Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Jonny Dovercourt: Toronto Mike'd #794

Episode Date: February 2, 2021

Mike chats with Jonny Dovercourt about his book Any Night of the Week: A D.I.Y. History of Toronto Music, 1957-2001, Toronto's great music venues past and present, his recorded walking tours and the Wavelength music festival.

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Learn more at realestatelove.ca. I'm Mike from torontomMike.com and joining me this week is Johnny Dovercourt. Hello, how's it going, Mike? Hey, Johnny, I think you've got the most Toronto handle I've heard since Jarvis Church from the Philosopher Kings. Well, he's got two street names in his name. I only have one. He has me beat. I accidentally, when I was thinking of you the other day, which I will do periodically, I was thinking,

oh, Johnny Davenport is coming on. And I'm like, no, no, no, that's somebody else. That's happened before. That has happened before, even in print. Oh, that's funny. I Weekly was talking about the great Johnny Davenport. Happened before. That has happened before. Even in print. Oh, that's funny. Like iWeekly was talking about the great Johnny Davenport. Actually, this sounds like a huge name drop.

No, I like name drops. Go ahead. But back when we were doing the Wavelength zine, we got it reviewed in this magazine called Arthur. And they had a zine corner that was done by Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth. Wow. And so I got a shout out from Thurston Moore, but he called me Johnny Davenport.

Hey, pretty close though. Like pretty close. I know. I'm like, how well does he know Toronto street names? I was kind of impressed by the mistake. But it's, it's fair to say that you might be a Johnny,

but you're not a, you're not truly a Johnny Dovercourt. That's a handle. Yeah. My real name is Jonathan Bunce. And Johnny Dovercourt just kind of evolved into a pen name, stage name. I dig it. I like it, man.

It's totally Toronto. Actually, and now I realize here I am doing this with you via Zoom. And I forgot your book upstairs. But I really dig your book. So before we even dive in, because there's so much to cover here, what is the name of your book, which I was going to read off the cover right now, but I don't have it. What's the name of this great book I've been reading? My book is called Any Night of the Week, a DIY History of Toronto Music, 1957 to 2001.

And we've never met, but we have, uh, like there's, I would say there's buddies of yours that have kind of dropped onto Toronto Mike. Uh, one of them, I guess would be, uh, Ben Rainer. Yeah. Ben's awesome. I ran into, ran into Ben in the street just last week. And, uh, you know, we had to, uh, we had to avoid hugging because it was just, you know, we hadn't seen each other in so long that we had to, we had to like, you know, put our arms up.

No, we can't do it. But next time, hopefully. Yeah, that guy. Now that we're like, I don't know what we are, 10, 11 months into this thing. Now I feel like I've been reprogrammed where like I can't snap back now. Like when this is all over, I don't know if I can hug. Like I've been, you know, I've been wired differently now. I don't know.

We'll see what happens. I'm good with the wave you know I think that hopefully the wave will continue hey what's up how's it going you know if we can all agree on that as being a universal thing then we can avoid like the awkwardness of like do I hug this person am I handshaking or high-fiving and I don't like the handshake like even before the pandemic I was growing tired of the handshake where, you know, strong men have to prove to you they can break your hand, your bones. The stockbroker.

Like what's that about? Like I actually was trying to get the, the, the wink and the nod to catch on before COVID struck. So I like the wink and the nod. I don't know about you, but. The nod or the wave.

I think those, I think those will hopefully, those of you will be some of the good things we take out of this uh michael barclay too uh i don't know how friendly are of michael but he's been on a couple of times here as well i've actually known michael since high school days because we're both scarborough kids so and we're also yeah also neighbors me and michael and ben we all live in the same area so yeah i've known i've known i've known mike since way back he actually he was high school friends with my first girlfriend

wow yeah and then he went to like university with my sister so you know there's so many weird funny connections over the years going way back uh what about alan cross you friendly with alan cross i don't think we've actually ever met in person, but he was the first person to interview me about my book. So he and, sorry, his compadre, whose name I'm forgetting right now, they had me on the Beats and Geeks podcast in February before the book had even come out. Michael Hainsworth. Michael Hainsworth, thank you. Yeah.

But yeah, Alan obviously is a legend and he's been doing his thing for years. I sort of knew him more by reputation for a long time. I hope one day we get a chance to like hang out and shoot the shit because we never really have. Well, one day when this is all over, I could make that happen. Like I'll get like Alan Cross, Michael Barclay,

Ben Rayner and yourself, like all in my backyard or something. And we'll just have a free-for-all about the Toronto music scene or something. Yeah, that will be the most epic Toronto Mike episode, maybe. I'm going to do that. I'm serious. I say it, but I'm going to make that happen as soon as it's safe to do that. So here's what we're going to do, Johnny. Because, of course, any night of the week, honestly, it's so dense.

It's so full of stuff. I kind of have a plan of how to do this episode. Obviously, we can't duplicate your efforts there, so people have got to go pick this up any night of the week. Do-It-Yourself History of Toronto Music, 1957 to 2001. It's available now.

Coach House Books came out in 2020. But maybe give us a little bit of like a little bio, like who the heck is Jonathan Bunce, aka Johnny Dovercourt, and what makes you an expert on the local music scene here? Well, thank you. I started playing in bands, a band, like indie band in high school.

And I really just got really deeply into like indie kind of diy music when it was still pretty new and i guess it was still called alternative this had been like the late 80s when i was in you know grade nine and uh and and over the years i just i just was just like a bug i couldn't get out of my system it just sort of became like my thing and i really uh when i was in university i really focused more on like going to support local bands and writing about them in my university paper that I did in my studies. And then after that, when I was finished university, I wrote for iWeekly and worked there for five years. I started as an intern. I worked as the listings editor, but that was actually this amazing job. I didn't realize

so much later how lucky I was in this position. I got to compile all the concert and club listings for I, do the club chart every week in the back. And so I got to know every single venue and artists probably. I can still remember, like I could probably tell you the address of any club in Toronto in Toronto off the top of my head probably phone number two so yeah you want you're looking to test me well we are going to test it because uh although I'm not going to give you anything too small but uh I I guess if you tell us exactly what we can expect from the book any night of the week I gotta talk to you about the the podcast series that accompanies it it's like a i mean for those listening i think it'll be right up any fotm's alley but like it's

like a walking tour of certain toronto neighborhoods and all the music venues like past and present like it's it's awesome dude it's awesome thank you i appreciate that but yeah like and then so i got into music deeply through playing it through writing about it and then got into organizing and so i started a concert series called wavelength when i was as a sideline when i was working at i weekly and that started way back actually wavelength is about to turn 21 it started in february 2000 and it's been going uh we're we're on show eight number 808 so we're only a few like episodes ahead of you. Yeah, that's close.

We're going to catch up pretty soon, I think. So Wavelength, yeah, became this amazing success story of like an artist-run concert series. Like I never really felt like I was part of the music industry and I still don't. Like Wavelength was very much a thing put together by a group of musicians to kind of create like a curated experience for going to see live music.

We used to do a zine. We still do interviews that are kind of like our zine content on our website. And then Wavelength became a nonprofit and we're still going. We still do a festival. We still do a year on concert series and lots of talks and events. I also put on shows at the Music Gallery, which is a very cool experimental concert space. And yeah, so I had amassed all this knowledge about Toronto music and had this kind of firsthand experience with it. But I had this idea of trying to do something which I hadn't seen in terms of

like books about Toronto music. There had been a bunch of amazing books about Toronto music, especially like ones related to a certain era. Like there's some great books about Toronto music. There have been a bunch of amazing books about Toronto music, especially like ones related to a certain era. Like there's some great books about Toronto punk, like Liz Worth's book was the one that really kind of blew my mind. It came out in 2009 and really kind of opened my eyes to like the reality of like, what was it like for bands, like the vile tones and the diodes? Like they are more like urban myths to me.

And I think that's what I realized. A lot of Toronto music wasn't well documented or recorded. It was almost like to the edge of the in kind of the phenomenon of urban myth. Like you knew more like you'd heard about these bands but who were they? Like what happened to them? What were the challenges they faced? So I wanted to dig more into that but I also kind of wanted to try and tell a story of the city through music that sort of spanned multiple decades. And that was really kind of like was the idea of what led to Any Night of the Week. And tell me about the accompanying like walk.

I don't know. I guess it's a podcast series, but like the walking audio, like you're essentially like our guide. Yeah, walking tour. That's the words I'm looking for. Walking tour. the walking audio, like you're essentially like our guide. Yeah, walking tour. That's the words I'm looking for, walking tour. So that was really cool. I had this idea. It was pretty great when I was asked to do it because I'd always had the idea like, oh, this would make a great walking tour.

So I was asked, after the book came out, I was invited by the Toronto International Festival of Authors, the authors festival down at Harbourfront, do something for their their festival this year. And because I think, you know, at that point, they knew they were going to be virtual. They had this idea of like, let's not do a typical reading. And you know, I'm not like a typical author, and, you know, sort of wrote this crazy music book. And I was like, sure, let's do something different. So so they commissioned me to do this podcast and and we talked about the idea of making it a virtual

walking tour of the different neighborhoods that kind of make up sections of the book the book really folk like the book talks about artists but it also really focuses on venues and how like different areas of venues move through different parts of the city through different decades you know Yorkville was the home of the 60s folk music scene and the Yonge Street was the 50s rock and roll and R&B scene and then Queen West was home of like punk and alternative and reggae in the 80s um so so we basically sort of did did that and and I worked out like a I actually worked out a route where you could walk say walk up Yonge Street and talk about all the different venues that are that are some of most of them are gone now at least especially the young street tour it's all you know these venues are long gone

most of them except for massey hall and uh the concert hall they're almost all gone um and the young street one was really fun to put together because as you walk up the street it actually kind of goes chronologically too so that was really fun so there's a so the first episode is about uh yeah so you can listen to me talk like walk you up the Youngstreet and tell you some stories about some venues I dropped in some some uh interview audio from when I was putting the book together did a few original interviews for it. So there's a Yonge Street episode. There's a two-parter that goes through Yorkville, the Annex, Kensington Market, and Little Italy. And then the last two episodes are a two-parter of Queen West all the way from University to Gladstone. Okay. I love this so much and people really

need to seek this out. Again, on toronto international festival of authors for commissioning this and you did a great job but who did the artwork like there's accompanying maps who did that so there's so my friend daniel rothstein he's a he's an artist and he's he's a map artist he does lots of different types of visual art but he's known for his map making his illustrator hand illustrated maps And he goes by the Twitter handle at the urban geog, because he's, he's actually an urban geographer. And he, which is funny because that's like what my dad did. And when my sister does professionally or at the academic level. So it's, it's very much like a sort of a family tradition.

So I asked Daniel, if you wanted to illustrate uh do maps to accompany the podcast that you could sort of you know walk along and get us like have a visual aid um and he the maps are really great because he did these little little drawings of the spaces that some of the some of which are gone so you get the sense of sort of memorializing or imagining what the urban space of Yonge Street looked like 50 years ago or 60 years ago. Okay, Johnny, here's what I'm going to propose and we'll hear what you say.

But I have these maps open. There's three of them here. I'm looking at them. They're amazing. They're perfect for accompanying your audio tour in the podcast. And of course, that's all a great uh companion to the the book uh any night of any night of the week so can i literally like just hits i won't

i won't duplicate your very lengthy podcast series there but can i just hit some hot spots some of the bigger venues and can we start with young street and i can just spit names at you and you can tell us a little bit about uh the venue particularly because a lot of these are gone now so it's okay so i'm at the i'm going to start basically at young and queen so if everybody closes their eyes we're now on young street uh and queen young and queen and i'm going to ask you about the uh tell us about the colonial tavern so the colonial was i think one like this one of the first jazz venues in canada and uh so i think it opened in the late 40s like right after cocktail bars were legalized because

it wasn't legal before i think 1947 to drink a mixed drink in public you could only drink beer or wine and uh which is kind of and yeah the history of alcohol consumption becomes like an interesting sub-thread of the book but um yeah a lot of the jazz greats played there like Miles Davis played there and Ella Fitzgerald and um it became kind of like it became a prestigious room for uh for live music in in Toronto in the in the in in the 40s and through even to the 70s. And it even had a kind of a bit of a punk phase, like Rough Trade played there upstairs. And then there was also the Colonial Underground,

which was in the basement, which is where the Violetones played their first show in 1977. And then it kind of like started to fade away after that and started to get, you know, at that point Yonge Street was started to get you know at that point young street was starting to get a little sorry get a little sleazy and i think that the colonial finally closes doors in the mid 80s and there's nothing there now i don't think there's there's just like an empty space it's between two bank buildings okay we're gonna go a little bit a

little tiny bit uh east and there's a venue that's there today. I don't know what condition it's in. I don't know when it's scheduled to be finished, its renovations, etc. But tell us about Massey Hall. Okay, Massey Hall, I believe, was opened in 1894, and it became the original home of the Toronto Symphony. It really became probably the major, probably like the major concert hall in Canada, sort of like the pinnacle of success in Canadian music is to make it to the Massey Hall stage,

famous for so many things like Gordon Lightfoot's, you know, annual spring concerts, Neil Young's live show in 1971 that was recorded and released in 2007. So many incredible shows have happened at Massey Hall over the years. And yeah, it's currently going through a multimillion dollar renovation. And I believe they've partnered with Allied, the developers Allied, to make the new, new reopen massey will be part of the allied center i don't forget the exact name and it's actually going to have multiple venues inside

of it so hopefully that will like the new massey hall uh reopening whenever that happens is gonna let's hope that like it kickstarts like a renaissance of live music on young street and it's got to be gordon lightfoot right that first show yeah yeah i think you called it well i think it was an easy one to call and i guess we just gotta he's just gotta hold on right like because he's not a young man so no come on gordy you can do it okay i now realize this this uh walking tour audio it's so good i almost want to duplicate the entire thing but i'm trying not to duplicate the whole thing so let's keep advanced north and we'll go uh north of dundas now and this is this is the venue i know best as hmv yeah 333 young street what was it uh because i don't remember it as

i don't remember it when it was this but what music venue was there well we're too young right so um but in you know in the 50s before we were born um the uh like um h sorry h and the hmv superstore location that for 333 young was called look hawk door and it was a tavern that booked uh like rock and roll and r&b and uh but it was like a dining lounge with a cow like i think a western themed dining lounge but it had a stage and it was most famous for booking ronnie hawkins and that's where he first played in toronto ronnie hawkins uh came up from arkansas he was like a rockabilly pioneer and uh and he was famous you know for being really kind of the guy who brought sort of southern rock ability to toronto and really sort of became the big name for for earlier and

for early rock and roll in toronto and also famous for his backing band being the hawks who later evolved into the band so robbie robertson played with them leon helm garth hudson uh richard manual and rick danko and uh that's so that's what Le Coq d'Or was. And I think it continued on into the 70s. And for listeners of the program, that's Ronnie Hawkins, okay? Not the guy from Lois of the Low. Not Ron Hawkins, but romping Ronnie Hawkins. Right, who's also hanging on.

So, I mean, what time is it? I haven't checked in a while but uh long long may he run because uh that stuff man just uh the uh uh what's the doc what's the martin scorsese document songs from the what was it the big what what was the martin scorsese documentary series uh brothers no uh the the uh the concert um The Last Waltz. Right, The Last Waltz. Right, right, right. Just still a great, if you can get a chance to watch it now, it's amazing, and get some Ron Hawkins there.

I think Ron is the first singer in that, the first guest singer in The Last Waltz. You know, for... Cowboy hat. Yeah, and it's great. By the way, guys our age remember the New Year's Eve. Ron Hawkins was at Nathan Phillips Square for those City TV New Year's Eve showcases forever.

Like, I just remember him in the fur jacket, you know, cold on New Year's Eve. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He was just unstoppable. Right. Oh, and for my money, though, back to the last waltz. I don't know why I forgot the name of the damn thing. I've seen it a hundred times but uh man uh for my money it's the uh uh the version of the weight with the uh

the uh staple singers that uh gets me every freaking time with you know pops in the mavis staples and the girls just tremendous man just great yeah same here all right where do i want to go i want to go off young street just for a moment because uh with this this look this venue was discussed quite a bit i've had the gary's on not together but separately but gary cormier and uh what's the other gary's name i can't believe my brain yes right right uh gary top so uh tell us about the edge yeah the edge is also before my time and one of those places i wish I'd been old enough to check out in person. But it was around from 79 to 81.

It was booked by the Garys. And it was the only, well, that and the Horseshoe were the only clubs that they actually booked full time. And Garys, for those who don't know, are the legendary concert promoters, famous for bringing a lot of important acts to Toronto for the first time, like most notably the Ramones in 1976 at the New Yorker Theater. And they went from there to the Horseshoe for like nine months. And then after that, they went to the Edge, which was over at like Carleton and... Yeah, it's like maybe Girard and Church, I'd say.

And it was in an old house. And they booked an astonishing number of amazing bands during that time period. And it really was kind of like the ground zero for New Wave and post-punk in Toronto in those kind of crucial years of the late 70s, early 80s. And The Edge, of course, is because it's the Edgerton Ryerson. Right? That's kind of a cool way to say it. 80s and the edge of course is uh because it's the edgerton ryerson edge because so it's right that's

a kind of cool yeah the name it used to be called edgerton's restaurant and it was a folk club in the 70s and then they rebranded it as the edge to make it sound cooler so johnny is this the venue uh that the the gary's had joy division book to play that's right they did have joy division book to play there in may of 1980 and uh as part of the north american tour that never happened ian curtis rest in peace you know they did that tour never happened no it did not sadly uh so wellesley and young now we're going to go north to wellesley and uh how about tell me about uh i definitely have to cover the gasworks but first i'm going to pick on the bohemian bohemian embassy yeah the bohemian embassy was uh sort of part of the 60s beatnik scene it was kind of um sort of like in between like in between the sort of rock and roll era

and the six of this late 50s and the the folk era of the 60s yorkville scene um sort of in this there's this cool little uh area around like saint nicholas and saint saint joseph street that kind of looks like a little village it's really kind of a cute area that sort of it's hard to believe you're just steps away from young street um but uh yeah the bohemian embassy was in like i think it now like a, like a northbound leather building or something, but it even just kind of looks like a little house. And this guy, Don Cullen, who was like an actor and a poet, he organized yeah.

Like poetry readings and folk concerts and jazz shows there. You can see it in some videos and it's where people like Margaret Atwood would have hung out in the early sixties. Wow. And really, yeah, that's where all the swinging hep cats would have been throwing down their beat poetry and, you know, listen to some cool jazz. So Ned Flanders' parents would be there.

Were they beatniks? I forgot that detail. Yeah, remember? Oh, man, we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas, man. Remember? Ned was raised by beatniks. Come on. Johnny, come on. I thought you were the Simpsons expert. I was like 25 years ago. Oh, yeah. I'm only an expert on those first 10 seasons and then forget about it. Yeah, exactly. 10, that's pretty far. Yeah, I know.

Maybe the first three for me and i can measure that because i bought i literally i bought the dvd sets of the seasons up through number 10 and then i that was my line in the sand it's like i'm not doing 11 so yeah it peaked with camp crusty for me oh that's great that's great mr black all right uh gosh man i'm gonna have you here for several hours because but i'm gonna to I got it. I promised myself I'd ask you what the gas works kind of legendary for the younger crowd because it's I think the the Wayne's World homage to gas works. But tell us about the gas works. The gas works started open in the early 70s, again, back to liquor laws changing. to liquor laws changing, the drinking age dropped from 21 to 18 in 1971. And that sort of opened up a whole new market of drinkers. So bars were making a lot of money back then. So places like

the Gasworks were just driven by draft beer. And so that also is sort of like what caused the Elmo Combo to open in its, you know, like legendary format. And so the Gasworks was really kind of aimed at just, it was like a drinking place for young people. They booked sort of cover bands. They booked folk acts. They kind of booked whatever would just bring in the people. So it kind of became, yeah, like it sort of became the place for the sort of hard rock scene of the 70s to develop in Yonge Street, like bands like Moxie and A Foot in Cold Water sort of came out of the gasworks scene.

And then I think in the 80s, it really became like the hair metal place. And that's where bands like Skid Row and Slick Toxic. I was about to say Slick Toxic because that's like your Gasworks band right there. And, you know, like, I think that a lot of copies of Meat Magazine were probably read there. Do you remember Meat Magazine? Yeah, and here's another band

that I loved in the 80s for a while, Killer Dwarves. Killer Dwarves. I think they were from Kitchener, but they probably, I'm sure they were. They came in and played the gasworks. But yeah, it was like the home of the metal scene and the kind of more hair metal scene. And it's funny, it closed in 93, which is like a year after Wayne's World came out. And just basically right

after Normana hit it big, you know, you can kind of see like, there's like such a shift, cultural shift when like alt rock became big that, you know these, it was, you know, you kind of feel bad for the hair metal people in hindsight because they were just so kind of swept away. Oh, yeah. It's like what happened to disco. I just watched that Bee Gees documentary and there's just that like, okay, if you're disco, you're dead to us. But save that Nirvana stuff because I'm going to ask you about Lee's Palace later. Okay. I'm going to ask you about Lee's Palace later. Okay. Final Yonge Street venue to talk about.

DJ Ron Nelson has been on this program and we went into great lengths about this venue. Tell me about the Concert Hall. Yeah. The Concert Hall is actually, of all these places, besides Massey Hall, it's the only one I've ever been to and probably have the deepest,

strongest memories of. I wrote a piece about the Concert Hall as the, the, the, the deepest strongest memories of, and I wrote a piece about the concert hall as well for the spacing blog that people can check out. If you want to hear more of my thoughts and feelings and memories about the concert hall, but it was the concert hall was the place where, especially if you're like an eighties or nineties, you know, teen in Toronto, it was like the place where you would maybe see your first concert or your first like real concert, your first, not, you know, not a stadium show or not, you know, the symphony.

Like the first time you went to see a band you might have listened to on CFNY or heard a much music that was, you know, like a step up from a club, but still a few steps away from the stadium level. So, yeah, for me, it was, you know, it was an alt rock indie kid. So I saw the Pixies there. I saw Sonic Youth there. I saw Dinosaur Junior and the Replacements and yeah, bands like that. I saw the Beastie Boys there too. So it was definitely like one of those places

where you would see really cool bands at that kind of level, mostly international. It wasn't so much, it doesn't figure a lot into my book because uh it's mostly sort of book touring yet touring acts and any night of the week really focuses on local music right but it was still really important and what's interesting about the concert hall is it had a lot of different eras like the went back to the 60s it was originally called it was a it's a masonic temple so it's a beautiful very special beautiful historic building built at the turn of the century like 1917 it was built by the masons by the free masons

right and a beautiful stone building and um and then in the 60s the the masons started renting it out as a concert hall originally it was a uh it was an rmb club called club 888 jimmy hendrix played there when he was a touring with wilson pickett wow and uh so that's a famous bit of concert hall lore and in the late 60s it became the rock pile um so which wasn't around for very long i think it was around for less than two years like a year or two and uh the i guess it's most famous for booking the first canadian show by led zeppelin wow and and this is only a 1500 capacity hall right it's not it's big but it's not that big like the who played there deep purple like lots of like important bands from the classic rock psychedelic era uh and then and then and then there was i think so much destruction at the at

the rock pile that the matons didn't want to book it out anymore. And it was kind of dark for a few years until the Garys, I think they were the ones who really came in and convinced them, convinced the Masons or convinced the family that it was OK to have shows again. That everyone was going to be well behaved and that they were going to make sure that nothing bad happened to the building. So then it became a big place for, yeah, new wave early alternative era shows and think new, think new order played there to bring it back to your joy division point. I was going to say, well done. Well done. And of course the Ron Nelson was booking those first first Canadian hip hop shows there.

Yeah. And I interviewed Ron to talk about that in the podcast. So yeah. And so that was really kind of the birthplace for, yeah, not so much local bands, but definitely local hip hop. Like that's where the concert hall really, really played a role in the local developing the local music scene was, it was all these in this first wave of Canadian hip hop MCs like Maestro,

Fresh West and Mishimi and Dream Warriors. Everyone from that first wave would perform there at Ron Nelson's parties in the mid to late 80s. Unbelievable. By the way, I'm looking for a Rumble MC. If you know where Rumble's at, let me know. Okay. I don't. Maybe someone listening. I've asked Ron Nelson, I've've asked mishimi i've asked maestro so if somebody has a a line on where rumble's at i want to talk to him so okay now okay so we're gonna take a quick quick catch our breath here for a moment because i'm gonna go to yorkville

next if that's cool with you here yeah let's let's slide on over right uh i wish you were here johnny and maybe i'll get you in the backyard this summer because I'm going to give you some Great Lakes beer when you get here. I got some fresh craft beer for you. And I got a frozen meat lasagna for you from Palma Pasta as well. So we'll feed you. Do you want a veggie one? Oh, you know what? I should have asked you first. That's very rude of me as the host. Of course I can get you a veggie. Here's my assumption. You want to eat an animal here.

I can get you a veggie lasagna. It's delicious from Palma Pasta. So you're going to get a veggie lasagna. You'll get some fresh craft beer from Great Lakes. I'm going to give you a Toronto Mike sticker, courtesy of stickeru.com. They're amazing. If you need any decals or anything you need for any night of the week or anything at all, any projects you're working on, man, StickerU.com. They're located in Liberty Village, and they've been great partners of the program here.

Awesome. Got nice news, great news. I unveiled it yesterday. I talked to Al Strachan yesterday and announced there's a new sponsor of the program. His name is Mike Maj majeski he's in the know in mimico and i know this walking tour of yours doesn't make it as far west as mimico but uh as i learned in the flyer vault uh james brown played the uh the mimicombo roller rink

oh my gosh and i don't it's really cool yeah no and there's a i mean i know your friend you know the flyer vault guys but uh this they uncovered of course the poster for the uh mima combo which is like a like a uh roller rink and james brown first ever canadian uh appearance he's playing there that venue like i bike by it almost every day it's like a strip mall like where you can get thai food and stuff like i it's hard to believe there was once a uh kind of a cool music venue there but that's uh that's a mimico venue and a cool mimico uh story but uh well i am planning to do more episodes of the podcast i want to get in outside of the downtown core oh like so if you do the waterfront, you got your Palais Royale. You can keep going West.

I guess they might've done stuff at the Sunnyside Pavilion. I don't even know, but that was a hopped place back in the day. And then you can get to the Mimico on Lakeshore in Mimico. All right. It's coming together. It's coming together. It's all coming together.

So Mike Majewski is the man's name. He's a real estate agent with Remax.'s in the know in mimico you can learn more about mike and what he's up to in mimico at realestatelove.ca ridley funeral home they're at they're at they're on lakeshore but they're at 14th and lakeshore in new toronto uh brad jones there is a tremendous fotm and you can pay tribute without paying a fortune. Go to RidleyFuneralHome.com to learn more. And we're almost walking to Yorkville. We've got lots of venues to discuss, a couple in particular in Yorkville I want to ask you about.

But I want to just let people know that if you're responsible for a network of computers and you're looking to potentially outsource your IT department, I recommend CDN Technologies and you can contact Barb there. She's barb at cdntechnologies.com and if you ask her nicely, she's going to send you a copy of her book, IT Scams,

and she's a great partner of the program as well. So much love to Barb Paluskiewicz at CDN Technologies. Now, Johnny, back to you. We're in Yorkville and and i'm gonna ask you about the minor bird oh yeah the minor bird so i think like for those younger torontonians when you think of yorkville as being like high-end luxury shopping and chanel and versace you got to put your mind back 55 years and imagine it in the mid 60s. And basically, that was the street was just filled with pot smoke and young, you know,

young, long haired hippies. And there's sounds of folk singers coming out of all these cool little cafes. And I think like, at its peak, like there was something like 40 coffee houses booking live music in these few square blocks of Yorkville. And the Minor Bird was one that opened in 1966 or in the mid, I think, 66. And it was kind of a bit of a theme place. It was sort of really wacky and there was crazy art on the walls. And there was, you know, nude, there was go-go dancers and a nude male chef. And they really tried to capitalize on the sexual revolution and getting lots of, they got a lot of press for being so sort of raunchy.

But the guy who ran it, Colin Kerr, I think he was a real sort of self-promoter. And so he opened the Miner Bird and then he wanted to start a band called the minor birds to promote the venue to promote the club and the minor birds featured at one point featured both rick james and neil young in their lineup that's unbelievable yeah if you can believe that rick james was then a draft dodger who had escaped this dude left the states i think he was from from Buffalo. And Neil Young was just like a sort of a folky who had moved here from back, well, he was from Toronto, but moved back from Winnipeg and was trying to make it in the folk scene

and wasn't having much luck. So he got drafted as a guitarist in the Minerbirds. And they got, the Minerbirds got signed to York, no, they got signed to Motown and they went to Detroit for a recording session. And then they found out that Rick James was the draft dodger and he had to turn himself in and the band broke up and the album never came out.

Right, and then the rest is history because I guess... And then Neil left. Neil and his buddy, Bruce... Bruce Palmer. Right, right. And they end up with Stephen Stills, right? And next thing you know, there's Buffalo Springfield, right? Exactly.

They drove. They said, let's get out of here. And they drove south. And then a few weeks later, they're in LA and we're jamming with Buffalo Springfield. Amazing. Dude, I love this, man. I could have you on once a week. This is fantastic.

Okay. But before we leave Yorkville, because I can't afford to stay there too long. Back then I could, but not now. Riverboat Coffeehouse. Well, that's also a Yorkville, because I can't afford to stay there too long. Back then I could, but not now. Riverboat Coffeehouse. Well, that's also a Yorkville spot. The Riverboat was kind of like the it was like the Massey Hall of Yorkville. It was like the place. If you got booked there, you'd made it in Yorkville. It was the biggest place, but it only seated like 120 people, but you know, it's where, you know,

Joni Mitchell played there and, but after she became famous and you know, Gordon Lightfoot sort of once he, once he made it up to, to playing the riverboat, he sort of had made it as an artist. So it became like the, yeah, the sort of the place for the people in that folk scene to aspire to play to. And it actually the, yeah, the sort of the place for the people in that folk scene to aspire to play to. And it actually quite, quite, it lasted into the seventies. Like the whole Yorkville scene collapsed in 68, 69, but to the riverboat kept going. And I think it closed in 1978.

And I'm pretty sure there's a Neil Young song that referenced the, the riverboat coffee house. I think it's referenced in ambulance blues. Yes. Yes. It's ambulance blues. That's it. Yeah. Good stuff. Look, you know, you've already proven yourself because you're not even looking at notes. I'm looking at the map here. It's easy for me to do this. Okay. So I'm actually, because I'm worried about, I'm really worried I will take eight hours

of your life here. I'm going to skip. We're still on Bloor Street, everybody. And we're making our way west. And I'm going to go just to Bathurst almost here. We're going to talk about Lee's Palace. Yeah. I mean, the Annex is never kind of like a big rock and roll hotspot,

but there have been some venues in the Annex, the area near UT over the years. But probably the best known has always been Lee's Palace, which opened in 1985. And it really became sort of like the main alternative rock venue in toronto like the that's it's like at that size where it's like it's like five or six hundred capacity it was a step up from clubs like the rivoli or the cameron house so they would kind of pull bands from the queen street scene and at first and uh i think that the handsome neds played the first night of the of the of lee's and then became like a you know became a place for local bands but also for touring acts maybe playing their first show in um in toronto most notably nirvana in april of 1990 uh nirvana

played there on their first uh their i guess it's their first canadian tour north i don't know if it was their first north american tour but it's definitely their first time tour. I don't know if it was their first North American tour, but it was definitely their first time playing here. And that's pre-Dave Grohl, right? We got... Chad Channing was still the drummer. Right. And I think it was just Chad Channing on drums

and Chris Novoselic on bass. Do we know how many people attended that show? I've heard different accounts. I've heard anywhere between 30 and 200. I've heard really a range. I anywhere between 30 and 200 I've heard like really a range I'm gonna guess like knowing Toronto At that time would probably be 70 You know like from

What I would expect of because Nirvana They weren't even that hyped They were kind of like I was into the sub pop scene at the time But everyone was all excited about Mudhoney like Nirvana Were definitely seconds if not Third string to Mudhoney in terms of pop scene at the time but everyone was all excited about mud honey right like like nirvana were definitely seconds if not third string to mud honey in terms of hype around seattle's seattle

bands on sub pop and i remember and i got i remember getting bleach like not when it like not long after it came out like maybe a year after it came out and i i actually wasn't that into it i was like this kind of sounds like black Black Sabbath. I don't get it. So I didn't, I never got to see them. But apparently, yeah, apparently it was, it was a great show. And I guess like famously, Kurt started throwing beer bottles at the backstage, back of the stage at the end of the show. Because back then Toronto audiences sat down.

Like I went to, I saw some other shows at Lee's around that time. It was pretty early on for me seeing, going to gigs gigs and i remember everyone would be sitting at tables you know like really yeah and like a bartender would come up to your table and bring you a beer you know it was very it was pretty sedate if unless unless you got to like a critical mass of audience where people had to push up to the front right right but it was but um i would have met i think there might even be photos from that nirvana show of everyone like sitting down and i think kurt was really bored with how like kind of apathetic the audience was so he kind of wanted to just instigate some shit he started tossing beer bottles at the back of the stage

wow okay now so so now we're gonna we're gonna drop uh south to college but i'm gonna again i'm gonna start in uh i guess, Kensington Market area. I'm going to start in the east end there. And one gentleman who's been on this program a couple of times is Eric Alper. Yeah, Eric Alper. I love that guy. Well, he likes to remind us, and rightly so, that his grandfather was the Grossman from Grossman's Tavern.

Yeah, that's right. I had forgotten that until you mentioned it. I'm here to make all the pieces fit together here, but tell us about Grossman's Tavern, which is, by the way, Spadina, like what would we say there? Spadina and Baldwin, maybe? Maybe it's a little bit just...

Spadina and Nassau, basically. Yes, Spadina and Nassau. That's it. The south of college. So it's kind of like, so it's on the edge of Kennedy Market between sort of between there Yes, Spadina, Nassau. That's it. kind of moved after Yorkville Yorkville was basically decimated it was really it was really sad it was really the kind of one time when a like a creative neighborhood was sort of actively destroyed by the city and a lot of the you know I mean I mean we complain about venues closing down now but like that was the like apocalyptic compared to what we've seen you know basically now until COVID but that's a whole other story yeah but grossman's sort of

became this cool sort of artsy scene it was really interesting from like what i read about it gary cormier told me about it was like it was a bit jet you know there was they had you know new orleans jazz bands playing matinees they had blues but they but the crowd was really mixed there was you know there was hungarians there was new chinese, you know, there was Hungarians. There was new Chinese immigrants coming to town. They had a Jewish history and then you had hippies coming in. So it was this real interesting sort of multicultural mix, which in Toronto in 1969, 70 was really new. It was really, you know, it was up until then the city was pretty homogenous.

It was really, you know, it was up until then, the city was pretty homogenous. Right. So, yeah, like, so it became this sort of neat, sort of new, like, cool watering hole for the kind of bohemian scene in the early 70s. Rough Trade got their start there. I think they played some of the earliest gigs there. And the kind of, you know,

it crossed over a bit with the folk scene as well, or wherever the folk scene had gone post-Yorkville. So, yeah yeah it's just this kind of interesting moment and it's still there i mean it's still like grossman's had been kind of unchanged for decades they were still booking like the same like new orleans jazz band had been playing there on whatever saturday afternoons for like 30 years or something and this is the venue that breaks Downchild Blues Band, right? Yeah, Downchild would have been. At Downchild, I think we're the band that basically kind of helped turn it into a venue

because they basically just asked the owner if they could play. Right, right. There you go. All right, we're going to go a little north now to Spadina and College. And this venue has been in the news quite a bit lately.

And I won't bore people by telling them that Michael Weckerle's mother taught at my high school because I've told that story. But tell me about the El Macombo. Oh, my gosh. We could spend an hour talking about the Elmo. Because it's like I think no venue has been through more dramatic changes than the El Macombo. And I'm surprised no one's written a book about it. And maybe I'll have to.

Or someone else can. But yeah, the Elmo is sort of went through that sort of incarnation for you know 20 odd years until the early 70s when it was bought by a couple of business guys one of whom was a Toronto Argonaut football player and uh and they they turn it into a rock club and it was really sort of in that sort of gas works era it was really popular throughout the 70s became best known obviously like the most legendary thing that happened there is the rolling stones played elm combo in 1977 you know their first club shows in 14 years they played under the name the cockroaches and april wine opened and margaret trudeau was there she was partying with the stones instead of celebrating her anniversary to fiora trudeau right and uh the shows were recorded some i think want the recordings from the elmo combo show make

up one of the sides of love you live and so that was kind of like the peak for the elmo and it really became at that point after that it became like the showcase spot for the canadian music industry it was very much like this is like where the rock music establishment plays. But then it almost kind of went through this kind of like through the eighties and nineties or through the eighties, especially kind of went slower, slow period of decline. It changed ownership a lot and kind of got forgotten about.

It didn't really become cool again until the mid nineties. And it became more of an indie venue. And William New took over booking. William was the guy who started Elvis Monday. Have have you had william new on the show no oh he would be great he's he would have so many stories i'm gonna make it happen yeah william uh started uh and he was like i you know i have a soft spot for william because he booked my first band's first show ever or at least our first like downtown show when we were still in high school what was your band called we were called development site which is a terrible name but it was like very scarborough it

was a name we saw on like signs all around scarborough right and kind of in hindsight very apt for us because we're learning to play our instruments so um but he booked he booked development site we played in elvis monday and everyone played in elvis monday was where every band played their first gig like every band of that in the 80s 90s generation it was a rite of passage to play in all this monday and so william he started he took over booking the elmo and it became a cool sort of a place for indie bands to play especially on the main floor and then a few years later dan burke took over booking and that was really like that's when things got really dramatic around the elmo and dan brought all this uh amazing kind of

um edgy sort of edgy band garage rock bands like the deadly snakes and danco jones there and peaches i think played her first gig as peaches there and the dan burke era of any brought in blow up and then and it was doing really well under dan's booking but it was only like i think three years before the building got sold and then the new booker the new or sorry the new owner abbas he just told everyone he was going to turn it into a dance studio like a you know a not a dance club but a studio for for for for for dance and ballet, ballet dance. And then everyone was really upset because like,

what's going to happen to this rock and roll club? Ah, you can't, you can't clean it up. And, and then, but that's what happened though, I guess. And Dan was forced out. He ended up booking the silver dollar. And then Yvonne Mat uh ended up booking it as a venue uh even though it had been kind of cleaned up it was still stated as the elmo and uh and yvonne booked it for a few years after that until it finally got sold again and then michael barkerley bought it and here we are now uh it went through this crazy multi-million dollar renovation and i don't know how many millions he sunk into it but

unfortunately you know not great unfortunate not great timing not that i had great timing with my book coming out in march 2020 either right yeah we both uh we both got a little um you know we were both a little screwed by the pandemic surprise surprise so unfortunately the elmo hasn't really been able to open its doors but because i think they were just about ready to have this big grand reopening when covid hit right so they've done some live streams from there and yeah hopefully and i know some few few people did you get to to visit it you know i i didn't get an invitation maybe i got lost in the mail but my my tie you didn't get one either okay we can't all be alan cross right so yeah i will say that i uh my tie to the new elmo there is that i produce a podcast

for carla collins called carla collins rocks the elmo which is actually recorded at the elma combo so oh cool so yeah they're doing stuff they're making things happen from there and like fingers crossed that they'll be able to return to in-person shows at the like 17th incarnation of the elmo combo all right you mentioned the silver dollar so while we're at spadina and college here talk to me about the silver dollar yeah another venue that went through a lot of different ups and downs and different multiple lives i think is what i say in the a lot in the podcast that was like um best known as a blues club for a long time opened in the late 50s um and you know danny marks i think booked booked the regular like the blues nights there um but i think it booked all kinds of music it was kind of you know like a um a legendary scuzzy bar but like wonderfully scuzzy you know and blues

jazz country and then it became Elliot Lefkoe booked it in the briefly in the 80s as a sort of like you know Elliot told me he won't do Toronto Mike this is a little bit I know his brother's actually been on the show his brother won't do Toronto Mike correct

yeah and his brother Perry who's like a sports writer uh has been on toronto mic but anyway elliot's a guy i wanted on and uh he just gave me an uh thanks but no thanks anyway well elliot he's a big wig now yeah maybe that's the problem elliot's one of the works for golden voice and his works for one of the biggest concert promoting companies in the world now. Right. And, you know, got to start in Toronto doing yeah.

Like booking shows, booking people like Jim Carroll and, you know, sort of Lydia lunch and really artsy artists. And, you know, he brought the flaming lips to play the silver dollar in 1987. You know,

can you imagine that seeing the flaming lips no that's amazing the silver dollar yeah and then um dan work dan burke took over booking in 2002 and uh yeah and he really made it into kind of like the place where the kind of 21st century generation of like indie noise garage bands like nets and dilly dally and people like that all like called the silver dollar home and downstairs there was also a rave club the comfort zone um which was a really like a kind of like really important after hours club for the electronic music scene in toronto okay now i want to get us to queen street but first so one more on college though because uh

sneaky d's is well it's it's Bathurst and College. Although originally, of course, Bathurst and Bloor. But tell me about Sneaky D's. Well, I have a big soft spot for Sneaky D's because Wavelength called Sneaky D's home every Sunday night for seven years. So it was like the kind of one of the longest running homes of our series um between 2002 and 2009 and sneaky d's yeah it's it's it's a nacho restaurant it's a it's a cheap beer student pub but it's like toronto institution and uh the upstairs they they booked bands and djs upstairs going back to 1990 not everyone knows there was an original it's actually the second Sneaky D's location.

No, actually the third Sneaky D's location. Oh, the third. Okay. So the original Sneaky D's downtown was across from Honest Ed's and Bloor, Bathurst and Bloor. Hence the name. Yeah, Sneaky D's, Honest Ed's. And then they moved down

to where they are now to College and Bathurst in 1990. But there was also a short-lived Sneaky D's Uptown location at Young and Davisville. Oh, okay. I didn't know that. Wow. Yeah. And I think they booked jazz.

I know when Sneaky D's first opened, it was more of a jazz club. Like Jane Burnett would play there, people like that. But then in the early 90s, Sneaky D's became an indie band place. Developments, I played there. And then my college rock band, Tuesday Weld, played there. We were more of a shoegaze band. I think we might have been one of the first shoegaze bands in Canada. Wow.

And we played, you know, bands like Grasshopper would play at Sneaky D's and Cat Rocket. And yeah, it was like a it was a great indie rock venue in the early 90s. And then and then it turned into a dance club for a few years. And they stopped booking bands. And we were all mad because they stopped booking bands. And then and then they started booking bands again in 2001 or 02. And that coincides with when Wavelength moved there. And yeah, there was lots of great shows and Sneaky D's is always just kind of like a very like unpretentious place, lots of graffiti and band stickers and cheap nachos and student priced, but a great stage, great sound, great sound. Like it was always one of those, one of those rooms where you could sort of stand anywhere in the room and always always sounded good and you could always get a good view of the stage even though it was like kind of like a little rough around the edges it was always a great room like you know you could have 30 people there you could have 200 people there

and it felt full at any sort of like range of that audience size. It's famous for the arcade fire playing there. Like at one or like not their first tour, but one of their earlier Canadian, sorry, sorry, Toronto. They're from Montreal. One of their Toronto shows earlier Toronto shows was at sneaky D's.

And apparently that was packed over capacity and people downstairs could see the, the light swinging because the floor was moving up and down. Yeah, Vampire Weekend played there. And it was also famous for the band Fucked Up doing their, they would do their Halloween parties there. And I think there's like a, I think there's a menu item named after Fucked Up.

Like maybe a breakfast item. I'm not sure. I think Cancer Bats also have something on the Sneaky Bees menu. Wow. Now we're going to Queen Street here here now there's so much on queen so again again the book well it's all called uh any night of the week and the book is great again that came out you said bad timing but i mean it's great it's uh came out in 2020 so any night of the week this we're kind of getting like what

i would call like a taste of that walking tour podcast accompanying series any night of the week uh so I'm going to just hit just a few of the the big names on Queen Street there's you know again much more detail in your uh your long form uh podcast series but let's start with uh Queen and well we'll stay a little bit uh east of spadina here the bamboo club bamboo so yeah the bamboo is one of what i call the big four uh queen west venues of the 80s there's the bam well hopefully we'll get to some of them i know we're we're getting up to an hour here but the bamboo is really do you have a hard stop by the way like are you okay then as long as you want then don't worry yeah what's your hard stop

uh for this topic uh i'll record till about midnight when i'll get sleepy okay so so you know so just setting the scene for queen west it was like really became like the alternative culture hot spot of the in the 80s lots of you know lots of people lots of people wearing black and um it and uh i don't want to spoil another story but the it was yeah it was very it was very dour it was very like you know a sort of um pessimistic and a little kind of gothy but the bamboo was the kind of like day glow alternative to that it was like a tropical themed restaurant that booked funk and soul and reggae and they they were like one of the first places to serve pad thai and had this amazing like you know uh world cuisine menu and yeah especially was it was definitely like the the place to hear live

reggae in the 80s where people like lor lee roy civilsenja and all these amazing homegrown Jamaican Canadian artists would perform at the bamboo um I I basically um was too young to really have seen the glory days of the bamboo but I kind of caught the tail end of it well let's move a little bit a little bit west uh Rivoli and the Rivoli yeah the Rivoli was like the sort of black, the black turtleneck place and was the place on Queen Street that apparently, again, to bring it back to Mike Myers, it inspired this SNL character Dieter. Right.

Dieter was based on a waiter who worked at the Rivoli. And the Rivoli was just kind of like a very artsy, multidisciplinary kind of space that, you know, they'd book theater performances and film screenings and poetry readings, but also booked live music, a lot of live music and opened in 1982. You know, the punk bands would play there like post-punk acts and, you know, weird folk bands and people like Jane Sibury and Mary Margaret O'Hara got started there. The first,

and the first real show I saw was at the rubly was the actually a vancouver band or victoria band no means no that i saw and i was in grade 11 in 1989 and that's still the best show i've ever seen oh wow yeah it's still like nothing will ever i think ever come close to to no means no because they were just they were on fire they were at their peak they were touring their album wrong and they were so tight I'd never heard anything like it it just like ruined me for live music after that

that's a great story but this is the venue that if I have my venues right this is where Kids in the Hall would play yes yes and the originally became known later on as a comedy place and so so the kids in the hall got their start there and the band shadowy men and the shadowy planet were were there were the live band that accompanied kids uh the kids in the hall so um yeah so that was

and that was one of the things in the mid 80s that sort of that kind of scene the shadowy men came out of that rivoli scene and um yeah it was like it was a great place for bands like of that kind of scene, the shadowing men came out of that Rivoli scene. And yeah, it was like, it was a great place for bands like of that, local bands at that level that could, that had a consistent following that could bring out an audience. And I think that was what was really different about the Rivoli is that people would dance.

There was like, they actually cleared away the tables and it sort of was the place where Toronto's, and that and the Bamboo was also kind of like, and it sort of was the place where Toronto and that and the bamboo was also kind of like where they kind of, the really kind of clubs where I think Toronto started to loosen up a bit at those places and have a bit more fun. By the way, there was a, there's a kids in the hall reboot coming from Amazon prime.

Yeah, there is. I don't know a lot about it. What do you know? When Kevin, so Kevin McDonald dropped by, by uh this is before the pandemic but it was 2020 so i'm gonna guess it was like february 2020 he actually told me off the record after the recording all about this deal there was one member who hadn't signed on yet so it had you know anyways that member did sign on i won't name the member because it was a private conversation but the uh it sounds like they're gonna just do new skit shows for amazon like it sounds like they're going to just do new skit shows for Amazon. It sounds like they're going to do, yeah. I just hope that Having an Average Weekend is still the theme song.

It's got to be, right? Yeah, I say in my book that Having an Average Weekend is the unofficial Toronto civic anthem. Oh, not the Shuffle Demons, Spadina Buzz? That's actually an episode at some point if you're in the mood. And I kind of did something for Canada Day. We did something similar. Me and Michael Barclay, he came over into the backyard.

He even brought his own microphone. But I liked the Toronto anthems, like diving into that a little bit. But that's something you could noodle later. We're right there now. We have to talk about the Horsesvern yes another it's funny if you compare the horseshoe and elmo combo like for you know venues of a certain of a certain age like air age and iconic status the horseshoe has definitely had way more stability than Elmo, way less in terms of ups and downs compared to Elmo. But yeah, it's like the Horseshoe is definitely

for the last 20 odd years has been kind of like the pinnacle, like the Massey Hall of the club level. Like you get to, if you get to the Horseshoe and you can fill the Horseshoe, you've made it on the Toronto club scene. Like it's the, it's the, it's the venue to aspire to. And yeah, it's, there's so many important bands that played there over the years.

It started as a country as a country in Western hall in the late forties, and looked by a guy called Jack star and became, and probably best known for stopping Tom Connors in the early seventies, you know, from PEI play played like the longest run, like, I don't know, 19 weeks or something straight at the, at, at the horseshoe in 72 or 73 and had a film couple of films shot there. And, and then, and then it, and then it was booked by the Gary's in 78 and briefly became a punk club.

And they had this amazing nine month run and like the, the show flyers from the horseshoe were just incredible. Just the lineups and the artwork went in the, in the punk horseshoe horseshoe era. And of course that ended with the last Pogo, right. