Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Jaymz Bee: Toronto Mike'd #415

Episode Date: December 28, 2018

Mike chats with musician and radio host Jaymz Bee about the Look People, Al Waxman, Ben Kerr, Mr. Dressup, Molly Johnson and JAZZ.FM91.

Welcome to episode 415 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Propertyinthe6.com, Paytm Canada, Palma Pasta, Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair, and Census Design and Build. watch and jewelry repair and census design and build i'm mike from toronto mike.com and joining me is musician and radio personality james b yo what's up i like this music yeah shout out to ill vibe illy composed this uh toronto mike theme song i like it i did want to be like, Toronto, Mike, yeah! Mike's on the mic, yeah! You don't think it's too cool for me? You know, I don't think anything's too cool for you, Toronto Mike.

Oh, that sounds great. Man, I'm the father of a James and I had to make that tough decision. Do I spell it the traditional way or do I... Phonetically, you're right. People sometimes... Luckily, I've been around long enough that most people know when they read J-A-Y-M-Z,

they're talking about me, James B. But I do get a few people once in a while who come up and say, James? James? James? James? James?

They're trying to think it must be some really amazing name. But no, it's just James. Yeah, and there's a soccer player. I can't remember where he played. But James, they call him. It says James in the back. James. And I'm like, ohames yeah and there's a soccer player i can't remember where he played but a hummus they call him it's james the bag hummus and i'm like oh yeah it's like jesus and there's also a j-a-i-m-z right he's a rocker that okay you can i uh may i reveal your full name assuming this is correct uh because it's kind of did you check on wikipedia yeah yeah it could or could not okay i'm gonna give it to you depending on who's been messing around with Wikipedia lately.

James Terrence Seamus O'Malley Loyola Doyle. You nailed it. I didn't think you'd get the Loyola pronounced properly. That confuses people.

I was worried about that one, too. My grandpa's name was Oli. Oli? Like Oliver? Loyola. Loyola is a really nice

Irish name. There's a school, Loyola Marymount or something like that? But that's a long Irish name. What really happened is that my mother was adopted. I like to tell people I'm a quarter Jew.

But my mom was adopted and she wanted me to look at all different things. So she'd take me to a synagogue, and she'd take me to a Hare Krishna temple. She'd take me to anything. And my dad, his family was Roman Catholic, Irish, and my dad was a born-again atheist. He really just thinks we're food for worms. He's really into science. I'm on that bus.

Yeah, well, he's really into science. And the thing is, my dad is such a gentleman. He will never try to debate somebody or change someone's belief. He'll just hold on to his own. And if they challenge him, he'll go toe-to-toe or head-to-head. But he really doesn't want to do that. So his parents, they wanted Seamus O'Malley Loyola Doyle, and Seamus is James in Gaelic or something like that.

I never understand how names have different names, but this is what you read. You can Google it. And then O'Malley is the same as the word Terrence. I don't understand what this means. There's a lot of repetition in here. So James Terrence is the name that is now on my passport, but my original birth certificate had many names.

They wanted to make everyone happy. And the funniest story is that they were concerned that people would make fun of me if my name was Seamus O'Malley. That sounds like a cool name, and people made fun of me my whole life anyway for dressing weird. So, I mean, the being teased thing,

I think they maybe overthought that one. The Irish have come a long way. I think that's what we're learning. That's for sure. We've all come a long way. Yeah, I've seen Gangs of New York, okay? I know that word. And we've all come a long way.

When I think about the things I've read about how Irish people were low class, terrible people. We're letting them in Canada, but why? And it's amazing we're here in the first place, Toronto Mike, here in Toronto, because when you think about, not only were the native culture having to defend themselves

and the French and the English were fighting, but within Christian sects, the founding of Toronto, everybody was fighting everybody. The Orangemen hated the Protestants. Like, everybody hated everybody. It was quite something. Yeah, and now you've brought me back to those history classes.

We learn about the Fenian raids. Yes. So that was the whole IRA thing. And you know, I'm living in Toronto. I love the limited history we have here. I mean, I lived in Europe for a bit, and there's so many places you can go where they have a lot more history than we do.. I mean, I lived in Europe for a bit, and there's so many places you can go where they have a lot more history than we do. But I like it. I like the Canadian history,

and I had a teacher named... It was Elijah Harper's brother, Vernon. And Vernon was an elder, and he taught us Canadian history from the native perspective. So I have a love of Toronto history. The Real Rebellions and all that good stuff. Oh, yes, absolutely. Kind of funny that we're on

Toronto history. Well, I was going to say, I was going to talk about Tecumseh and Big Bear, and it's all coming back to me now. Yeah, yeah. And Tecumseh, sorry, that guy should be celebrated every day all the time. The way he outsmarted the Americans is legendary, and I urge people to read up about Tecumseh. It's more than just a street in Toronto. Yeah, why does Laura Secord get all the publicity?

You know what I mean? Yeah, well, you know what? I think it's great that a woman gets some advertising, too, about helping the war and her and her cow. Most people just think of her as a delicious chocolate, though, so we've got to make sure they remember that there was an actual person. Sort of the way now most people think Tim Hortons is just like a coffee shop. They don't realize, oh, that's a former Maple Leaf.

That was a wonderful hockey player and a pretty thriving little establishment. Now it's a ginormous thing that's been bought by big people and stuff. But it was a nice little, we had one in North Bay, Ontario when I grew up, little Tim Hortons. Absolutely. So where in Europe did you live for a bit?

I was based in Switzerland. And then from there there we could dart off anywhere we wanted. We'd spend time in Liechtenstein in Germany, a little bit in Austria, a little bit in Holland and I would go to France every year for a music convention and spend a week

in south of France. Boy, I really thought I might just live there one day. South of France is a magical place. Saint-Paul-de-Vence is a beautiful little town on Tebe, right on the coast. That and Costa Rica are probably the two places I've been where I went, I could just retire here. And when I say retire, I just mean right somewhere else.

Retire to what? No one retires anymore. Hey, you're sponsored by somebody. When I say retire, I just mean write somewhere else. Retire to what? No one retires anymore. Come on. Hey, you're sponsored by somebody. Okay, I'm sponsored by a few. Yeah, crack that open. And that's a, okay, so what I did, that's up from the fridge.

That's an octopus wants to fight. That's my favorite. In fact, you'll see the poster on the wall there. It's got a little bite to it. Yeah, you got to, yeah, it's. There's no octopus in this, right? Oh, good question. I've read about how smart octopuses are and I think I've got to give up the octopi.

I was going to say, is it octopuses or octopi? That's the great debate. Enjoy. Okay, so let's give you some gifts. Well, octopussy, but that would be James Bond. That's right. The six-pack is... You're going to get seven because you can drink the cold one. You can still get a six-pack.

I drink the cold one now when I got six room temperature to take home with me. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. That's courtesy of Great Lakes Brewery. Great Lakes Brewery, they are a fiercely independent craft brewery located here in Etobicoke. 99.9% of all Great Lakes beer remains here in ontario what so it's always fresh always fresh enjoy enjoy james well you know what's cool i like that people sponsor podcasts because uh it's i'm sure their rates are reasonable but it also gets the word out for people who

kind of care about the small guys and the feisty guys. And I can tell by the artistry of their beer cans, absolutely hilarious art. The pompous ass English ale is probably my favorite, but I like them all. Listen, there's a lot of like what you think are craft breweries and then you do a little digging and you realize they're owned by like Labatt's. Oh, of course. They just have freaky labels on them.

Read the small print. Absolutely right. So it's like, oh, this is a division of like Molson Co's or something like that. Oh, of course. They just have freaky labels on them. Read the small print. Absolutely right. So it's like, oh, this is a division of Molson Coors or something. So I like these guys because they're the real deal. The owner's been here. He's kicked out the jams with me. It's a family-run local craft brewery, fiercely independent. That's no joke.

That's the real deal. So I like those guys. Speaking of like fiercely. Not to mention the beer tastes pretty good. It's great beer too. Great fresh beer. I also want to give you... I'm touching this red box here. It's beautiful.

That's actually a frozen meat lasagna. I'll be handing that back to you, but thank you so much. Oh, you don't... I don't eat meat. Oh. Which is funny. Looking at me,

you might think that I smoke cigars and eat meat and do all these things, but no. You know what I'm learning though? Because this is a new sponsorship of Palmas Pasta. They make great vegetarian lasagnas. But I need to know what I need to start doing is when I book a

guest, I need to ask, are you a vegetarian? That's right. Because I could have... But you know what? I'm going to take this anyway because I have a good friend who's helping me design a new website and she eats meat. Okay. Well, I was going to say there's two options. You can take that and gift it.

I will bestow that on someone. Or I could deliver to you, I could bike to you and deliver to you a, I don't mind delivering to you a frozen vegetarian lasagna. Well, I live quite far from Etobicoke, from Imico here. Give me how many clicks away are we? How many kilometers?

It took me 18 minutes here by Uber. I could bike that easily. Okay. I mean, I bike, my average ride is about 30 kilometers. I guess, I don't know. You want to give a neighborhood? Yeah. Well, no, I'm near Queen in Broadview.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Nothing. I can do that. No, I sometimes cycle from my place down to Burlington or Oakville, and that's only a few hours. Yeah. And no big hills.

Don't do Oshawa. I went to Oshawa last year with Barbara Lika. She got me cycling from here to Oshawa and another friend, Melissa, and we went. It was five and a half hours, and it was more uphill than down. I don't even know how that's possible,

but it was absolutely a workout. That is a... I don't do the long rides. Like, I did the ride to conquer cancer, and we went to Hamilton. Of course, you have to climb the escarpment and there's a lot of climbing there. I haven't gone east. That sounds like a great ride

to Oshawa, but it was tough. It's a gorgeous ride. You're only on the streets once in a while. There's some nice paths and things. I'm an optimist and when I was going downhill, I knew that we were going to be going uphill again. I actually, after a couple hours, I went, oh my God, I should have trained for this.

I'm also in a mountain bike, not a racing bike. Yeah, I'm a hybrid, so I know what you mean. And the two girls have light bikes and they're racing bikes and they're in better shape than me and half my age. So between all of that, I had my work cut out for me. Well, I'm glad you're a cyclist. Oh, it's so important. I mean, you have to be safe in the city.

I like the paths. I like the paths. I like the small streets. I'm not a road warrior by any stretch. But the water, like you mentioned, the waterfront trail, I mean, that's... You can get across the city that way. Yeah, I swear by it. Well, we're kind of on it right now.

Like I swear by the... Absolutely. In fact, that's why I know this neighborhood is because I'm cycling over to Oakville and I'm always passing by here. I'm just happy to hear that. I want more people on their bicycles and out of their cars. We played, a long time ago when I was touring in Europe,

we played in Utrecht, Switzerland, or Holland, and everybody had a bike. It was absolutely beautiful to see almost no cars on the street and people smiling and healthy, good complexion. The Dutch get it, man. I mean, I've been to Amsterdam a few times and it's bikes everywhere. It's just bike, bike, bike. I want to give a shout out to some people who helped me with this episode.

Joel Goldberg. Oh, there's a talent. He started way, way back. Stuff like Electric Circus, all these things on Much Music. Electric Circus. He did so many videos back then that were important. Shuffle Demons, Out of My House Roach, which was hilarious. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Maestro, a bunch of Look People videos for me. In fact, he did one video for Lowrider with both of us, or that he did all the work, and then a whole bunch of videos we made, we did together cause I was producing and directing videos myself, but we were good friends. And I mean, I really wanted somebody with,

you know, secret of success, get people better than you. I wanted somebody with more experience than me to work with. And, uh, he was really good at thinking big. Well,

we're going to get to, uh, we're going to play a little bit of Lowrider, and I got some Look People stuff coming up in the episode for sure. But yeah, so Joel Goldberg was great help. He was over here a couple weeks ago. Ed Conroy, who I like to refer to as Mr. Retro Ontario. That's funny because between Toronto Mike and Retro Ontario,

we're all lovers of this city, and I love that people celebrate. And I've been a fan of Ed's crazy clips. He just finds the coolest things to share. You know, we did, and this is going to come up later too. So I'm so glad you're here for episode 415 here, because Ed was just over here, Ed Conroy, to do a retrospective on the life and career of Mark Daly. Right on.

And it was amazing. Mark Daly, City TV, everywhere. Yeah, that's pretty good. I worked with Mark. Mark's on some of my records. I know. I got some clips. We're going to hear some.

Are you kidding me? Like these guys helped me with the homework. Yeah, for sure. So Mark Daly, interesting thing about that guy, and I'm sure Ed covered all of this, but he was a police officer for a little while. Then he was like a crime reporter for City TV. Yeah.

He was the voice, of course. Everyone knows him as the voice of City TV. And then he also did a whole bunch of... He played trombone with Parliament Funkadelic for just a little while in Detroit. And he also did voices for some very funny and very weird cartoons.

Yes. There was one... What was it? Crap, I can't remember. There was one that my was it it was ah crap i can't remember there's one that my something friends uh ripping friends ripping friends right we played a clip of that on the really hilarious so mark daly was a sweet man and uh i mean i don't think we had too much notice i think it was very private when we found out he was dying it was there wasn't much time to do much uh to celebrate him. But I always think of him with the highest esteem.

And he had a great sense of humor. Listen, because this is so timely, like New Year's Eve is only a couple of days away. Let me just play this little promo from City TV. Two, one, happy New Year! Happy New Year, Toronto! It's the biggest. It's the best. It's the only New Year's Eve bash you'll want to be at this year. But City TV brings you live performances by Cassandra Bassick.

