Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Jonathan Gross: Toronto Mike'd #1349

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

In this 1349th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Jonathan Gross about his years as a rock critic at The Toronto Sun, his years on the air at Q107 and on CFMT as host of Video Singles, his sister Marjorie Gross, his cousin Spenny and so much more. Consider this part one in a series. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Pumpkins After Dark, Ridley Funeral Home, Electronic Products Recycling Association, Raymond James Canada and Moneris. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail]

Welcome to episode 1349 of Toronto Mic'd, proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times, and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma pasta in Mississauga and Oakville pumpkins after dark,

get your tickets. Now at pumpkins after dark.com recycle my electronics.ca committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. The advantaged investor Podcast from Raymond James Canada. Valuable perspective for Canadian investors who want to remain knowledgeable, informed, and focused on long-term success. Season 5 of Yes, We Are Open. An award-winning podcast from Moneris. Hosted by FOTM Al Grego.

And Ridley Funeral Home. podcast from manaris hosted by fotm al grego and ridley funeral home pillars of the community since 1921 today making his toronto mic debut is jonathan gross welcome good to be here you know the ridley funeral home riff uh reminds me of the WKRP episode where they're sponsored by Ferryman and they do that jingle. Absolutely. You're young and swinging. No time to think about tomorrow. There's no denying that someday you're going to buy it. That reminds me of that one. Listen, I'm doing the show in a protest.

Why? Because you had Lorne Honnickman on the show, and he's just a social tumor. I don't know why you would have him on the show. Elaborate honnickman on the show and he's just a social tumor i i don't know why you would have him on the show elaborate because uh dear friend of the show what do you mean you're just kidding okay i was worried for a moment lauren's one of the funniest guys i've known for 100 years does he get into the fact that he was the um play-by-play announcer for the toronto toros no oh you have to hit him with that one.

I got to take a note right now. No, you have to. Are you kidding me? No, you have to do that. I did not know that. The Toros were a hockey team, right? Yeah, you have to have him on the show with possibly Sandy Muzz Foster,

who was his color guy. I don't know. Let him tell you some stories back then. I go back a long way with Lorne. He's a wonderfully No, he told, let him tell you some stories. Wow. Back then, the Toronto, I go back a long way with Lonnie. He's a wonderfully funny, great guy. And I'm proud to be on the same show that he was on. So there you go. You know who else I wanted to, a few people wanted to say hi when they heard you were finally making your Toronto Mike debut.

By the way, we met at a Hollywood sweet breakfast event and Cam Carpenter introduced it. So I want to shout out Cam. Cammy and I go back. I consider him a very close friend. We go back 40-some-odd years. I remember the exact moment I met him. I was at the TV grandstand show. It was

Zahn, and he was making some fun of Zahn, because the guy who managed Zahn was booking the event, booking the place, so they always played there. I forget who the headliner was that night and I'm sure he can remind me but I know the opening of Zahn and we were riffing on Zahn, the scene he grandstand.

I was like 22. I think he was I don't think Cam was more than 17 and he was already writing and doing stuff. There's a guy who invested in the music business and is a much beloved figure. I consider him almost doing stuff. There's a guy who invested in the music business and is a much beloved figure. I consider him almost a brother.

I love him very much. He pops up all over the place. I mean, everywhere I go, I see, oh, there's Cam Carpenter. And that's kind of, you know, what you're doing with the show is that, and one thing Toronto's losing is characters. And every time you have these people on the show and they're all characters,

and we've lost some of that over the years, and I give you a lot of kudos for keeping that alive. So, you know, Cam's a character, and, you know, LaHannockman, and a bunch of other people on the show who I've worked with or I've known over the years. Well, let me shout out a few of them because they sent notes.

And, you know, I also, I'm very attracted to characters, and I produced a show called Gallagher and Gross Save the World. It was John Gallagher and Peter Gross. And this was just A-plus content. Unbelievable. And those are a couple of characters. Peter Gross?

It's a little funny relation. Any relation to Peter Gross? No, no, no. But Peter Gross' marijuana story. You ever heard that one where he gets busted? 100%, yes. And this is Namor. So what do we do if I need the money?

I need the money. I got the extra cars. I'll lend you one. Any Peter Gross stories, even if they've been told before, I'll take them again. He's in the FOTM Hall of Fame. Oh, he is? Yes.

We had a mutual friend who passed away, a guy named Blind Ricky. And Blind Ricky was the only other New York Ranger fan in the city besides me. And I met him 50 years ago at a Rangers practice in Maple Leaf Gardens. Right. And Peter was a track guy, so Ricky was into the horses. So I was into the hockey and Ricky was into the horses. And I spent a lot of time with Ricky, and I'm sure Peter did too, and he passed away a few years ago.

So dedicate the show to the memory of Blind Ricky Muzo. Good idea. Good idea. Good idea. Peter's still very close with Jim McKinney and they still go see, they go to, what's it called?

Saratoga? Yeah. That's the big raceway, right? I should know this. But Peter's the go-to man. If you want to hear a podcast about Ontario horse racing, Peter Gross produces and hosts

Down the Stretch. That's what you listen to, man. I put out a movie years ago called The Boys from Ripoff. I'm the only other human other than you, I think, who did an episode all about Ripoff. Oh, my God. It was I bought my company and inherited a print of this film. And it was an old guy, Bennett Fode, who owned the film.

And he threatened to sue me because I didn't have rights, and finally made a deal to put it out. And Peter was still around. There were some good people in the film, but I remember seeing the film in high school. It was this $12 independent film, and it was a great, you know, those little episodes, and that was Peter's

big break. Yeah. The voice from Ripoff. And remember, Donald Shabib had Going Down the Road under his belt, so there were high hopes for Ripoff. And remember, Donald Shabib had Going Down the Road under his belt. Right. So there were high hopes for Ripoff.

This was the sequel or the follow-up. The follow-up, yeah. But What's-His-Face was in it, became a very big director. I forget his name. Don,

not Don, there was a guy, the star of the film became a very, very big director. Okay. There is, I just will shout it out

as we go here because I think we're going to talk about lots of FO2s, but episode 765 was literally like 90 minutes all about Ripoff, and Donald Shabib, Peter Gross phoned Donald and asked him a bunch of questions about Ripoff, and we recorded that conversation and played

it while Peter was in the backyard diving deep into this movie, that not many people, I mean, if you watched, you know, maybe late great movies that showed up or whatever, but you know, unlike going down the road, nobody really talks about ripoff. No,

they don't. For good reason. But when you're a kid in high school in the seventies, they made this local film. You went and saw it. That's the way it worked. Peter did. So I talked to Peter every Sunday,

which means I talked to him yesterday. Cause we talk about his podcast down the stretch. And I said, Hey, I got, I have a different Gross coming over, Jonathan Gross. And he says, make sure you ask him about the battered newsman.

Oh, boy. That's part of the story. I'll leave you a shout out. Okay, because I will get back to this because there's so much. I got so much on the table here. I hope you have nothing planned for the next several hours. No, I guess not. And when you bring up the battered newsman, then you know you got nothing.

I'm going to get a tent in the back. Elliot Cowan says hello. Elliot, these are people I go back to since I was five years old. It's like family. Well, Elliot, he came on and talked about his dad, Bernard Cowan. Bernard Cowan was my neighbor for many years, the voice of the CBC. And Ellie was trying to do some stuff.

He had some tapes of the old Spider-Man sessions and things like that. Bernard Cowan was a legend. I mean, if you go back far enough, I mean, the voice was Bernard Cowan speaking. He had great pipes. And his son, Rob, was still a very close friend. Did a lot of work on radio and stuff. Had a good career. Inherited the pipes.

Yeah. And legendary stuff. Legendary guy, Bernard Cowan. So I should, yeah. So Bernard, we talked about him with Elliot, but I will say that Rob Cowan, also on FOTM, came over. He does some great Foster Hewitt impressions, and we talked about his work at CJCL and elsewhere.

We all, we all, we go back to CKFH and Ricky Moranis and all this stuff. And Ricky did his first standup routine in my mother's backyard. I mean, we can do this forever. Really? I know he was very close with Rob Cowan. They had a act called Cowan and Moranis. Yeah.

They were very funny by the way. Okay. So later in this chat, I'm going to actually revisit SCTV. And I didn't realize that you know you could make that claim that's wild already so let's stop the press here gear joyce gear joyce writes in and says jonathan will always have the writing credit on seinfeld's ass man episode yeah i worked with him at the sun and i liked him it stands to reason this is

gear talking stands to reason no one liked us, stands to reason no one liked us, stands to reason no one liked us. Jonathan, if I remember correctly, wore Cooperalls in our son pickup games. Another reason

this hate on him. I'd love to hear, okay, and again, it's early in the app, but maybe this is a good time. My God, am I like flashing before me.

So maybe speak, I will bring up, because of course he wants you to talk about your sister as I do as well, but you wore Cooperalls? I was ahead of the curve because I played hockey at Penn State and I think we had Cooperalls then

and I brought them back and wore them and we had a, I played at U of T in one of those colleges for a while and then um we had a team at the sun which guys took way too seriously and i wore coop rolls because i i had um and then i switched to the half coop roll because i used to buy my equipment at madison square garden that's a whole other story big r Rangers fan. Yeah, and coop rolls were a lot of fun to wear until they weren't. And, you know, I was a very trendy guy, right? You know, when you're a trendy guy off the ice,

you've got to be a trendy guy on the ice. When you're a rock critic, you've got to be, you know, you've got to be wearing the right leathers. So on the ice, coop rolls were in fashion. Because the Philadelphia Flyers did wear coop rolls on the ice for several years. And you're going back here. I got to take more Prevagen to get these memories going, man. Well, Steve Simmons, another name to draw up.

This will get us to your sister. So Steve Simmons saw on Twitter that you were making your Toronto Mike debut. Steve's been on several times. He said, make sure to ask him about his late sister Marjorie, one of the brains behind Seinfeld. So let's do that now before we dive into your life here. Please, if you don't mind. In fact, maybe before you say a word,

I'll play a little Fusilli Jerry teaser, and then we'll talk about your sister. There you go, buddy. What is it? It's Fusilli Jerry. It's made from fusilli pasta. See the microphone? When did you do this?

In my spare time. I'm working on one of you, George. You can talk over it if you want. It's Jerry's reaction to that. The part is to find the pasta that captures the individual. Why, if you're silly? Because you're silly. Get it?

Yeah. Well, thank you very much. So, did you get your new plates? Oh, yeah, I got my new plates. But they mixed them up, somebody got mine, and I got my new plates. But they mixed them up. Somebody got mine, and I got their vanity plates. What did they say? Ass man.

