoir. It's not I did this and then I did that and then I did the other thing.

It's like a love letter to his community, the city, the musical community, the comedy, community, the queer community. It's like telling these stories of all these other folks who had an amazing impact on his life. My favorite chapter in that book is one called Albert that comes very early on about the big brother that he had. And not only is that story in and of itself amazing when you get to it at the early stages of the book, but then as you go deeper into the book and realize what a challenging life, family life he had, it really begins to resonate how great that is. So if you haven't read rough description yet, get on it, folks. Get on it.

I saw, well, he, prior to him dropping by for that second visit to talk about his book. And we had a lot, I mean, afterwards, when I wasn't recording, that's when I opened up to Dawn about how much I related to some of those, some of those chapters. But he's a talking head in the National Slash documentary that Colin Brunton and the gang made. So it was good, Don Pyle, just a living legend. Right on.

Okay. So let's go across to the other side of the country for a moment because we were not content to just have maritime bands, right? We signed a band out of Vancouver called Zampano. I love this record so much. It's like I don't want to talk over it, right? Because I love this record so much. Zampano's first album for subpop, look what the rookie did,

which what a perfect title, because man, look what the rookie did. It was the first of two albums they did for us. It came out in January of 1995, and I think it is one of the great lost albums on the label, Canadian or otherwise. And where it's relevant today

is that the lead songwriter and singer in the band, Carl Newman, new pornographers. And Zampano, you know, which was named after the drummer, Jason Zumpano, who was sort of the character in the band, they disbanded after a couple years. But this first record, look what the rookie did. I have listened to this record hundreds and hundreds of times and it just never gets old. The party rages on. Okay, cool.

Very cool. I was going to ask, I mean, now it'll make sense. But I've heard of Eric's trip. I've heard of jail. I've heard of this band called Sloan with Zimpanel. I didn't, I'm not familiar. Yeah. Well, if you, you know, if you weren't listening to, you know,

a particular batch of college radio stations, whether it was in Canada or the states at the time now, I know you were. This is my flaw. No, no, I wasn't. This is my, I think this is a negative on my 90s in that almost all my music came from two sources in the 90s. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. CF&Y, which was known as 102.1, the edge, which wasn't playing this. and much music. Like, if you were not on either of those two places, I needed, like, a good friend to say, listen to this, you son of a gun. And honestly, that was one of the things that made it difficult for us in Canada

because we were having trouble getting the kind of airplay, the video play, etc., that we were enjoying in the United States. So some of the Canadian bands actually suffered in their own market. You know, it's not enough to just... I mean, you can't just stamp maple on the thing, right?

I was going to say, even... Don't tell Brian Adams about the, yeah, the... Cancon laws. I don't think he likes them, but they're supposed to help bands like Zimpano. Right. So we bounced back out to the Maritimes. There was a third band that we signed, and this group was from Newfoundland. Or I should correct... Not the Maritimes. I was just... I was not only going to correct myself on that, but I was also going to correct myself and say Newfoundland and Labrador.

Very good. There you go. No, good on you, except I have also aired in the past and referred to Newfoundland as the Merit Times, and I get a beating. Oh, I bet. A whoopin. Well, we both cut that off. Good for us. The Hardship Post, they had an album called Somebody Spoke, and this is their track, Slick-Talkin' Jack. Slick-talking Jack, don't mind being slack.

And if you flash a smile, he will smile, too. And if you wouldn't mind, he would love to spend some time. He's new in town There wants a little more fun Talking check Look at him Talk So Mike, let me ask you

What vocalist Comes to mind When you hear Seb singing this song Kirk Cobain And It's like a bit Kurt Cobain

And it's a bit Avidando Okay I'm gonna jump I'm gonna jump in with it I'm gonna jump in I'm gonna jump in with Elvis Costello All right

It's like a little curt. Yeah, I went to my era. I didn't know. But at the beginning, it had a, I had a curb vibe at the beginning, but then it turned into a little about, it's a shame about Ray kind of a little thing.

But, uh, great song. Super cool song, super cool band. I think we only ended up doing one album with them. Um, it just didn't really connect with an audience. Um, but I wanted to play it today because they were a pleasure to work with and,

and, uh, a great song. Now we're going to pivot a little bit to something sports related. Now, you know, one of my favorite things on your program is all the sports talk. All the baseball folks you've had, the stadium stuff that you've talked about is so great. Yeah, I've been to see the Maple Leafs at Christy Pits. There is no better value in sport. Can I chime in? Okay, so last summer, not this summer, this summer, we had a whole different phenomenon going on with Yassie L. Pueg.

but last summer we had a woman named Ayami Sato from Japan who became the first woman to play in the IBL, which is now the CBL, the Canadian Baseball League. So I watched her last summer pitch at Christy Pitts. Yesterday night was the deciding game in the inaugural WPBL championship, and Ayami Sato threw the first complete game in the history of the league and led her L.A. Queens to the first title.

That was last night. That is amazing. Yeah. That is absolutely amazing. I'm glad you mentioned Pueek, because I went and saw, it was late May, I think it was Barry that they were playing. There you go. And I walked into the park, sat down there on the lawn, no charge, as you are fond of pointing

out, no charge. No one asks you for a dollar. You know, fantastic. And up to the plate comes Pueig, one swing, hits a double, you know, it's like, fantastic. He set a record. I mean, you know, he's only 35. typically when you get these former MLB stars, they're coming in here, they're like 45.

You know what I mean? That's when they come and play for the Leaves. But unbelievable. So we're going to pivot from baseball to hockey now. Now, I grew up in Eastern Washington, and I grew up playing hockey, all right? And now here's where we're going to, let me give you one more little piece of backstory here.

I love it. No, I'm loving this, man. Before we hit this. So I grew up playing hockey. So I'm old enough to remember original sex hockey, right? And I grew up watching Hockey Night in Canada on CBC. And so I just want to say FU Rogers. All right.

Thank you because, yeah, now you got to pay to play that game. Like if you want to follow your team, you got to cough up some money for Rogers. They even got rid of the Punjabi. I've listened to that. I was discussed on Rewinder. You know, I would watch it in Punjabi if I didn't have the English feet. So entertaining.

It's like watching the Spanish language feeds of soccer, right? It's like so much fun to listen to. So much fun to listen to. And I watched some Stanley Cup playoffs last year. Obviously, I wasn't watching it here. There was no leaves to watch last year in the Stanley Cup. But I did watch the Habs deep in their run in the finals. And I watched it in French in Montreal.

And it was probably more exciting to hear it in French. And it was like, oh, the language doesn't matter. Well, I'm glad you mentioned the Habs because, you know, I'll do respected Toronto, sort of, for the Maple Leafs hockey team. When I grew up, I was a Habs fan. Gila Fleur was my player of choice, but I'll tell you what attracted me the most to watching the Canadians on Hockey Night in Canada was listening to Roger Duce sing the national anthem.

And this is one of many places where Canada just kicks the United States. States ass. You have the best national anthem. And hearing Roger Dice, sing that song, no one sung it better than him. And I loved, I'd be at the pizza parlor with my folks on, you know, after playing hockey on a Saturday night watching that and hearing him sing that song, man, yeah, go Canadians. Love to hear it. Okay, you go Habs go from, from Dave over here. But now we're going to go to another original six team. And we're going to do a shout out here to Tim Cherry, Don Cherry, right? That Tim Cherry episode, man, that is why you are an award-winning podcaster.

That episode, man, that episode was good. I love that episode so much. So shout out to those two guys. Shout out to Gere Joyce. Of course, I'm hoping that I get to meet Gare soon. He's in Kingston. The trouble getting him to these TMLX events is it's a big trip for him. Yeah, well, I'm going to lean on Don Stevenson to get Gare to come so that we're all there on Monday night.

That's the, so Don, if you're listening, call Gare up and let me get this thing. Get on a train. Get this thing. Get this thing. He can walk from Union Station to the GLB Brew Pub. It's a short walk from Union Station. There you go. And also shout out to my musical pals from subpop, Mike Bolitsky, and Joe Pernice, both of whom are huge Bruins fans.

And now we're going to hear a song from Chicks Digget about Jerry Chevers. All right. So I'm going to explain that song a little bit for folks who don't. don't know, right? So Jerry Cheever's was the goalkeeper for the Bruins for many years. I think the Stanley Cup years that he won, I think we're in 1970 and 71. But this was the old school days where you just wore a mask on your face, right? It wasn't a helmet. It was just a mask pasted right up to your face. And every time that he would get... Like Jason. There you go. Like Jason. Every time he would get hit in the face, he would draw stitch marks on the mask, right? And so there's these photos of him

where this mask is almost entirely black from all the stitch marks that have been drawn on the mask. So the parentheticals on this song, it's just called Jerry Cheever's, but the parentheticals on the front and back are, I feel like Jerry Cheever's, stitch marks on my heart. And it's all about how these guys, when they were in school, had their peachy folders, right? And they would draw the mask on the peachy folders and put all the stitchers. marks on it. But this is like, I mean, talk about a lovely letter to a, to a professional athlete. I love this song so much. Chicks Diggett from Calgary, Alberta.

Yeah, I love it too. This is the self-titled, from the self-titled debut in May 1996, Chicks Digit. And I also love these like story songs about sports heroes. I'm thinking of John K. Samson. Yeah. About the, the, what, Riverside. Okay, what was Reggie, Reggie Leach? I got to get that right. I have to Google it. from, I think it's Reggie Leach, Riverton, here I am, struggling,

Reggie Leach, John K. Sampson. This was kicked out by Tim Thompson on Toronto Mike, and I still play it, we the undersigned, it was a petition by John K. Sampson

to get Reggie Leach into the Hockey Hall of Fame, which is at Front and, where is that, Front and Young Street there. And I love that, too. I love these songs about these old sports stars,

particularly when they're hockey. You know, something I've never heard you mention on the show. And, you know, obviously I haven't heard all 1976 other episodes, right? How dare you? Have you ever talked about the band called The Baseball Project? I don't think the base, it's a bit of a blind spot to me. It might have come up by somebody like a Gerard Joyce. I feel like it has been referenced.

Maybe a Mark Hebscher, but it's not top of mind right now. Okay, we got to get you on to the baseball project. Because this is like, this is Scott McCoy from the Youngfresh Fellows, Peter Buck from R-E-I-R-E-M, Steve Wynn from the Dream Syndicate, Linda Pittman. They've got this band that is entirely story songs about baseball players. And they've got five albums. Fantastic band.

We've got to get you hooked up on the baseball project. You had me at Hello here. Tell me about chicks dig it. Well, you know, four on the floor, you know, alternap punk rock from Calgary, Alberta. Like a warp tour type band, as I recall. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, you can smell the sneakers and the skateboards from here, right? Yeah, we did, we did one album, two albums, I'm not sure.

But, and, you know, they weren't exactly my cup of tea, but that particular song, I just, I love, love, love that song so much. Hey, at a curiosity, not sub pop, but do you have any awareness of a band called Faber Drive? Never heard anything. Okay. So Dave Faber from Faber Drive. Okay, it was like pop punky stuff, but a bit later than chicks dig it. But I digress, except Dave Faber, the founder of Faber Drive, and the only guy left in that band from the OG lineup is in the basement Monday to do the Faber Drive deep dive.

Cool. Cool, cool. So let's see, let's bounce back out and find out what's happening in the Maritimes in the summer of 1996. We're going to hear some more jail. So I am baffled to this day how we did not have a massive hit with jail on this record. A few things to point out on this. I mean, this song's, it's almost finished, right? It's like a two and a half minutes song.

You got 36 seconds left. You know, it's like a perfect 45. It's a perfect single. Same producer, Brad Wood, same studio from two years before. but there is an enormous leap in quality in the songwriting and the performance. And this was one of the really enjoyable things as someone working at a record label is you sign bands, you feel like you maybe see something. And again, I didn't sign the band.

Joey signed the band. But, you know, you work with them when they're at a nascent stage. And you see something that might come together. And it might be because they, you know, have some indication of the talent. it might just be who they are as people, right? That they're going to get there. And in this case with J.L., they grew so much in terms of their quality. So on that song, you've got Jennifer Pierce singing.

You know, Jenny has a long connection with the early Sloan records as well. So you can ask the guys about that when you talk to them. Jenny's sing and lead on that. Laura Stein is playing bass, and, you know, her bass playing has improved. dramatically from the first two years. Eve Hartling is the other harmony vocalist on that song. And the other thing that changes with this record is that this is when Mike Bolitsky has joined the band as a drummer.

So the combination of Mike Bolitsky on drums and Laura on bass creates like this really, really solid foundation. They had the songs. That record, that second album, so wound. 12 songs, 13 songs on that. That is a smash hit. And if you haven't heard it, find a copy, listen to it. It's just, it's amazing.

What is the answer to that great question you're asking, which is, because I bring up every time I have the Sloan guys, I bring up jail, of course, but the average, you go to the young bluer subway station, and you ask 100 random people about jail, J-A-L-E, and I don't know if you'd get one. You know, it's true. Maybe one.

And, you know, what it comes down to, more than anything in that industry, is luck. It's like so many things in life. It's like, yeah, you can be great at something, or you can have all the money behind you or, you know, any number of things. But at the end of the day, like either the sun shines on you or it doesn't shine on it. But dare I use and shout out to Rusty and Jim Moore, but dare I ask you if there's any misogyny at play here? Like if these are a bunch of dudes, is it a lot of? a whole different story? I don't think so.

We're mid-90s. I mean, Alanis, but she was, you know, Atlanta's is going strong. I guess I'm trying to think of the, you know, whole, of course, has lived through this. You know, I mean, there's certainly a massive amount of misogyny in the industry, for sure. And it's much harder to break as a woman or as a group of women.

But rock and roll, like, you know, you know, but at that particular time in these scenes, that was not. I mean, Varuka Salt or any number of bands that you could talk about that were fronted by women or that had women singers or, you know. Garbage. Yeah, garbage. I mean, there's tons of them that made it.

I don't know why it didn't happen for jail. And I wish they had them. They are. And what a great group of people they were too. But there was another band out of Vancouver I always thought should have been bigger. Cub. Great band. Absolutely.

But no one, I mean, I may be the same person who knows. J. L. Nose Cub. There you go. Undoubtedly. Undoubtedly, they... I do have a question for you. A recent episode of Toronto mic'd. So this Saturday coming up, I'm going to be at Massey Hall.

Yeah. To see the Canadian songwriters Hall of Fame inductions. Okay. So the tragically hip are going in. Oh, you're going to kill me now. Okay. Rock Vossine, who I'm not familiar with very much. He's a bunch of bigger in Quebec, I think.

But it's not my bag. But he's there. And who else? Leslie Feist, there's a big one, but also the two principal songwriters from a little band called lover boy, one of whom was on Toronto Mike last week. Do you have any lover boy stories for me? I certainly do. You had Paul Dean on the show. And, you know, that was super, super interesting for me to listen to. Let me give you a little background on my music listening as a kid. All right. So probably the first live shows that I saw would have been performances at the World's Fair in Spokane in 1974.

Expo 74. I don't remember who any of the groups were, but I probably saw some Canadian bands and maybe some Caribbean bands who were coming. through Canada to Expo 74. I don't remember that. But my first proper concert with my parents was Elvis, the year before he died. Wow. And, you know, that's something I'm certainly very proud of.

The first concert that I went to by myself as a teenager was lover boy. When the, when the, and, you know, I just lost half your audience. I'm sorry. No, I mean, you can't listen to. Canadian classic rock radio today without hearing at least a couple of lover boy jams. Oh, for sure. What I mean to say is, you know, there's a certain group of people for whom my credibility, you know, just got just got killed.

When that Get Lucky album came out, I was super, super into that. And they came and played the hockey arena in my town, which is, you know, where all the metal bands came. The funny thing about this was that they were actually the opening act for Zizi Top. And it was the tour that Zizi Top did between the one where they had the live buffalo in a cage on the stage when they were like, you know, they had fallen about as far out of favor as a band could. It was the tour between that and when they broke out with the Eliminator record. So I had- Which ties back to Don Cherry because his theme song on Grapevine, which was a television show, produced.

produced by Tim Cherry, I believe, was Sharp Dress Man. There you go. So we'll give a, you know, Frank Beard just passed. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. Right. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. By the way, quickly, a couple of gifts because you gave me that invaluable cassette that will live forever in this Toronto Mike's

studio here. But I have a measuring tape for you here, but it's not just measuring tape. I feel that undersells this new model from Ridley Funeral Home, which is also, the measuring tapes here, but it's a flashlight, it's a bottle opener, it's a level, it's all these things. Hey, Mike, I, you know, I got to thank you especially for giving me one of the fancy new ones.

Okay, is that from Don Pyle? Because no, no, no, not from Don Pyle. Here's a Sloan story for you. So I was here in May, right? I was here in May. And it happened to coincide with the Sloan garage sale. Okay. So I go to the garage sale.

Okay. And, you know, have you actually gone to it? Yeah. I bought a T-shirt there two years ago. Okay. So you know there's a huge line up down the alleyway. People are, you know, you kind of got. to wait patiently. Well, there I am in the alley. They had set out a bucket, you know,

with a sign on it that said Looney Bin. And it was sort of a honor system kind of thing. And there were some buttons in there and a few promo CDs or this or that. And there was that measuring tape because, you know, you've got, you've had those guys on like six times or something. I would love to know, was it Patrick Pentland? Was it? Who's guilty? But you know what? During the era a Ridley funeral home given out the OG measuring tapes. All four have been over here. So I have no idea which member of Sloan dropped that wonderful measuring tape

from Ridley Funeral Home into the Looney Bucket. But that's amazing. You spotted it and you bought one. I spotted it and I thought, well, that's amazing. I don't know if I'll ever be on Toronto Mike. I've got to get one of these tapes right now. That's amazing.

And now you have the 2.0. I got 2.0. Man, I couldn't be happier. I should have like put some kind of identifier on it so I could say, oh, this one in the loony, that was, that was the Andrew Scott one. How dare he? Okay.

I'm glad you got that too. You got the full collection now. That's exciting to me. But I also have it. And my concern right now is I believe are you a vegetarian? You know, I'm not. I'm happy to eat the beef in the lasagna. That's just fine.

You know, right now, if you're in the United States, you're a little nervous about eating any beef. We don't have that here. I know. This is a little different story. I'm just a little shaky about it. Okay, well, I'll just tell you that you can choose. I'm like, Monty Hall, okay, this is, you know, let's make a deal. You can either leave today with a delicious and safe beef lasagna from Palma pasta,

or if you're in the city long enough, the next, I get four at a time from Palma Pasta. I will absolutely order a vegetarian lasagna and bike it to you as long as you're in biking range, depending how long you're sticking around. How long are you sticking around? I'll be here for another week. So I could make that. I'm just saying I could do that. That's very kind of you.

I am super happy with the one that I have. Thank you. I'll stick with door number one, man. Is that your final answer? Okay, that's a different show I'm being told. Okay. So I want to let everybody know there's a free event at Old Mill on October 7, 2026 with Nick Iini's and Karen Stintz.

So Karen Stints will be talking about her new book. And that is going to be recorded for an episode. I'm going to record that for an episode of Building Toronto Skyline, a podcast you should listen to from Nick Aini's. Thank you, Nick. And last but not least, this won't work in Seattle. This is for Canada only. So close your ears.

I'll geo-target this one just for Canadians. But recyclemyelectronics.ca, memorize that URL, because that's where you go. If you have old electronics, old cables, old devices, I don't want you throwing that in the garbage. Those chemicals will end up in our landfill. That's no good for anybody. go to recyclemyelectronics.ca, put in your postal code and find out where you can drop it off to be properly recycled.

You know, Mike, I was super impressed. I happened to hear the episode when you had the gentleman from Recycle My Electronics on. And, you know, a lot of those entities that quote unquote recycle things don't. You know, or they send it to really bogus places that are bad for the environment or humans in other ways. And I was super impressed with the whole sort of supply chain narrative that he has. had, that's the real deal. So, absolutely. He's coming back. I'm hoping he'll be back in the basement in October. Good, good man, clip hacking, good supporter of this show. Toronto Maple Leaf left a vacancy. I haven't filled yet. So if anybody listening wants to join the family here, hit me up,

Mike at Toronto, Mike.com. Okay, back to you, Dave. All right. Well, let's get, we've got two more pieces of music to put in, and I've got a little bit of statistical narrative to share with you, because you love those statistics and that deep dive. And I've, I've, I've brought them. So we're going to go to the end of 1996 just before I personally leave the label. And we're going to hear Elevator to Hell, which is the band that sort of comes out of Eric's trip. Okay, let's do it. Mid-length greasy hair

He had lots of songs that he wanted to share High up above him in the tall, cloudy air Flew a little bird Some others noticed there Bird's name was Roger and he didn't have a care Except when it came to humans so unfriendly stares Diving through the thick air The anger grew till where

Roger attacked the boy and pulled out half his greasy hair The boy screamed and Roger cursed Humans dirty stairs And armless swung in everything He blurred in Roger's head He fell down to the pavement And the people looked and cared Roger couldn't move

And all you could taste was greasy That was for me, right? Great bit of psychedelia there I slightly misspoke when I said you know, elevator to hell was the band that came out of Eric's trip because there are a lot of things that have tumbled out of Eric's trip. Rick and Julie went their separate ways. Julie Doran has had some amazing solo records under her own name and as a broken girl. I saw her play about a year ago. It was absolutely wonderful. And then Rick White, you know, that guy is a Renaissance man.

He is so amazing and impressive to me. If for people who know any one of his bands, whether it be Eric's Trip or Elevator to Hell or what have you, you really owe it to yourself to go to his site on band camp, which is Rick White Archive, and check out the dozens and dozens of amazing recordings he has there. He has done so many different types of music. He's got his own home studio. he plays all the instruments. And like after the pandemic, he did, just for a lark,

he did these five K-Tale-style albums. I loved your K-Tale episode, by the way. He did five K-Tale-style albums like the 20 hits of the 60s and the 20 hits of the 70s or what have you, where he picked 20 songs, played all the instruments, and said he Rick White did everything. And those records are absolutely amazing. They're aghast to listen to, you know, and he's, you know, he keeps doing his own solo stuff.

He did some collaborations with the Sadies over the last couple of years after Dallas passed because they were such close friends, Dallas and Rick. You know, Rick has absolutely done some amazing things. And what delights me to say, even though this has nothing to do with subpop, Rick and Julie put out a record together just a few weeks ago. First thing that they have done together in, you know, I don't know, two decades. And it's a wonderful record. Um, so anybody who ever cared about Eric's trip go to, I think his label is called Blue Moon Records or something like the blue fog record records or recordings.

But if you just go to Rick White archive on band camp, you'll, you'll hear that. Um, so. By the way, you're drinking that a Czech Pilsner. I know you're a Pilsner fan. It's delicious, man. I got, you know, the hop pop. We changed from hop pop. You drain the hop pop. You've moved on to the Czech Pilsner.

The hop pop's only 12 ounces, right? And I'm, I'm, I'm thirsty. So I'm going to drop into the beer here. So that was the last thing that I wanted to play from you from the era that I was actually working for the label. But why do you stop working for the label? Why do I stop working for the label? You know, I have asked myself that off and on for the last three decades because there are a few people who I worked with at the label at that time. Shout out Jeff Kleinsmith.

Shout out Megan Jasper. who have stayed there the entire time and had a really productive career and helped keep rejuvenating that label over and over and over again. But, you know, honestly, at that time, Mike, it was like, I felt like I'd done it, you know. And I could have, you know, just like what happens with bands, you know, they start on indie labels and then they go to a major label or this or that. And it turns out like Nirvana. There you go.

And maybe it doesn't work out. so great, or you're Sloan, and maybe it doesn't work out so great, and you, you know, you go back on your own at some point. I kind of saw that trajectory, and in fact, there were a few major labels who tried to hire me away from Sub Pop, and yeah, I'd take the free breakfast. I'd take the flight to San Francisco, and I'd tell Jonathan, you know, hey, John, I'm going to go have some, you know, French toast with some jackass from Polygram, and, you know, and then I'm going to come back, and I'm not taking the job. But at a certain point, I just thought, I've kind of done this, and I love it, time to do something new. So it was really nothing, nothing more than that. And I remember when I,

you know, when I told the label, there were a lot of people who were shocked because I think some folks probably thought I was going to be the last one to leave to turn out the lights, you know. But it was time to move on to something new, for sure. Can you share what you moved on to? Well, the thing that I moved on to directly after that, I was a curator for experienced music project. which was a rock and roll museum that started in Seattle. It opened in 2001. And that actually was a project that I worked on that brought me back to Toronto a lot. Was Alan Cross involved in this?

I know the name. Okay, only because something may be a similar name. I'm not sure. I saw something of this nature at the Ontario Science Center. This was a, I mean, this is a major institution in Seattle that was founded by Paul Allen. Okay. And, you know, it was in Toronto news. It was a quarter million dollar project with a Frank Gary building.

You know, hey, shout out Canada. Frank Gary, although this was the building the Frank Gary disowned. It's not in any of the books. There's a Frank Gary Memorial episode, too, with Jim Sheddon. Oh, I'd love to hear that. Yeah, you can find that in the, yeah. I'd love to hear that. But anyway, so that was the next thing I did.