TBTBT. And John James and the Mothers of Hope. Gord Marko and Monica the Old Host as the City of Toronto, Golden Griddle and City TV present the ninth annual traditional New Year's Eve bash. That's not this time, right? That's old. That is old. They didn't take Mark Daly's voice and make a brand new promo, did they? No, and they don't have Gordon Martineau and Monica D. Old doing it either. If Monica's back in town,

I'll be right over. I like her. Yeah, I have I had her to coming in, but she was coming in to promote, like she was in Toronto to promote some kind of makeup. There was a makeup line, like a Sephora or something. And it ended up that

she didn't have time to make her way over, but she promises next time she's in town, she's coming over here. Well, I just remember, I knew her. She was a very shy and sweet

and intelligent young woman, and I think a lot of people either loved her or hated her because people love to use words. People hated Monica Dior? Well, I just mean people who are jealous or people who just don't like that kind of music. Whenever somebody would say something like that,

I don't have a lot of time for people who use hate so quickly. I'll usually refresh on their memory and go, you know what, you can hate liver and never want to eat liver. That's okay. But when it comes to people, can we just temper this a little bit? You don't like to that kind of music or you don't want someone, but I'm always the one to remind people to

tone it down. So I mentioned Jay Gold, Joel Goldberg, and I mentioned Ed Conroy from Retro Ontario, but I also want to say thanks, big shout out to Mark Weisblot from 1236. He was actually over yesterday for episode 414, and I told him you were coming on, and he had some great memories and thoughts of you and said some kind words about you.

So I want to say hi to those gentlemen. And then, yeah, oh, yeah. So he pointed out yesterday that he said, because I mentioned that you were coming over today, and then Maestro Fresh West is episode 416. He comes over tomorrow. And Mark told me that, he said, you and Maestro were the two, he called you the two, the top two Toronto famous guys. If you, you know, back, let's say about,

you know, 15 years ago or so. 80s, 90s. Yeah, like early 90s. He said there was no two more Toronto famous people. He said Maestro and James B. The thing about Maestro is he's articulate and friendly. And I don't know if people always think of, especially back then,

rappers as being particularly articulate and friendly. There was like MC Solar in Paris who was brilliant. And then Method Man, you know, talking about his manhood. So the real difference between... He was in The Wire, remember that. But different, really different messages and different things. So Maestro kind of slid right down the middle.

He could be cool and talk about whatever he wanted, but when you were actually in his presence, he's just a friendly, relaxed guy. Very Toronto that way. Absolutely, absolutely. We also were on the same label and lost a bunch of money together, I bet. I don't know if you're going to want to ask him.

Is it Attic or what is it? Songcore. Attic was Al Mayer's label that kind of launched Lee Aaron Metal Queen and Weird Al Yankovic. Weird Al. I got some Weird Al stuff for you coming up. Yeah. Weird Al and I are pals. I talked to him yesterday. Can you tell me, did you

was he dating a friend of yours? Yeah. Well, you know, he was coming to town for a comedy event, and Mark Breslin, my buddy, says he needs some dancers, and two of the dancers he needed, very specific, these need to be dancers who aren't afraid to wear a body puppet, and it's basically just their legs. And so these two girls I know who are dancers, they have great legs, and they put on Mrs.

Potato head costumes and pretended to play guitars doing the moves, and it was might as well face it, you're addicted to spuds. Right? So after his concert, which was fantastic, over at the Science Center of all places. Kind of makes sense. Yeah, it was my job to take him on the town on his day off. So the next day, I took him to Mimi's restaurant for a vegetarian feast, which he really appreciated.

And then I realized he doesn't party. I didn't know. No drugs, no alcohol, nothing. Yeah, he's what do you call it, straight edge. Now, he will have a glass of wine with a meal nowadays or something, but back then, not a thing, right? And so I was trying to figure out where to take him. So I took him to

a house party, and that's where he met a girl that he dated for a little while, was really attracted to her and really, you know, kept in touch with her when he went back to LA. Yeah. And I always knew him as just a great guy. So every time he comes to town, we manage to either grab a lunch or go run around and do something together.

Oh, that's great to hear. But he really is as normal and nice as any Swiss person you'd ever meet, but he's from L.A. Go figure. Well, we're going to get to the Swiss people soon. See, all this stuff's on the list. Do you know the name Kevin Shea? I do. Kevin Shea, originally, I don't know what his North Bay connection was,

but I kind of knew him from there for just a little bit, and then he worked at some record companies off and on. Right, because he came on because he also works at the Hall of Fame now, the Hockey Hall of Fame. That makes sense. He's a major hockey head. That makes great sense. So he came on.

We were talking about Bill Barocco, of all people. I wanted to do a retrospective on Bill Barocco's career, but we talked about his- Okay, is that an athlete? Oh, yeah, that's a Toronto Maple Leaf. I have no idea who that is. Well, you know the Tragically Hip. I don't even know how many innings there were in a game.

I know nothing about hockey. I know you're joking there, but I can tell you that... I was going to say, you know the song 50 Mission Cap by the Tragically Hip? It's my 50 mission cap. Yeah, can you sing the whole song for me? I worked it in to look like that.

Anyways, that song is telling the story of Bill Barocco. I did not know that. There you go. I knew New Orleans is sinking and I don't want to swim was pre-Katrina. Right. Yeah, it was really sad. I'm glad that they actually asked radio to not play that song for a bit and don't tie it into that story.

They weren't trying to be prophetic. Very tasteful of them to do that. Yes, absolutely. So Kevin Shea, I had him talk a bit about his music career, and he did tell a story about how as a record label guy, he had to kind of manage Weird Al

on his visit to Toronto, where he was babysitting Weird Al. And it's the easiest gig in the world. Yes, because he also did Motley Crue, which was not nearly as easy. No, no. I mean, put it this way. If Motley Crue,

you'd have a whole bunch of guys that want different things and have different ideas of how they should spend their day. With Weird Al, you have one guy and the hardest thing is, can you get me some veggie sushi

or something like that. His demands are very, very small. That reminds me. Remind me at the end of this episode if you want me to i will deliver to you a vegetarian lasagna or you can give that i'm gonna that call you can you can noodle that no no i want you to cycle over that we're in i'm going veggie gotcha gotcha uh jim slow tech says hi now jim slow tech i've been a fan of his writing since i probably since i got here in Toronto in 1980. And then we were lucky enough to cross paths on over many years. At first it was social events and things.

His sister runs a really cool late night private party place. I'm not going to call it a booze can or a speakeasy, but it's in that realm. But very private and very cool. And then I've seen him rock out a few times, which is kind of like imagine Bill Gates trying to do Mick Jagger or something. It's wrong and strong. I always enjoy it. But is that like a Noozapalooza or something?

Yeah, where he kind of, I think he might have done a David Byrne song, but whatever it was, it was just perfect, and I was happy to see him on stage having fun. Awesome. But he's a great writer. I'm going to play a tune for you, and then I'm going to ask you about the singer fun. Awesome. But he's a great writer. All right, I'm going to play a tune for you, and then I'm going to ask you about the singer here. All right. My tattoo is tingling.

That was the test. Oh, the buzzing of the bees and the cigarette trees, the soda water fountain, where the lemonade springs and the bluebird sings in that big rock candy mountain. Lemonade. Don't you love how he says lemonade? I was going to say, it's December as we record, and this is the month where you hear Burl Ives' voice the most. That's right.

Because he's in the Frosty the Snowman. Frosty the Snowman, which was not actually called Frosty the Snowman. He played Sam the Snowman, the narrator of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Right. But it's a common mistake that people call it Frosty because they think of the snowman before anybody because it's Burl coming out with his little goatee. And that is such a famous cartoon from the late 60s that in places like Japan, they think all North American snowmen have goatees.

Just because of our lives. And that was done here. That was done in... Rankin-Bass is here. Yeah, near Hamilton. And I spoke to Paul Soules, who is the voice of Spider-Man. Wallop and web snappers. He lives in Toronto.

He's going to be, I guess, late 80s now or something. Wow. Anyway, he's a hip dude. He's really fun to talk to. And he did the voice of the kid, of the elf kid. The dentist wannabe. Yeah. Yes.

Exactly. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he wanted to be a dentist. The dentist wannabe. You have a good memory. I didn't see it this year. Oh, because I got a couple of toddlers. Exactly.

And they saw it, yeah. Well, so the dentist wannabe was Paul Soles. And Burl Ives remembered Paul Soles. When I asked him about it, he goes, oh, yeah, Paul Soles, lovely guy. Yeah, I remember working with him. All right, so let's address that. So you mentioned your tattoo was tingling. Explain to the people what you mean.

I have a tattoo of Burl Ives on my left shoulder, and it tingles when I think about Burl. I got it done in August the 8th, 1988. So it was like 8-8-88. Nice. Which is infinity four times sideways. Wow. Which doesn't really matter. Anyway, I got it done

and I found myself less than a year later at his house hanging out with him. And I'd met him before and I decided he was like the perfect person. I loved his voice. I loved his acting. He had a campaign called Johnny Horizon. He cared about the environment in the 50s.

You know, he said interesting things hanging out with him too. Things like he'd look at the moon and he would say, oh, it looks as if the wind has taken a bite out of the moon. And then his wife would say, oh, Burl, stop showing off.

And then I'd start singing the moon is the north winds cookie which was a song that he was famous for yeah uh he would also say things like he'd look at the movie the robe and he would know every part character what they did where they were today which person did drugs and wasn't reliable who was really good he would tell you stories about all the extras in these epic movies with Charlton Heston. And then he would also tell stories about, that's my favorite thing. He thought Madonna was very talented. He thought that she was an artist more than a singer, and that she pushed some boundaries that might be a little bit much for some people,

but she's an artist and she's allowed to be that way. So that was interesting. I didn't think Burlby talking about Madonna. Um, and also, uh, Anthony, uh, Perkins, that he was just one of the favorite actors he worked with. He said, but he was very upset in a scene for Desire Under the Elms where he, uh, did this whole speech about I built stones and I got a fence and my fence made of stones. And he does this and he works and works at it. And then when the movie comes out, you never hear him. You hear his voice going like Kenny from South Park. And then it's showing Anthony Perkins in the next room, shaving, looking at himself without a shirt and a mirror.

So the director decided we're going to spice this up and make this guy the sex symbol and not worry about Burl's writing. So Burl told me after that film, he realized he has to separate himself from the end result. He can only do his best job and he knows that they can just screw up the film. Right. Right. Right. Paul Newman, his favorite scene of his entire career was Paul Newman in the basement in when he was Big Daddy, Cat in a Hot Tin Roof.

And he said, my favorite scene was with him in the basement when he was Big Daddy, Cat in a Hot Tin Roof, and he said my favorite scene was with him in the basement. He said he was trying to shoot him up with some heroin because he was in so much pain he was going to die any minute. And he said that scene, he goes, I forgot I was an actor. I forgot there was a camera. It was just me and Paul. Wow.

Yeah. So Burl, I'm glad you got to... Would you consider him a good friend? Like Burl? His wife was like got to... Would you consider him a good friend? His wife was like a spiritual guru to me. Okay. And so if... One thing interesting, so I'm a fan of Burl

because I grew up with his kids' music, his folk music, loved his acting. But meeting his wife and getting to know her was half the thrill of going to their house was getting to hang out with both of them, not just one of them.

And yeah, I would think of him as a good friend. I have a whole movie that's going to be featured. Speaking of Joel Goldberg, he and Ed are working right now on a documentary about me. And one of the things they're going to be doing is showing some scenes, like I threw a party for Mr. Dress Up

at his retirement, where it was just filled with drag queens and all kinds of exciting people, Mohawks and Nohawks and Afros and just wild people. So Mr. Dress Up loved that. I like hearing his music in the background. Yeah, yeah, well... You're fast on the buttons here.

Because I'm of the vintage, Mr. Dress Up was my jam. Like, this was a big deal to me. I have outtakes of Mr. Dress-Up was my jam. This was a big deal to me. I have outtakes of Mr. Dress-Up beating on the puppets and things during the rehearsals. Casey and Finnegan? Casey and Finnegan, and then the later ones, Chester and all the later ones. So what I love about this footage is he gave this to me. He gave me the master VHS or whatever after I threw the retirement party for him. And he said, you just got a promise.

You'll sit on this for 10 years. I don't want any children currently looking at my show to not understand what's going on. So this, okay, I was going to ask you about this later, but let's find out now. When will this documentary be finished? Like, is there a target? You know, will it be this year or will it be 2019 or 2020?

I have no idea how these things work. All I said to them is I will assist you in finding these old tapes and weird TV shows I did years ago. Because even if I'm mostly an entertainer or mostly a performer and musician, if most people think of me that way, when I did the Dummies book,

Cocktail Parties for Dummies, I was on cooking shows and this show and that show. And one time, look, people at West got on a kid's show and it was really weird that we were there

doing what we were doing. But it was a riot. It was an absolute riot. Okay, now, so we talked about, we talked about Mr. Dress Up, which is amazing. And we talked,

we... Burl Ives. These are two of my big ones. Right. So let me, which is amazing. And we talked... Burl Ives. These are two of my big ones. Right. So let me... One of the sponsors of this show is a gentleman named Brian Gerstein. He's a real estate sales representative

with PSR Brokerage. I'm going to let him introduce this next gentleman I want to talk about. Let's listen to Brian. Hi, James. Brian Gerstein here, sales representative with PSR Bureau Bridge and proud sponsor of Toronto Mic'd. I want to wish Mike and his listeners a happy new year.