Ass man? Yeah, ass man, Jerry. I'm Cosmo Kramer, the ass man. Wow. Who would order a license plate that says ass man? Maybe they're Wilt Chamberlain's. It doesn't have to be someone who gets a lot of women. It could be

just some guy with a big ass. Or it could be a proctologist. Yeah? Proctologist? Oh, come on. No doctor would put that on his collar. Have you ever met a proctologist? Well, they

usually have a very good sense of humor. You meet a proctologist at a party. Don't walk away. Plant yourself there because you will hear the funniest stories you've ever heard. See, no one wants to admit to them that they stuck something up there. Never. It's always an accident. Every proctologist story ends in the same way.

It was a million to one shot, Doc. A million to one There's my phone So where are you going to stick this I'll tell you where I'd like to stick it Alright that's um That's the episode Look it's um

My sister was a Stand up comedian Right out of high school. I think there's an old Chinese proverb that says, talent does whatever it wants to, and genius does only what it can do. And this is all she could do, was be funny. So she left town after my mother passed away, and she was 18, Was be funny So she left town after my mother passed away She was 18

And went on stage The Improv Catch a Rising Star And this is before Jerry actually started It was Richard Lewis, Larry David Al Franken Alan Zweibel Lane Boosler

Belzer And she was up there and she was 18. And, and, uh, her act was, her material was great. She wasn't,

wasn't a great act. She wasn't, didn't deliver like other people, but she stuck it out for eight years. I remember my father, uh, after she dropped out of acting school, she was 19.

He said, go down and see what your sister's doing. Cause I can't figure it out. So I go to New York After university one year And St. Marge dad's got a lease here That you have an act And you're doing it

And so Well I'm doing the improv Late Sunday night And I'm from Toronto I figure oh 10 o'clock And I get the improv at 10 He goes what are you doing Well you said you're late

Late Sit down So I sit there 11, 12, 1 1 o'clock they put on Leno And this is Leno When he was doing Elvis Before Elvis passed away And Leno was great

No matter what he was There's two people, a cop and a hooker In the crowd there at that point They bring on my sister And she manages to bomb in front of two people, a cop and a hooker in the crowd there at that point. They bring on my sister, and she manages to bomb in front of two people and leaves the club, and I was it. And I went to see my father, and I had to say something. I said, well, she opened for Jay Leno.

And that kept her down there. And she paid the price of admission, and she was there for eight years. Finally, she got a job. She knew all the SNL people because she had auditioned for SNL. We knew Lorne Michaels from a past life, and she was between her and Gilda for the last shot. Wow. And they gave it to the right person.

My sister wasn't ready for that. And she struggled, and then she got a job on the show Square Pegs. It's kind of a legendary cult show. The show that was cut down, cut, canceled because, well, it got Tracy Nelson,

Jamie Girtz, Sarah Jessica Parker, or CJP as they call her. That was their start. And, but the show got canceled apparently because it was too much cocaine on the set. And Beats,

who just passed away recently, ran that show. I mean, it's available on DVD. You can find it. It's a hip show. My sister wrote a bunch of episodes is right up rally. And that's how she got started.

And from there, she, she always had work. She worked for Bob Newhart. She worked for, um, uh, Chris Elliott on one on star work for get a life.

Chris Thompson, burnout theater, a lot of stuff, um, worked for, she was brought in anything Anything But Love to write for Richard Lewis. She wrote some movies. She got sick in 93, real sick. And I think Jerry and Larry understood what was happening,

and they brought her onto the show. The last two years of her life. And she wrote some very funny episodes. Not only a few, I'll tell you how that happened, but she wrote The Understudy, which I helped her with. She wrote the one with the dress looked good in the Barney's window. I forget what it was called. She wrote four episodes, I believe.

And the one in the showerhead. Right. Which is brilliant. I was on the set for that, and I'll tell you about that if you want. The Fusilli Jerry came about. I'd worked, my sister got me a job in LA when I lived out there at ABC.

I was writing for America's Funniest People. She was very, very close with Arlene Sorkin, who passed away a couple months ago. And I'll dedicate whatever I do on this show to Arlene. She was a wonderful human being. And I got a job writing on America's Funniest People. And then after that, it was a little dry, a couple of new misses. And I moved back to Toronto after the earthquake.

I had bought a company. I can explain that to you later. And Marjorie was on Seinfeld at the time. She just started. And I punched out three ideas on a piece of paper and faxed it out. I had just gotten a rejection letter from Peter Melman. And I said to Marjorie, look, here's three more ideas. They don't like him.

Have a nice season. I'm done. One of the ideas was, uh, what if, what if Jerry, uh, to, uh, get a better deal on his mechanic work tells putty the mechanic. And there's a story there. Uh, what Elaine likes in bed likes in bed ergo the move and george wants to learn the move and it becomes a thing right and i think it was a two inches of copy on a piece of paper with two other ideas that i forget what they were and i get a call

back the next day for my sister who threw compliments around like manhole covers so it was kind of a surprise yeah that move idea i walked it into jerry and larry and they really liked it and now let's face it seinfeld was the number one show in the world someone said they liked your idea of seinfeld you can dine out on that one for a few years right and she calls the next day and said yeah they're gonna buy it so they bought the the move idea and then they gave us the ass man and if you silly if you look at the credit steve scrovan i think a couple guys get story credits on top of that because the way seinfeld was constructed it was um a dovetail so you had to have four stories very few sitcoms had four stories going. Use an A and a B and have fun.

So this is four stories. You have some free lane to do. So the move was involved. George was involved. Because of Kramer, you had the fusilli thing come in. And Jerry, you know, was one in the middle of the whole circus. And the Putty character, I don't know if anybody explained that to you, was based on a guy my sister had a crush on in eighth grade named David Putty from Cedarville.

I'm surprised Ellie Cowan didn't bring that one up. So Putty calls me on the phone after the show airs. He goes, what the hell's going on? I bring my car down. You're putting, you know, show with 30 people watching. And so my sister had to fly back from LA and take him out for dinner to calm him down. But, uh,

we invented Patrick Warburton. That was his first big break. Wow. And I was on the set and, and, uh, I got introduced and, uh,

somebody put their hand up middle of her bank and that Raleigh still, it was not Raleigh. I forget what it was. And it was at the same Jonathan Gross he used to write for the Toronto Sun. I go, wow, out here in LA. That was the treat. It was a

great thing. Look, you know, in life, sometimes things work out. And that one worked out. And in the intervening years, Jerry and Larry have always been very nice to me. Jerry's done me a couple of favors and I've seen larry he's been very nice and uh a lot of memories and uh and i'm glad my sister got to finish her life out working on sign up yeah i'm so sorry for your loss it's a long time gone far too soon though yeah she was a she was an interesting human being i don't know if people ever took care to look, but before she passed away, she wrote a goodbye letter to the world that was published in the New Yorker.

And it became a black humor classic. I think all the old bits that were written about her in the New York Times was really more about that letter, that article that she wrote. It's called Cancer Becomes Me. If you ever get on the New Yorker website, have a look at it. It's quite something. It's ironic that Putty was a Devils fan, right? Not a Rangers fan. Well, yeah, but Jerry was a Devils fan.

Right. I have that Seinfeld Devils jersey. And I have a Fusilli Jerry. Wow. And so, okay, so when that's what Gare meant, because Gare tells me, you know, you partially wrote the Fusilli Jerry. He called it the ass man

episode but now I got that story that is unbelievable but you would you literally would be there for tapings and yeah yeah right yeah yeah we did they I showed up you know Jerry was dating that 17 year old but I kind of knew Larry you know if I could tell I've been a lot of sitcom sets um this one

this was a real incredible place because they didn't nothing really went wrong they're so professional that they'd read lines and you wouldn't notice anything but larry would come out and give it a slight twist maybe two takes three takes i sat on a frazier set you could be there forever seinfeld you were done in two and a half hours um and and they were really professional the fascinating thing was that um jason alexander came to town a few years ago for a uja event and he said you know we we really enjoyed working together but we weren't friends he He said that, you know, Larry and Jerry chasing whatever. And I was married and we, we, we loved working together and we had a great time, but we weren't friends.

And you'd think that I'll be best friends. Right. But he said, we weren't really friends. It was a great job. And we, we get, you know, the chemistry was probably the best in the history of television, but, but he said we weren't friends. And Jason's a lovely guy.

I mean, they're all lovely people. I would never say, I still speak to Melman once in a while. And I say, I see Larry and Jerry when I'm with them sometime in LA or New York. And Larry, Jerry, yeah, again, like it's history. I still get residual checks.

That's going to go on forever. Amazing, amazing. There was news like a couple of weeks ago, there was Jerry dropped a little note that, oh, there might be a reunion in the works. But am I the only one who remembers they did reunite on curb your enthusiasm and it was perfect it was quite brilliant it was like the beatles getting back together i thought it was brilliant i thought george was brilliant i thought and they handled the michael richards thing very well and that's

a sad i don't know if you ever saw the Comedians in Cars episode with Richards. I did, I did. That was quite something. And Richards is a fairly special guy. Got caught in a situation of not his making. And the way that he talked to Jerry, you know, a very soulful guy. His career clearly was over after that. But that was a powerful piece of television. An otherwise very light show.

The Richards episode, I think, is the best one. Because you love these guys. These people are part of the firmament. Back when you didn't have 4,000 streaming services, Thursday night you watched NBC. Oh, I know. Monolithic culture. I know. We were all there.

Absolutely. Just one more note about your sister Marjorie. Mark Weisblot writes in to say that she's a part of the Mark Breslin origin story because she was on Canada AM as part of a comedians getting critiqued thing, and Breslin was one of the critiquers, and Joan Rivers

got that tape somehow and then from that tape ended up hiring Mark Breslin as a producer of her talk show. I don't know that. I know that Marjorie was on the Canada AM. I was to schlep her out there because she loved getting up at six in the morning.

But Breslin started at Harborfront in 1974. And my sister just graduated from Brangsom Hall and she comes home with a tape i want you to hear this i go i don't know she's talking people and we had a party i who knew from this stuff no no no i was on stage on stage where you know we we knew comedy like we all knew freddie prins on the carson show but we weren't aware of any comedy scenes toronto was you know the toronto was nothing you know they had missed the second you had sct a second city great but no stand-up right and mark had this little scene down her harbor front with uh larry horowitz yeah um uh

my sister maybe tony molesworth maybe half and they put some bridge chairs out in a room and she got up and i you know she kind of was funny but you know we had mostly friends and family there and and that's how she started with breslin you know i did breslin was a huge fan her whole life and that's how he's him he did that he was running that till he went to church street i think a couple of years later i mean it's all legendary stuff and if you were part of the church street thing way back when it was really special you couldn't get in it was like going to the cbgbs or the cavern club because it was the hottest place in town is this the event that uh is this when ralph ben murgy might be the host for these things is that ralphie was around, my memory doesn't serve me so well.

I love Ralphie. But it was really Breslin's once a week. That was it. We had seven spots once a week, and it was tough to get on. And it was sold out, and there was nothing else in Toronto, right? Toronto in the 70s, you had to go to New York to get anything going. So it wasn't a happening place. There were 12 cool people in the whole city,

and I knew them by name. Name them right now. Okay, that's amazing. I'm now thinking, we talk a bit about this scene with John Wayne Jr. There's an episode of Toronto Mic'd where he talks about this scene, but it sounds like Mike McDonald comes out of this scene? Mike McDonald comes out of Yuck Yucks the Prop or the Club.

McDonald, who my late, very close personal friend, Howard Lapidus, managed for most of his life. McDonald kind of exploded onto the scene. He was kind of a post-Howie type of guy. Howie was the first guy that kind of broke out, right? And Howie broke out because of his manager. And he was just broken out because he was Howie. I don't think he was making a lot of money, but Howie was a known person.

And then McDonald was after that. McDonald was the polar opposite of Howie. He was a brooding, moody guy. But he had so much onstage energy that he became an icon. I love Mike. I wrote about him. I put out DVDs last years ago of his specials. You know, he was a wonderful guy.

You know, he had his problems. But he was from Ottawa, and my friend Howard managed him for years. Mike broke out. Mike was in, and Breslin thought that the second coming was, and this is while Jimmy was doing his thing. And Jimmy kind of came in before McDonald. Do you mean Jim Carrey? Yeah.

Okay. Just making sure. And Jimmy was, was, uh, I was the first guy ever to write about Jim Carrey. He was 16 or I'm in Canadian teen magazine. And, and Carrey was a completely different animal. You know, you're lucky enough to see Carrie back then. Yeah. You know, I wrote about him a lot,

and he actually had optioned a script from my sister. My sister got paid a lot of money from a script called The Best Man that she wrote, and Jimmy was going to be in it. His manager won a million bucks just for it. It was Hollywood crap, but Jim was a force to be reckoned with but mainly uh like doing in like uh impressions right i love impressions yeah his impressions were out of control like a jimmy stewart like it looks no no he did he did better stuff better stuff jimmy stewart's like old school he he would he did tom jones he he did like henry fonda in golden pond right he was a much different animal my favorite impression of him when i'm He did Tom Jones. He did like Henry Fonda in Golden Pond.

He was a much different animal. My favorite impression of him, and I'm a cornball guy, was the amazing Greskin. It was a very off-the-wall impression. No, Jimmy was a major talent. The sadness of Jimmy, I always had that regret that I interviewed him once for The Sun and I asked him about living in a car with his family. I think I broke his heart. He trusted me.

And I, are you the first to go public with that detail? I might've been. And, and, um, he was upset and I, I don't blame him. I, I had, he was, he was 17 at the time. Right. I mean, he was a young guy. Right. But what a talent, what a major, major talent. And, and, uh, he, he was probably,

you know, Howard is, Mandel is huge, but in terms of talent, Jimmy, Jimmy, uh, is a Titan. Before we move on from talented people in this scene,

what about Norm MacDonald? Did you cross paths? No, I was, I was gone. You were gone by then. Yeah. I,

I, I was gone. I didn't, I didn't, like I said, I wrote for the paper until about 1983. Then I kept a column in the Star for a few years after that in the TV Guide. But I stopped doing the daily thing in 83.

And Norm didn't show up then. Norm came later. So when I was preparing for your visit, one of the things that struck me is how, like, how many different interesting pockets there are, you know, because you think just the Toronto Sun stuff on its own, I could probably sit down and chat with you for 90 minutes about that. You mentioned you alluded a few times to like a VHS tape business, which we're going to get into. Boy. You know, we talk, but there's also another TV show we have to talk about. And I have a clip to introduce that.

And then a great friend of the program who's actually going to be here on Friday. He'll be on Toronto Mic, but he actually wrote in a note because you covered his band, and I pulled that audio. We're going to cover a lot of ground here. I just want to,

since we already talked about your very talented sister Marjorie, but you're also related to Spenny from Kenny vs. Spenny. Have you had Spenny on the show? No, I would love to have Spenny on the show. He's my favorite cousin. So him and Kenny, they had started, they go back a ways.

They made a movie. I forget the name of the movie. I think I put it out for them. And it was kind of the start of Kenny versus Spenny. And I've never seen guys who went through so many development processes to get to Kenny versus spinning. It's quite a story. It took years.

It wasn't one year. It was, they finally got this concept going in. It blew up. I remember the show was on for one year and I was doing some work with Tom green and green had a new rap album out. Organized Rhyme. No, this is that. Oh, this is post.

This was later. Okay. Tom was already Tom Green. Okay. And he did a show in Barrie, and I brought Spenny, and Spenny was a bigger star than Tom Green there. And I put out the Blu-ray, the DVDs for that show. I made real good money.

Those guys were rock stars. Spencer, you know, I give him a lot of credit you know he he went out and did this and they didn't you know they'd leave in the dressing room you know it wasn't everybody's cup of tea but but boy they they hit it they had a u.s deal with comedy central for a while and there's some you know there's a lot of story but spencer is is again he's a little brother i never had so so i i love him to death and any i can do for him i do okay so we'll bounce around a little bit we'll get back to uh but have him on the show i would love to have him on the show and we'll get back to this this business that

you you are you still running that business no it's uh two generations ago i um i had a very eclectic career i had i got married and my father said You gotta do something normal Outside of promoting rap concerts Well we're gonna get to that too And the ADHD lifestyle And so we had some friends In Korea And they were making

VHS tape And what can you do You know people I knew some guy I remember by 1981 i had been to a press conference for the first vhs movie duplication facility in the country that video everything in the company was video one or video something they were a post house they opened up this little paneled room up on above of englington East and it was 200 machines were making VHS tapes. I remember them and Jerry.

And I said, I'll call Jerry. Cause he's still, and I had lunch with Jerry and he bought a couple of containers of this Korean tape. And that's how we started. Did that for five, six years. We bought, we opened a little plant. We were winding tape. We had the Disney contract for a while.

Um, and then it just, you know, VHS died away and the company went away. And then I moved to LA and I wrote, and I've told you some of the things I did out there. And then I came back. Um, I'd had a customer, uh, in, in the VHS business, this guy named Kurt Glimzer, who, if he's still alive, should be on your show, who partners with a guy who should be on your show. There was a record store called The Record Peddler in Toronto in the 70s and 80s, run by a guy named Benny Hoffman,

who I love dearly. He was a great guy. I hope he's still around. And they had this street, you know, those great import record stores where the cute girl behind the counter would sneer at you when you bought a record she didn't like. And, you know, everyone had attitudes and leather jackets. And, you know, I came in.

You got to think about the Beach Boys. No, they didn't want to hear that. And they sold bootlegs openly because the copyright laws in the country were really not evolved. And all those bootlegs came from Ben's partner, a guy named Kurt Glemser in Kitchener. Kurt was a very interesting guy who was making money when he was 12 years old, selling comic books in the schoolyard, kept alligators in his basement. And so he had started a serious bootleg and collectibles business,

including a magazine called hot wax quarterly. And it was nothing for him to get on a plane, fly to Australia and buy Led Zeppelin singles right out of the warehouse. Cause it was a different B side than there was here and blah, blah, blah, blah, very sophisticated stuff.

And he had vinyl and then the laws changed and the RCMP came and cleaned out his house. And he says, what business is there starting up where there's not a whole lot of legal firewalls? Ah, the home video business. So he started buying masters. He had every women in prison film. He had Pen 1, Pen 2 from Jama Fanaka,

and I was making tape, and I sold him tape, and he paid his bills he was a stand-up guy yeah and i'm living in la and i'm just things weren't going great he says look john i i let's tell you the uh the confidentiality clause in my business uh ran out i sold the company to a guy he's going tits up why don't you come buy the company i can get it to you for 10 cents on the dollar and my late sister kicked in a few bucks out of here and bought the company. I can get it to you for 10 cents on the dollar. And my late sister kicked in a few bucks out of it and bought the company. And he says, I'll run it out of my warehouse in Kitchener. And I flew up to Kitchener, bought the company and we called it Video Service Corp. He was

Video Entertainment Corp. I changed to Video Service Corp. And he ran it for a while. Then I realized that his business model wasn't working in an ever-evolving business. And so I said, Kurt, I love you, but I've got to fold it up. I mothballed everything. My father had a warehouse somewhere. I put all the masters, all the tapes, all the crap.

And I went back to L.A., and then the earthquake happened. My wife said, we're getting out of here. And I came back to Toronto. I wasn't going to be a writer up here. It's too hard and you get two kids and whatever. So I said, I better un-mothball this thing and see if I can get it going. And I did.

And I, and I found out I had every woman in prison film ever made. And a friend of mine tipped me off to a program at Zellers where they're doing VHS tapes on extended play. I hope you people are enjoying this kind of history of the home video industry. I love it. More detail.

And, um, so I sold a bunch of inventory off. And thanks to my late friend, Kai Void, who had a huge facility here in Toronto and gave me a lot of breaks. He was a great guy. And then I,

I, I, um, I had written, uh, the worst Gemini award show of all time. And that's saying something. Oh,

it was pretty shitty. It was, it was the Joe Flaherty one where they were going to do a demo of high def TV on stage. And they left the monitors out by the shipping dock in November and they froze. They couldn't get it going. And it was a complete disaster.

But, but on the writing staff was, was the, great Roger Abbott from the Air Force. A lovely guy, God rest his soul. And a buddy of mine says, I moved back from LA. I didn't know what was going on. He said, look, John, this show, the Air Force, is huge. You've got to do something with these guys. So I called up Rog, and I said, why don't we do a best of air forest?

I called it the air forest video yearbook. And we compiled a bunch of sketches and put it out. And lo and behold, this thing took off because back then home video was being sold at Eaton's, the Bay, the 1989, of course, this is,

this is 90, 94. Okay. A little later. Okay. And it's sold. And the next one is sold and sold. And I could remodel my house with the third one.

And then I ran that for a couple of years. And, and so I became a, I had a business video, video, video service corp. And we, we had a little warehouse up on Western road and I proceeded to exploit

relationships. And, but you know, at one point we ran out of gas a couple of times. And I remember one time a kid, my plan intended. Yeah. And a kid in my,

a kid of mine in, in the warehouse said to me, when he had this kid up in Ottawa on cable TV, you should go call him. So who's that? It was Tom Green. So I flew up to Ottawa on a blizzard and, and signed him as producer the day he signed his deal with MTV.

And we ended up with all the material that was on MTV. We sold a ton of product. I'll bet. And Ottawa went from there. You know, we worked with Team Canada in 2002, the Gretzky gold medal game. Salt Lake City. Fabulous. Sold a lot of that. Then I missed out on

Trader Park Boys. I'd be living in the south of France. They called me. I was busy with this hockey video. I screwed up. But then I picked up Corn Gas. Well, that's a big one. that's what I meant with no pun intended we sold we sold a lot of that and then Kenny and Spenny and Russell Peters who

is not my biggest fan but that's another story and we have a business you know it's called unobstructed view now and we are probably the premier site for movie collectors you folks like like film please go to the site unobstructedview.com and you'll and we are probably the premier site for movie collectors. If you folks like film, please go to the site unobstructedview.com,

and if you mention that I was on the show here, we'll give you a little discount. Love it so much. Okay, so love. Now we've caught up with what you're doing these days. We're going way back here. You ready to go in the time machine? Let's try it. Let's try it.

Let's see where this takes us here. Woo-hoo, yes. Welcome to a brand new season of video singles. The tapes you're most likely to see today include Donna Summer and her pals in Musical Youth. The Night Moves of Lionel Richie.

The Pump of Prince. And some funky sounds from a thing called The Art of Noise. Hi, I'm Jonathan Gross, and it feels real good to be back in the saddle here at MTV's Video Singles. Our theme this week is music television and a special series of shows. Of course, I'm talking about 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week cable music television, the kind that the powers in Ottawa are now looking at as a possibility for this country next year. And when you talk about music television, you're talking about MTV. That's not our little station here, but MTV in the United States.

That's the Warner Amex channel that it means to 18 million homes. They've done that in only two and a half years. Some of you might be familiar with MTV via your neighborhood pub, or if your parents are in that income bracket, you might even have a satellite dish pirating the airways in the comfort of your own home. With MTV's cooperation, we're going to show you something of what a music channel looks like and how it presents itself. Plus, with our playlist this week, we're going to show you something of what a music channel looks like and how it presents itself. Plus with our playlist this week we're going to show you a lot of bands and artists who have become associated with the music video explosion. So you're going to see a lot of Duran Duran, of course some heavy metal bands and Jonathan Gross of course, myself coming back from New

York for this one. I brought with me a satchel of tapes, most of which you've never seen before, a lot of great stuff. Anyways, we're going to start things off now with Donna Summer. Of course, she started way back in the heyday of disco, but she's doing really, really well with this track. It's done very well for her in video. This is Unconditional Love on video singles. Donna Summer, let's get back to school. Jonathan, tell me everything about video singles.

I can't believe we're doing this. So CFMT aired this. It goes back before that. And it's a different MTV, obviously. It goes back before that. Okay, talk to me. Cammy, our close friend Carpenter, there was a show with Samantha.

In 1981, there was a show that we used to tape at CFMT at 3 in the morning. Something else? I forget the name of the show. Joe Goldberg? No, no, Joe, God bless Joe. I love Joe. It was a show.

Cam was the ad rep. He had one client, the Hard Rock Cafe. Okay. And I was the news guy. I forget or something. Samantha was the host. This is 81. I haven't seen the tape for years.

And that's how I started with CFMT. And then I guess in 83, I did a variety of shows for them. Video singles is one, but I did one, a Brit show with the Old Grey Whistle Test. I did a bunch of episodes with UK product. I guess this is before Much Music. Yeah, because Much Music doesn't come around until 84. Yeah, this is before that. So I was, not that anybody watched

CFMT, but there is some tape floating on. And before that, going back to 82, there was a show on CBLT that I was part of called TO2GO, where I was doing someone, I think it was Rob Proust reminded me of it. I did all the music video interviews with bands,

and The Spoons played the C&E a couple of months ago, and I went to the show, and the Spoons were great. They opened for another band that I used to know. It was actually one guy now, Flock of Seagulls, and they were terrible. But the Spoons were great, and Gord was great, and Sandy was great. And Gord's in Flock of Seagulls. Right, right, and Gord's great, Sandy was great.

They were wonderful. Okay, so your story, which I don't even mean to interrupt you, but Rob Proust is the guy I mentioned earlier who's going to be here Friday at noon. Rob Proust will be in the basement Friday at noon. And he's the one who wrote I Love Jonathan. He was a huge supporter

of our band in the early days. He often wrote little news blurbs about us in the Toronto Sun or wherever else he had entertainment columns. And check out this video from a CBC show.

We had an early 82 before we made the actual Nova Heart video later in the year. We shot a video. Okay, so this is you took them to the David Dunlap Observatory. Yeah, and we shot it.

Okay, I'm going to play a little bit. I won't play too much. Okay, alright. It's my show, Jonathan. Clearly. Although you can talk over this, I have no idea how much of Nova hurt we get before we get to the top. They were wonderful. So I think we just,

Steve Skaney, I believe, was the producer of the show. And I said, let's do a video with these guys. Yeah, and they were photogenic. And they were young kids. And it was a great, you know, those experiences, they're just, you know, there's a thing about Canada

that is kind of not existent. You know, it extends to the Sam Roberts and even the Randy Bachmans of this world. They're humble people. You know, Canadian celebrities is kind of an oxymoron. And they always had to be of the people. And no one ever had an attitude. No one ever was too good for something. And I always remember that. I remember like

Roger Abbott and I would send the Air Force out to some fast forward Freddy's video shack for an autograph. They didn't care. They showed up. And the Spoons were like that. They worked hard at what they did. And like I said, 40 some odd years later, they're still great. And I get nostalgic about those days. But, you know, the thing we should talk about... Okay, here, one moment.

Sweeping the British pop charts with teenage sensations, bow-wow-wow, altered images, and the human link. When 16-year-old keyboard player Rob Proust joined the quartet last year, the two-year-old Spoons were ready to break out of their Burlington backyards and sign a recording deal with Ready Records. Their debut album was called Stick Figure Neighborhood,

and Gordon Depp's collection of suburban-oriented songs garnered a lot of attention in the university scene. The positive response encouraged Ready Records to enlist the support of high-priced British producer John Punter for the Nova Hearts project. Punter, who admired the band's maturity, came up with a single that is international in sounding and capitalizes on the new electrobeat movie. By 23 we've nominated Gordon Deppie as the spokesman for the band Gordon. Are there any problems or any advantages to being such a young band in a scene

that really is much older than you? I think first of all it's a lot easier to work with a band that's yelling because they don't have as many obligations and responsibilities so we can get together on a more regular basis and work at it. Do people take the band seriously? Yes they do. Maybe before they see us they kind of wonder about our age but once they see us they know we're wrapped apart with the older people. I find this absolutely fascinating Jonathan. Like I mean you're like oh older people. I find this absolutely fascinating, Jonathan. I mean, you're like, oh, do people want to hear this detail?

I need more detail. This is it, man. Before much music, this is what we had. Okay, so you're still telling the story. I know you've gone into the story about the CBC show, but you still owe me some video singles. I've seen clips of video singles with John Major, for example. God rest his soul.

I guess because I was living in New York at the time. I left The Sun I think in 83. And true to fact, when I was in New York, I worked at one of Rolling Stone's publications. So I was like in the scene there. And there was a gap

in content in Canada. So I would bring up stuff, all the rap music you couldn't get up here and Island Records was... We'll get back to the rap stuff because I've had DJ Ron Nelson over here. Jungle Ron. Yeah.

One of my favorite guys. Love it. Okay, we're going to get back to that, but here, keep going. So... We should talk about the sun. Here, let me promise you this. We have to do that at one point.

There is a whole segment. I know you're like, what the hell's going on here? But just trust me. All right, I'll I hear it. Let me promise you this. There is a whole segment. I know you're like, what the hell's going on here? But just trust me. There's a, there's a Toronto sun segment coming up and I've got even questions and comments. So we're going to jump.

We're like Tarantino here. We're jumping around a little bit, but right now you're telling me video. Like what is, what is it that we just listened to and how does it tie together with that show? We just played with both the spoons, video singles.

I can't remember video singles. That's not video singles. No, no. That's the CBC. That's CBC. But CFMT had video singles. And I know we mentioned John Major was a host there. But you were, what, the first host?

Like, where do you fit in? Yeah, I was there before Major. They stepped it up. I think they brought in Major to make it a lot more professional. And this predates Toronto Rocks? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Because Major, I guess, is the first host of Toronto Rocks.

Yeah, this is before that. This is J.D. Roberts. Yeah, this is before that. J.D. Oh, yeah. Because Major, I guess, is the first host of Channel Rock. Yeah, this is before that. This is J.D. Roberts. Yeah, this is before that. J.D. Roberts? No. Was Gallagher? No. Well, the only one I can think of who else did was Brad Giffen.

Yeah, but I think this is all after. Yeah, Major, I think, was the main guy. There was a guy named Vince. I forget the producer's name and CFM team. We really got along well. And I worked pretty cheap because I had income. And again, I don't recall a lot of people watching the show or commenting on it. I guess it was high and inside.

But we had a well-produced show and shot a lot of it. I know that. And then I remember before I moved to New York, I shot a bunch of these British shows with them. And it was an episode of my life. I think after that, when I came, I didn't know much TV. I did that show Switchback

on the CBC a bunch with my friend Sean Thompson and Bus Gang and Simon Rakoff and the Sunday morning CBC show. I did that. And there were different versions across the country, right? Yeah, this was local. Yeah, that was the Toronto version.

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. And, you know, like I said, I wasn't good enough to get anywhere on television. But I guess, you know, at the time, you know, if you go back to the early 80s, there was no internet, right? So you had to get your information from the print. And I had a radio show on Q107. I was doing the comedy show there i was kind of a a minor player i guess you know between the print and the and the tv and the radio i was was quite known i guess for that scene you know still fairly inside i i gotta be honest

with you but you know crazy times i i can't even define that, how crazy. So in your words, they basically replaced you with John Major because he was a 10-50 chum guy? Yeah, I don't think, I forget the whole sequence of things. I might have been on the show with Major doing some bits or did another show. But Major, they really wanted to step up the professionalism of the show. And Major had the pipes.

And he was the right guy. I don't have radio pipes. He was great. And they had someone else on there. Was it Samantha? I forget who it was. There was a female on the show. And I guess I did some bits or something.

But it's 40 years. It wasn't Shirley McQueen, was it? I don't think so. Shirley was a Q, I believe. She did some TV, too. Did she? I think so. Shirley was a Q, I believe. Because she did some TV too. Did she? I like Shirley. Around that time.

But I forget. I don't, I think some people, I remember some clips on TV and I have a couple of videos somewhere, but. Well, it might've been Samantha Taylor. Like it was either Samantha Taylor or Shirley McQueen. Because she went out and did that CBC show after that. Yeah. Video hits.

Yeah. Yeah. That was a big show. Sandra Fair produced that again. Not with us anymore. One of the greatest producers in the history of Canadian television. Well, we were talking about women who were on video shows that were filmed or recorded in Toronto.

So shout out to Catherine McClanahan, who recently came on Toronto Mic to make sure that we all remember her role in history, the first woman VJ in much music history. She was dating my very, very, very, very close friend Paul Farberman. He got name checked. He got her apparently into all these, including, I don't know if you were there, but Farberman was there.

The Tears Are Not Enough recording. No, no, no. You weren't there, were you? In terms of backstage photos, Paul Farberman's the king of backstage photos. I never see the guy who has more backstage photos. Almost got me excited. Paul Farman is the king of backstage photos. I never seen a guy who has more backstage photos with various people. Probably one of the great collectors of

Toronto Rock memorabilia too. Really? And he dated her for quite some time. She was a fun human being. She married Jean Valaitis from Jesse and Jean after that relationship. I didn't know that. Then she married the guy out, the guy who was playing.

The guy from Coach and also SpongeBob SquarePants. I think that's over too. Patrick Starr. That's over. For sure that's over. She married Jean? She married Jean Valaitis. I did not know that.

Yeah, listen, this is why you got to listen to Catherine. She actually was spitting fire. You got to listen to that episode. I'm going to have to do that because I always had a lot of time for her. Saw her a lot in LA. She was great. Okay. Wow. Okay. So got to listen to that episode. I'm going to have to do that because I always had a lot of time for her. Saw her a lot in LA. She was great. Okay, wow. Okay, so I know we're jumping around,

but we're going to focus now. I just want to shout out Elephants and Stars because one of their questions, it's actually a guy named Manfred. Was he the host of the original video singles? We have our answer. I think I was. I think you were.

I think I was. I think that's for sure. And we got to hear some of that, some of the evidence there. Hamilton Mike. Now let's go back. Okay. Actually, you tell me the story of how you end up at the Toronto Sun. It's my favorite story.

So I was at U of T and I was the sports editor for the varsity. And I loved it. And we had a bunch of Paul McGrath, who became the rock critic at the Globe for a while, and a lot of lefties there, but most lovely two years, wonderful years, my friend Bobo, Robert White, Brian Pell, a lot of people. And I had a fun, it was a lot of fun.

And my father, God rest his soul, he passed away last year. He says, look, John, I know you like this journalism journalism thing i'm friends with a couple of board members of the toronto sun maybe i can get you a summer job and uh i i it took them five months to find me and they brought me down for an interview with the city editor and um i never read the sun even going in the interview you know i didn't give a shit about anything right and and uh he asked me one question he says uh john i got one question i go what's that do you play hockey i go yeah well you're hired so uh my job was to sort of have a seat in the newsroom and go out and take pictures of Miss Nude Ontario. And I never was, I was, I was never a photographer, but I show up the first day of work

with my two Minoltas I got from my bar mitzvah. And, and they sent me to the zoo to take some pictures of animals in the rain. Anybody knows the history of the Toronto Sun knows the center spread was a very big deal photo essay. And i came back with two rolls of 36 and somehow it worked great oh i became a photographer did a little writing uh and um became a photographer my job was if i remember correctly was monday wednesday friday you had to go to moss park arena and play hockey with the team then go to the moss park tavern and watch these guys while they drank themselves to a point where they go finish the paper. And they would bring in Rimstead to drink with them and Eddie Shaq.

And it was crazy times. I was a young kid and I played on that team for, for years. And when I left the, I, the summer job ended and I freelanced while I was graduating and I didn't write much. I wrote mostly photography. And then I got a job, um, was 23, got a job at Ottawa today, which was a short lived, um,

impersonator of the sun in Ottawa. And then when I started covering junior hockey, but I also wrote about rock and roll a bit there, reviewed some bands, you know, just stuff. And then I came back to Toronto. They gave me a job back at the sun in 78.

And, um, I was sitting in this room. I was doing some reporting, but I was pretty shitty as a reporter. And Wilder Penfield was the lead critic there and a lovely guy. And he'd come in every day with his Soho Weekly News and his Village Voice.

Because you realize the big critics influenced other critics. It wasn't who they were writing for. It was the critics who read the critics. And they didn't have anybody covering Ontario Place. And more importantly, nobody, Wilder had no interest in going to Queen Street and covering the punk rock bands and the new wave acts. Right.

And I was into that. And I started writing about these bands that no one ever heard of and started to get, and no one in the other papers were writing about these guys and the vile tones and the diodes and all these guys. And I started helping the labels along because I really liked these guys. And I became a thing. And because of that, I did that for four or five years

and became their critic there. And I couldn't tell you, no one, you can't buy that life now. critic there and i if i couldn't tell you no one you can't buy that life now i mean no it wasn't it ridiculous um hanging out you know you just tell your editors yeah i'm going on the road with the clash for a while they'd say just bring the receipts and we don't care what a time okay so what i'm going to do is i'm going to interject with a few questions about this period of your life and then of course i have questions as well. But Steve Cole, hello, Steve. Steve writes, did Gross take over from Penfield?

No. No, Wilder kept writing. I'll be honest with you. In the hierarchy of critics in town, there was Goddard was always at the top. I was going to ask you

about Goddard. Goddard, I love. Peter didn't like me, but I have a lot of respect for Peter. God rest his soul. Peter was the only guy in Canada I think Dylan would talk to.

And I think he's the only guy Mick Jagger would talk to. Wow. And Goddard was a true musician's critic. He thought a much deeper level. He was also a big fan of my sister's. Wrote about her a few times. And Peter quietly did his job. And he made a lot of money writing books toward the end of his career.

And that kind of got him his house in france i believe and uh he was the dean of the critics i'm old enough remember when there was nothing you got as a kid you got your information from peter goddard writing in the star you didn't no magazines were there there was nothing i guess you just had like 10 50 chum right and chum was am it wasn't really talking about music it was top 40 right peter was there in the 60s if you're a kid you know i can tell you lots of stories but peter peter was the best writer of all of them uh and and wilder was a classically trained musician so he could sit and talk to nana muscuri for a while he had a different kind of taste, but a lovely guy, and a guy who worked very hard at what he did. I was more run and gun, and also because I took pictures and shot, and wrote, I was an

asset. It's a lot cheaper to have me out, you know, shooting the concert than writing about it. No one else did that. Okay, so that answers Steve's first question. Then he goes, I was just looking at a bunch of clippings. So Steve, I'll just tell you, Steve chimes in quite a bit on Toronto Mike, loves the program

and he has a scrapbook because he'll send me like pictures. Like for example, you mentioned Bachman. So when Randy Bachman was coming on, Steve Cole had like clippings

about when he originally lost that Gretsch guitar. Yeah. And then he communicated would get that to Randy. Okay. So Steve Cole has clippings. He did send me one.

He goes, I'm looking at a bunch of clippings trying to get a sense of the timeline. Seems like they both had a lot of articles in the late 70s, but Penfield was the only one in the sun in the early 70s. So what year did you join? I think it was 76, 77, the summer student, then right until 78.

Then he ponders, you'll appreciate this. He goes, imagine the days of two full-time pop rock music writers. The star used to send reviewers to Buffalo concerts even. And then he sent me a clip and he goes, as you can see from the attached, in 1978, the Toronto Sun sent Mr. Gross and a photographer, but maybe you were the photographer. I was the photographer. Okay. That's okay.

To cover Stone's concert in Buffalo. Right. The star had Bruce Kirkland and Fulton there. My question for Jonathan is this. Was it common to cover concerts a couple of hundred kilometers away? And if so, when did that end? It seems so extravagant given that many of the papers today don't even do local concert reviews anymore.

The point was, basic newspaper math is if CPI or whoever's promoting is buying ad space in your paper wholesale, you'll support that scene. That's why there's no more film critics, there's no more movie ads. So if a band was coming to town, whether it be U2 or whomever, and you could get an advance on that band, whether it be an interview or a review, it looked a whole lot better in the paper. You know, people, again, got their information. This kid's writing in.

He obviously read. Oh, they're coming. Here's what's going to happen. Here's what they're playing. Here's what the show looks like. Without reviewing it, you wouldn't review an out-of-town show, but you would write about it. And it wasn't no big thing for me to get my car and go to buffalo right the stones were reviewed because they did not play toronto on that tour

i have a picture i'm doing right now a big picture of jagger that peter howell gave me i forgot that i shot in buffalo that i'm having blown up. The Stones were brilliant. Well, it's a whole other conversation, but the Stones were great. But no, I went on the road. And also you had publicists like the late Gino Empry, who you would go out and review shows at the Royal York. He would send you out on the road prior to them coming to do something. He'd pay for the airfare and pay for your hotel.

And you'd go out and write about Heinz heinz and dad or whoever the hell well you know you know it was it was a bunch of cap calloway and and people like that you go out and write about them and they were coming to town and you'd be charitable because the whole sun newspaper was based on george anthony taking every film junket there was and writing lovely things about Anne Murray every half hour. And, and God bless him. He, he built a section with no money to something that was still to me,

the star had a better entertainment section when Sid was there. Um, much more, uh, they had William Littler and real, real critics, but the sun competed. The sun was certainly a lot better than the globe.

Globe was didn't care about the rock critics and the film critics. Jay was the greatest film critic and he was the Globe. But in terms of other stuff, Sun was more fun and the Star had more information, more news. Hamilton Mike wrote in and said, what were

his first impressions on hearing or seeing Rush and the Tragically Hip for the first time. Now, when are you done with the son? No, I was done before the hip. Yeah. The Rush I saw, I love Geddy and all these guys. I love Ray.

I only seen Rush a couple times, and I think I'll tell you when to start a little later. So their last club date with their original drummer was in 1974 at Larry's Hideaway. Me and my buddies went down and the drummer wasn't very good and they were kind of a rock band. They were a power trio back then. They weren't this Neil Peart, you know, kind of weird fantasy stuff. They weren't Prague. They weren't Prague.

And, and they were great. And Geddy was a Jewish kid from northern Toronto, so we all loved him. And I don't think I was into it after that, and be quite frank, when it came to Rush, that was wilder. I was not going to talk to those guys.

And that was a big act. You know, if you remember the June Awards in the 70s, Terry David Mulligan would get on the stage and go, Rush, good life, and Anne-Marie, good night. You know, it was only three awards, and they got them all. You know, it wasn't much past Rush. Shout out to TDM, yeah. And we'd all retire to the hostility suites, as he would say.

But no, no, I never wrote about Rush, really, because that was out of my purview. They were a big act. What were your favorite acts during your tenure at the Toronto Sun? What were your favorite acts? I guess I'm always partial to the guys I had relationships with. So the Canadian band, they weren't big. The Diodes, I was always tight with those guys. Tired of Waking Up Tired.

I still have that on the playlist. Paul and John and Ralph Alfonso was a manager. FOTM Ralph Alfonso. He was Up Tired. I still have that on the playlist. Ralph Alfonso was a manager. FOTM Ralph Alfonso. He's a lovely guy. I guess the one band and I was friends with Boy George for a while because I wrote about him extensively and I wrote about him in New York at Rolling Stone.

And the band I had a relationship with were the Cars. There you go. Look at that. Look at that. I was just waiting for you to say the C word. When's he going to say the C word? Well, that's pretty impressive. So I had seen the cars at the

El Macombo and I knew about them from my friends in Boston because they played the Rat and they were a huge act. And then the road manager was a guy named Steve Berkowitz and I went on the road with them on their second tour and I made an impression on Kasich

because I kind of called them out on a crappy live show and some of the crap they were doing on stage was kind of, you know, they were a terrible live act. But Kasich had time for me and I always wrote about them. Then in New York when they did that fourth album

um with warhol doing the videos i forget the name of the album and i interviewed him for this rolling stone thing i was doing for and and the way it was back then uh it was okasic by himself the rest of the band by themselves i go to boston talk to the band then okasic and i can see okasic uh for me he lost it in that interview he started screaming these assholes would just be fucking around at Berklee if it wasn't for me and I'm the whole band and I can see

what it fueled Ocasek for all those years and I want to write a book about him he lied about his age going in because he was really like 35 by the time the band broke and he hadn't made a nickel and um he had a chip on his shoulder right the way through i know he at the end of his life he was the head of a and r at electra guys are coming he goes i don't need

this shit he was he and he's divorced his His marriage wasn't great. Is this the one to the supermodel? Yeah, but I'm going to say this. First Cars album, it's the Pet Sounds of the 70s. And I interviewed Roy Baker, who produced the record. Roy Baker had done Sex Pistols and stuff,

but he had produced the first two Queen albums. And if you look at the choral work and the cards, it has a Queen-ish type of feel to it. And they recorded the record of the UK to give it that kind of new wave, kind of hip thing. And he turned, you know, he spun gold for these guys because these guys were acoustic guys working on, Benny and Rick had worked on Upbeat and Cleveland and stuff. I already knew this group right down to the end.

I remember the last time I spent time with Rick was at Area in New York, and it was me, my then-fiancé, Steve Rubell, and me at Area hanging out. And I'm the only one around now. Let's drink in the last minute here, and then we'll talk a little more about the car. She is there to meet the stars And she loves again I kind of like the way, I like the way she skips

Cause she's my best friend's girl She's my best friend's girl Oh, oh, oh She used to be mine She's so fine My best friend's girlfriend My best friend's girlfriend She used to be mine

My best friend's girlfriend Yeah, yeah My best friend's girlfriend. My best friend's girlfriend. She used to be my best friend's girlfriend. My best friend's girlfriend. What's it like listening to this song once again in the headphones here? I never get bored of the sound quality. The guitars work well on anybody's AM radio in their car, that kind of Beatles country riff from Elliot, you know, and the guitar and

then the choral work. But Roy Baker called the chickies, you know, with the sound of that guitar. Listen, it's modern, postmodern stuff. And Rick was a very bright guy and Ben was a wonderful vocalist and they really had chemistry. And as long as it lasted, they were the cards. And I'm glad they got in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They should have gotten in a lot earlier. But that's the one band.

And I was friends with The Clash only because of my sister. She was friends with Ellen Foley who sang on Paradise. And she was with Mick Jones. Was also, if I'm correct, in the first season of Night Court. Yes, she was. I haven't spoken to her yet, but she was a lovely person.

And so when The Clash were big, you couldn't call the record company, hey, I want an interview with The Clash. They weren't talking to anybody. So my sister arranged for me to go to New Orleans to spend some time with them on tour. They were nice guys. I'm never going to say a bad word about Mick or Joe or those guys. Because Ellen was dating him, right?

That's how I got in. Yeah, yeah. Hitsville, USA. Yeah, my sister called Ellen and said, we're the ones who wrote The Clash. I'm just connecting these dots right now, Jonathan. Of course. And she's saying Paradise by the Dashboard.

Yes. Amazing. And so I spent some time with those guys and I saw Mick over the years. They were nice guys. You know, I remember going to the venue with them in New Orleans and we're in the van and I go, and not a fun town, it was getting a little scary. I go, hey guys, where are we going?

And Joe turned to me and goes, look, mate, we're going to play the last place the Doors ever fucking played. And sure enough, if you look at the Doors, the last place they ever played was the warehouse in New Orleans. And we played this warehouse. And they were great, and Mick was great, and it was a lot of fun. And they had a manager named Cosmo Vinyl who was an interesting guy and you know those

no one else got that. I guess I you know. Wait Cosmo Vinyl? Is that the inspiration for Cosmo Kramer? The ass man. Cosmo Vinyl is one of those characters he asked him what do you do Cosmo? A little bit of everything and a lot of nothing. You know but they were real like they

The only band that mattered. They kind of imploded the following year at the Us Festival. And that was, I think that's the last date they ever kind of did as that foursome. And they were bad-mouthing Steve Jobs. And I know it wasn't Steve Jobs, it was Steve Wozniak who financed that, who I spent some time with. Yeah. That's a whole other show, the Us Festival.

But they were good guys. I don't think I trying about this thing yeah yeah okay i don't think i don't talk to rick emmet about this yes lovely guy i don't think i met a lot of people that were assholes i i don't david lee roth was a professional asshole the okay dave you're, you're crazy, but I get it. You know, you wouldn't, you wouldn't be upset hanging out with Dave, even though he treated, he was a rock star. There's no more rock stars in this world. Dave Lee Roth was a rock star. But I, I, I, it, there's volumes of stuff.

It doesn't, I had more access than anybody. I had more fun than anybody that I survived all that in one piece. I will say that you can't do this past the age of 30. That's when I left the daily grind. Because you have to be living it. It's like Lester. But Ben Rayner did this well into his late 40s. He wasn't committed. You have to be committed to stay up till 5 in the morning. You've got to be committed to go drinking with these people. You've got to be committed to stay up till 5 in the morning You gotta be committed to go drinking with these people You gotta be committed to not go home

And for these guys, like how PD did it Yep, it's a job And once it's a job, forget it You gotta be willing to go out and see 4 or 5 bands a night Get on planes, go and interview and hustle And live it You had to live it. You had to make decisions for you.

Your emotional well-being had to depend on what records you were listening to. It's not for old men. No country for old men. No, it wasn't. When I did it, the Rolling Stone had a magazine called The Record. I worked there for a while. It was a lot of fun. Okay, so we'll take a moment here.

So when do you leave the sun? 83. 83. Okay. So you put in a good, like about five years at the Toronto Sun there. 78 to 83.

So, okay. There's more ground. Let me give you a few gifts because you made the trek here. I'm thoroughly enjoying this. By the way, we mentioned Rick Ocasek, so I have to shout out

that the late, great Rick Ocasek did produce my favorite Weezer album. Yes, he did. Great job on that. I still love that album. Yes, he did. Okay. Great Lakes Brewery is a craft brewery here in southern Etobicoke.

You can buy their fresh beer at LCBOs and grocery stores across this fine province. I've got some fresh craft beer for you, Jonathan Gross. So thank you, Great Lakes, for sending that over. Also, Jonathan, do you enjoy Italian food like lasagna, let's say? Is that a food you enjoy? More than anybody. I have a lasagna for you

in my freezer that you're taking home with you. You're going to love it. Palma Pasta sent it over. Also, Palma Pasta is going to host us FOTMs. You're invited as well, Jonathan. This is TMLX14. It's going to be on December 9. That's a Saturday at noon at Palma's Kitchen.

That's one of the four Palma Pasta locations. And it would be amazing if the great Jonathan Gross showed up. So you're now officially invited. They'll feed you. Palma will feed you and Great Lakes will give you a drink. Where is this? This is near like Burnham, Thorpe and Mavis area of Mississauga. Okay.

All right. It's for the 905ers. Central. Very central. Walking distance. It's easy to get to. Walking distance. I could bike there, but okay.

I have a wireless speaker for you, Jonathan, from Moneris. That's for you. It's a quality speaker. You're going to dig that, and you're going to listen to Season 5 of Yes, We Are Open, because FOTM El Grego has been going to the Maritimes in Newfoundland to collect stories

from small business owners, inspiring stories for entrepreneurs like us. This is going to inspire the heck out of you. Season 5 of Yes, We Are Open, but you can also listen to Kurz and other great music. All right, I'm going to do that. Thank you. And you're playingERS and other great music. All right. I'm going to do that. Thank you. And you're playing with a measuring tape there. That is courtesy of Ridley Funeral Homes. Hey, you're young and swinging.

I love that. I love WKRP. I sometimes wonder if I can draw a line between what I'm doing now. I never worked in radio. You mentioned you were at Q107. I'm going to ask you about that. But I just loved radio. And I think a big reason I love radio is i loved wkrp in

cincinnati and i wonder like if there's no wkrp in cincinnati am i even hosting a podcast right now it's funny i i i spent a lot of evenings and howard hestford passed away i recall that evening i spent with him in new york uh we were at a some maybe it's a home video release of krp i was 100 years ago with the real music intact no no i think the vhs the vhs came out with the real music took him years for shout fat that's another story and has been i spent a whole evening drinking and talking about chuck berry has been was a huge rock and roll guy and he just loved chuck berry and we sat for hours talking about chuck uh and a lovely guy by the way uh god rest his soul and uh if you worked in radio q especially you know that's where you had a bunch of characters way it was. You had a bunch of characters there

and you had a bunch of burnt out producers and drug addled on air people. Who, like, tell me about how you end up on cue, what you did there. And if you could, any names you can drop. I've talked to a whole bunch of them. Well, Samantha was there. Makowitz was there.

Okay, so Bob, that's senior. So Bob Makowitz, senior. Samantha Taylor was there. Mackiewicz was there. Okay, so Bob, that's senior. So Bob Mackiewicz, senior. Samantha Taylor was there. Yeah, a lot of fun. We had the morning guy. Was Gene there? Jesse and Gene were cute, were they not? They were, but I feel like you're Scruff Connors.

Scruff Connors. His son's been on the show. Did he pass away, Scruff? He did pass away, yeah. I think he came out of the closet, didn't he that's all uh hazy to me at this point i was on a couple of junkets for scruff scruff was a morning guy can you do a scruff impression and i was i did the comedy show but they had me on the rock report a lot and then they let me spin some records sometimes i was the first guy in

toronto to play dancing with myself hey from my close friend billy idol um love billy a great guy and and uh sweat i had a lot of fun um i had the comedy show for a couple years and that was on q yeah sunday night and i remember the chum the Chum FM funnies. This competed with that. No, the Sunday funnies was after that. That was Rick, I believe. Rick Hodge. Right, no, we were before that, and I did it for a couple of years,

and boy, did I have fun. I love comedy, right? So I was plugged into a lot of stuff. I mean, I was very fortunate that my friends and I were big comedy people, and through my sister, I met a lot of stuff. I mean, I was very fortunate that my friends and I were big comedy people. And through my sister, I met a lot of people. And, you know, we go to New York all the time and see stand-up. And this is the golden era, right?

This is Larry David at three in the morning. And guys who are, Gilbert, right? Gilbert Godfrey, yeah, sure. Gilbert and I, I knew Gilbert. His podcast, by the way, Gilbert Godfrey, yeah, sure. And Gilbert and I, I knew Gilbert, and his podcast, by the way, is wonderful. I enjoyed it too. It's what I'm looking, I'm actually, in a sense, a small sense, I'm trying to capture,

he's doing like an old Hollywood thing, and I'm kind of doing that for guys like you, like Toronto Zeitgeist guys. Give me, where is Harold Hossain at? Find me Harold Hossain and get him in my basement. Get Jojo Chinto in here. I'm working on it. I'm working on it i've had dialogue you know we talk about inclusivity uh he was the first guy and and moses put him on the air and um guy couldn't speak that well but he was a personality became a hero for the jamaican community became a real icon and uh he should be on the show. He's 82 years old now, I think.

I'm working. He should. So there's a gentleman. God, I'm going to forget his name. A cameraman who was seriously hurt in an accident filming for City TV. And he's paraplegic, I believe. Yeah. And his name will come to you.

Antonoff. I'll have to Google this name, actually, in a moment. But every year they have a birthday party for him. And a lot of my friends go to this thing, like Jim McKinney, Gord Martineau, Peter Gross, Lorne Honickman, all these cats show up. And then I was looking at the photo from it the other day. The other day being like a month ago.

And I see Jojo Chintos in the photo. And I'm like, okay, Jojo's got to come on. He's a legend. You ever been to Ann Romer on the show? Several times. Very good FOTM. I dated her 100 years ago. Did you?

Yeah. Before the skier? It was before. She was the prettiest girl. People would faint when they'd see her. She went to Branksome where my sister went. So this is where I met her. She lived in the same building as us.

Yeah, she's working on a radio station in Markham right now. She is? Yeah. She's great on a radio station in Markham right now. She is? Yeah. She's great. Called The Region. And she does, you know, those infomercials or commercials she does for like a Windows place. Apparently they're airing in the States because

people in America see this commercial of Ann Romer and they Google her name because they don't know this name, Ann Romer, and they inevitably end up on TorontoMic.com and send me a note or a comment to let me know that Ann Romer is in like whatever. She's in the firmament. Kansas. She's in the firmament. She's in the firmament.

She's been around. And I remember when she started her first day doing television was that show with Peter Finiak. Okay. And what station was that? Global. Global.

And she came to my desk crying. Bill Antonoff. I wanted to get his name. So Bill Atonoff. She was married to a cameraman. Yes. I believe you're a hundred percent right. She was married to a cameraman. Yes, I believe you're 100% right. She was married to Paborski, then she was with George Gross

Jr., and then she was married to Cameron. She's had a few guys, but she... The wrong Gross there. Yeah, but she's a character. She's a real character. Well, I mean, listeners of the program know what I think of Ann Romer there. I've said too much, but okay. So Q107, how long are you there? Two years, I think.

Okay. I need to get you to, so are you writing for Rolling Stone proper? No, the magazine, I was on the road. What happened was in the fall of 82, I went on the road with The Who for their first of 27 farewell tours. Right. And I was in New York and someone said,

you should call a guy named Dave McKee who was running the record. Rolling Stone was finished with music at that point. And they shunted most of it off to another publication they owned called The Record, which was all music in the old Rolling Stone double fold packaging was kind of a groovy thing. And so he said, you got to call this guy McGee.

You could write for him. You're a good writer. And, and so I called up Dave and he said, uh, what he got was I'm going to roll up the who, the who. Yeah. So I wrote a cover story on the who for them and, uh, photos, the whole deal. And I became, I guess I became one of their editors. I wrote a lot of stuff for them.

The two, three years they lasted until they folded. I had, they had an office on Fifth Avenue, same building. Jan, the only thing I ever wrote to Jan. I was going to ask you about Jan because of obviously in the news recently that maybe he was a little bit misogynist and racist in his. I'm not sure. I'm not sure I buy that. He's an old guy.

This is what he knows. I don't think, you know, he's going to be a guy who grew up in the 60s in San Francisco with that stuff. It's all he knows. Those are the people he interviewed. I'm not going to defend him to the hilt, but I understand. I understand when you come from that perspective. Jan, when I read Sticky Fingers, because my old girlfriend is in there,

I didn't realize how much drug use there was in the building. I didn't realize that Annie Leibovitz was a junkie. I didn't realize how much coke was going down. We didn't work on the same floor. Jan only noticed one thing. I auditioned. I tried to get a job there running a random notes. That was my first kind of chance. And they gave it to Merle Ginsberg, and they were right. I wasned, I tried to get a job there running a random notes. That was my first kind of chance.

And they gave it to Merle Ginsberg and they were right. I wasn't ready for that. But the only thing I wrote was that Jan noticed was Ed Carr's piece. And he said something. And I didn't really know him. You know, I saw him a couple times in the hallways, but

it was, I guess if you want to read a real tragic book um read everything as an afterthought uh it's it's a nephew of the late great paul nelson wrote wrote about his uncle who was the dean of the he ran the review section at rolling stone and if you remember when you're a kid you would read the review section without hearing a record and go out and buy it. Yes, of course. And so Paul was the captain of that.

All the guys I knew, Billy Altman and Lester and all these people. Lester Banks, yeah. Yeah, I'll tell you about Lester. And I guess he summed up rock criticism in the way I sum it up, is that when Lennon said the Beatles were bigger than Christ, he was right. Rock and roll became a religion. And religion needed scholarship, like all religions do. The critics became the scholars.

And so you would cipher your understanding of the music through the great critics, and there were some wonderful guys writing, obviously, and maybe writing too intellectually about drug addicts, but, you know, whatever. And that was what Paul Nelson was about. He had invested in this so much. It was religion for him. He grew up in Minnesota and was loaning records to Dylan.

They lived in the same town. And then he woke up one day in 82, I think, when the music, disco had killed the record business and disco had killed people's understanding of what the business was about. It was a business. It wasn't about art. And he left the business. He just walked away and worked at a video store in Greenwich Village for

many, many years until he passed away and kind of of ignominiously, to be said the least. And he's kind of the poster child for rock critics. Lester died when he was 32, kind of burned out. He really invested. He realized it was a fraud, but he was so deep into it, and he wanted to be a rock star. He had a band in New York. We'd go see him.

But Lester was a flame out nelson just was a guy who was became a it was disillusioned and and i think there's no such thing as rock criticism anymore none of the stuff's worth writing about you know it's meaningless and that's the problem back then it seemed to matter and like i said if you're invested intellectually it was great but But I spent one night with Lester. I went to see Bob Seger in Nassau Coliseum. Him and Billy Altman. And Altman was the first guy to get a college degree in rock criticism from the University of Buffalo.

And Lester, in terms of hanging out with someone, my friend, a lot of fun. Okay, good times. Amazing. Bob Seger, of course, Bob Seger. But Lester, he's not prepared, he's not really portrayed properly

in that movie, but Philip Seymour Hoffman does the best he can. Yeah, almost famous. Yeah. A great movie and a great book and I was a fan of Cameron Crowe when he was 15, so.

I do like that movie, Almost Famous. Yeah, but the bootleg cut is very good if you can find it. Bootleg cut. Canada Kev is on the live stream and I apologize, Kev,

that I didn't check earlier, but I just glanced at it and he had a question while we were talking about the cars, but I'm going to ask it now because I just read it now. Canada Kev says,

is it true that the cars would test their final studio mixes sitting in a car listening on a shitty AM radio? Yeah, that's what I said before. Yeah, okay. So you did say that. Okay.

Okay, I knew you mentioned that it sounded good on an AM radio, but I wasn't sure that they did it. It got to sound good on a shitty speaker or a killer. An Olds 88 or something. You know, it was an AM radio. Okay. Okay. Actually, let me shout out two websites, and then I want to hear about what's the battered newsman, because we did tease that earlier.

But recyclemyelectronics.ca is where you go if you have any old devices, any old tech, any old electronics, Jonathan. Don't throw it in the garbage. The chemicals end up in our landfill. If you go to recyclemyelectronics.ca, you'll find a depot accredited by EPRA where you can drop it off and have it properly recycled. So write that

down. Also, tis the season. We only have a week left before Halloween here. PumpkinsAfterDark.com is where you go to get your Pumpkins After Dark tickets. Pumpkins After Dark, of course, is an award-winning Halloween spectacle in Milton,

Ontario. That's a short drive for you. So make sure you go to pumpkinsafterdark.com. Who were the battered newsmen? I know the battered wives. Well, that was the point, right? I had friends with the guys and I guess it was Bomp Records, the home of Bob Sigurini,

God rest his soul. Oh, man. He's an FOTM too. No, no, no. Bob was the first rock critic that allowed me to hang around with him. He had Beatles rehearsal tapes. I didn't know from Bob. Bob was the first rock critic that allowed me to hang around with him. He had Beatles rehearsal tapes. I didn't know from this. He was

great. He was a big fan of my sister's. He had her open for her at the Omicombo one night. Bob, God rest. I love Bob. Cam and I are going to have a dinner. I've got to discuss this. Cam should have written a book about Bob. Well, I did phone. So when Bob

passed away, I zoomed with cam to just talk to cam carpenter about his friend bob segherini and that dropped as a ridley funeral home memorial episode i do one a month where we talk about people who passed yeah they're very interesting we talked a lot about bob segherini and now that i you guys are kind of cut from a similar cloth in that he was also like early Much Music VJ guy. Who was? Bob Segarini. He was on the radio, wasn't he? Yeah, big time on the radio, Q107. He was the Iceman.

But he also had an opportunity until he screwed it up. But he had an opportunity but he did that often. All the stories end that way. He had an opportunity to be a video jockey on Much Music. Oh, he did? Yeah, and you can hear more. There's a great, if you ever get bored, listen to Bob Segarini on Toronto Mic.

We get all those great stories. I will. But you're in the battered newsman. Right, so we decided to have an answer band. I have no idea how I convinced the newspaper to back this. So Peter Howell, I think it was me, my friend Steve Moranis ricky's cousin

played guitar he was a sunshine boy so he qualified and then we had a couple of guys um peter howell and and i think a drummer i forget who played bass i was on vocals and quote unquote keyboards wow and i had done something with uh steve davey from uh the everglades a couple years late most afterwards sorry and we decided to come out and do some punk songs and we opened up for the wives at the elmo and then we played a few dates on our own at the old punk place on Bloor Street. I forget the name of it. And we opened for some bands.

Yeah, it was when somebody stole our mics and the paper got pissed off at me. It was stupid fun because that was my life. And then I had a band a little later called Deadlines. We opened for Teenage Head. Wow. And we had a better musicians and that was fun. I wrote a couple songs.

I remember, yeah, that was me being goofball stupid. I have a lot of goofy episodes in my life. That was one of the goofiest. But that was because Bomp Records, I mean, Bomp put me on the cover of a couple singles they it was it was wolfgang and i forget the other guy's name and they they tried to make a go of it with a couple of bands the wives segherini um the curse i think they were involved in 12 copies he was you know back in those days any record you want to sell you had

a plate of the people that bought the record. There was no way you could sell more than, have you had Greg Godovitz on the show? Yes, I have, yes. Yeah, he would tell you how it was to sell records. Yeah, now, it's interesting that this whole battered newsman got into my notes because my chat with Peter Gross, and he said, make sure you ask about battered newsmen. So I wonder if Peter Gross has attended a show or two.

Yeah, I'm sure he did. People remember weird things. It was a lot of, it's just, you know, there's a lot of, it's a long, strange trip and that was part of the trip. But I just started at the Sun, it was in 78 and we did that. And we rehearsed, so the best thing was

we rehearsed in a loft up off of Jarvis and Adelaide. Okay. And there was that band, oh, and I forget their name. They were a huge prog band in Jamaica or something, but they were from Toronto. They had just total prog act, but they were big in Europe. They didn't make it big here. Forget their name.

And they played O'Keeffe Center, opening for Steve Howe, I believe, who was a guitarist for Genesis. Steve Howe? I forget. He's from, yes. No, it's the other guy. It was the other guy from Genesis. And I trashed them.

Of course, I show up at the rehearsal hall the next day. There they are rehearsing with me. Steve Hackett. Steve Hackett, right. And they were a big band. I forget Hackett, Steve Hackett. Right. And they were, they were a big band. I forget their name and I'm real sorry. Um,

if it comes to you later, I will. And, and they, um, boy, I never forget that move. I'm rehearsing with you guys and they,

and I hated me and they were, they were good musicians. I just kind of, I had a slash and burn kind of MO back then. And, uh, I, I didn't like anything that wasn't like,

you know, skinny and English with some leather jackets and some intravenous drug habits. So I trashed a lot of bands. I'm not sure I was right about all of them, but that's what I did. I'm a big fan of early Canadian hip hop and the whole scene and kind of documenting it where I can.

Okay, that's why when I had DJ Ron Nelson in there. early Canadian hip hop in the whole scene and kind of documenting it where I can. Okay. That's why when I had DJ Ron Nelson in there, in fact, I got a cat coming over on Saturday who was one of the co-producers of And the Legacy Begins by Dream Warriors, which DJ Ron Nelson, I think it was recorded in his big basement studio. Not as cool as my basement studio, probably much cooler, of course. But you were the first person to write about Run DMC? Well, no, it's more than that. I was the first guy to bring Run DMC to Toronto.

So I feel like I would have thought that might have been DJ Ron Nelson. So we need you to now, for the record here, on the mics here, your role in all this, and then when does DJ Ron Nelson show up? Let's go back a second. So I moved to New York in 83 and,

and I ran into Nile Rodgers at a bar and he had produced a spoons record. I knew him from Toronto. Very, very nice guy. I said, you know, what's going on in New York is where he goes, rock and roll is dead here.

He says, forget it. The only thing that matters is hip hop. So he sent me down to, um, the Roxy, the skating rink, and I hung out with guys, and I met Tom Silverman,

and then the guys who had run DMC, and I started. So, you know, I'm going to bring some of this. I was living in New York, but I was going to bring some of this back to Toronto. And I started doing, I guess it was some sort of New York DJ festival I was doing in Toronto at Heaven. And I brought in Africa Bambada. And I was running Jelly Bean and Mark Kamens and guys. And it wasn't really successful, but I built a little reputation at Heaven, which was kind of a bar where the black kids were going on Friday nights. And I knew the manager.

He was a lovely guy. And so I run DMC. I was the first guy to write about run DMC in Rolling Stone. No one knew what this was. And so I remember Russell and the fellows, we went to this Chinese place down in the Flatiron District, and we hit it off really nicely. And they were going up to Harlem a a couple weeks to shoot that famous pilot that

became a vhs i forget the name of it too with let the music play when she was on it what's her name uh and them and the treacherous three which kumo d was in it was real old school stuff and i said to to russell i said you know let's let's bring these guys up to Toronto. And they had an agent, Norby Walters, and I paid him a very small amount of money and I flew them up to Buffalo through People's Express to save money and I brought them into Much. And I was already gone, I think, from video singles because Mike Williams was kind of the guy. And I brought up a rock box

video they didn't have it up here and the guys came in and we sold out heaven and they tore the place up and they were they were brilliant you know and then i did a lot of other shows after that fat boys cherelle houdiniini, um, a lot of, a lot of groups. And, and I think, um, I was the first guy to do that, I guess.

You know, there weren't, Ron started promoting the Sunshine Crew eventually, but I was the first guy to do a bunch of shows. So you kind of passed the baton to Ron Nelson. Yeah. Ron, Ron is a famous guy because,

um, a few years later, he was 89, he brought in Public Enemy and Run DMC, and I forget, EPMD, I believe, to Varsity Arena, which was a big risk. I don't know if he made any money or not, but I was there, and I said, wow, Ron, you did this on a big scale because you didn't bring rap acts in. It was hard. Most of the guys couldn't get across the border. At UTF, I had to take one guy back one night because his brother was up

for murder one. It wasn't a lot of organization there with that business. But I had a lot of fun until I didn't. You know, I didn't do it for the money. I did it because I was into this stuff. And I used to promote for Charles Caboose a couple of shows later. I brought up, uh, Jerry Caliste and Hashim and some other people, but that, and I kid Creole and the coconuts. That's a whole other story. Um, but Ron, yeah, Ron, it, it, it, it passed on to Ron and I saw Ron a few months ago at

a hip hop awards thing out in Scarborough. It was good to see him. And he's, he's always had his heart in the right place, Ron. And so we went to Buffalo together. We spent a night at the, um, it was, it was called the hip and I forget the break dance show was a big traveling show that Def Jam used to put on. And so Ron, I spent a lot of time together. He was, he was into it and

he had that show Fantastic Voyage and got a good soul Ron Nelson and I was thankful that he supported me. Okay and because you mentioned, although you called him Mike Williams, I was told not to call him Mike. He looked me in the eyes and said, I speak into a

Mike. I am Michael. Michael Williams. Okay, great, fabulous. But here I gotta drop this because. Michael Williams. Yeah, okay, great, fabulous. But here, I got to drop this because you dropped his name. No Cleveland, no Bowie. There's my, he looked me in the eyes as well and said, no Cleveland, no Bowie. And I'm like, okay, you were there. I wasn't there.

So I listened to Michael Williams. He was a great DJ in Montreal and he was great on Much and he always believed when he did and and he helped me out a lot. There's a lot. There's two very long episodes of Michael Williams from the last couple of months, and a lot of great history there too. All right, my friend, you've been amazing. I almost think I should check in with you here

because I would touch on a few other things unless you want to leave it for a sequel. Let's just collect our thoughts because I've got to go take a shower now because my whole life is – I got an email from somebody. I have a blog called 60 is not the new 40. You know what? I actually do enjoy your blog. I just wish I could subscribe to the RSS feed.

For some reason, there's no RSS feed. But I do recommend people bookmark it. 60 is not the new 40.com. Yeah, so, and somebody wrote me in, a girl named Sheila, and she said, yeah, when you were the son, you used to come to my apartment on Maitland and get your hair cut, and

you had a crush on my roommate, Trish. And I go, yeah, I did. I was like, thanks for reminding me. She was a really cute, she was, back then those girls only wanted skinny English guys who played rhythm guitar for some band. Not a guy, you know,

who played tennis on the weekends. So can I tell you the topics I'm saving? Because I actually, so I want to talk to you about, and I'll just run them down and then if there's one you want to do right now, it's up to you, but we can also play it out.

I want to talk to you about, and I'll just run them down, and then if there's one you want to do right now, it's up to you, but we can also play it out. I want to talk to you about SCTV. So if you do honor me by coming back for another chat, I want to talk to you about SCTV. I want to talk to you about David Letterman. I know you've got a great Letterman story. Who told you that? You did.

I read it on your blog. Oh, that's a good source for a lot of good things there. So I got the letterman story. I want to talk to you about Mad Men. It's one of my favorite shows of all time. And I wanted to kind of tie that into Mrs. Maisel. I forget the full title of that. What's it called?

Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. There's basically, all you need to know, Mr. Gross, is I've got more than enough for a sequel so just for the record now before I play a little Lewis to the Low will you return

for a second Toronto Mike episode sure you're a good guy and some people I really respect have been on the show so that says a lot name them

I want to know those people no no but you just name a bunch you know but I suggest you have a couple more people but have you had Ralph on the show

Ralph Alfonso has been on the show yeah so Cammy's been on the show a bunch and he's the but I suggest you have a couple more people, but have you had Ralph on the show? Ralph Alfonso has been on the show, yeah. Yeah, so Cammy's been on the show a bunch and he's the dude I grew up with. Lots of time for him. And Lauren Honigman, who I make fun of, but who is just a wonderful human being. Lauren's a dear friend of the show. Were you friendly with Brian Linehan?

I knew Brian well. There is the one famous Brian Linehan Caddyshack story. Has anybody told you that one? Tell me that before I play us out here. So Linehan had, like Brock Linehan, had a habit of over-researching and over-extending and made a name for himself because he was just very, very thorough. So he's on the Caddyshack junket.

And he got a little out of hand with Ted Knight. Everybody loved Ted, right? And so he's attacking Ted Knight for not going to see Mary Tyler Moore on Broadway and whose life is it anyway? And I was busy. I couldn't get him. What do you mean? You work with her. And it upset Ted. And it got back to chevy and uh so when chevy's turned me into you by by brian he says brian thanks for all the questions um uh can i ask you a question brian sure chevy wasn't can you please fuck off?

You know, they love Ted. But Brian was a lovely guy, always took public transit and always saw him in the subway. A minch kite guy. Again, the characters of Toronto. Yeah, no. That's him. Loved him. I emulate him in this picture you see here is because members of the Watchmen know that I kind of emulate him.

And he's kind of a role model of mine. And they wanted to thank me for the support by telling me that Brian Linehan would be proud of me. He would. He absolutely would. He would be very thorough, very charming, and not obsequious. You work at a level where people get a little challenged, and that's fine, too. And that brings us to the end of our 1,349th show. You can follow me on Twitter and Blue Sky.

I'm at Toronto Mike. And go to Jonathan's blog and bookmark it and check it out. It's called 40 is not. No, 60. 60, my friend. 60. I did my research until I fucked it up. 60 is not the new 40 dot com. And go to Unobstructed View for the best

movies you can ever find. And do that too. And much love to those who made this all possible. That is Great Lakes Brewery, Palm of Pasta don't leave without your lasagna. Raymond James Canada, Minaris, Recycle My Electronics, Pumpkins After Dark and Ridley brewery palm of pasta don't leave about your lasagna raymond james canada manaris recycle my electronics pumpkins after dark and ridley funeral home see you all tomorrow no it might

be wednesday when my special guest is brad giffen from torontos. Are you kidding me? That's happening, everybody. See you all then. is coming up rosy and gray yeah the wind is cold but the smell of snow warms me today and your smile is fine and it's just like mine and it won't go away because everything is rosy and gray well i've kissed you in france and i've kissed you in spain