Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Denise Donlon: Toronto Mike'd #208

Episode Date: December 21, 2016

Mike chats with Denise Donlon about her years at MuchMusic, Sony and the CBC.

Welcome to episode 208 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a local independent brewery producing fresh craft beer. And Chef's Plate, delivering delicious and locally sourced farm fresh ingredients and refrigerated kits directly to your door. I'm Mike from TorontoMic.com and joining me this week is Denise Donlan. Welcome, Denise. Hey, Mike. How are you doing? Good. Recently, like super recently, I was invited to the Royal Cinema for the Christopher Ward book launch.

So I'm there in the audience, and I feel like I witnessed a much music reunion. You certainly did. That was a lot of fun. These are the people who made appearances. In addition to yourself, Christopher Ward of course, and then Michael Williams, Laurie Brown, Kim Clark Champness, Master T, Simon Evans

and Ziggy. It was like old home week. It was so great to see everybody. And after the show, I'm getting on my bike. I'm getting my bike unlocked, and I'm going to jump on it and head back here. And I see you. You're walking by on this. I don't know if you remember this, but you were walking by on the sidewalk.

I do remember. And I had this moment of like, should I be that guy? I don't want her to think some homeless guy is going to attack her or something. I'm like, should I like pounce? And I thought, just let her know you exist and maybe she'll come visit you in your basement one day. Oh, it's awesome. You pounce like Kato. That's right.

All good. And I surrendered. My last episode was with Bob Elliott, who's in the Baseball Hall of Fame, believe it or not. And you're a member of the Canadian Broadcasters Hall of Fame. So my new rule is I only want Hall of Famers to visit. Oh, dear. Well, you better hurry. Hall of Famers tend to be old.

You've got to get them before they pass on. Aw. I mean, not that you don't look old, for what it's worth. Thank you. But you did write a memoir. So recently you've been promoting Fearless As Possible, Under the Circumstances, a memoir. And I'm just going to guess these last few weeks have been crazy with the book promotion.

You've been everywhere. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun, actually, doing lots of different interviews. And it's amazing how many podcasts there are now, which are, it's such, it really is the democratization of the airwaves, right? And guys like me can like have some kind of a slice of this broadcasting pie. A slice of the broadcasting pie. Actually, it's funny you just mentioned Laurie Brown and Master T and all that, because there was a dinner at my house last night, and Lori brought over a cake, a Dufflet's cake.

She was in charge of dessert. And written on it, it said, flowerless as possible. It was a chocolate flowerless cake. Really funny. That was amazing to even see her on stage there just for a little bit. She's so funny and entertaining.

And she said, you know, I was reading the book, and I kept thinking, wow, it feels like I was there. And then I remembered I was there. That's great. And so you've been promoting this everywhere. And then now you're in some guy's basement. And I wondered if there's anything more Canadian than that. It's pretty Canadian. Well, you're, you know, We the North and your Stanley Club Maple Leafs flag and the low-height ceiling on the basement. So, you know, crouching all my way down. But I'm sitting, I'm very comfortable. Thanks, Mike.

And I'm just glad you haven't concussed yourself on that. That's why, you know, I guess you could tell. When you're coming downstairs, I have to do the two warnings, right? There's the, oh, yeah, there's that first part when you hit the bottom of the stairs. Be careful, but you're not out of the woods then. Like, people let their guard down, like, oh, I've cleared it. I'm okay. And then, bang, then they have the one right above us.

So, thank you. We are safe. That beer in front of you is compliments of Great Lakes Brewery. That looks very delicious. Ooh, pumpkin ale. Very delicious. So, yeah, you're getting the tail end of their popular Brewery. That looks very delicious. Ooh, pumpkin ale. So yeah, you're getting the tail end of their popular pumpkin ale there. And there's a variety pack in there.

And then you bring that home with you. No way, really? Of course. Wow. So you're only picking out the Halloween ones. How often do you get to do an interview and you get free beer? This is fantastic.

See, I take it back. I said, is there anything more Canadian than being in some guy's basement promoting your book? But you know what? If you leave with beer, there you go. You is fantastic. Take it back. I said, is there anything more Canadian than being in some guy's basement promoting your book? But you know what? If you leave with beer, there you go. You got it. Karma Citra IPA. These look delicious. Thank you. Enjoy. That's from Great Lakes Beer. It gets better.

The people at Chef's Plate want to send you a couple of meal kits for free. I'll send you... What have we been doing? Facebook messages. I will send you a link with the menu because it changes every week. And you pick your two favorites and give me a shipping address. Wow.

And then I'll take care of it from there. It'll just arrive and you'll get a free meal. See? They said no such thing as a free lunch. But two free dinners. Now we're talking. Now you're talking. That's fantastic. Thank you. ChefsPlate.com for everyone listening. Go use the promo code Toronto Mike, and you can get two plates for free as well, just like Denise.

So that's chefsplate.com, promo code Toronto Mike. All right, Denise, let's do this. We don't have a lot of time. The aforementioned Bob Elliott was here for two hours. So we're not going to keep you here for two hours. I saw you got scared there for a moment. Well, you might need a roll-out couch at that point. I got it around the corner.

My son's mad. So let's dive in here. It all began for you out west, and you were working in PR. Can you just tell me the origin story of what you were up to when much came calling back in 1985? Oh, well, I was living in Vancouver and I had my own PR company, which was set up with me by Sam Feldman at Feldman & Associates. So Sam now manages, you know, Diana Krall and Elvis Costello and James Taylor. And, you know, he's just a wonderful, wonderful manager.

And it's still a dear friend and at the time he had his agency Feldman and Associates and he's Bruce Allen's partner and Bruce of course has Michael Buble and Brian Adams and Jan Arden. Oh is that all? Oh is that I know and the world literally was starting to beat a path to their door

and Sam was managing at the time Doug and the Slugs and Trooper and Headpins. I love Doug's. By the way, I used to listen to 680 when it was all hits radio in the 80s and there was three Doug and the Slugs songs that got played all the time.

Day by Day, Making It Work, and Too Bad, I think. I loved it. Exactly, yeah. Doug was so much fun to work with and so I'd go on the road with them and advance their tours. And I'd just been back from a tour in Europe with Whitesnake. We were on the Whitesnake Slided In Tour 84. And that chapter in the book is called The Feminist Compromise.

This is Tawny Catan. That was the years of her on the car? It was. A young Mike remembers that very fondly, actually. Oh, yeah. Sorry, a little white snake here. Sorry, let's get our lighters out. Okay.

So you were on tour with these guys? Yeah, so we were the opening act. We were the headpins. I was the publicity person there. And it was the first major tour of Europe I'd been on. The headpins had been across Canada with Kiss and then through the States with Quiet Riot and Eddie Money. And the tour collapsed with Quiet Riot. So Sam had to find us a new tour. And we ended up in Europe with Whitesnake and it was it was magnificent it was full-on you know hair and leather pants

and studded everything and gobs of swagger and profligate excess it was everything you can imagine that tour to be wow um and I survived it and we came, and much music came calling. They'd been up and on the air for two years, and because I was a publicist in Vancouver, I was doing my best to get my bands on their air. So I developed a relationship with the camera people that they would send out, because they were broadcasting from Toronto, right, the nation's music station, and yet they sent these cameras, I should say camera,

actually, it was only ever one, coast to coast to try and capture the other parts of the music scenes across the country. So John asked me, because Jeannie Becker, who was the host of Rock Flash at the time, was moving on to fashion television, and would I come back to Toronto and host Rock Flash? to Toronto and host Rock Flash. It was a, it was, his timing was perfect because I was kind of re-examining my life choices after being on the road with Whitesnake. Whitesnake tends to have that effect on people.

I was just, you know, the rock and roll lifestyle was fantastic, but I was really burning the candle at both ends. You know, my big, you know, sprayed rock hair. And I went to see the movie Spinal Tap yes in the theater it had just come out and I walked in there with my head pins tour jacket on which was a vinyl blue fake fur tour jacket with the words turn it loud on the back and I watched a Spinal Tap, and for some reason, people, I wasn't laughing at the same place

as everybody else was laughing. And I kind of got a little embarrassed, and I turned my jacket inside out and walked out of the theater thinking, I should re-examine this. That's great. Can I ask you, though, in that scene, because I envision just tables,

lines of Coke everywhere. Was there lines of Coke everywhere? Well, the Whitesnake tour wasn't like that. Some other tours, you know, in North America, it was more like that. But in Europe, I mean, it was a big, huge tour. They were playing arenas, right? And so you're more likely to see a roadie with a briefcase than a bra collection. And it was more smokes and booze.

He was drinking Perrier, right? Yeah, it was more smokes and booze. He was drinking Perrier, right? Yeah, it was more smokes and booze, really. John Lord, actually, was the keyboard player on that tour with his big Hammond B3 organ. And he taught me, he was the first onophile I'd ever met, the first wine guy. And he taught me about, he said, why don't you try some of what I'm having?

And he was having this beautiful Stilton cheese and this gorgeous deep purple, deep purple port. No pina, yeah, that's David Cleverdale. Yeah, and I ate and drank it together, and it was like an epiphany. I was like, oh my God, this is the way rich people live. And yeah, I never thought about deep purple in quite the same way again.

That's right. So, Rock Flash, like, so I remember Rapid Facts, for example, and Rock Flash is like the predecessor, right? Yes. This is like the... Before the Rapid Facts. Right. Of course.

And you had to, like, this was a live hit throughout the day? Yeah. And we were live for eight hours at much, and then we repeated twice. And so my job, and this was, you know, pre-Google and everything else, my job was to come up with, Bruce McNabb, who's the producer, to come up with fresh news items every hour on the hour, usually about two or three minutes. And the VJs used to use the segment for some, you know, comic,

we used to call it comic light, actually. Comedy without the humor. And then I had to jump on the phone and try and come up with something new to say every hour, because our conceit was that the audience would watch it for the entire eight hours, and you couldn't repeat anything. And they did, actually, a lot of the time. So, and I basically, you know, developed friendships with lots of people in the industry and that yeah it got to the point where they would phone me so it became easier over time and my fear of being on air also got easier over time although I still hate seeing myself on

the air okay tell me about that so because you're also is this around the time you're doing the new music as well is this yeah so I went to the new music after Rock Flash. I did Rock Flash for about two years, and I started doing the occasional interview on air. My first one was Stevie Wonder, and I did Iggy Pop, which was alarming in a little ways because now you had to be on air for a long time and actually know what you were talking about.

And then Daniel Richler was the host of the new music, and John Martin asked him, he went to the CBC, and John asked me to host and co-produce, no, co-host and produce the new music. And I thought it was a huge step. I was used to two-minute rock pops. I wasn't used to producing and being in charge of an hour show every week, but Laurie Brown graciously invited me in, and off we went.

It was a cool show. The new music was a very cool show, real influential to me as well. Well, to everybody. It was syndicated around the world, and it was one of those shows where it wasn't just about playing music videos, which were still very young, but it was about really following the artist's lead, and we'd get deep into issues because the artists were deep into issues.

On a much smaller scale, I related to something you wrote about. You never saw yourself as a broadcaster, right? You didn't particularly, I guess, like your voice. My look. Okay, so on a ridiculously smaller scale, like on a 0.1% scale of what you had to deal with, the fact that I'm actually talking to you now on like a recorded broadcast is kind of amazing only because I always hated my voice.

Like I always hated. Your voice is good. Is that true? Or are you just saying that because you're too heat away? No, no. I'm hearing you through the headphones. It's a good voice. I always thought I had a bad, I thought I never liked my voice.

I thought it was squeaky, like too high maybe. And I would always hear my radio, the radio DJs and they had this like. Totally. But see, you're comparing yourself to that was the icon ship of the time right everybody had to have those voices where you you had to sell chevys right in the in the meantime right so those of us who didn't look and particularly in terms of on air um visually you know it was the don henley song you know the bubble-headed bleach blonde comes on at five and she can tell you about the plane crash with a something in her eye.

It's funny you mentioned Don Henley. I just, you know, Jay Gold, of course. So I was on the phone with him recently because I told him you were coming on. He's been very helpful. When I had Maestro Fresh West on, he was a great help and I had a chat with Jay Gold about you and he said,

make sure you ask her about the Don Henley at Kingswood, I guess. There's a Don Henley interview that went, I don't want to say went south, but do you have a Don Henley story? Well, yeah, Don.

You know, I love that song. Yeah. See, if you gave me two hours like Bob Elliot, I could play the whole song. Oh, man. Well, you can play a little more. Just let him sing. Don't you know it's like a 90-second intro?

You know what? I like at radio stations, they tell you exactly what second will this guy start singing. I don't have that. After fails, we've been poisoned by these fairy tales. Lawyers dwell on small details. Since daddy had to fly. Oh, but I'm to a place where we can go. Still I'm touched by men. So watch the clouds.

You know, I'm taking this out of your end, though. This is coming out of your end. Okay, don't you worry. This is the end of the innocence. Really is a beautiful song. It's gorgeous. And I'm thinking what Don Henley would say right now about the, you know, president-elect. I can't bear to say his name. In terms of the end of the innocence.

Oh, goodness. But yeah, the Don Henley story was we were at Kingswood and, you know, interviews are interesting because they really are an artificial construct, right? The person sits down and, you know, maybe they're on a promo tour and they've been doing interviews all day

for a week talking about themselves. Same same questions and you know the interviewer wants something which is to have a great experience and to sell probably airtime on their backs and uh the interviewee is looking to sell records or a film or a book or whatever they're doing and so but they walk in and you don't know what mood they're in, right? And you don't know what they think or what's going on. So, and you're hoping that they're going to tell you intimate details that they may not even tell their shrink. So it is artificial and you got to cut through that. And so Don Henley sat down and he was, he said, he crossed his legs, he folded his arms, he looked down at the ground, and it looked like he absolutely,

his body language was that he did not want to engage. And I'm like, oh, God, here we go. You can always tell. Anyway, so I started, you know, gamely asking questions, and he was a little monosyllabic, as I recall it. But I kept asking and kept at it, and I'd worked really hard on the questions, and I knew his stuff backwards and forwards,

and he really started to open up. And finally, by the end of the interview, we had a great talk. And so we, you know, turned the interview off, and I thanked him, and he shook my hand, and he said, wow, that was really good, not what I expected at all from MTV. And I went, MTV?

Oh, okay. See, MTV had a very different approach than we did, right? And I think, and this is just my opinion, but I think that their approach was very much that their stars, their VJs, were on a similar plane. They promoted them and they held them up as to be equals to the artist. Right. And our approach at Much Music was, you know, practically anybody could be a VJ, really, and we're just the vehicle for the artist, and we're here to have some fun and entertain the audience at the end of the day. So that was kind of fun with Don Henley anyway. No, you're right about the approach. In Much Music, Don Henley was the star of that interview.

You know, you were just the person setting him up like a T-ball again in a long long line of interview stupid questions it actually reminds me that we did i did an interview with hunter s thompson once and he didn't he was coming to toronto and he didn't want to do any interviews and his publicist said i said well why doesn't he why doesn't he want to talk about the book and the publicist said well if don says if he had 20 bucks for every stupid question he's ever been asked. And so Lori and I thought about it and we said, OK, what if tell him that we're going to bring a stack of 20s?

And for every bad question, he can take a 20. But if I ask a good question and he gives me a good answer, I'll take a 20. And anyway, he agreed to it. And we did it on the roof of the park. I brought a stack of 20s. And then, well, Hunter got progressively less focused during the hour. And at the end, we had a big argument about whether or not we're going to subtitle him. But wow, an interesting guy.

I can imagine. What's the chap's name from Simply Red? Nick Hucknall. Okay, I couldn't remember his name. It was one of my terrible interviews. But here's another nice song from the same era. I loved this record.

This is where I'd be telling you the weather maybe, the traffic updates or whatever. And here's Simply Red. Holding back fear Thinking of the fear I've had so long Holding back fear Thinking of the fear I've had so long When somebody hears

Listen to the fear that's gone Strangled by the wishes of nature Hoping for the arms of nature Get to me the sooner or later Oh You're waiting for that refrain. Yeah, that's right. I know. But you, and we'll pause if it gets to that part.

We'll pause and bring it back. But you had an experience with him as well. It wasn't a great experience. I think, I mean, I have no idea what Moody was in when he came in. And I didn't go back and check the tape on this. But my record, because I did like over a thousand experience. I think, I mean, I have no idea what Moody was in when he came in and I didn't go back and check the tape on this but my record, because I did like over a thousand interviews

and I just wanted to talk about the ones I actually remembered and he was pugnacious. He came in, we did it in a record store. I think he was nervous about being out in public

and I loved this record and after having sort of a really cranky experience with Mick, I could barely even listen to it again. It took me years before I listened to it. You're doing okay right now, I noticed. Oh, it's such a long time. I'm forgiving him. I'm forgiving him.

You know what? For a guy with one solid album under his belt, you know what I mean? He's pretty attitudinal. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's a little early. Hold on.

Here it comes, I think. Here. Hold on. I'll keep holding on It's a little early. Here it comes, I think. Where's that part? That holding, holding. When do you get to that, Mick? Oh, it's later. All right.

That's all right. I don't have enough time for that. Oh, now we have the sax there. Well, anyway, that's, yeah, that's too bad to hear again. And I don't think they had a, I don't know, Money Too Tight Dimension was another one I remember was about radio play, but they didn't have, I don't remember much radio hits after that. Yeah, I think, you know what?

And this is just a guess because I never ran into him again, but, you know, sometimes, and I write a lot about artists and what they're like and why they are the way they are in many ways, and they're a little tweaked because they have to be, right? They're a little alien. I mean, the best ones, the icons, the legends, because we ask so much of them, right? They have to be porous in order to feel the muse and to bring whatever it is they want to write about inside and then

send it back out to us like they're holding up a mirror. And yet we ask them to do what Joni Mitchell always referred to as the star making machinery, right? They have to go out and promote it and do the red carpets and meet and greets backstage. And a lot of them aren't very good at it. So, and if you're not good at it and you don't make a lot of friends while you're out there because you're awkward or uncomfortable,

it can kill a career. So maybe he tripped over himself on that one. Who knows? I don't know. And I have this new software I just wrote this morning that if you say the words Joni Mitchell, it starts playing Joni Mitchell. Oh my goodness.

You are a genius. Yeah. You can help me market that maybe with your connections. Wow. On the phone of Jay Gold, he mentioned, yeah, the intimate and interactive with Joni Mitchell. And apparently she wouldn't stop smoking.

Is this what I hear? No, she wouldn't stop smoking. There's nothing you or the fire marshal could do, Tim. Well, you know, it was what it was. She's great, man. No, she was unbelievable. And she came in to do that I&I. It took a long time to negotiate that contract.

And I was the vice president much at the time, so it was unusual for me to actually go back on air. But it was requested, and so I did it and uh loved it she was man she's so percussive and she's so giving when you get her sitting down she's very free associative um and her like I don't use the word genius word very often at all um but in terms of artists, I would absolutely call her a genius in her painting and the way that she's, you know, steadfast in her career through so many musical changes as well. She really is off the charts. Love, Joni. And we're going to, I'm going to play a little bit of you, actually. I just want to set, so this is my favorite band of all time. It's you

and the Tragically Hip. So we're going to play this. It's only a couple minutes, and then I'm going to ask you about a few people you worked with that much, and then we're going to talk about how you, you know, you mentioned you were the VP there, and we're going to talk about how you made that transition. So here's You and the Hip.

Unfortunately, coming out of one ear, one side I hear, which is too bad. That's what happens when you get it from YouTube sometimes. If you get comfortable enough to write a song as though you were talking to a friend, then that friend would sort of know exactly what you're saying all the time. Like you and your best friend, you don't even have to make sense. You know, you have your own friend speak. It's been a long time since I needed quite so many clues to be able to decipher a record,

but researching the latest of the Tragically Hips record fully completely certainly taught me a thing or two. I learned all about a pigeon camera. It didn't actually exist. Nice idea, though. I learned about Hugh MacLennan, that he wrote Two Solitudes back in 1945. And I even learned that when Bill Borilko died mysteriously, the Leafs won a Stanley Cup, and they won another one when they found his body. But I'm not about to reveal everything that's on this record. You're going to have to do that yourself, and you'll be rewarded, because for this band, it's truly a record for a band that's come of age.

I apologize for the potato quality of that audio. But that's how you sounded back then. And that's right after, yeah, Fully Completely was released. So that was like the peak of hipdom, I'd say. That's amazing. Love. Although just, you know, Barilko actually scores the winning goal before his fishing trip in which he disappears.

He actually scored that winning goal in overtime, which is all part of the folklore. I'm a big Borilco guy, so I had to clear that up. So is it okay if I just pepper you very quickly with some people you worked with that much, and you can just tell me a little bit about them? Moses. Moses.

The biblical Moses. The biblical Moses. Well, he did have the Ten Commandments. You know, thou shalt have no logos higher than thine own. He had that commandment because Roots, who was not an advertiser of much music, they would know Ray Perkins, he was so bright, and is bright, he's still around. They would find out that the bands were coming into much because we'd be advertising it, and then they'd arrange with the label to go and steal the acts

and take them down to Roots and dress them all up. So by the time the artists came into the station, they were festooned with Roots gear. And yeah, so Moses made a new commandment, thou shalt have no logos higher than thine own. And for a while, we weren't even allowed to wear, you know, band T-shirts and merchandise. I know, but we fought back on that.

Well, when Run DMC comes, they can still wear the Adidas. Yeah, apparently. That's the exception. Well, yeah, because the product placement was just starting and people didn't know, you know, how far it would go. A lot of the videos were coming in with names, a lot of booze and Hennessy and Cognac. And, you know, it was a long way from Little Red Corvette for sure because Run DMC was one of those ones that started it. You know, they talked about a product name

and then they waited for the truck, beep, beep, beep, to back up with the product at the door. So we didn't know as a company whether or not that would take a big bite out of actual traditional advertising. But MTV solved it in a lot of ways because, you know, the brand stuff would be pixelated out, the traditional advertising. But MTV solved it in a lot of ways because the brand stuff would be pixelated out, the visuals anyway. Couldn't do much about the lyrics.

But that was a big push and shove time at the time. Yeah, interesting. And Moses, I mean, it's him and John Martin, basically, because at the beginning of Much Music, John's responsible for the content, John Martin. So tell me about John. I find, I don't know him, obviously.

I know he's passed on, unfortunately, but I talked to a lot of people who worked with him and I get a sense of him, apparently he had an office across the street at the bar and their phone was there and if you wanted him,

you had to go to the pub. Is this true? He did spend a lot of time at the Friar and Firkin. And before that, Emilio's on Queen Street before we moved. Now, John, you know, people would say it's because he drank all day. Well, he smoked all day. And it got to the point where you couldn't smoke in, you know, in the office.

And we all used to. We all used to go into editing bays and smoke our heads off. You know, and open the door and big clouds of gray smoke would come out. And who knows what was going on with the Freon on the tape. But, yeah, bad for everybody. But John was, he was, he's an anarchist. He was fun loving. He really did leave us to our own devices, right? If I remember, you know, if there was ever a problem,

he and Nancy Oliver, who sort of, you know, kept the place humming and on time, you know, she'd say, oh, well, you know, there's this problem, what should we do? And he'd say, panic? Or he'd say, I'm going off to do this interview, why don't you go to Hong Kong and shoot a throw for the World Music Video Awards?

And I'd say, well, what do you want? He goes, I don't know. Just go shoot the shit out of it. And off we'd go. That's just great because you get creative license to kind of have character, right? You can fall on your butt and learn from doing and pick yourself up.

And no, John was fantastic. And he was a personal friend as well. He introduced me to my husband, Murray McLaughlin. Of course, I'd met him before and had thrust microphones in his face coming off the Juno stages over the years. But yeah. It's your genius software.

Yeah, I just wrote it this morning. It's pretty good. So far, so good. Everyone, you know, when you talk about Murray, if I may, everyone talks about the Farmer song, which is a great song. I guess, would you say it's his biggest hit? I think it's his most well-known song. That's what I mean, I guess.

You know, On the Boulevard was actually the first song that Q107 ever played. Was that right? Yeah, ever on the radio. They opened with that song when it was a brand new station. And he's still touring with Lunch at Allen's and with his own just recorded a new solo record and uh yeah murray many heads my friend lorraine calls him and when did you when did you guys get married oh no i have to okay we keep messing that up we thought this year was our 25th anniversary and we both you know bought each other a silver wedding anniversary card and actually it was last year how do you mess that up that's amazing that's amazing but the one i like

here i'm going to leave the farmer song if that's what you mentioned the murray so that's why he's here now i know he wasn't so uh down by the henry moore you got the great like uh references you know the toronto references of, this is a cool track. Yeah, cool track, cool song. And love the Henry Moore. Even though they're moving it. Yeah, did they already move it? I don't know.

I didn't read that. I walked down the Kensington market. Bought me a fish to fry. I went to the silver dollar. See all these references, you know, to the silver dollar. See all these references, you know, on the silver dollar. Yeah. Okay, Marie. Yeah, he's fantastic.

And that's one of those I call fun facts. You know, someone mentions Denise Don, then you know who she's married to. You know what I mean? She's married to Marie McLaughlin. For all these years. So you're true to the CanCon grade. You even married CanCon. I am.

I'm a big CanCon Canadian pom-pom-pom waving nationalistic cheerleader. And you've proven it, although you can't keep track of your anniversaries. But that's another situation. That's between you two. John Martin, so you actually took over for him, right? Essentially, you took over the content side.

I did. Moses asked me to run the nation's music station it was a very tough conversation because i loved john and he was my mentor in oh so many ways and um so i couldn't do it unless i had his blessing he gave me his blessing and just said you know what if it if it to be anybody, I'm really glad it was you and you're going to be great. And he told everybody that and he really gave me some space and yeah, and off I went. And that's good for you personally to have that kind of endorsement from your friend who you're replacing. Without that, it's, you know, it's awkward.

Oh, I don't, I'm not sure I could have, I could have done it actually. I really don't Well, good on him for doing that, because he made your life much easier. Yeah, he did. Be gracious. Yeah. But, okay, so it's amazing, because you come in, and you're doing rock flash, and you're doing all these different things, and then you're running the show, which is awesome.

And is it mainly because you were assuming a lot of those duties anyways, if you will? Yeah, not in terms of running the entire station. So, again, big learning curve lots to learn um but Moses and I had a conversation very early on because you know I was like he said Denise it's not every day you get a station to run and I was like well that's true and uh he said well I don't don't think of it as a station think of it as an instrument to be played and I thought okay well how am I going to play it and and I wanted to what I was very excited about at the new music was all of the relevancy shows we were doing so as I mentioned earlier you know artists it was a time of great artist activism

Sting was in the rainforest and REM was doing Greenpeace and Live Aid was happening with Geldof and Little Steven was commanding against apartheid with Sun City. I mean, there were so many artists that you could talk to, not just about music, but get really deeply engaged and put music in a social-political context, which I thought was fantastic. And so we decided, I said, well, I want to be able to continue that in Much Music.

And so it was called The Drive for Relevance. And yeah, we played a lot of Madonna and Guns N' Roses videos, but we also did, you know, HIV AIDS campaigns with Kumbaya and Molly Johnson and gender things and, you know, racism programming. And election coverage and stuff. Like election. Yes, brandishing our naivety like a sword. I had no clue.

I didn't even take a polyscience course. And we actually went to Gemini for our election coverage. So there you go. I know. I think Mansbridge is a little myth. He's over it now. He can't win them all. He can't win them all.

Speaking of fun facts, you know who he's married to So the election coverage And you said HIV and AIDS Cynthia Dale She's a little older than me But she went to my high school And we had a picture of her in the drama room Of course you would

Her and her sister And Jennifer Well Cynthia and I were in a quilting group together We were connected somehow Exactly I think it's so important that you were doing all of that work Cynthia and I were in a quilting group together. Is that right? Actually, we're connected somehow. Exactly. I think it's so important that you were doing all of that work on the social consciousness stuff because you're, who's tuning in?

Mainly young people, right? When I was a young person tuning in and it was very, you're very impressionable and you're kind of shaping your views of the world and it can be very influential to kind of, you know, hearing from Petereter gabriel or sting or uh bob geldof or whoever right like to me it's so key to get you know to give uh expose young people to that and i don't know today who's doing that well i agree and i think it's you know the formative years i guess we call them um but it's a really kind of heady cocktail when you're a teenager of the balancing act between arrogance

and impotence, right? Because you think you know everything. And at the same time, you're not sure of your place in the world and you're feeling, you know, insecure perhaps and less than confident. And maybe you're out of your clique that week in the school. And so to be able to engage the audience in a way that made them think and to make them feel included. I mean, I think the big secret to Much Music was, and you know, Moses put those doors in where you could open the doors right onto Queen Street and invite the audience physically, as well as literally in. Into the environment. Into the environment. And so we did shows like Too Much for Much, which was a media literacy show where we asked the audience to engage. Should we play this video? Should we not play this video? Why shouldn't we play this video? So to really

analyze the media they were looking at. They didn't teach media literacy in school at the time. And I mean, and now more than ever, when they've got faced with a million choices in terms of screens and this information overload and fake news and everything else that's coming at them. You know what show? It was a CBC show well before you were there, but I've had Jonathan Torrens on. Street Sense.

Street Sense, okay. Jonathan is so funny. Yeah, yeah. Love him. He's on Mr. D now. Yeah, yeah. He's great. But like Street Sense,

like there's no Street Sense today, but I can't tell you, like, between your social work here at The Much Music and between, and the Street Sense, it really does create a savvy consumer. Like, you know, you check your sources, you learn these fundamentals. And today, I just, I always wonder, I got

four kids, like, I'm doing it. But, like, our other parents are doing it. You have four kids, you are doing it, Mike. Goodness, great. Congratulations. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And, you it, Mike. Goodness. Great. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And, you know, a couple of them are old enough to like consume stuff. So it's like for them, for example, you know, it's like, you know, just teaching them about,

you know, you don't, you know, just so much there that Street Sense and Much Music used to do for us. And today I just wonder because they're all on YouTube kind of selecting their own kind of people. Like it's a different thing. You're kind of picking from the list as opposed to choosing a channel and having it serve you. It's a whole different methodology. It is so interesting.

And I know they teach media literacy in school now. And thank goodness. Because I think it's important not only to understand the sources and the biases that come in different media, but also to make sure that you're looking at a wide bouquet of sources the sources and the biases that come in different media, but also to make sure that you're looking at a wide bouquet of sources, right? So that you're not only listening to people and opinions that you already agree with. Like an echo chamber. Like an echo chamber.

Which we do now on social media, right? We do. But it's important not to. You've got to break that habit and actually, otherwise you get, you know, we become surprised by things like the U.S. election. By the way, you mentioned earlier, when I say it out loud, I feel like it's the onion. It still feels like it's sort of a Saturday Night Live or an onion sketch, like a joke. Because the Simpsons long ago did a joke about President Trump.

Because Lisa Simpson took over for President Trump. It was a whole hilarious ha-ha, like, that's the future is President Trump. This is a whole aside. We don't have time for it because I'm going to talk twice as fast as normal now. But yeah, I'm still kind of like, I accept this reality, but I don't really like, I'm still in a state of shock is how I would describe it. I am too.

I mean, I watched that election until it happened in the wee hours, and then I woke up the next day, and for a moment I lied in bed thinking, okay, maybe that was just a bad dream. Maybe if I don't think about it, I'll just walk downstairs and I'll look at the paper and see if that was a bad dream. And then I walked around like I was, like I was hung over for days after in a, in a, in a day. It is rather, the whole thing is rather surreal. And even to this day where you're like,, he might be tweeting at Alec Baldwin or something.

It's like, this is real life. It's kind of a strange... In contrast with Obama, it's so jarring because I saw his... I was watching his press conference. My wife and I were watching. I'm like, this is the last time we're going to see a thoughtful,

well-spoken, compassionate, smart guy addressing the nation. It's going to be a long time before we see this again. I know. I miss them. I'm grieving them already, and they're still there. No scandals. Eight wonderful years, no scandals, all class. That's amazing. We go high when they go low. Right.

The two day-oners, and I know you weren't there at the beginning. You came in 85, but Christopher Ward and J.D. Roberts. What were they like, specifically J.D. Roberts, because he left MuchMusic to become a City Pulse news anchor. And I was wondering if there was any condescending assumption there that VJs were maybe idiots and newscasters were more intelligent or something.

How did that fly? Now he's like a chump guy. Yeah, yeah. No, I don't think that was evident so much. What was evident was that J.D. Roberts was going to go places, right? And you saw it. I learned a lot from J.D.

just watching him because he would be, you know, he'd come to work every day, usually whether he had a shift or not. He was the first one in the building to have a computer. And he would watch, we had what we called a daily double so that the news would come across, the music news would come across on the fax machine. And JD would stand by the fax machine waiting for these three or four

pages and it lists birthdays and whatever. And he'd take it and he'd circle the things that he was going to use in his show, which was like calling mine, mine. Everybody else stay off it. Mine. Cherry picking. Cherry picking. And he also learned to write. I mean, sort of to light.

He learned to shoot the camera. And these were so, and he learned how to edit. And we could do anything we wanted there. And, you know, the magic of the place was if you did have aspirations of doing something else, it was there in your playground for you to learn. So, and it made him a better journalist because he knew how to put a story together. He knew how to edit so he could be out in the field directing with the cameraman and not just being sort of the on-air personality. So it was very evident that J.D. took his role seriously and that he was going to make a name for himself, and he has.

And now he's back in the White House with Trump. Right. Oh, my goodness. Isn't that amazing? It all comes full circle. Christopher Ward. Christopher was the fun man. You know, Christopher really was the beginning of much music

because City Limits was the start, right? And that's where that crew honed their craft and figured out how to light and how to shoot and how to be goofy. That's what John Martin actually told me. He said, my parting advice is that you should always allow the VJs the right to be silly. And it was great advice, which is why we could, you know, spend a whole day

programming by throwing flaming trees off the roof. Which is great stuff. And I told Christopher he was essentially the first Garth really to the Wayne. Really? He was the first Garth. He was and him and Mike Myers are still friends and he wrote the forward to his book.

And Christopher was just funny, funny, funny all the time. There's a piece on air of Mike when Christopher brought Mike Myers over to visit me at Rock Flash. I was doing a very, very breaking news story on Kick-Ax, which was a band who was on tour in the West and they'd lost their guitar player. So Mike decided, as Mike, he had this wig on and his antler hat,

that he wanted to be the new guitar player for Kick-Ass. And it was a comedic moment that should have been magic, and I was just too dumb on camera and too nervous to actually really make it sing. But Mike, he is another one. And Chris is so multi-talented, the songwriter. Black velvet. Totally. And he wrote a book. He's written two multi-talented, the songwriter. Black Velvet. Totally.

And he wrote a book. He's written two novels, I think, at this point. And he's got a big heart. Christopher is a lovely, lovely man. What about Erica M.? Erica, look at her, the yummy mummy. You know, she, again, another one who took the opportunity of the magic of that place and you know poor erica was one of the people that grew up under the spotlight in the microscope of this of this public um uh you know

people could be very cruel right not not like now which is you know you can get flamed every for seeing anything uh online but you know, she took it so well, and she's managed to turn all of those skills into being such a great entrepreneur and a great mother. Her two kids are unbelievable. Just, I have so many props for Erica. I think she's just lovely.

There's a great entrepreneurial, that's a tough word for me to say, but entrepreneurial. I used to have trouble with the word brewery. Brewery. I'm good at it now. Well, good now with Great Lakes brewery. That's what forced me to get it right. But entrepreneurial spirit that came out of that building, because Eric M's a good example. There's a whole new realm and she was on the bleeding edge and look at her now. And everybody had to, right? Everybody just had to figure it out for themselves there because it was literally not that much guidance.

What about Michael Williams? Michael Williams was the musicologist, right? Soul in the City. I mean, he had a great brain for music, first of all, but also for detail and particularly for history, right? And it was important for us particularly at the nation's music station where you know it was the first time you had a national uh essentially radio channel with pictures on it and so the whole idea of um enshrining diversity um on camera and off

camera and celebrating our differences uh was key to who the station was not only from a racial point of view but from a gender equity point of view from a lgbtq point of view you know there's a story in the book about when we put a float in the the first we were the first mainstream broadcaster to put a float in the pride parade in toronto which happened just because one of the executive assistants was a young gay man. And he just said, Hey, Denise, wouldn't it be great to have a float? I was like, Yeah, that was a great idea. So we literally, you know, rented a flatbed truck, and put the ads on the air, much comes out. And once it started to be known that we were going to put a float in, I got death threats,

people would phone me and say, I know where you parked your car. I know where your kid goes to school, which rattled me until the day before we were supposed to be in the parade. And I went up and talked to Moses and to Ron Waters, who owned the Waters family, owned the stations, because it wasn't just much music coming out of those stations. And we'd had bomb threats before um and i didn't want to put the dancers at risk on the float either because it wasn't just one or two calls it was a campaign going on that's amazing i know that long ago not that long ago so and you know ron just said and moses too like we've got your back and i remember walking down those stairs just

thinking it it gave me so much courage, right? I thought I could strangle those homophobic troglodytes. And we got on the float the next day, and that was a giddy, giddy, wonderful, boa-feathered, glittery celebration of love, right? And had I caved, the haters would have won. But that day anyway, love won. And it was a triumph.

No, I'm glad. I'm glad you proceeded. But that's scary, especially when they drop the whole, I know your kid goes to school line. Like that's now you're in like. Now you're in different territory. Yeah, now you've crossed. There's a line somewhere.

You're well past it. Okay, Laurie Brown, you did speak about her earlier, but she was great. But if you want to say more about Laurie Brown, you did speak about her earlier, but she was great. But if you want to say more about Laurie Brown, feel free. I can go on about Laurie. Laurie, I would have been deeply serious without Laurie Brown. She brought a real, you know, poke things with a sharp stick attitude.

And, you know, she was a musician herself. She was in the Corey Hart video. Which Corey Hart video? Sunglasses at Night. do sunglasses at night she's a prison guard do you know who takes you know because i gotta revisit that one but you know uh only because another vj who i'm gonna ask you about now who's who's been here for an episode and he tells a story that he claims that he is the boy in the box that cory hart is singing about do you want to guess which form? Steve Anthony? Correct.

Steve Anthony says when he was working in radio in Montreal, he was in a box or whatever and Corey Hart would come in. So Steve Anthony tells this story in my podcast that he is the boy in the box. Wow. I know.

Isn't that crazy? Wow. So I don't know if Steve's just delusional or whatever. I never heard that. Yeah. There was another DJ, very famous, Don Schaefer,

and he was Schaefer in the box. But I don't think, yeah. So I don't know. Oh, let's give it to Steve. Give it to Steve. Steve can have it. Steve brought a,

he had a coffee with him and he told me to take a sip, which is an unusual move. And I'm like, okay, I'll take a sip. This is live on the recording. He had five sweeteners in there. Five complete packets of sweetener.

I know. Because one sweetener is too sweet, right? Yeah. So tell me what it was like working with Steve Anthony. Well, Steve was the unpredictable, you know? There's so many stories about Steve. It's like he tried to shave Huey Lewis on air one day and Huey wouldn't let him and Huey got all upset. And oh my God. I mean, he was on breakfast television as well,

coming out of the same building. And the ads used to be, we apologize for Steve Anthony in the morning. So, you know, Steve was a wild man. He was the fun guy. I didn't work very closely with Steve because on the floor, there were two floor directors, Jim Schutze and Dennis Saunders, Denno. And they were the guys who were like, you know, front lines with the VJs all the time. So, but I still know Steve now.

I still like him. I still see him. And yeah, it's always a hoot. Yeah. Frenetic is a word I could use. Frenetic. How's that for Steve? I only had the one time with him a couple hours.

But yeah, fantastic. It was great. And I know I'm going to really... I think we're going to end Much Music here. So why don't you tell us... I know your next stop is Sony. Why do you leave Much Music? How's that for a question? That's a big question.

I'll make it short um we had just launched much more music it was a real labor of love for me it was uh it was hard fought to get it not only to get the channel because we were denied the first time but then once we got the license to get it up right because all the other cable outlets were launching their own digital channels and um anyway we finally succeeded and we launched it and I needed and wanted that channel because much music had become so attitudinally young, not necessarily demographically young. And there was, we were losing, you know, the masterclass artists, the Lorena's and the Ann Murrays and the Bruce Coburns and the Mary McLaughlins and Gordon Lightfoots.

So anyway, we launched that channel and we just put in an application for another, I don't know, 13. And Chum was growing in leaps and bounds. But it felt like we were launching channels with a ball of twine and some chewing gum, right? And that was the magic of the place, right? The efficiencies were that you had the heart of it. You had all the fundamentals, the tech, all coming out of that building. So you could just add new channels onto it, like arms on a little body you were building, and legs and bits of hair. So I remembered how much effort it had taken to launch much more music, and I wasn't sure

I had it to be able to launch more channels without a big injection of cash. So Sony came calling. I was headhunted. And the record industry was, you know, the year I went to Sony was the height of the recording industry. It was the biggest, grossest, I mean grossing, sorry, sales of global revenues, global recorded music at that time. All that Celine Dion money, right?

All that Celine. This was Celine Dion money, right? All that Celine. This was 2000, right? 2000? Yeah, 1999 was the biggest sales year on record for the entire global recorded music industry. So then I thought, wow, maybe I won't have to fly baggage anymore. I could move up to business. Wouldn't that be great?

But more, and I'm joking a bit, but more was really that the artists were arriving sort of fully baked at Much Music, right? They already had the record. They had management. They had a video. They were well on their way. And I thought, wouldn't it be so exciting to work with artists right from the ground up, right? Discover and nurture and celebrate and market new artists.

It would be fantastic. Little did I know that 5 percent of my time would actually be spent doing that and the rest of it would be running a company that literally sort of moments after i arrived the impact of illegal downloading napster the disruptive little dickens like perfect little storm that you were walking into actually unbelievable and i remember the first inkling i had was i got a note literally at the uh there for like a week and i got a note from head office saying because it was december saying no christmas presents for the artists this year and you know what we were used to christmas presents even at much from all the record companies we get leather jackets and we get

you know swag swag for days. You know, big baskets would come rolling in full of all kinds of goodies. And yeah, the breaks were being put on really fast because the impact was hitting right away. So you have your height in 1999, and then the Napster happens, and then the rest is Pandora's box, really.

Yeah, the business did not recover. In fact, 2016 was the first year the sales of recording music actually went up by 3.2%. Year over year, though, right? Year over year. Versus 2015. Year over year. That's Adele, I think.

Yeah, it might be Adele. I can't look into it. Yeah, hello and thank you. Hello and thank you. I think she and I, maybe Taylor Swift, but you've got like a handful now that can actually move units. Well, all the Canadians. Look at Drake and The Weeknd and, you. Hello and thank you. I think she and I, I always, maybe Taylor Swift, but you've got like a handful now that can actually move units. Well,

all the Canadians, look at Drake and The Weeknd and, you know, Justin even. Yeah, no, yeah.

I was just in Germany and I can't tell you how much Bieber I heard on their Top 40 station and The Weeknd quite a bit too. I didn't hear too much Drake, but a lot of, and by the way,

the guy who I'm surprised is so big overseas is, maybe I shouldn't be surprised, Michael Bublé. Oh, Bublé is huge. Absolutely. Yeah. I heard him everywhere. Yeah. Yeah.

He's a great entertainer too. And my screen went off. Hold on. You did. It's like live TV. Well, you've messed with your screen and I'll talk to you about Sony a little bit because, you know, walking in there was, I mean, Napster was just one, right? There was so many other illegal files. It was like playing whack-a-mole.

And by the time Napster was two, the illegal file sharing had become David to the industry's Goliath. And it really did. It was disruptive. Artists were dropped. Jobs were lost. It was devastating to the industry. And the industry had to reinvent. And luckily in Canada, I had a great boss, Rick Davis,

and we were sort of a little under the radar in Canada. We were a well-run operation, you know, between Celine and Leonard Cohen and Our Lady Peace and Chantal Kravjazic and Garou. We had a great artist roster. So good money for the company. And we were allowed to R&D. We were allowed to mess around

and see if we could help reinvent the business up here and that was fun you said Leonard Cohen and my software kicked in Leonard Leonard Cohen

you tell a story and I'll let you tell it but it regards this song so tell me about your engagement with Leonard Cohen over So Long Marianne

it was left off a greatestest Hits. It was. So. I loved, still love Leonard Cohen's music. Just love that. I don't know about it all. Well, you know that I love to live with you.

But you make me forget so very much As a fan, I think this song belongs on the Greatest Hits package by Lenny Cohen. I share that view. What was his reason for not wanting it on? Well, so, yeah. So he just put out 10 new songs,

which was his first studio record in 10 years. And I was lucky to be able to work with him on that. There's another story in the book about the listening party, me and Leonard and our head of business affairs, Ian, in a little hotel room in Santa Monica, listening to the record, 10 new songs on a 10-inch close-and-play CD player that's been nailed to the side of the bed table, and we are sitting on the floor with our feet under the bed, having drank two bottles of wine, trying to listen to the... Anyway, it's a giggly moment. But after the success of 10 new songs,

the label worldwide wanted what we called an Essentials record. So this was the creme de la creme for Sony. These were, you know, only the biggest, best artists got an Essentials. They were double CDs, you know, the Essential Tony Bennett, the Essential Michael Jackson. I remember these. Yeah, I remember these. They were big records and they sold big. And so they wanted one.

Leonard did not want to do another compilation record. So it took, you know, we finally convinced him to do it. And, you know, I promised him the moon and the stars and he could go in the studio and he could remix everything and we'd spend whatever. And he agreed and he went to New York and he remixed the tracks he wanted to remix and remastered them. And then he sent me up a track listing and I'm looking at the track listing and this song's not on it so long Marianne and so I call his manager and say Kelly um is there some mistake here how can we put out an essentials record without one of the most essential songs and she says no I've already talked to my buddy he just doesn't like it I'm like he doesn't like it and as Leonard told me later he he said, well, it was

never as good in reality as it always was in memory. And I'm like, yeah, but you can go back and remix it. You can make it brilliant. Anyway, wouldn't budge, wouldn't budge, wouldn't budge. And meanwhile, I sent the track listing out around the world, and the sales forecast for that record plummeted.

Some of the territories didn't even want to put it out because they thought they'd be a laughingstock because they can't put out an Essentials record without an Essentials song like So Long, Mary. But there's a good point there. I always felt it was weird. This is Geek Eagle's greatest hits or whatever I had as a kid,

and it didn't have Hotel California on it. And it always felt like kind of disingenuous. What? Exactly. Whose fault was that? Yeah, I don't remember that detail, but yeah. Anyway, it finally got to the point where I had to tell him that I could put it on without his permission. And so we were on the phone, and I said, you know,

Leonard, I'm sorry. And he was very angry. And literally I had to hold the phone away from my ear. And he wasn't just mad at me he was mad at every executive who had ever profited off an artist's work without respecting the artist's talent right and book publishers and record people anyway finally I said Leonard I'm really sorry but I have and I you know I've always respected him and and I wrote in the book, which made him laugh. I said, you know, I've respected you so much.

I have you on a pedestal so high, it had its own lighting and cherubs around it. Anyway, he finally said, Denise, if you go against my wishes after I've asked you not to, and you insist on putting this song on the record, then go ahead. But you need to know that you will always hold a much smaller piece in my heart. And I know.

Cutting words from Leonard Cohen. I was breathless. And I said, well, I'm sorry, but that's a risk I have to take. And we hung up, and I went home, and I had a large beverage, and I was shattered. I was just like, ugh. Because this was, I was going against the artist, right? And the, yeah, the poet. And the poet was pissed.

Absolutely. Anyway, I sent a note to his manager and said, you know, we're going to go ahead, and it's going to have so long. Married on it. And the next day, and the reason I included this story among so many other stories in the book, was because. Marianne, on the next day, and the reason I included this story among so many other stories in the book was because he sent me an email the next day, and I can't read it verbatim, but he just basically said,

Dear Denise, you know, in the butcher shop of the world, these are small matters, and you will always hold, you know, you will always have a place in my heart. Your old friend, love, Leonard. And it was like, oh, thank oh thank anyway he freed you of the burden he freed me of the burden

and the other reason I wanted to include this story was because you know it stands for how artists go to the wall for what they believe in and they should and yourself as well though that you realized that this song needed to be there and you fought the battle and you made the tough call

and that's why they keep putting you in charge of things. Yeah, right. Well, there was other people urging me on. My boss was definitely, you get that song. It's there or you're gone, Denise. Well, not quite. The Sony building in Don Mills is being demolished. Are you aware of this?

I'm so sad. I drive by it, and it's so empty and forlorn. But yeah, because everything, that building was unique in the world. That Paul Berger was the past president of Quadrangle Architects in Toronto, put that building together. And it was one of the, I mean,

I've never visited another building like that where you could A&R the artists, they could record the records, they could perform it on a soundstage, you printed the artwork, you shot the video, you manufactured and printed the CDs and the DVDs. There's a distribution operation out the back with a pick-and-pay system, and you shipped it to the customer. It didn't happen anywhere else.

And that's what was so interesting too, when the business tanked, worldwide it tanked, is that I do my president's meetings with the company every quarter. I tell them everything that was going on, here are the numbers, here's our hits, here's our misses, this is what we're doing about it. Invite people to have new ideas to help, you know, reinvent. But they knew the numbers because they were touching the product every day. They could see what was going out, how much they were shipping, and what was coming back.

And they were just trying to figure out how to unplug the internet. I think it was in Chicago and they were trying to find out where the cord was. Right. All right. Well, how do you compete with free? I mean, it was an impossible situation.

Yeah, it's impossible. Because now even bands, the album is almost like the excuse for the tour. Exactly. That's where they're going to make their cash. Totally topsy-turvy. And it impacts the art, too, because if you're now expected to make all your money live

and touring merchandise, as well as the other, you know, crowdsourcing and couch surfing and funding and all of that stuff. Oh, yeah. It turns the artist into hustlers, number one, where they really should be spending most of their time on their craft. And it means you have to be brilliant live.

And some of our most amazing, enduring artists aren't, right? That's true. They're just not. I mean, when have you seen Dylan with a pyrotechnic walking sidewalk dance show? And he's hitting this, right? They're just not. I mean, when have you seen Dylan with a pyrotechnic walking sidewalk dance show? And he's hitting this, right? You don't know which Dylan you're going to get when you're out there. But quickly, I've got to hustle.

If you want to help crowdfund the Toronto Mic podcast, patreon.com slash torontomic. And Denise, I'm almost done here. Almost done here. So why do you leave Sony? Because I know you do end up at CBC at some point. Well, I left Sony because it was a merger. So BMG merged with Sony.

And I mean, the great news for me was I just re-upped my contract. So I got what you call a non-compete. And I was able to, you know, do whatever I wanted for a year. I know. So I went to work at the Clinton Foundation and Frank Giustra and made a whack of money

that they all spent in doing excellent things in far off places. Don't believe what you read in that last election. The Clinton Foundation has been investigated six ways to Sunday and no one's found anything, anything except for them being absolutely above board. I'm not sure the truth matters anymore.

That's the point I think we're at here. The truth doesn't matter. Well, I asked a friend of mine about four months before the election who was very close to the Clinton Foundation, and I said, what's going to happen? He said, Donald Trump is going to say crooked Hillary, crooked Hillary, crooked Hillary so many times until people believe it. And I was gobsmacked to watch it happen.

But even at 6 p.m. on election night, I was talking to my 12-year-old daughter and I was so filled with confidence, I told her, we're going to watch history tonight. First woman president. This is a 6 p.m. election night. I couldn't, if I were a betting man, I'd be living under a bridge right now.

Right, I'd be with you. I was so confident. I actually a betting man, I'd be living under a bridge right now. Right? I'd be with you. I was so confident. It was just, I actually didn't think it'd be close. This is how stupid I am. Right. And then it was 6 p.m. on election night. No, you're not stupid. We all thought that.

And two hours later, as you see what's happening in Florida and some of the other states, and you start, my tone, I went from like ready to party to like going to a funeral. Yeah. In like two hours. I was gutted. I couldn going to a funeral in two hours.

I got it. I got it. Horrible. Oh, my goodness. Okay. So you end up at some point, 2008, I believe, you end up at the CBC. Wow. Look at you.

Much Sony CBC. Well, you know what? I think that I always, even when I was at Much Music, I kind of ran it like a public broadcaster in some ways. I mean, the reason I got to play around the edges with all the relevancy programming was because we were hitting the bottom line. The company was very successful on the Much Music side and doing really well, so I got the freedom to play. But the CBC, I mean, there is no public service. That's what it is.

So I was delighted to go there i knew it would be a tough gig because it was a little very different in terms of the way it was run from the private companies that i'd uh been working at um but again you know walk in the door and then three months later 171 million dollars shortfall and instead of you know creating wonderful new programming and inspiring the troops i was sitting locked in a room with spreadsheets trying to figure out where to cut and it was uh i think we did a good job i think we did a no scorched earth policy and we we cut so that we would hope to grow again one day we didn't close a single station, thank God. Although the book opens with me being protested in Sydney, Nova Scotia,

with a bullhorn in my hand because people are yelling at me, no more cuts, save our CBC. And I think the only thing that saved me on that grassy knoll out there was because I'm so passionate about the CBC. And I, as frightened as I was, because it's scary to talk to an angry mob. Yeah, I can imagine. Although it was a CBC angry mob. And it was a Nova Scotia angry mob.

It was a Nova Scotia CBC angry mob. So if you're going to pick an angry mob, that's the one I think. It's a pretty good one, yeah. Because they're lovely people. But it's because it would be a sad day indeed for the CBC if they weren't there, right? Showing their support.

You're preaching to the choir on that one. Yeah. So I wish them every best luck as they go forward with their bold new plan. And once again, learned a lot, love the people, and continue to applaud them from here. Were you there at the CBC when the podcasting began? Yep. So Jesse Brown, you might have heard of Jesse Brown. He's got this Canada land

thing he does. Have you done that on your book tour yet? I have not. No. Just wondering. So he had a, I guess it was called Search Engine. He had a podcast at the CBC and then CBC dumped him and he doesn't stay quiet about this fact. He likes to bring it up now

and then. I was just wondering if you think CBC could have, maybe, you know, you mentioned podcasting has become such a big thing. So 2008 to 2011, do you think maybe CBC missed out a little on the podcasting thing? Or do you think you're right on there?

Well, no, I mean, first of all, I wasn't there when Jesse was there. I came after he left. So I met him after. But we launched the radio app while we were there. I came after he left. So I met him after. But we launched the radio app while we were there, the CBC book, CBC Music. And at the time, that radio app was so popular. I mean, Apple voted that, you know, in their top 10 of the year.

And it was the very, very beginning of apps. So, and we noticed right away that i mean the public broadcaster suddenly people across the country could get any programming they wanted you know time shift and curate their own content which was fantastic it was no longer broadcasting one-to-many it was like you know one-to-one now and we could interact with the audience in a whole new way um and we were the i'm gonna forget the stat but it was i forget the stat but we had as many people downloading the podcast immediately as to represent the size of a small station like the station in Moncton. So that's how thirsty the audience was for the flexibility and the ease.

And this was, as I say, pre-serial, so it hadn't quite, you know, the masses still. So I was back-end producing podcasts in 2006 because Humble and Fred, I was the guy behind the scenes doing that. They were doing it from Dan Duran's house. So, you know, writing the XML and it was so fresh and new. I remember so many people, when you said the word podcast, it was almost a frightening term.

Like, it was like, what do I got to do? I got to like syndication, subscribing. It's scary. They just want like a big play button that they can click and then it makes noise or whatever. Yeah, yeah. So it's, you know, this is the i called the yeah the the bleeding edge basically and now it seems like i'd say the masses the majority of the masses have not only know what a podcast is but probably heard one absolutely and are using i'm faked i subscribe to so many that i'm constantly

full and i have to go back and delete them all because i don't have enough time to listen to everything i'm i'm so interested in right but no, that was an exciting time. The challenge for the CBC, of course, was we were in the midst of cuts. There was no new money. So in order to build these brand new shiny tools, the money had to come from somewhere else. You almost said big shiny tunes. I did. That's your lunch bag. There you go.

I had those. Those were great. See, oh my God, they sold millions, those compilations. Because, yeah, you're right. And today, people build them themselves, right? They do. That's right. They're playlist. Gian Gomeshi, very briefly, you say you didn't know anything that was happening untoward in the Gian Gomeshi universe.

And so nobody complained to you? Nobody. So when it happened, when the news broke, i got like i got hit with a skillet it was like what in heaven's name and you know it it threw me i keep saying violent words hit me and threw me which is not what i mean to say but um i was i was shockedasted. You were blindsided because you didn't see it coming. I was blindsided. And I thought, and at the beginning, you know, the young producer who complained about being, you know, hate-effed, I was at the cottage and I had gone through all my daytime risks.

I've got my daytime risk since I was booking concerts at Waterloo. Cool. And I know if I had seen those two words that I would have reacted like a mother bearer or had it come to me, but it didn't come to me. It never came to you. So, and there was like six layers between that producer and me, including the union in the middle there.

So, and I was very accessible. So, at first I was like everybody else. I read the Facebook posting and thought, oh dear, his father died and on and on. And then watch the trial go, and it brought up my own incident. And so I sent a letter to friends and family saying, here's what I know about the CBC being, you know, very strong for women. 51% of the managers were women. Strong supporters, great HR, you know, there's signs everywhere. Do you feel stressed? Phone us. I'd never seen that in a company before. So when I sent my note out,

what I got back from women I've known for years and years, and we've been, you know, very close confidence, you know, they all took their rape stories they told me what happened to them they had one woman told me that she was raped she didn't report it the guy went on to rape and kill another woman and so she not only lived with her own rape she had to live with the guilt that had she told she could have saved possibly the life of someone else so it's the walking wounded out there. And when I watch the trial, I mean, you know, all I can say at the end of the day is, according to the numbers that were done by Holly Johnson, a University of Ottawa professor who looked at 2012 stats, apparently in Canada, of a thousand cases of sexual assault, three are conv, three result in a conviction. So I'm not sure how that isn't a fail, right?

It's a fail. That status mind-boggling. It's a fail. So maybe these high-profile cases will just help us, you know, heighten our vigilance and deepen our compassion and prove and help move forward all the stakeholders, from the police officers to, defense attorneys to the judges. I mean, we still had a judge in Canada who said,

why can't you just keep your knees together? I mean, we've got to do better. Yeah, that's awful. We have to do better. That is awful. Are you still working with Conrad Black on the Zoomer? No, I resigned from the Zoomer after we delivered the 26th show. Conrad was interesting.

I wasn't expecting Conrad as a co-host. I thought it was going to be, you know, a comedian. It'd be two girls and we'd have some fun on the show. And I really love the idea of the Zoomer. You know, there's so rich a variety of things to be able to do on the show. And I'd worked with Moses before, of course. And Conrad, you know, he's huge IQ. And that made me a little nervous.

But I thought maybe I could sort of equalize it with a big EQ. And at the end of the day you know he did his time he conducted himself well in prison he mentored other prisoners and you know we're a country that believes in second chances so i was like okay let's see where this goes this is really interesting but at the end of the day on that show i didn't have editorial control and so and there were decisions made about content that i didn't agree with. And, um, and so I left, I was like, you know what, I'm too old to, um, to do things that, you know, don't serve me in the way that I think I need to be served at this point.

It's a testament to you that, uh, Moses sought to get you back under his, under his wing. I'm trying to think, what is that? In his empire. In his empire. So, yeah. So, you know what? Good luck to them and, you know, onward for the Zoomer,

but it doesn't have me there anymore. And your book, of course, is called Fearless as Possible Under the Circumstances, a memoir. You didn't think you were too young for a memoir that didn't cross your mind i'm just a girl who can't say no i was asked and i thought i should get these stories down before you have those day timers you just revealed and i wanted to get them out of the basement you have to digitize it yeah that would be good and uh yeah if you it's a pick that up uh and it's it's because unlike the Christopher Ward book is sort of like a much music thing

of lots of pictures and stuff in yours it's more encompassing of the Denise Donlan world where you came from I'm closing with a quote that I have ripped off of McLean's magazine it says this and I hope I read this right

because I should tell everybody my trusty tablet that I've used for almost every episode, we're at 208 now, dies in the middle of this episode. It's me and electronics. My kid and my husband don't let me touch their electronics. It's been Donland. I live at the Genius Bar, trust me.

Oh, and it's not even an Apple product. I wonder if they'll still help me. All right, here's the quote. She's worked and chummed with canadian music's elite leonard cohen joni mitchell celine dionne diana crawl gordon lightfoot the tragically hip and even married one marie mclaughlin in 1990 mclean's knows when you got married. Maybe you two should figure it out. She's partied with the Rolling Stones, parlayed with Conrad Black, and parried with Peter Zowski. On air and off, she's battled for women's rights, gay rights, civil rights, and environmental protection,

championed AIDS research, and was among the first public figures to support War Child. She's blasted through several glass ceilings, bettered our social and cultural landscapes, justly earned the Order of Canada, and lived to tell about it all, gutsily and vibrantly. She is, in equal parts, Canada's Sheryl Sandberg, Gloria Steinem, and Nora Ephron.

Wow. I know. And you're sure you didn't write that? That review gave me a hot flash. I have to tell you. I read it and I was like, whoa. I just got one. Oh, goodness.

Are you kidding me? Yeah. They're very, very generous. But you know what? There's a lot of stuff in the book that I think is really funny. And that's what people are telling me when they read it is they find it wickedly funny, which I'm happy about. Because I tried to write with as authentic a voice as I could possibly muster

and just be as honest as I could. You know, you said 30 minutes. I totally ignored that. You did. You're not getting mad at me when I stop. I'm scared. I'm phoning you when I'm stuck in the gardener for an hour. You know what, though?

I was going to say, don't worry. You have lots of beer with you. But don't touch those beers when you're stuck in the gardener. That's an order. I'm looking forward you when I'm stuck on the gardener for an hour. You know what, though? I was going to say, don't worry. You have lots of beer with you, but don't touch those beers when you're stuck on the gardener. That's an order. I'm looking forward to the beer. And that brings us to the end of our 208th show. You can follow me on Twitter, at Toronto Mike, and Denise is at Donlon.

That's D-O-N-L-O-N. Early adopter. Yeah, you're lucky you got that one. And our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer, and Chef's Plate is at Chef's Plate C-A. See you all next week. Thanks, Mike. Thank you.