If you have any real estate needs in 2019, you can call or text me at 416-873-0292 so I can advise you if you should go ahead or not. No obligation whatsoever. 273-0292 so I can advise you if you should go ahead or not. No obligation whatsoever. James, as a product of the 70s, I watched my fair share of King of Kensington, somewhat like All in the Family from a Canadian perspective, but was too young to appreciate the social issues brought up and watched it just for the laughs, of which there were many. What motivated you to start up the Al Waxman Fan Club,

and how cool was it that he attended some of your events? Well, thank you, and I will try to answer your question now. I think he was reading that, but thank you. Also, while he was talking, I got to drink some Great Legs Brewery, so that was double sponsorship at once. Al Waxman Fan Club is a very easy story to tell because I've told it so many times. I was at Ingle Nook Survival School, Ingle Nook High School, which is a community high school

for people who don't fit in. And teachers that are so hip that you just want them to like you so you actually learn stuff. It's the greatest high school experience I ever had and it was for one year in in 1984 so uh we're walking down i'm walking down with one of my fellow students basil salazar who's a poet and musician we're walking through kensington market and we were told to do everyone had to do a paper on or group papers on uh the canadian identity

we were going through the market. We'd had a couple of drinks. And we said, hey, wait. King of Kensington should be King of Canada. All of Canada should use Kensington Market as this is what Canada is. Like a microcosm. Yeah.

And when people kept saying melting pot, I'm like, not so much. Because we don't want it all to be in one normal stew we want a bunch of side dishes we want sure we can all get along but we don't want people to assimilate into our culture it's okay if you go to an area it's a mosaic exactly it should be more of that than than the melting pot idea is nice american yeah it sounds too melty i want some crisp vegetables in there um so so we were walking through and we decided i mean it was really knee-jerk um just we should start the al waxman fan club i'm gonna call and

this is typical me even as a kid i'm gonna call his agent i'm gonna get all this video footage about him i'm gonna get all the stuff we're gonna have so much information about al waxman's personal life and his work and his charity work is when we found out how much philanthropic things he was up to we got very excited and he would always say look i do this because my mom taught me it was important al waxman would say um you're supposed to have money right now to pay your bills money right money right now to put away for the future, and money right now to give to someone else. You should divide up the money you make in three. Make sure you're giving away a bunch of money to charities or to help other people. And that was his philosophy.

And once we met him, we really loved him. We heard a lot of stories about him being too fussy of a diner or being a hard director, or there's all kinds of stories out there. So we call those the anti-Al factions, and we really wouldn't have anything to do with it. In fact, we wanted to counter that by making him basically God. And we thought the only way to counter these terrible stories, and there weren't that many of them, but I mean, you know, a waiter says, he didn't tip me hard, he was a really fussy guy. I'm like, okay. So everybody has a bad day, right?

I've met some celebrities that were complete nincompoops. Oh, we're going to get to one I want to talk to you about later. Yeah, but most of the people I meet, I really like. And if they are an example, and I don't mind, I'm not bad-mouthing them, but he had a bad day, Bob Geldof. Not at all fun to meet. Absolutely not friendly. I've heard this about Bob Geldof. mind, I'm not bad-mouthing him, but he had a bad day. Bob Geldof, not at all fun to meet. Absolutely not friendly. I've heard this about Bob Geldof.

Well, I had no idea. I had no idea. We were opening for him at an outdoor concert in Switzerland, and his band seemed like great party guys and really fun. This was the Boomtown Rats? Yeah, and he was really, really not happy. But then, you don't know. I also met Tom Hanks one, and he wasn't happy.

Oh, wow. That's surprising. Well, I think the movie that he was in was pretty crappy, and maybe he knew it. but then you don't know I also met Tom Hanks one and he wasn't happy it was surprising well I think the movie that he was in was pretty crappy and maybe that crown one it was the it was the not Beatles movie that for so that thing you do yeah that's I thought he directed that he directed that that's right and the thing is I don't know maybe you never know why someone's in a bad mood he could have got bad news that day. I'm never going to hold it against someone if I met them once and they weren't gregarious. That's not...

That's just... It's not important. And in fact, it's important to say it's not important. Well, I'm going to play just because we're talking about Al Waxman. Let me just bring us back. Memory Lane, we'll call this. All right. All right. bring us back. Memory Lane we'll call this. Alright.

One of the all-time great theme songs. Go, King. Go, King. Take care of this king. He finds his fortune in the faces that surround him. His wife says helping other people brings him luck. Luck. But then his mother tells a slightly different story. He's the only king around without a buck. Yeah. He's a man among men. He is a man among men.

The people's champion. We think he's number one. And when destiny calls him. I'm sorry, that line is still busy. He's king of Kensington. Come on. Ole. That's my favorite. That's got to be the best theme song in Canada.

That's as good as it gets. Beachcombers. Nice little melody, but they didn't have any lyrics. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Amazing. Jesse and Relic and lots of trees.

Do-do-do-do-do-do-do. No, they didn't have a song for the Beachcombers. I always liked Relic. He was my favorite. Me too. Everybody's favorite on the Beachcombers was Relic. Okay, there you go. I wasn't alone.

And with Al Waxman, it was interesting because that show had so many guest cameos and so many different characters that came through that show. It wasn't really, it was a bit of an ensemble cast,

but there were so many. I remember Mike Myers was probably 11 years old or something. Oh, wow. Making his screen debut on King of Kensington. Is that right?

Yeah. I think Christopher Ward is taking credit for that. You know what he's taking credit for? The first on-screen appearance of the Wayne Campbell character. Oh, of that character. That's very different. On City Lights

or whatever the... City Limits. Whatever predated much music. Christopher Ward had on... That's right. And they used to have a best of kind of music videos. It's so funny. There were so few music videos in the mid-80s.

When Much Music launched, we got a lot of airplay with the Look People, my band, because we made videos. Even if they were cheap, we made videos and most people didn't have videos. So we got a real boost from... And can you... I mean, I was... City Limits, new music, much music, all of that stuff. So Toronto Rocks was on, Toronto Rocks with,

well, John Roberts, J.D. Roberts. I barely remember that, but yeah, I was on that show. That was a big one. And funny, we talked about Joel Goldberg enough already, but he was on a CFMT, Channel 47 video show as Jay Gold. Like he was on there as Jay Gold. I don't think I ever saw that one. And of course there was

Samantha Taylor on CBC. Jay Gold is the name of my accountant and they're not related. For those of you listening and wondering what we're talking about. Video hits with Samantha Taylor. Video hits, yeah. That's right. Sylvia Tyson was the producer of that show and Sylvia Tyson was my Kool-Aid mom. I lived in her basement for a while in Rosedale

when I went to high school. And Sylvia Tyson has a hugest collection of jokes in her head. She collects jokes and doesn't forget them. That's a great trait. Don't do drugs, stay in school. Don't do drugs, stay in school. No, because she's really good. She just

has a million jokes up her sleeve. She produced that show, Sandra Fair. And after a while, the late, great Dan Gallagher was hosting that show. Yes, he was. And I remember he had a show on Much Music called Test Pattern. Oh, I was on that show. And I did really well until they got to the sports. And the only reason I didn't win anything is because they had some sports questions.

I miss Dan Gallagher very much. I'm going to toast him right now. Hold my glass up. Yes, absolutely. No, he was great. Because he also was involved with the Toronto Argonauts. He was like a public announcer. Yeah, his brother brought as well.

It's just Dan was, he was, what makes it tragic for me when I think about this is he knew that John Candy died at 42 and he didn't want to be that overweight and that unhealthy. So he lost a lot of weight and looked absolutely great. But I think it was maybe a bit much on his heart or something. So his immune system was a bit down and he passed away at 42 and he was on a roll. He was starting to write a film script. He was

hosting stuff at CFRB. He was a really good friend of mine and he just seemed happier than he'd ever been that last little while. So it affected everybody real hard because when you see a guy with a career like that who never had a bad word to say about anybody, he was, you put him in the league with Maestro.

Just a guy who just didn't diss people. He was really a positive force. Yeah, he'd gone way too soon. That's terrible, terrible. Let me ask you about a guy who just didn't diss people. He was really a positive force. Yeah, he'd gone way too soon. That's terrible, terrible. Let me ask you about a gentleman who I remember quite well. I used to live in an apartment near Young and Bloor,

like Charles Street and Young. But I would often see him busking. But can we talk about Ben Kerr? Ah, the King of Cayenne. Yes, that's right. He would sing, Nothing's better with cayenne pepper when you've got energy. And loving's better with cayenne yes that's right he would sing nothing's better with cayenne pepper when you've got energy

and loving's better with cayenne pepper look what happened to me what tell me you were his campaign manager when he'd run for mayor is that right that did happen okay well i forgot about that because i've known i knew ben for so long he was always at young and blore singing songs yes uh there were one day he had a song called and he There was one day, he had a song called, and he wasn't Jewish, but he had a song called You Don't Have to Be Jewish to Be Happy, Though It Helps. And he was singing it, and a couple of neo-Nazis, actually they were just Nazis, there's nothing new about them,

they just walked up and they gave him a black eye and they started beating him up. And he's an old man, singing songs with a guitar. Like, these guys are monsters. Anyway, he went right back the next day with his black eye and the big bandage on his head and just kept singing. He says, no, I'm not being afraid of those guys. I'm going right back and I'm going to do what I do. He also walked from L.A. to Toronto to get media attention for smoking in the workplace.

He thought that was not right and no one should be allowed to smoke in the workplace. Talk about being advanced. That was in the 70s he did that. He was ahead of his time, but that's tougher than biking to Oshawa. Yeah, that walk. Yeah, that took months. And what else did he do?

Anyway, he was a fantastic guy. And then because there was no one running for mayor, I usually do pick somebody and try to help them out in some way. I don't get hugely politically involved, but I want to make sure they know I'm on their team and throw parties or supply bands for them or do whatever I can. So with Ben Kerr, there was no one running that particular year

that I was excited about. So I said, Ben, why don't you run? Let's go have some fun. And we had posters and parties all over the place. I remember Ben Kerr for mayor. Yeah. It was a big piece of Toronto lore. It was pretty big.

Now, he ran for mayor many, many years, but the year that we worked together, that was the one that got all the media attention, and that was the one with all the parties. We even had an art show at the Cameron House. Okay, you're going to have to bear with me because we live in different times now. The problem with some people, particularly younger people,

is that they think that whatever they feel today is the way it always should have been. Right, yes. They apply the context of today to... Right, so you try to say like Dean Martin, right? Yeah. He wasn't a womanizer. He's a ladies' man.

You look at somebody like Bing Crosby, he was a womanizer. He's a ladies' man. You look at somebody like Ben Crosby, he was a womanizer, not necessarily a ladies' man. You have to dig deep into their histories to figure out who treated women right, who didn't. So Ben Kerr was always a gentleman, but we thought it would be funny to put him in robes and smoking jackets surrounded by different beautiful women,

but only one at a time. He wasn't surrounded by a bunch at once. But it was all different outfits and all different girls. And we had an art show of these giant portraits at the Cameron House. And people thought it was funny. I mean, it was like Don Knotts, right? Right, right.

And we weren't trying to make this sexy. We were trying to have fun with it. And again, you have to be context of the time. It wasn't as socially... No context of the time, it was, it wasn't as socially. No, 20 years ago, it was kind of fun to do that. And I have to say,

on that topic, I've been told by a couple of men, not women, that I should have less photos of women on my social media pages because we live in different times. And I'm like, you know what?

These are my best friends and I'm not going to kowtow to people, people's misperceptions. When I came down from North Bay to Toronto, I was called Gay Jay from North Bay, right? And it didn't hurt me because I'm open-minded, and I don't care what people have to say. I know who I am. But I think it's weird that now it's gone the other way. Now, how dare you have female friends?

You must be trying to sleep with all of them. It doesn't make any sense. We've overcorrected possibly. Well, not only that, what makes me, what jars my gherkins is that when people say this, what they're saying is

those girls you hang out with want something from you or like you're dissing my friends when you say that. Yeah, you're almost objectifying them by you say that it's this is so much about me by suggesting they're only there because of how they look right right yeah and so if i have friends from like you know uh 17 to 81 years old sometimes three or four of us will hang out at the same time and often there's a guy in the room but if you take a photo of of me and a bunch of guys

or me and a bunch of girls all the comments are going a photo of me and a bunch of guys or me and a bunch of girls, all the comments are going to be about me and a bunch of girls. They're not going to comment on me and a bunch of guys. So anyway, when it comes to that, I'm always a little careful. But with Ben Kerr, we didn't care because we were like, you know what? You're a charming little old man and you've got all these girls around you who think you're funny and sweet, so let's just

work with that. And it was a way to get media. At the end of the day, it was just a way. Good or bad, we've got to let people hear what, and the things he had to say about how he'd run the city, much like Bernie Sanders, they were idealistic and they were beautiful. It's important that people get to say,

speak their mind, even if it's not as possible as they might think. Speaking of media coverage, I have a clip here of good old Colin Vaughn on City Pulse. Yeah. So let's listen to Colin. Ben, I don't know how many campaigns this has been.

This is number four. Number four. I know it's been a lot. Surely you must be, at this stage, you must be kidding. I mean, why do you do it? Toronto needs the first singing mayor to take Toronto to the world in song, to cheer people up a little bit. That's it? That's it.