And, you know, I've done a variety of other things. But I've never stepped too far away from the music industry as a fan. I don't work in it anymore, but I still enjoy going, and I pay attention to what's going on. You know, that's actually a good segue into the next track. Okay, because the new track will bring us into the summer of 2026. Exactly. But a couple of questions just to mop up your, I can't believe you were at Subpop doing the International from 91 to 96. Like to me, this is such a core period of time for this kind of music in my life.

and I think that's pretty cool, man. So it, you know, it was the greatest job of my life for sure. But you could write a book. I could. Maybe I still will. And you should, you know what I want you to do? Here's what I want you to do. I don't know what pull you have with whom, but I always love the hype documentary we talked

about. I have the VHS, my VHS copy in my hands right now. Two thumbs up from Siskel and Ebert. That's how good it was. And this was like diving deep into what was going on in Seattle at the, turn of that decade, 1991, whatever. And I think we need to do the same thing for the Maritimes. That would be super cool, wouldn't it?

Like, we got to do it. Get the Sloan guys, you got jail, you got, you got Joel Plaskett and Thrush Hermit, and you got Eric's trip, and you got a whole bunch of, I mean, so many people still around to tell the stories. We've got to do this. Yeah, that sounds good. So, you know, before we play this new track, what I got to thinking about while I was, you know, reminiscing about this. And I do actually, I want to shout out a few other people here

who I haven't had a chance to mention yet. You know, we had distribution in Canada. We had partners that we worked with in Canada. And some of those folks were really, really amazing. When I started at the label, we were distributed through cargo. And I know you've heard the story many times about how cargo sort of imploded and saved themselves and imploded and saved themselves. So when I first started with the label, our records were distributed in Canada by cargo. And from there, when that kind of blew up, we moved to Denon. And this is one of those interesting things. You know, over time, there's been all sorts of electronics companies who've gotten into the music industry.

You know, like Phillips was a company from the Netherlands who bought mercury in the United States and, of course, RCA, right? So Denin actually had a little music distribution arm here in Canada, and they took us on for a couple years. That was probably like 92, 93, 94, something like that. And a couple great people there, Kelly Mulvey handled all of our promotion. And the person running the label at that point was Lloyd Nishimura. Lloyd was a huge supporter of subpop, and he ended up going up. on with a couple of other folks to found outside music, which ultimately became the biggest independent distributor all across Canada.

And that's where SubPOP ultimately ended up for their distribution, and I'm pretty sure it still sits with outside. And in between that, we had a little detour. Here's one of these, you know, try out the major label thing and then work backwards. We had a little detour with Warner Music. So in 1994, subop records sold 49% of its company to the Warner Music Group in the United States. Right. Now, think about that.

What big corporation buys a minority share in a company, right? 49%. Right. And they gave us a huge amount of money for that, right? The deal was that we maintained relative. freedom in the United States, but we had to hand over the distribution rights outside of the United States to Warner Music Group. And so for the years 1995 and 1996, that became my task. I went around and around and around the planet, meeting with all of our independent

distributors who had worked so hard for us. And then I had to break their heart and say, pull the records back. It's going to Warner, and we all knew that in most territories it was going to go to shit, right? That wasn't true in every territory. There were some countries where Warner did a great job for us. Spain, Australia, Sweden, really great. Canada, not so much. So we had some initial meetings with the folks at Warner here in Canada.

And we had a couple of big records coming up, one in particular by Sebedo. And it was really, really clear that it would be released, distributed, and buried all in a week by the Warner Music Group. So we had to take some action here. So Joyce and I came up and we met with Warner and basically said, this isn't going to work. you need to assign us a label rep who will work inside of Warner on our behalf. And so that happened. We kind of came up, preemptively read them the Riot Act, and the Warner folks said, you know, we've got this young woman working at the label named Katanya Whalen.

And so they, I think we left the building, right? And then Katanya was like called into the, into the conference room probably right after we left the building and told, you're now in charge of Sub Pop. And Katanya did an absolutely fantastic job for the label, despite the fact that she was working in this huge machinery that just didn't give a shit one way or another about what we were doing. She's gone on to a great career in the music industry. She's been working down in the States at the Orchard for, I think about 15, 16 years or something. but shout out to Katanya for doing it. Great job for us in the belly of the beast. The other thing that we did to make sure that we were covered,

that we had someone looking after Katania because we didn't know if Katania was going to be any good, right? So we wanted to hire someone to be our Canadian label manager. So with the encouragement of some of the guys out at murder records, we got a hold of a woman in Montreal named Franz Chivalier, and France was working as a publicist for cargo. And here's another great story about the hilarious grandiosity of subop, right? So we had decided we were going to hire a Canadian label manager to look after Warner Music,

or as we just called it, the bunny. You know, pejoratively, they were the bunny. And so we decided, okay, we're going to hire, and we're going to do some interviews for this. So we thought, okay, well, what's that? the most pompous, obnoxious, ridiculous thing we could possibly do. We rented the largest suite available at the Royal York, right? You know, I mean, you can imagine, right? This huge suite, like, you know, it was probably the Queen Elizabeth Suite or, you know, something like that. I don't remember. Huge sweet. And there's just me and Joyce and Jonathan and a shit ton of old

furniture, right? And we set it up so that, so that the people who were being interviewed, you know, had to come and knock on the door, and they came in, and there was Jonathan in the middle. We kind of set it up like he was a king, right? So he's in this, you know, he's in this big chair, and we've got this huge light above him almost like the light of God above his head. Right. And, and, and this is how we conducted interviews for the label manager for Sub-op Canada. And we actually had some, we had some great candidates. There was another one. named Jane Tattersall, who went on to work with spiritualized and did a lot of other label work. I mean, people were knocking down the door, right, to try to work for us.

But Franchovalier was a great pick. We ended up setting up a house for her out in the beaches so that bands could stay, you know, park their van, back it up against the wall so their gear wouldn't get stolen and all that. So she helped take care of the bands when they were touring and coming through Toronto. And while we were in this awkward period where we didn't really have distribution through Denin, Warner only took certain records, the ones that they thought they could sell a lot of. So we were actually shipping physical product up from the United States to France, and then she was reselling that to independent stores all across Canada.

So we kind of took our own distribution back into her own hands. You know, so that arrangement globally with Warner lasted two or three years. And then as these things always go, Warner realized, oh, we have no idea what to do here. And so the beauty of the story was that they ended up selling those shares back to Subpop for a significant discount on what they bought them for. So it was a little hiccup in the history of the label in a lot of different ways. and, you know, apologies to the independent network of folks who had been helping us, who kind of got crushed along the way. Well, they didn't get crushed, but they kind of got pushed out of the mix temporarily.

But then many of them came back. So like I said, Lloyd, you know, Lloyd was a denin. He was distributing us, and then he ended up doing it again at outside. So all good. Okay. Okay. But the quick mop-up before this summer 2026 jam from subpop here is a question from me is, Do you know the name Ben Kerr?

No. Okay, so Ben Kerr, because there was a hoax that Ben Kerr was being signed to subpop, and this would be read in I Weekly, which was a weekly alternative paper, but owned by Torstar, and I think it was FOTM, Ed Keenan. This is more for the listenership than for you, but who may have originated this hoax, but you don't know the name Ben Kerr, so there's no follow-up questions. But I do know the name Ed Keenan.

Where's he been? He's at the start. No, no, no, but doesn't he understand how quarters work? He hasn't been on the show for a long time. He's a recurring event, Mr. Dave. He is the first Thursday of the quarter at 2 p.m., which means he's my guest a week tomorrow. Sweet.

Next Thursday, 2 p.m., I expect to see Ed Keenan knocking on the side door here. It's his time for him. And we have a municipal election going on, so there's actually a lot to talk about about Ed. That'll be big. But Cam Gordon, who I've mentioned now for the third time, Cam, I'm sending you an invoice, okay, and I'll see you tonight. But, of course, we got the Eric Strip story.

We got the jail story. But you weren't there. But do you have any insight into these three bands? Hot Hot Hot Heat, Wolf Parade in Constantine's? Only as a listener. Only as a listener. But that's, I appreciate the question. It kind of leads me to where I was going next,

which is to say that, you know, I got to thinking about this. And it's like, I know that the connection between Subpop and Canada didn't end just because the Maritime Squad. quieted down and I wasn't at the label. I didn't have anything to do with it. So I did a little research. And I can tell you that there are at least 35 distinct Canadian artists, not counting doubles like, you know, Eric Strip, Elevator to Hell.

There's like at least 35 people who've recorded for the label. There's 110 unique titles. I've got it broken down by by province. So did you want to do this now? Yeah, let's do this now. Let's do this now. Love it. So I'm going to give you a little quiz.

You know, you wouldn't know. What province or territory has the most number of unique artists who've released on subpop? Ontario. Tide for second. British Columbia had nine. Shout out hot hot heat. Yes. All right.

Ontario and Quebec, both at eight. Okay. New Brunswick at four. By the way, that's British Columbia punching above their weight. there. It sure is. Alberta had three. Nova Scotia, just two. Just two. That's where Halifax is. Newfoundland and Labrador one. Yeah. And you get goose eggs for Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, P-EI, and Yukon, all zero. So we've got to do something about that. There's probably some... Especially Manitoba. Winnipeg's a huge music city.

Yeah. Big, huge bands. I mean, the Watchmen just got a Polaris Prize for their McLaren Furnace room, dude. It is weird to me that there's nothing from Manitoba. And it could be that, you know, in my researching in the internet or this or that, I may, I may have missed one. So here's the next, here's the next quiz question. Right. And I'll give you a hint. It's Ontario.

What band, what band has the most individual titles on subpop? And this can be, this includes singles, you know, odds and ends and this and that. Who do you think that would be? Constantine's. Nope, it's Mets. With 15. Mets has 15. I was never going to get that.

We would have been here all day. Okay. Yeah. And that's not counting the weird nightmare. The side project, which is seven more, seven more titles there. The runner up would be Chad Van Galen with 10, okay? And that's Alberta, I do believe.

Yeah. So there's a trivia here. Okay. But I love this subpop Canada trivia. Yeah. So there's some stats for you. So now let's just. You brought the hot, hot heat today.

I did. And we just talked about Calgary. So now we're going to bring it up to June of 2026. There is an act on sub-pop. They've been on the label, I think, for about six years that I absolutely, absolutely love, called Cartel Madra. And we're going to hear something new from them right now. Abidant to me. Bishop's evident to me.

Evident to me. This is evident to me. This is evident to me. Out of your mouth and keep your sights are clean. Keep that old trick out of your clout and keep your fight on mean. Take that types a scene and make that fight cut clean. You know what it is that I mean. You know, I'm the bitch for the screen. Keep it in check to the team. Keep it in check for the team.

Get that whack shit out of my sight and keep your mind on track. Get your old look back, but don't be settling scores unless you wanted it more. Don't be trivial, mindset critical. Just stay clinical. Keep your criminals close and just keep opening doors. Hunger for glory, never a war. We relieve dead. Down in the trenches running 500 laps push up bed press trumpets blaring hair braided wind whipping loud and dangerous Uniform pressed takes and tigers stripes and scale of is rio

Schoolyard fights like cancer asked you a question give me an answer Yeah, I'm gonna be honest I have no idea where we are They just had head towards the giant hand bro. What? Do you think you can stand up straight and punch? Don't bleed out too much Don't get knocked by lunch too many crabs in the pot even two is a lot keep your energy out of my thoughts free bleeding out of the box I am razor trapped in intrude like a laser. When my gloves come off, my hands feel hot and batter. Tolerate the finishes. Come up to the villages. Screen it in the cinemas. Viler through perimeters. Minimise the damages. Show me all the witnesses. Show me all the witnesses.

Circulate the evidence. Speak of my benevolence. Always using violence. That's how I got my confidence. Climbing me to the world again. Getting back my sentience. So how cool is this? It's wild that we spent this episode in the 90s, right? We went through like eight 90s jams. And then here we are in 2020. and it's like we're in the future. This sounds like the future. You know, this band is so cool. Again, Calgary, Alberta, but it's two sisters who were born in India.

I mean, this is great about the diversity of the sound on subpop. It's a story about diversity in Canada, too, right? So these two sisters from India moved to Alberta. They're queer, and they're doing this hip-hop music, right, that they refer to. to as gunda rap or gunda music. And my understanding is that gunda is a term in Southeast Asia to refer for, refer to gangsters and criminals or what have you. So these,

you know, these videos that they do are like filled with all the usual kind of hip hop, bling and cars and parties and all this crazy stuff and super raw sexuality. But it's all set in the prayer. of Alberta. I mean, the, the footage is just absolutely amazing. So that track that just dropped was actually produced by a Toronto producer, and his name is either J-E-B-E or J-I-B-E. I'm not sure how you pronounce it. It's J-I-D-E. J-I-B-E. But okay. Oh, okay. So. B-E, not D-E. Yeah, I think it's B. I think it's B, you know, probably my type.

One of us has a type. One of us, it's probably, probably me. But this Bancart Hotel Madras are playing this Friday night at Sneaky Dees. There's some sort of a festival going on. I don't know what it's called, but it's at Sneaky Dees. Thankfully, we don't have to do a Ripley for that. A Ridley for that. And there you go. We're brought up to speed and there's my debut, Mike.

Dave, I loved this episode so much. Like, we do this quarterly thing called FOTM cast and we only talk about like 15 episodes from the quarter. But I promise you, you're on the list. I got to talk about this episode with the guys from FOTM cast. Hey, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here, Mike. Thank you. And thank you for my cassette copy of Nevermind the mollusks.

This is amazing. You got Sloan on there, Eric's Trip. We got... Well, you know, if you get those Sloan guard, if those Sloan guys get back in the studio, keep your eye on that or it'll end up at the garage sale. I'm going to start putting like little tiny numbers on each... Ridley funeral

measuring tape so I can track them in the wild. Who's given up their Ridley funeral and I think

that's amazing at the Sloan Garage sale which is an annual event I wanted to go this year at a conflict

of my kids soccer but I was there two years ago bought a t-shirt just great everybody's there the guy from Super Friends is there

Matt Murphy he was there Mo Berg walked by Wow you were talking about K-Tel the K-Tel albums and I was

thinking oh yeah the guys from trans-Canada highwaymen spoof on that with their releases where they cover these old like 70 songs from you know you name it

but Gino Vanelli whatnot and that is Moberg Chris Murphy that is from Baranaked Ladies Steven Page

and Craig Northee from the odds so those are Canadian that's like the Canadian traveling were Wilburys I guess which one is Johnny Cash

they all wish they were Johnny Cash well Johnny Cash isn't in the traveling Wilburys No, but he was in the highway, man. Oh, he was in the highway, yeah.

Right. I turned my, my brain got turned to the, you know, we only have two left. Wrong super group. We only have two Wilburys left, you know. It's very sad. Okay, Dave, thanks for this so much.

Thanks for the gift. And honestly, I can't wait to see you Monday at TMLX23. Yeah, man. And that, and that brings us to the end of our 1,977th show. Go to TorontoMike.com.

for all your Toronto Mike needs and much love to all who made this possible that is Great Lakes Brewery. Dave's got his fresh GLB here. Subdivisions. Who do you think? Oh, you wouldn't know.

You're not a Seattle guy. I don't know. You can't speak about Mark Daly from Seattle. Get out of here. Palma pasta. I've got your beef. Beef is safe in this country.

I love it. You have my promise. All right. There's no promise. Palma pasta. Nick Iini's. Recycle my electronics. And of course, Ridley Funeral Home.

See you all. So here's how it works. I already recorded 1978. It is a kick-out-the-jams from a great supporter and listener who was born in 1978. That's your clue. I'll drop that tomorrow. And then on Friday I'll be dropping an episode.

I'm recording tomorrow with Kathy Young. Kathy Young has quite the story. This is going to be good. And I will see you all then.