All right. That's all we need. Change the attitude in Toronto. I love this. He did say he wanted Toronto to be known as entertainment capital of the world. That was his constant thing that he would say to people. Say, we can get way more business in here

if we don't drive the artists out. He was concerned about affordable housing for artists and that was 20 years ago. It's kind of depressing what's happened in Toronto since then. People are moving to Hamilton.

This isn't a good idea. I mean, it's a good idea for them. Not a good idea for me. We've got to get some affordable housing here and keep artists in Toronto I mean, it's a good idea for them. Not a good idea for me. We've got to get some affordable housing here and keep artists in Toronto. Actually, it's funny. Somebody you worked for. So I want to keep this chronological.

Good luck. You're doing a good job so far. Yeah, tell me about, okay, so we already talked about you being in charge of the Al Waxman. So you're the president of the Al Waxman fan club, but how does that tie into the B people? Oh, okay. So here's what, yeah, this got weirder.

So at first we're in high school and we're saying, okay, we're going to do this Al Waxman fan club and we're going to make him the King of Canada. We're going to write this paper about why he's important and what the Canadian identity is and how he symbolizes the Canadian identity. So that was done. We decided, I mean, most of this was me,

but I had four or five other friends that we really hung out a lot and came up with a lot of ideas. Clay Tyson, Sylvia's kid. Bruce Scott, who's now living in Thailand, but he's a graphics artist. Max McDonald, a painter. Basil Salazar and myself.

So we would sit around and come up with these crazy ideas. And mine was, okay, let's write to all the political leaders, everyone writing for prime minister, and see if they'll join the fan club. And then Basil said, well, we should write to the Pope. I said, okay, you're right. We should write to the Pope and we should write to the Queen of England. Okay. So I'm in high school, right? This is really weird. I'm in high school, and someone comes up into the classroom and says, James, John Turner is on the phone for you. I go, what?

Liberal Party John Turner? Yeah, okay. So I go down and talk to him. He's like, James, I'd love to join that club. Al Waxman is a great Canadian, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then I get a letter from Ed Broadbent. I would be happy to be a member of this club. Never heard from Mulroney.

And never heard from the Pope. The Queen, and this is creepy, I wrote I wrote as James B. from Ingle Nook School, and I wrote to the Queen, a letter came embossed, and I mean this looked like, the letter looked like it cost 20 bucks back then.

Embossed with the old Buckingham Palace seal and all this stuff on it. And it was made out to Ingle Nook Community School, blah blah blah Sackville, Toronto, and then said, attention, James Terrence Doyle Esquire. That's fancy.

How did they know my name? And this is before the internet. How did they figure out? How did they know your name? They this is before the internet. How did they figure out? How did they know your name? They would go into their computer, super secret spy database and know who I was. They had to do some research to write to me. And it said, it was from John Hastings of Buckingham Palace,

said, I am commanded by the queen to thank you for your letter dated blah, blah, blah. I am sorry to disappoint, but the queen does not join any clubs. And so I went, oh, silly me, of course. So then I wrote back and I appointed her an honorary membership for life

to the Al Waxman fan club. I never heard back, so I assume she accepted. That's hilarious. And this all got us marks in school. Our teachers were so impressed with the community involvement and then the B people. Yes, the B people.

So then we just, I mean, there's no reason for that name, by the way. My name wasn't James B. back then. It was just J-A-Y-M-Z, and I didn't have a last name. So we're sitting around, and I don't know. We just start writing songs that are silly. Some of them are spoofs, like We Want Kensington Reruns after I'm Not Your Steppenstone. We just changed lyrics. And then we started to write

our own songs, and we were going to the Beverly Tavern to do our very first concert. We didn't have a name for the band. We were just going to be the Al Waxman Fan Club. And Basil had a shirt that had a skull and crossbones, and he had written with a magic marker,

Death to the Bee People. And I said, what does that mean? He goes, I don't know. I was really drunk when I did this. I drank tequila, and I made this shirt. And I said, well, we should just call ourselves Bee People, and at the end of the show, we'll just sing a song about Death to the Bee People. And I don't know why this was a good idea, but we did it. The audience laughed hysterically, and some of the people in the audience were rock bands that I really had respect for. And we're the young kids from high school playing to the old guys who were cool, guys like Toby Swan and William New. So we were really excited. And then we decided, you know what? This band, the B-People, are the official Al Waxman fan club band.

And we ended up writing, I don't know, 14 songs about Al Waxman. Danny Lenoir called us and said, this is really funny stuff. You want to capture it right now, even if you have to do. This was way before crowdsourcing, but that's what he suggested, is that you get some people to give you 20 bucks up front and you give them a couple of records when they come out later. And so we had some fans and we thought we were going to do something, but it didn't last very long.

It lasted exactly a year, the band. And then everybody kind of knew they wanted to do different types of music. This was punk, like Al Waxman punk rock. It didn't make a lot of sense. But we got a lot of media for it because we were weird and entertaining. Yeah, different.

And Canadian. Yeah, right, right. So the bee people, of course, precedes look people. So how long between bee people and look people? I was shooting a documentary, and a lot of it will be used in this new documentary about me, but I did a documentary about the Al Waxman fan club. And it was quite funny.

When I look back at it, it was a lot of work. But we were outside of CBC with about 30 people with signs saying we want Kensington reruns. The show had been off the air for years. And we thought, bring it back on the air. We're the Al Waxman fan club. We demand you bring it back on the air. When they brought it back on the air,

we pretty much disbanded. We pretty much thought we've done it. Al came to a bunch of our shows. They were always benefit concerts for big brothers or sick kids or something like that. But at the CBC thing, so this is one of the last days of shooting this documentary, the guy, the security guard, is this young, really handsome young guy who says, you know, always wanted to be in a band.

I'm a singer. Don't know how to get in a band. I said, well, it's very easy. And I picked up a Now magazine. And back then, the magazine was super thick. It wasn't online. So it was a super thick magazine with a lot of want ads. So I opened it up and I said, here you go, open this up. Here's an example.

Look at this band. A band from Switzerland is looking for a singer and they've just arrived here and they're well known in europe and they're looking for a singer i said so circle that i said so why don't you just audition for that one and he goes great idea so then i walk home and as i'm walking home i'm like why don't i audition for that that sounds like a fun thing band from switzerland what will that be like so i went to the audition yeah um i got it to the second round of auditions because at first I'm like, this is weird. I'm a punk rock singer and these guys had

some melodic songs I was supposed to sing. And I kind of realized, hmm, I can sing a bit. This is actually, you know, this is like Leonard Cohen kind of singing or something. It's deep voice, Stan Ridgeway, Tom Waits, that kind of talking singing thing. And I'm like, you know what? This is pretty good. So when they finally gave me the gig, I'm like, okay, look it. I know you had singers better than me. I know you had singers that have at least two or three octaves. Come on. You got better singers.

And they said, yeah, but your visions and the way you wanted to rewrite our songs with your new lyrics, because the second time I came in for the audition, I had rewritten all their songs. And I said, you guys have some good ideas, but your lyrics, the English isn't quite up to snuff for people, right? And that's the whole reason they were looking for a singer

is they came from Switzerland and realized, oh, people are laughing at how we pronounce things and do things. We thought we were cool, but we're actually like Spinal Tap over here. And this is pre-Spinal Tap, but we're actually like spinal tap over here. So, and this is pre spinal tap, but still that idea. Um, so,

so they let me in. And the first thing I did is I convinced them, we need to just get our crap together and get right over to Switzerland and play for even just one summer. And then we'll come back and we'll be the guys who went to Europe, but we got to do it with me and we got to have press in there. And so they were totally into it. They said, you're right. When we're done, it took us about two months to prepare, right?

We're going to rehearse every single day. And this is something you can only do when you're young. I don't know where, no one had any money. But we rehearsed every single day. We wrote songs. We practiced. We did it probably four to five hours a day. And then went to Europe and had a blast.

Amazing. And then people changed. Like a lot, most of the Swiss guys ended up getting day jobs and we bring in Canadians to fill in. And like the amount of people that came through the band is monumental. But Great Bob Scott and I

were pretty much there from the beginning. Okay. We're going to pick up the look people on the other side. But first I want to just do a tiny bit of business here. Give you a chance to sip that beer. Rest your voice.

This is Remember the Time. So, James, on this day, this exact day in 1906, and I know you're not a very big sports fan, so this fun fact will mean nothing to you, but on this day in 1906, Toronto iced its very first professional hockey team. This hockey team was called the Toronto Hockey Club. It was, yeah, Toronto's first professional club. It was also known as the Toronto Professionals, or more simply, the Torontos, which I think is a great name for a team, the Torontos.

The Torontos. Yeah, the Torontos. They'd play exhibition matches. I guess you'd know if people were from here or not, because they'd be like, are you going to the Torontos game? You're like, you're not from here. Are you going to the Toronto game?

Yeah, you're from here. That's what they do at the border, right? The Toronto, so they played exhibition games against the best clubs in Canada and the United States. So not the Marlies. Nope. So this all predates the arenas. Yeah, what was it?

The St. Patrick's, I think it was the St. Patrick's. You know, I used to have this parrot, and every time the Leafs would lose, it would squawk and squawk. Oh, it did a lot of squawking in there. And you're supposed to say, what did the parrot do when they won? And I'm going to tell you, I only had the parrot 40 years.

Yeah, I missed... Yeah, that's an old corny joke. I missed my vaudeville punchline there. Remember the Time, James, is brought to you by Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair. They've been doing quality watch and jewelry repairs for over 30 years. And they're much better than me.

Much better than you. I worked at a shop like that. Okay, well, you know the shops that were in Sears? Remember? Well, Canada had Sears, of course, until recently. And they had a watch repair place in there. That actually was the Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair people. They were in the Sears.

And then Sears disappeared. So now they're starting to open their own shops. When I moved to Toronto, I had to pretend that I needed a job. And I walked into a jewelry store in the beaches. I think it was called Spurrier Jewelers. And there was an in the front window. I saw this window display and I'm like, wow, that's pretty ugly. So I walked in and I said, hi, listen, I'm wondering if you need help with your window display. That's what I do. I've been doing window displays and I'm just, wow, that's pretty ugly. So I walked in and I said, hi, listen, I'm wondering if you need help

with your window display. That's what I do. I've been doing window displays and I'm just lying about everything. I just need a job, right? Fake it till you make it. And I know how to artsy things up. I could do that, window display.

And I'd only done a few. I did the Rivoli in a couple of places. But it was like, I'm in high school and I walk in and I tell them the stuff I can bring in, right? There was some toy store and I said, look, these aren't for sale, but it was like, I'm in high school and I walk in and I tell them what I, what the stuff I can bring in. Right. Right. Uh, there was some toy store and I said, look, these aren't for sale, but I have a Pez collection.

Let me put them in your window. Um, at my own club at the Beehive, I had empty lighters, thousands of them. A friend of mine had collected all the empty lighters he could, and we made a stained glass window out of it. Awesome. Right. So all these things. So I went to them and I said, let me do your window display.

The old guy likes me and he's like, so do you know how to fix watches? And I said, oh yeah, I mean, I did that for a little while up in North Bay. Of course I didn't. So he said, well, I could use some help. So I lasted three weeks and then they figured out

I didn't actually know how to fix watches. I fixed some watches. It feels like that would be a real skill. I don't. It is, it is a real skill, but here's the thing. So these were not high to fix watches. I fixed some watches. It feels like that would be a real skill. It is a real skill, but here's the thing. So these were not high-tech watches. These are old, true, tried-and-true watches. So a lot of times, if you open the back

of your watch and see that there's something not moving, you just release the piece of dust or whatever it is that isn't moving. Right, there's some gunk in there. Or try a new battery first, because half the time, that's all it was, if it was a more modern watch. But I didn't last long. I didn't know what a spring ring was, which, of course course anyone would know uh i called it a doohickey um stuff like that so it didn't last very long but i have respect for people who actually know what they're

doing and uh i don't care what anyone says there's no there's nothing wrong with linear time if you want to know what time it is you might as well know what time it is right and these guys know what they're doing and by the way speaking of watch batteries if you want to know what time it is, you might as well know what time it is. Right. And these guys know what they're doing. And by the way, speaking of watch batteries, if you want 15% off your regular priced watch battery installation, just go to a FastTime location and say,

Toronto Mike sent me. I heard about you guys on Toronto Mike. They'll take 15% off the price right away. This is a great deal. Go to FastTimeWatchRepair.com for a location near you. They actually opened a new location in Richmond Hill. So do that.

By the way, it makes sense now, James, that you were doing the watch repair stuff, even if only for a few weeks, because then you end up in Switzerland, right? Because that's where the watch stuff is. That's true. And that's where I actually probably... I don't know for sure about this.

I'll have to ask friends. But I'm pretty sure I wasn't always on time in the early 80s. By the time I came back from Switzerland, not only are there trains like incredibly on time, the whole country is a giant train set, but also people were not late for lunches and meals. They didn't say, sorry,

there's this thing called traffic that got in my way. Like, no, you didn't leave early enough. That's the truth of it, right? Right. So I realized, wow, everyone there values each other's time and they show up on time. So I've made it a habit.

Fashionably late is five minutes early. That's my motto. I don't want someone waiting for me. That's a good motto. And ideally, I don't want to be waiting for someone else. If it's a date, it says a lot about somebody if they're on time. And if they're 10, 20 minutes late and they're really beautiful and have a crazy story, then it's like, you know what?

I know you're worth the wait. Let's just try to be on time next time. It's boring to sit around. But when someone's really, really late, you kind of know, whether it's business or personal, you know that they have a problem with seeing the big picture. So Swiss accuracy got into my bones after I came back and I thought, yeah, I think it's really good to be on time.

And don't just use traffic as an excuse. Amen, man. If you get to a meeting early or dinner party early, that you get to just walk around the block twice. Like, actually just take a moment of repose it's okay i know we're in a big city but we're going to slow down once in a while i'm with you man i'm with you uh no so look people um i'm so we got a kind of the origin story of uh look people and i guess is now a good time i'm going

to play a bit of lowrider here let's play it and we'll talk about it. And this video was directed by Joel Goldberg? It was, and Nash the Slash is on doing the violin solo, but he didn't want to be in a video in the daytime at a go-kart track out by the airport. He goes, no, that's not like the Nash the Slash way. I'm in dark alleys. I'm not

out in sunny days. So we didn't blame him for that But he sure sounds good on the violin So I can tell you with this song We weren't too excited about doing this song. We were actually just shy of being pissed off. We did this as an encore at the El Macombo at a show, and a bunch of record labels were in the audience.

And when I said, let's go back and do Lowrider for a second encore, first one was one of our own tunes, went back and did it as a second encore. And we were done it was clay tyson who said yeah with our luck they're gonna say that's gotta be our first single and sure enough we got a record deal and they said let's do that as your first single and we're like we've written so many songs we only do three cover tunes a david clayton thomas, War, this one Lowrider, and 21st Century

Schizoid Man by King Crimson. Those are the only covers we did and this one became the single. The video's a lot of fun though.

Without a doubt, man. We're talking late 80s, right? Like where are we at here approximately? Yeah, we would be. We would be late 80s into the early 90s.

Yeah, Goldberg's your man. I'm pointing to my left is the 12-inch single for Let Your Backbone Slide. And I know that was... This was all about the same time, right? In the late 80s and early 90s, Joel was everywhere directing videos and producing videos. And that's, again, why probably Maestro and I crossed paths a bunch of times because we had a lot of the same friends.

I can imagine. It was a much smaller city back then. It sure was. I can't believe how many people I don't know. And you know what? The other thing is now I don't have any reason. I'm like a Canadian celebrity who needs a name tag. I know a lot of people, and they know me back,

but I never walk into a room assuming a bunch of people in the room know me. I don't. That kind of celebrity. There are so many scenes. Toronto is filled with little beautiful microcosms, but not one big scene. The jazz scene is incredible here. The avant-garde crazy music scene is really good here. I mean, these are the things I know more than the others.

But when I see even showcases of young bands, there's a lot of interesting music going on in all genres, but there's no one major scene. So people don't really know each other. And if people say, oh, you're James B., I have no idea if they know me from some old television show I used to do or one of my bands. I don't. I just, I'm happy to meet people, whether they know me from some old television show I used to do or one of my bands like I don't I just I'm happy to meet people whether they know me or not but I don't really assume I know and

it's kind of weird to start a conversation with well let's talk more about me tell me how you know me what do you know about me what do you like about you might remember me from such films as but when somebody comes up to me at a booze can and this happened, a guy comes up to me and maybe he's a little bit unfocused. But he he's like, I know you, man. You're on Bowling with Ziggy. You're on the Life Network doing this vintage vintage show. And he names like four things I did. And and you think you're so big.

I said, no, I don't think I'm so big. I think I'm so thirsty. I just came no, I don't think I'm so big. I think I'm so thirsty. I just came to this booze can to see a band and have a beer. I said, it sounds to me like you watch a lot of TV.

I haven't even seen the shows you're talking about. I love the process. I'm picked up by a car, taken somewhere. I do, like the limo you sent for me. I appreciate that.

But I did get you a beer. You got me some beer. That's worth the Uber. I'm kidding. But no, but these places, I mean, you're treated did get you a beer. You got me some beer. That's worth the Uber. I'm kidding. But no, but these places, I mean, you're treated well. And you get to, in my opinion, I'm usually, in my case, I'm usually trying to promote something. It could be a book or a record or it could be another band because I spend half my time promoting other people. But I'm going there for a purpose and it's fun.

But I don't go home and watch myself and critique myself on how I could be better or not. I don't take myself that seriously. By the way, Jay Gold, Joel Goldberg with Jay Gold, that name always reminds me of Jake Gold. See, this is where we have to stop right now because you've got Jake Gold, who was on Canadian Idol as a judge.

You've got Jay Gold, who's a very famous accountant and highly respected. Please don't confuse those two. And then you've got Joel Goldberg, who very few people know as Jay Gold. I don't even remember that. Yeah, you can blame Retro Ontario for the fact that I know all this. But Jake Gold, I had a phone call with him fairly recently in which he said he would not do my show unless I paid for his transportation

to and from. I don't think you need that. We'll just leave it at that. Okay. I'm going to obey my mama's law and not say anything at all right now. Well, that's no fun. Okay, let's listen.

What am I playing here? How many golden rings are there? Five unhand rings. Five. How many guys in are there? Five Five Five Sorry for the poor audio quality Well that's okay Yeah this song was a favorite of Lollapalooza musicians Like Jane's Addiction?

Yeah That was Perry Farrell's band right? Yes Yeah so Perry was a fanrell's band, right? Yes. Yeah, so Perry was a fan, but it all started with Flea. Can you turn that down? Yeah, yeah. It's hard to talk over that quality of... It's a bit tinny, yeah.

The thing about that, it was a fun funk tune we did. I made a video for $500 at, I don't know, was it Rogers or McLean Hunter, whatever the cable thing was called, in Etobicoke. Yeah, McLean Hunter, I don't know, was it Rogers or McLean Hunter, whatever the cable thing was called, in Etobicoke. Yeah, McLean Hunter, I think. It was one of the highest rated and most played videos of that year on Much Music, even though it cost us $500. Wow.

It was all blue screen, and it was so much fun. But it was Flea from the Chili Peppers that would take people onto their tour bus and play them that video. It was the video five and a video of my drummer break dancing in a cowboy outfit. And so Flea turned so many people onto our music,

we ended up getting invited to play on the side stage. Oh, at Lollapalooza. Yeah, first it was in LA through Perry Farrell and then a guy up here who's a hero, Elliot Lefkoe, a great agent and a champion of music, got us on the shows up here. And the only time we got in trouble was when Great Bob Scott, my drummer,

took his pants off in Molson, what do you call it, Park? The one up on Barrie? Yeah, it was Molson Park. Molson Park. That's the only time where police came up and said, if your drummer takes his pants off one more time, we're putting you all in jail. It would be the best press you could.

You couldn't buy that kind of press. Also, you can't put us all in jail for a guy who's naked at a rock concert. Also, the Chili Peppers did that all the time. Well, yeah, they had a sock over their privates, and Bob didn't go for the sock. And by the way, that exact same show, speaking of good press,

that exact same show, Dave Ab good press, that exact same show, Dave Abruzzi, who was the drummer for Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam, yeah. Wow, you knew that. Yeah, my second favorite band of all time. He would move the drums for Bob. He didn't want Bob to touch his own drums because he said, we're not worthy to have you. Like, he was such a fan.

And Bob's such a weirdo. And Eddie Vedder would wear, and this is back, I love that this could happen. Eddie Vedder would just wear a baseball hat and he'd be, I love that this could happen. Eddie Vedder would just wear a baseball hat and he'd be in the audience and he looked like everybody else in the audience. No one knew Eddie Vedder

was sitting right beside them looking at our band. Yeah, that was early days for Pearl Jam, right? Because they don't really break until 10 and 91 or whatever. That's right. That was early days.

They were just breaking, actually. This was their big... Was Nirvana on this bill too? Was this the Lollapalooza that Nirvana and Pearl Jam? No, Soundgarden was on the bill. Oh, wow. But what I remember is Fleek would come back and go,

hey, look, I want you and Great Bob to come and dance on Real Men Don't Kill Coyotes or one of their old songs. We knew all their stuff. We knew the Chili Peppers from Switzerland. We'd already partied with them a bunch and I'd interviewed them in Switzerland. And they weren't famous. That's their first George Clinton record. They weren't famous at all. I only discovered them in Switzerland and they weren't famous. That's their first George Clinton record.

They weren't famous at all. I only discovered them after Mother's Milk came out. Wow, that's late. Yeah. So they had the Mojo stuff. Right. The Uplift Mojo Party Plan was the first amazing

kind of white funk record because, and it was George Clinton who went in there and made sure they didn't lose the funk. It was my favorite record of theirs actually

and Hillel was alive back then, their guitar player, great guy. And it was George Clinton who went in there and made sure they didn't lose the funk. It was my favorite record of theirs, actually. And Hillel was alive back then, their guitar player, great guy. And so we would hang out. So Flea said to everybody, OK, we're going to get these guys to do backups. We go back to the stage at Lollapalooza to go up on stage with them and do backups. And the guy backstage is saying, there's no way I'm letting you anywhere near there. I said, he's invited us up. I said, at least bring us backstage. We'll wave.

He'll wave at us and wave us to come on stage and then you'll know that I'm right. And he goes, I'll tell you what. If he doesn't bring you on stage, I'm going to punch you guys out. He was serious. He hated us.

We looked weird, right? And he didn't want us near backstage. So we did it and he called us out and we did the dance and everything. And at the end of the song, this is one of their last songs on the set, Flea yells, I love the look people. The next day at Lee's Palace, there's an article in the paper with Flea saying he loves the look people. And then that lineup around the block, we'd never had that before. Awesome.

And it was also kind of getting towards our last days of that particular lineup. And it was really cool because one guy like Flea saying he likes something is worth 20 journalists. We had people always say they're a great live band. You should check them out. But having a musician say it is what affects people. Kevin Hearn from the Baren ladies uh was he was in look people he was in you know we had so many versions of look people he was in what i would consider uh almost like i i don't want to be rude to all the other members but the definitive

look people lineup was when we were the happiest and and the wildest uh wildest meaning we were the happiest and the wildest. Wildest meaning we were half cool and half nerds, right? And that was Kevin Hearn and Logo High and Clay Tyson and me and Great Bob Scott. Clay quit the band and then Chris Gartner joined and we were great. And we were doing Lollapalooza at that time as well. It was a different year. Rage Against the Machine opened for us.

They weren't famous yet. And I went backstage. I went backstage to the lead singer, and I said, you know my favorite song is Fuck You, I Won't Do What You Tell Me. And do you have to beep that? No.

Good. Because that's the name of the song. Yep. And he said, thanks, man. I said, I just think it's kind of like Life of Brian. And he goes, what do you mean? I said, well, you're yelling, Fuck You, I Won't Do What You Tell Me, and you put the mic out in the audience and they all yell, fuck you, I won't do

what you tell me. Well, they're basically doing what you're telling them. And he didn't seem to get the irony and he really thought I was being- Zach DeLaRocca is who you're talking to. Esoteric and he didn't look like he, yeah. But they sure did kick it, man. They were incredible live. That was my jam too, man. That self-title with the monk who set himself on fire, that was the cover of that album. Man, yeah, right.

Fuck You, That Was All Great. I mean, they were such a good live band. Killing in the Name Of is the name of that song. Right. And what they would do is they would up our game because now we got to follow these guys and we better be extra heavy. But I actually called it the lollapalooza virus because what would happen is we were so heavy we kind of lost a little bit of the playful

awkward thing that i actually personally preferred is is just where you're not quite sure what to make of them instead of oh those guys are circus but it's top balance right because uh you're kind of getting lumped in there with like i want to say, Corky and the Juice Pigs. Well, only in Canada. Yeah. And you know what? We were lumped in with them and Bare Naked Ladies and a few other bands.

And I just took it as a compliment because everyone they're comparing us to are really, really gifted. Yeah. I know they mean it as a diss, but I don't care. And everywhere else in the world, they compared us to Frank Zappa or The Tubes. And then later, people would compare us to the Chili Peppers, which was proof that the humor was so dry or jaded

that a lot of people didn't get the humor in the band, and they thought that we were now a cool band, which I don't know if we ever wanted to be a cool band. It's almost like I'm thinking of like boot sauce, right? You know what I mean? I'm trying to think of a band that's like... That's a name people are going to have to be looking up on Wikipedia. They had their moment, though.

Oh, they did. And everyone's a winner, babe. They had a good version of that tune. I took those guys on some parties. I actually escorted them with a private tour of Disney World. Wow. How did you score that? I was working for Much Music as a party consultant at Daytona Beach Spring Break.

And they were one of the bands playing. And I just really got along with a few of the band members. The singer, the bass player, the guitar player was Sonny Greenwich Jr.'s son, Sonny. So that's Sonny's son, Sonny. And they were fun. I arranged it for a girl I knew who was

high-ranking. She would do the videos of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. So she'd be in a scuba suit going down, shooting the fish and the things going by so that when you're in your hotel, you'dagues Under the Sea. So she'd be in a scuba suit going down, shooting the fish and the things going by so that when you're in your hotel, you'd see all the things you can do.

Yeah, and you'd see all the things that... So we're doing a tour with her and she tells us this story. So now I'm with Boots House. We never have to line up. The best thing about Disney World, go with a private person who works there, be a celebrity,

and you don't have to line up. So she takes us around and she says, I with a private person who works there, be a celebrity, and you don't have to line up. So she takes us around, and she says, I'd never worn a scuba suit, but I was their star camera gal, right? So they put me in a scuba suit, and I had to go underneath to shoot. She goes, as I was under, I started to feel a bit nauseous. I took out my breathing apparatus, and I vomited underwater, and then put it back in. Now, when I put it back in, my mask started getting

a little bit foggy and everything was a bit surreal. And she goes, I wasn't going to pass out. I was just a little bit sick. But suddenly, all these exotic fish from around the world, the most colorful, beautiful fish you've ever seen, were all around me nibbling on my vomit. And I felt like Snow White with all the forest animals. That's trippy, man.

I wrote a song called Underwater Hurl and my bass player hated the song so much he quit the band. Now, obviously that was the straw. It wasn't really just that song. I think it was just that, hey, every time you have a brain fart, we have to write a song. What if we just say no to that idea? All right, I'm going to take you back again to 1992.

All right. Oh, look, an audience. Join me every Friday night at 11 o'clock. It's our new time. See you then. Friday night with Ralph Ben-Murgy. A new time right after Kids in the Hall. Fridays at 11, 11.30 in Newton Blatt. So speaking of

Torontonians who moved to Hamilton, he's living in Hamilton now. Ralph Ben-Murgy. Ralph Ben-Murgy. And it's kind of funny that your podcast is running. This is almost real time. It's coming up today, right? Yeah, I'm going to put 15 minutes after we take that picture outside,

I'm going to have this online. Well, this is cool because Ralph Ben-Murgy is my guest on my podcast, which launched today. And it's on YouTube. It's a visual thing. So you have to basically look on YouTube. But it's called the James P Podcast. And Ralph is my guest today.

Today. On my show. He's been here. And he's supposed to be coming back. I'm glad you've got him as your guest. But is it also, like, is it an audio too? Or is it just YouTube? It's just YouTube for now because I don't have this beautiful gear you have, and I refuse...

Oh, when I drop off the lasagna, we can talk about that. Yeah, I refuse to use crappy audio gear after having, you know, 20 plus years in radio. I don't want to have crappy audio gear. But the audio is fine when you're looking at people and they're talking. I also put them in front of a green screen so Jason Brown and I can come up with silly things to put in the background while he's talking. Okay, so two things.

One is make sure you say hi to Ralph. I will. And he's very spiritual. This guy gets so interesting to talk to. He's not what people would usually think. And in my opinion, he is probably the definitive Canadian celebrity because you keep grounded.

You're self-effacing. You don't think anybody owes you anything. Stay real. Yeah, we had some pretty deep spiritual discussions with Ralph, for sure. Yeah, I still go out to his place in Hamilton. We have brunch and we talk about lots of stuff. And it's funny because there was a time when working with him was not always that easy.

Well, again, let's get to that. So the reason I play that clip is because you were the show's musical director and the Look people were the house band. We got along fine during that show, although he wasn't that happy during that show. He kind of felt boxed in. Like he had so many, and truly, there were so many people involved in that show. He kind of felt boxed in. Like he had so many, and truly,

there were so many people involved in that show. I had three people to attach one lavalier mic to my vest or something. It was, there were so many people and so many producers. So I think he felt like literally, here's the man trapped in the middle of all of this. And he was, the show itself, the musical performances and interviews were good,

but there was a lot of elements to that show. And I'm not so sure that, you know, he mentions it whenever we talk, that it was not so Canadian. The budget looked too big. Everything looked a little too big. And he came between Tommy Hunter and Rita McNeil. So he's a little too city-slicken he came between tommy hunter and rita mcneil so he's a little a little too city slicking for the room interesting yeah that's what i think but the show itself to to do that show was a lot of fun uh the amount of license we had to wear whatever we want that

was executive producer uh mark breslin right from yuck yucks he's the guy he's the guy who really gave us he was the biggest Look People supporter of anyone more than any label or anyone. So, about, I'm going to say, six weeks ago, he was booked and scheduled

to be on this show and then something happened with his kid's school and he had to cancel last week. Right. And he's never rescheduled. Interesting. So he is a super busy guy

between running a huge company and having a little kid. He, I didn't think he was ever going to have a kid. This kid is a little genius. And I could see, as a dad now, it's just, nope, kid comes first, 100%. So hopefully you'll get him back here. Well, when I do get him back, now I have this conversation with you.

I can reference and talk about look people. So cool. Yeah. Well, he was never afraid of us. The opposite. In fact, okay, here's a story. Yeah. CBC, I had decided, we had just come back from a tour of out west and California and Lollapalooza, all this stuff.

And I decided to let my hair start to grow in a little bit. I had a shaved head and I only had hair sticking out of the top like a rhinoceros, like a horn. Right. Or I could just attach an elastic and let it fall down and it looked like a water fountain. It looked like Pebbles Flintstone without the bone in the hair. So I like to call that beyond gay.

No, I don't even know what that was. I looked like Zippy the Pinhead, but I enjoyed it. And I had that hair don't, it's not a hairdo, for three years walking around, everyone's smiling and laughing. Now they're laughing at me, but I forget what I look like because I've had the hair so long. So I just think the world's happy and friendly. I forget people are laughing at me. That's a good trick. It's my nature. Yeah. I have a lot of

tricks how to stay happy. I don't think I'll write a book about it. But anyway, I would look at this as, you know, this is all fun and game. So I'm going to grow it back now just for a change. And Mark says, look, you got the job at CBC as the musical director, no matter what. You can have whatever band you want. I know you want look people, and I'm there, but I'm just telling you, it's up to you. The only thing I ask is that you don't grow your hair normal.

And I said, well, that's weird. What does that matter? And he says, I just know that CBC get picked on by the media all the time. This is government money. They better do it our way. Like everyone's an armchair critic. He said, so if you come in with long hair, they're going to say you sold out. You used to be in the wildest band in the world.

Now you work for CBC and you have normal hair. And he's right. I never thought of it that way. That was one. Like you conformed. Yeah, so I did shave my head, and I'm glad I did because it looks ridiculous. It's like Paul Schaefer, he looked way better

when he shaved his head too. He just started looking more like a cartoon character, like Lex Luthor or something. So he was right to say, don't give up being weird. You're on CBC, but please be yourself. On the opening show, the weird. You're on CBC, but please be yourself. On the opening show, the first show we did at CBC, Great Bob Scott wore adult

diapers and nothing else and was playing drums. So CBC bigwigs were very nervous and Mark was just giggled. He just loved that they didn't know what to make of us. But the show was a lot of fun and another thing he told me to do when I was young, he said, look, you're a freelance

guy. Keep your receipts always. Keep your receipts. Keep them in bags and boxes for six years. They're coming after you one day. And he was right. At one point, the taxman came up and said, we don't believe anything. You better start proving all this stuff.

That's good advice you got there. Yep. And it was life-saving advice because I had to pay an accountant $4,000 to prove that the government owed me $2,000. Oh, no. So the government's out too. I'm out too. My accountant's up too. I'm out too.

I'm out too. That's life. That sucks. That sucks. So when they do cancel the late night with Friday night, sorry, Friday night with Ralph Ben-Murray. Which they canceled the do cancel the late night with Friday night, sorry, Friday night with Ralph Ben-Murray. Which they canceled the beginning of the new year, the first, what was it, Thursday of

January, what would that have been, 94? 94, I think. Yeah. So January 94, we went in for a production meeting and we're told the show was canceled. And your look people, you canceled look People like a few months later, right? What we did, it's pretty funny. We had a t-shirt, we had a record called

Crazy Eggs, and it was based on a saying that Burl Ives said. Burl Ives once said, because he became a vegetarian at 70, and he lived to 83. So Burl said, it's them crazy eggs that'll get you. He says, you are what you eat.

And if your eggs aren't organic or free range, if those chickens aren't running around a field, you're eating all of their anxiety. And he says, with meat, it's even worse because you're eating the anxiety of the animal and the fear and everything of the animal. And unless you're going out, literally going out and hunting and eating the thing you just shot and you and you shot it humanely like the way that people have hunted and done things for years otherwise you know it's

coming from you know a factory where they just line up and wait to be killed and cows know as they're lining up that they're about to be killed whether they do or not but this belief right so we call the album crazy eggs after burl and we go on the road and we made a shirt called the laying of the egg tour and it was prophetic because that tour was bouncy and bumpy we ended up in california everybody uh had a reason for like this has to work now we've been doing this a long time. We need a deal. And so our whole lives hinged on a couple of showcases in Los Angeles. A lot of celebrities and cool people showed up.

No major record labels. No deals were offered. And so we broke up in LA. It was nine years to the day of our very first gig. Nine years to the exact day. It was the day before my birthday, April 12th. And we decided, well, I decided, and I took Bob to a bar and said, listen, man, I think we got to pull the plug.

I certainly didn't want to come all the way home the way we just came. We were going to go back and do the same tour coming home that we had just done. And we weren't making enough money. In fact, my visa was paying for all the things we weren't. Like, I'm the only guy in the band with a visa back then. Right.

So I had to pay for everything. I'm like, we just got to pull the plug and go away. And I was really into big band music. And I liked Harry Connick. And I liked humor. So I said, I think I want to do some kind of spike jones big band it's a little bit like wayne newton it's a little bit like harry connick it's a little bit like spike jones or spike lee spike lee and and spike jones spike jones i keep thinking of directors there's

a director spike jones but i mean the old guy yeah yeah the vaudevillian yes um so so bob's like okay well i'd be into doing that like yeah i'd be into doing that. Like, yeah, I'll be into doing that. So we told the band, and we really said, we need a break. We didn't say we were never going to play together. And we've never said that, because we never had a fight. We're not going to not play together. It's just Kevin Hearn went off and did Corky and the Juice Pigs, then the Rio Statics, then the Barenaked Ladies.

Wow. And then Clay opened up a bike shop that he owns and and kind of went off on business and writes his own music and has always been doing music but he really wanted to just have a bit more security and a job that might make a few bucks sure pay the rent and uh chris gartner is playing in a million different bands a lot of world music bands long go high is doing soundtrack work, which he's never stopped doing. So everybody moved on pretty easily. I would say Bob and I were the two that maybe didn't have quite as much of a plan and kind of dug our heels and said, we're musicians and we're just going to do this. But I would say that Bob's being one of the

greatest drummers in the world living right now, probably. But because of his stage antics, there was a lot of serious bands that would have said, oh, he'll just upstage us. Right. So I don't know if he got as much work as he should have. As a drummer, he should have been in any band he wanted. But visually, he was so special and so much more interesting than most bands that I think that's why he pretty much stayed on the freak scene and played with really

interesting music, but not necessarily the most commercial. I'm just going to bring up a little bit of this is a cover of Streets of Philadelphia by Molly Johnson, of all people. Molly Johnson, of all people. Molly Johnson, of course, she put together the AIDS benefit, Kumbaya, which was at Ontario Place and MuchMusic broadcast this.

Ontario Place Forum, the revolving stage. I remember that revolving stage. Where I saw Tom Jones and lesser bands. I saw my first concert ever there, Chalk Circle. Do you remember Chalk Circle? Chris Tate. Yes. Great band.

They sounded a lot like a very young U2. Yeah, great band. Yeah, yeah. That's, yeah. I still, every April 1st. April Fools. April Fools. That was the song.

April Fools, yeah. Great, great, great song. Big head. And CFNY played the mess out of it, and it's a great song. So here's some Molly. Tell me about your role in, and I'll bring down Molly, but in the Kumbaya festival there. There's this little restaurant called Mimi's that's no longer around. She passed away.

But it was a tiny restaurant with about 20 seats. And if you walked in there, if you were lucky enough to be allowed in there, because she really just, oh, I don't know. You were closed. What? But there are people here. Yeah, well, they're the last ones i'm serving i gotta go and she just like not let people in um but you could see members of rush cowboy junkies uh blue rodeo always in there um and so molly comes in and mimi is playing a demo cassette that i made with john o'grant of three original tunes. So the band Look People had just broken up. I decide I'm going to try to go get some,

and I very rarely, Look People got some government sponsorship for some tours or something, but I very rarely did I ever fill out a form. I find individuals or I find other ways of financing records, not asking the government for it, which I don't blame if people want to. I think it's wonderful that we support the arts, but I'd had a different route.

So I made this demo and I played, I sang and played trumpet and maybe some percussion and Jono played every other instrument on the demo. So he played sax, bass, guitar, piano, everything. And we made this demo. Molly comes in, she hears it. She's like, Hey, what's that? And Molly says, Oh, it's James B right here. And she goes, James, you're singing. That's not punk rock. And I'm like, no, no, the look people broke up.

So I'm just doing this stuff. I said, it's, it's a, it's a jazz band. Um, and, and it's a four piece, it's just a four piece band and all the horns we just keep overdubbing. And she said, Oh, well, why don't you use Colleen Allen and the Canadian Women with Horns? It's like a four-piece all-woman horn band. I said, oh, that would mean so much.

I said, Jonna would for sure want to write charts for Colleen Allen. Like, she's awesome. I would love that. So she said, okay, well, maybe I can get you a gig at Kumbaya. And I didn't even know what that was. I just said, oh, we'd love a gig. I said, that would be so crazy. I just got back from Europe.

I can't believe we might get a gig. she did she got us a gig we got to play two songs uh between uh uh what was it moxie fruvis and bare naked ladies and then it was andy kim oh yeah yeah and he was just here he was just here yeah so all so all these guys were playing and it was like star studded there was every every canadian tragically hip was there everybody was there like i can't even imagine. I could tell you who wasn't there, but I can't even tell you who was there. And so it's across Canada on Much Music. And there I am singing a couple of jazz tunes I wrote with my band and all these beautiful women with horns.

And I just had to be like, pinch me. This is so nice. So because of Molly and because of that, I really had the confidence to go out, raise the money, get the thing going, get a record deal later with BMG. Everything kind of happened from that very

first concert, just going, I know we have something here. She got the Order of Canada. So she's been... I would think Kumbaya alone, for the amount of money she raised and what she did, she was like the Bob Geldo Order of Canada. So she's been... Well, I would think Kumbaya alone, for the amount of money she raised and what she did, she was like the Bob Geldof of Canada for that. But also, her community involvement is way bigger than that.

She's kicking butt for the good guys on a regular basis. And the Kensington Market Jazz Festival is just more proof of that. I'm getting angry because the Molly Johnson you're talking about, we have so much respect for her. I would like her to come on, like you've come on, for a conversation like this. Instead, I had a different Molly come on. Oh, of course.

Is there two Mollys? No, no. There's one beautiful Molly who does not put up with much of the music industry. So am I the music industry? I mean, it depends on how you ask and what you have to offer. I have no idea. But I'm saying that when it comes to doing interviews, she would never be here this long.

I can tell you that. She doesn't want to just sit around and talk about herself. She just doesn't want to. I would bet if she had an event coming up and she wanted her to talk about a charity. So for example, the Kensington Market Jazz Festival, great event that she organizes, she did want to talk about that. And I got the strong impression that's all she wanted.

Exactly right. No, but that's it. She has no interest in telling people all about her life and her thoughts and this and that. She wants to work really on point. What is it that I want people to know? Do I want them to know about how I started Ultimo or one of my old bands?

No, I don't need, it's not important right now. What's important is this one thing. So she's micro-focused and she also has a lot of help. Like Ori Dagan last year and the year before, Genevieve Marantet, who is my best friend, who was knee-deep in making it happen. So she's got these good people. Céline Peterson, Oscar's daughter. All these people are really,

really involved. There's someone you need on your show. Céline Peterson. Sold. She can tell a story. You know, Oscar Peterson, I guess he was a lakeshore guy because there's a monument to great lakeshore residents. And he's part of this monument. Like just a couple of...

I know his last, the last house he lived in, which was... For credit maybe? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, further out. Yeah, exactly. I wasn't going to say exactly where,

but it's a little further west than here. Yes. But yeah, he did live there for quite a while. And he... I think we've claimed, I don't know, maybe we were...

In New Toronto, they were desperate to claim some port credit. That's a little further west, maybe we were in New Toronto, they were desperate to claim some port credit. That's a little further west. I actually think he's passed port credit, but he might have been in this area earlier. I don't know where he was living for a lot of the time. That sounds great, but

I'm going to play a little clip of what Molly said on my show and just ask you for your feedback on it. People think when they see a musician like yourself all over Much Music, for example, which is a national station or on the radio, we assume that you drive around and you're Bentley or whatever and then you've got your mansion or whatever. I think there's an assumption that if you're on TV and you're a popular singer that you're rich in things.

That's America. That's not Canada, my friend. That's America. If you see an artist on TV in America singing a song they wrote, they're getting an evently. I, sir, do not have a driver's license. Neither do I. I mean. Just so you know. Just so you see. No, I'm not.

This is all about real talk. No, we're understanding. And now I got to level with you. Yeah. Okay, so I cut it off for the good part because I won't do that today. But that, by the way, if you're bored one day, what happens next is pretty epic. So Molly... I don't have a license either.

I was in North Bay. I moved down here at 18. When I was 16, I did not want to be the guy being the designated driver taking people to parties in North Bay. So I never got my license. Came down here, nobody had one. Didn't need one. I got my bike. I got the TTC. And if I'm in a pinch i got a taxi

right right i saved thousands of dollars of not parking and no gas and no up no insurance no buying the car no insurance like that's five ways i've saved money yeah um and one way to spend it for your health like you don't need a gym membership because you're biking everyone you you're you're talking to the converter here because i absolutely have told my friend who says get one of those new electric bikes i'm like no why why do you want me not to be healthy why are you telling me to sit on a motorized bike i just saw my mom uh and the christmas break well we just had christmas and i saw my mom and she was like oh mike i bike every day and she's like even in the winter i'm gonna bike today although today's like summer like a spring day today but i'll bike tomorrow when it's

cold but uh she's like, you're addicted to cycling. She's made it out to be like I'm addicted to heroin. And I'm like, you mean this thing I enjoy that puts me outside. I see my city. I think about things. You can also go from A to B that way or just cycle around and do it for health. If I have to go somewhere, that's how I get there. But also if I have nowhere to go because I work from home, i'm going to do it for like spiritual and physical well-being like this is like my how i mentally fit and physically fit

you ever do this where you can just like like i like dim sum and there's three different neighborhoods in in toronto that have great dim sum restaurants so i'll just get on my bike and say okay i'm going on a bike trip i'm going to this first place and all i'm going to have is hargao then i'm going to go to the next place and I just kind of make it very specific. So I have a little snack and I'm really looking forward to going but it's not really a mission. What you're doing I do something very similar where I

sort of like I create destination rides I call them. Right. So it's like sometimes if there's like let's say I have to get fabric for my wife. She sews all the time. There's a place nearby that's a fabric and there's a place let's say 14 kilometers away that sells the same fabric. Well, everyone's like, oh, you go to the one right here. But no, I always say, no,

I'm going to go to the one that's 14 kilometers away because I'd like the ride to the destination to buy it and come back. Toronto Mike, sponsored by Fabricland. Fabricland. One of the great jingles of this city. Everyone talks about that forever. Whoever wrote that, whoever wrote that may not have had any talent.

Whoever said, that's the jingle, you've nailed it. Because I'm sure there was many versions. There was like, fabric land, there's lots of fabrics for you to choose from. And then they just went for that one. Fabric land. Fabric land.

Yep, that's it. You can sing. Yeah, a little bit. Are you going to create a band for me? I want to be in a band with you, man. Only if it's called Fabricland. Yep, that's it. That beautiful... You can sing. Yeah, a little bit. Are you going to create a band for me? I want to be in a band with you, man. You sound like a good time. Only if it's called Fabricland. Oh, I'd do that.

You kidding me? Hey, and your wife can make us really hideous costumes. And she's good at that, too. Okay. It's a performance art band. I'm in, man. One last thing,

because I want to... Well, not last thing in the episode. One last thing before we wrap up. I want to talk a bit more about the Mark Daly stuff, and I want to talk about Jazz FM and a couple more quick things. But I want to, well, not last thing in the episode. One last thing before we wrap up. I want to talk a bit more about the Mark Daly stuff. And I want to talk about Jazz FM and a couple more quick things. But I want to share with everybody Paytm. It's an app designed to manage all of your bills in one spot.

You download this app from paytm.ca. They're the only app that gives you rewards for all your bill payments. Use the promo code Toronto Mike when you make your first bill payment with Paytm Canada. And they'll give you $10 in Paytm cash right away. You can spend that $10 on another bill or you can redeem them for rewards

like gift cards for your favorite store. Maybe they have a Fabricland one. Everybody's got an idea and that one sounds like I should look into it. And that's how I pay all my bills because even if they don't accept credit card,

Paytm accepts credit cards. I can put everything on my MasterCard and get points on that. So it's just pretty damn awesome. So that's Paytm. Thank you, Paytm, for your sponsorship. James, you mentioned earlier, or I mentioned earlier, Mark Daly. And you did some...

Can you tell me how this came to be that you performed with Mark Daly? Yeah, I'm trying to figure out... I mean, we just saw each other at events over the years, social events, charity events, not sporting events. But we saw each other around. And I think there was a picture, because I was at a party in Detroit with George Clinton. And I think I might have shown it to him.

And he said, I used to play trombone with that band. I'm like, what? I didn't know that he had spent time in Detroit and that he actually played trombone. And then I said, you know what? I don't have a trombone gig for you, but I do have a song called Life of the Party that is very funkadelic and funky-like.

Not nearly as funky as those guys, but we tried. And I said, will you come and sing some backing vocals? And so he did. And then I put out two other records, and I just kept bringing them back in, going, oh, I love your voice. Will you read this? Sometimes it was a rap song. Well, here's the thong song.

Oh, my favorite. This is my favorite. I'm gonna sing it again. She head bumps like a truck, truck, truck. Fires like what, what, what, all, truck. Fires like what, what, what. All night long. That was him.

You know, Mark Daly, I believe, is the voice in Subdivisions, Russia's Subdivisions. You know, that voice that goes, Subdivisions. So this is Clay Tyson sounding like Tom Jones here. Or maybe Michael Bolton. He was trying for Tom Jones. But anyway, it's a hilarious tune. And I wanted Mark Daly to be doing... Dubs like a truck, truck, truck. Perfect.

Yeah. And he also did another one called Southern Hospitality and that song, a ludicrous tune. Oh, there it is. This opens with Peter Kent, who's now a politician but used to be a news anchor.

Yes, he was. So check out the first line. This is so crazy. Cadillac grills, Cadillac bills, check out the oil my Cadillac spills. Matter of fact, candy paint Cadillac grills, Cadillac bills. Check out the oil my Cadillac spills. Matter of fact, candy paint Cadillac kills.

So check out the hose my Cadillac fills. Okay, so, oh, Mark? 20-inch high. Oh, don't you like my 20-inch ride? 20-inch thighs make 20-inch eyes. Hoping for American 20-inch eyes. Okay, so I gotta tell you, those two, right?

There's Mark Daly doing his rap and Peter Kent to get... Now that he's a politician, check out the hose my Cadillac fills. I mean, this is a real rap song.

I did not write these lyrics. What I did is I tried to clean them up without changing them. Right. Like, I wouldn't use the N-word in a song and that would be littered

throughout some of these songs. So instead of that, I'd say, hey fellas, listen to this. Amazing. I just wanted to... Oh, that one,

Steve Anthony. Steve Anthony's a hoot. You don't love them hoes when you get on the flow. Better throw them balls all my women in the house if you're chasing cash. And you've got some big titties with a matching ass.

With your fly ass boots or your open toes. When you get on the flow, better throw them balls. Yeah, so he basically brought in kind of the William Shatner type character on that. You know, he's the Corey Hertz boy in the box. Yeah. And you know what? He's a really good friend of mine. And what's funny with Steve is John Gallagher, who was City TV Sports, he was so jealous.

He was so jealous that he was out of town and he didn't get to read on that particular tune. Because when he heard everybody else, he's like, oh, my God. You got Steve Anthony. You got Peter Kent. You got, you know, I want to get on that thing. John Gallagher's a hoot too. These are some fun people, I'm telling you. They've been on this show.

John Gallagher is not in jail because he hired an editor for his book. He was about to put out a tell-all book and his editor's like, you might want to eliminate a few of these chapters. He promised to send me the unedited version but I never did. I never even got the edited version.

He interviewed me for it and I begged him not I never even got the edited version. Oh, I got that. He interviewed me for it, and I begged him not to tell some of the stories that we shared. For his own good. Nothing to do with me. No, it's quite the book. That's for sure. All right. I know I don't want to keep you four hours.

I got to get to the radio stuff, okay? Well, also, I got a six-pack of beer to go home with, so I really got to go now. I finished the first Great Lakes Brewery Octopus Beer. Octopus wants to fight. IPA. IPA, by the way, a good beer, right? Yeah. It stands for I Praise Al, Al Waxman.

You love the Al's. Weird Al, Al Waxman, you love them all. Jazz FM, tell us about your time at Jazz FM, and then I should tell you I have some obvious questions, but one here from a Twitter person who says he wants to hear your thoughts on The Collective and the Ross Porter contributions. Yeah, I don't want to talk about that,

and probably legally I'm not supposed to, but I could tell you that 16 years at a wonderful, wonderful station with so much fun. Oh, my God. And I came up with a whole bunch of jobs and I had a lot of support that seemed to dissipate in the last few years. And things weren't that easy over there, that's for sure. But what I can say is I think this station, the city needs a station like that. Jazz and the arts, especially jazz and jazz-influenced music, it's good for people.

Young people need this music. So no matter who takes over that station or what happens to that station, I only hope the best for the scene. I'm concerned about the musicians. I'm concerned about the nightclubs and all the people that support music. I think they deserve the best.

And hopefully things will turn around and it will be the best. So that's about all I can legally say. I totally get that. There's been a lot of litigation going around there lately and I don't want to be one of them. Let me ask it

differently in a way that won't get you in trouble. There was recently some announcements in social media that a group that, they call themselves The Collective, these people who have resistance at Jazz FM, that they're starting jazzcast.ca. Have you heard of this?

Well, those are, yeah, of course I've heard of it. I don't really know what the plan is there. I just know that Danny Elwell, uh, is a beautiful spirit and knows her music and lives to Ford music. She's just so, so into it and such a fan as a broadcaster. It's kind of nice to see people that are basically music nerds. They love music so much that it's not at all a job.

There's nothing else they could do. I'm not sure what the business plan is or anything like that, but I think there's room in Toronto. If something is done well, there is no such thing as competition. If something is done well, we're all raising the bar. We're all trying to help the same musicians and the same clubs and the same labels and the same everything. So I think the more, the better. and the same clubs and the same labels and the same everything. So I think the more the better. And I wish them great luck with that.

So you're not part of the jazz cast? Well, I can't right now because it's not that I wouldn't want to. It's like, look, I will go anywhere. If somebody wants to pay me to promote the music I love and the scene and get people, my life has been, for most of my life,

get people out of their house and into a room. It could be a salon, a little quiet party in someone's house. It could be a nightclub. It could be theater. But get out of your house. Be surrounded by people.

Sorry I can't help sports. I just don't get sports. That's okay. At all. But every other thing, whether it's ballet or classical, young kids can go

to classical now because TSO are smart, and they have all these programs and ways of getting people in a lot cheaper than when I was young. I couldn't ever afford or think about seeing the TSO. So anything that gets people out the door is wonderful. And like you said, you mentioned Dani Elwell. She was on recently. You're right, she loves music, and she's part of this jazz cast.

She was the spirit of radio back in the days of CFNY, and she brought some real insight. When she does a radio show, it sounds like she's talking right to you, whispering in your ear while you're listening to music. One of the best broadcasters I can think of. For her not to give up and say,

you know what, I'm not waiting for someone to give me a job. I'm just going to keep promoting and playing the music I love. I think it's great. It's a battle to figure out how to do this and get paid and how to get... It's a big thing, but I applaud her for it. I think it's a great idea. Also with her working on the JazzCast is Garvia Bailey. Yes.

She's part of that team. Yes. What was it like working with Garvia? Garvia is so sweet, intelligent, and real. She is one of the most sincere people. She will not shine you. She will not

give you the red apple. She's going to actually tell you exactly what she thinks, and she's going to be honest and sincere. So you know where you stand. I mentioned my best friend earlier, Genevieve Marintet. Same thing with Genevieve. She will let you know where you stand. I mentioned my best friend earlier, Genevieve Marentette. Same thing with Genevieve. She will let you know. If there's something going on in her life,

in her mind, or between you, she will just let you know so you've got somewhere to go from. So I loved her honesty and I would support her in any way, including if I was asked to testify. Oh, I no. Yes.

Now, Heather Bambrick recently resigned, and then very shortly thereafter, she was announced as part of this JazzCast initiative. Right, yeah. And Heather, I did, just to tell the listeners, Heather, who apparently lives near here, she is coming on very

soon, coming on Toronto Mike. She was a part-time person, and she may be able to speak and say whatever she wants. I was full-time, and it's not as free for me to talk about the situation over there. I'm allowed to say this, though. I'm going to try this. I'm a positive person, and I know there are a lot of donors and previous donors to that station, not-for-profit, you know, registered charity. Yeah, it's a public podcast.

Yeah, so the only thing I would say is that the company SaveJazzFM.com, right, is a bunch of donors that are trying to write the station. I'm not going to say the station is wronged right now, but I'm going to say that these people have been painted by some other people as they want to buy the signal and sell it and do all this stuff. It's absolutely a lie. 100%.

These are just concerned people who love jazz. I'm not going to diss anybody, but I'm going to tell you that those people are honorable and they have some good fight in them. so we'll see what happens um i'm trying not to get involved in fact all i've been doing for the last few months is trying to move on and it's very hard um um emotionally to move on when you when you feel bad for kind of who's left and what's happening right in in in this situation but um that's about it i've probably said a lot more than i was going to but all of it is about i love that station and i love

the people who make the music and the whole reason i did this in the first place for 16 years is because i love the musicians and the people who support them and that's not just the nightclubs and the publishers that's also the people who donate to a station and who buy concert tickets and who use the Patreon page to sponsor things. These people that give, even if it's five bucks a month, people that give something instead of nothing, it touches my heart every single time. Now, one of those donors is he calls himself Jimmy Jam, and he wants me to share his note with you, which is, I think James was great, a missed personality for sure. And he wanted to know if jazz, if things change and Jazz FM asks you back,

would you accept? That's his question. Put it this way, I would never say no to an offer I haven't heard yet. Right. That would be foolish, right? Right. So I don't know what that would look like.

I know that I have spent months now getting together a situation where I can pay my bills and continue to be me. It's not easy, but I'm making the same money I was making before. I'm not making less money right now. I'm just working harder and I hope at some point smarter. I don't think, you know, maybe I'm clever, but I'm not sure how my IQ is in business. So I'm not going to say it's easy,

but it's a lot of fun. I'm out of my comfort zone. And I had a list of things I wanted to do in the last 20 years while I did have a job at various stations. Because I was, before that, I was at CFRB for a bit. I was at AM740. I had a bunch of other stuff.

Right. So, no, AM680. Well, whatever it was. Mojo, talk radio for guys. That one, yeah. I was at that one for a little while. Okay, yeah, yeah. I have friends who were there.

Yeah, yeah. So, I did a bunch of radio, and I always want to promote other people. I decided when I turned 42, which was like last year. No. When I turned 42, I decided I have to spend half of my time promoting other people and half of my time doing my own art. And in the last 16 years, it turned out to be 80% of my time was promoting other people and 20% doing my art. So if I can find that 50-50 balance, that'll be the best of all possible worlds. In the meantime, someone hired

me to write a musical. I'm getting paid to write a musical. I have things coming up that are... I'm still doing tours. I have a company called Beeline Music Adventure Tours. I've been doing tours since... Not officially since

the early 80s, but in 87, I did a party. And in 97, I did a thing called the James B. Floating Cocktail Party of the Caribbean. And so I had 850 people at 1100 bucks each go for a party for a week on a boat. So I've been doing travel before I was at Jazz FM, but the Jazz Safaris with Jazz FM

was one of my favorite things to do at that station, was take people out and take them on adventures. And the difference between most tour guides, on my time off, I don't need to be alone. I don't need to replenish my energy. I can do that when I get home. I take people to late night clubs or backstage to meet celebrities or to a place where they're all going to jam later. And we could be in Italy or Iceland or Cuba or right here in Toronto, but there's a connection that nobody usually

gets. And I don't think it's a big deal because I love Jamie Cullum or Weird Al Yankovic or Jim Carrey or any of these guys. And if they're around... Jim Carrey was a big fan of yours. Jim Carrey. I wish I could reach him now because he's changed management and a few things here and there. I used to have his home phone number, but he never stops to amaze me. When I went to LA, and this would have been early 2000s or late 90s, late 90s, when I went to LA, everybody invited me

and said, oh, and you're in LA, give me a call, give me a call. Well, all of my friends who aren't nearly as successful or famous as him were all busy. He actually met me at a restaurant, bought dinner for me. We talked about life and religion and everything in the world. And I'm just like, wow, you are just the most normal, sweet guy. You're no different than the Jim Carrey, just like Michael Bublé. These guys are no different than they were as kids. They're open-minded and sweet. I mean, I'm sure they're very different after all their lives adventures,

but I'm saying the essence of them is so much the same. James, this was great. I'm not playing you off, but this is your jam. I know. It's hard for me to talk over this one, but I'll make it quick. This is Ryoichi Sakamoto. It's hard for me to talk over this one, but I'll make it quick. This is Ryoichi Sakamoto. It's called Bring Them Home. You asked me for my favorite song.

This would be it. It feels like I wrote it, and I think most people feel that way. The minute they hear it, they're like, I love this music. I got to meet him several times, but he really isn't that talkative, so I can't say we're friends or I know him,

but I had dinner with him once in south of France and he is just a sweet, soft, sensitive composer. Up there with Ennio Morricone is one of the greatest film composers in the world. And this song just kills me. Here, let you catch your breath. By the way,

amazing song. Let's just play a little bit here, but about the Jazz FM real briefly is that I know you've got to be careful and i know how litigious everything is and everyone's being careful i'm having people like danny over and it's like you ask these questions and all of a sudden it's like everybody's afraid to say stuff at some point when the dust settles and when all this is in the rearview mirror i hope somebody tells the true story of what went down because like from a like a fan's perspective like from where I sit, it's been a year long clusterfuck, and

I've got more questions than answers. None of you guys are talking. And you won't get them currently, I'm sure of that, based on actions over there. You won't get any real answers, but there's something, I keep having this fantasy that Christopher Guest, who

made Spinal Tap and Mighty Wind, maybe he's got a little bit of a jazz film in mind. So no one can stop that from happening. Right. I got you. You change the names a little bit, and then you get to go. Anyway, I don't have any ill will for anybody. I just want things to be fixed. I just want things to be tickety-boo. I mean, it's just jazz, for God's sakes. We're supposed to get along and promote things.

That's what makes it such an interesting story, though, because we're talking about a public broadcaster, jazz. And I know donations, pledges were down, which makes complete sense, in that there's this, in front of the courts, they ordered, Jazz FM had to give up the donor list or whatever. That was like a decision from a judge that came down recently. Well, I'm allowed to talk about that.

I mean, honestly, if you just go to SaveJazzFM.com, you'll be able to read what has happened and how it makes Kafka look like simple stuff. It doesn't make sense, the amount of noncompliance with the courts. It doesn't make sense to... amount of noncompliance with the courts. It doesn't make sense to... But none of it makes sense. None of it makes sense.

If you were in a corporation, and you were a stockholder, and someone said, you're not allowed to disagree with the people who run this, and you're not allowed to meet with anybody else, you go, well, what does that mean? No, that's not right. Your dissent means you talk, and you work things out, and you figure things else. You go, well, what does that mean? No, that's not right. Your dissent means you talk and you work things out and you figure things out. You need information to do that.

You can't just have an opinion. You've got to form an opinion. So to not be able to reach out and talk to each other doesn't make any sense. And for everyone to have to be quiet worrying about being sued actually makes absolutely no sense. But at the same time, look at me. Zip.

I'm not saying much because I love the station. I want that station to succeed. But whose station is it? Like this station, this is the people's station, right? Well, and this is your show, so you can say what you like,

but I'm done. All right. James, I'm going to let you off the hook on that one except to say maybe a little time has to go by. And I will again. I've been told I'm off the hook many times. Here, listen. Amazing.

Oh, your new podcast. So you're recording with Ralph Benberg today. That's right. And where do people search for this? Just the James B podcast, J-A-Y-M-Z-B-E-E podcast, or J-A-Y-M-Z. It's a ZE, a podcast, or J-A-Y-M-Z. It's a Z or a Z. Oh, it's always Z, okay.

Okay, depending on where you're from. But yeah, David Clayton Thomas was on there, Barbara Lika, Gene Denovi, 91-year-old piano player who wrote songs with Johnny Mercer and hung out with Duke Ellington. And this week, Ralph. And then coming up soon, I have Mendelson Joe. Oh, yeah. There's a Toronto name for you. And he lives in a shack up north,

and I had to drive three hours and go through this wavy road that said, turn back, you're not invited, beware of bears or whatever. I used to see him on DuPont, I think it was. Yes, that's right. He used to live at Ossington, on Ossington. Anyway, he is a genius. We've been pen pals for decades.

And he really, he likes pen to paper. And I absolutely, I just love his political stance. He'd be a guy who would say something like, half the world is female. Why don't we just give them the power for a while and see how that works out? He just says things that are so obvious and so awesome. And he's got mild right now, thank God, but he's got Parkinson's and he's slowing down. He's probably going to come up with a new style

of painting. He doesn't have anyone else sitting for him right now. But his brain and his heart, never bigger. So speaking to him in a little cabin surrounded by his paintings is probably the highlight of my year. Well, listen, when I deliver your vegetarian lasagna, we can chat about your podcast audio and all that kind of stuff. We can talk. This is my bag. At some point, I want to do that. And that's, again, why I didn't jump onto anybody else's thing yet.

Because I'm still... You're still gathering intelligence. Yeah, I'm still getting through all this, figuring out. Everyone keeps talking about me as a brand. And I'm like, yeah, okay, I've used the word once or twice. But really, I know what I want to do. I want to promote other people and work on my own art. And if I can do that 50-50, that would be just right

because there's so much stuff out there. I stopped singing for quite a long time because everybody, I kept finding singers better than me and said, well, why don't I just record them instead? And now I realize I kind of miss all of that. You've got to find that balance. I have a passion for it, so I want to do both.

You've got to find that balance. And that brings us to the end of our 415th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. James is at James B Says. So J-A- Am I right? Which one are you looking for though? Oh, Twitter? Oh, Twitter, yes. Okay, so on Twitter

it's James B Says. S-E-Z. S-E-Z at the end. And what's the one you wanted to promote? The one I want to promote is the new one. It's just my brand new website that launched yesterday. We're still fine-tuning some of it. It's j-a-y-m-z-b-e-e dot c-a.

James B. dot c-a. Beautiful. Because if we, there's, I mean, we could never cover everything in a day, let alone a couple hours,

but the new CD I just produced, The Tiki Collective and Muse. And I want to point out, maybe I'll hold them up for the picture we're about to take. Oh yeah. You're giving me a couple of, some vintageiki Collective. And I want to point out, maybe I'll hold them up for the picture we're about to take.

You're giving me a couple of... Some vintage look people vinyl. Oh, amazing. It's going to go up in the studio here. This is Tom Wilson's artwork he did here. It was Maestro Fresh West. It's going up in here. Thank you so much.

Well, yeah, so The Tiki Collective is the last thing I did. It's my favorite thing I've ever done. And I just think the music is brilliant. And we're promoting great musicians and amazing singers. So all that stuff's at my site as well. Well, I might have to get you back to kick out the jams at some point to pick up some of these things that we didn't have time for, but this was a great pleasure, James.

Thanks so much. So I mentioned James B. Says. That's Twitter. And then our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Propertyinthesix.com is at Raptor's Devotee. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair is at Fast Time WJR. And PayTM is at Payors Devotee. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair is at Fast Time WJR.

And PayTM is at PayTM Canada. See you all tomorrow when episode 416 records with Maestro Fresh Wes. Let your backbone slide. We'll see you next time.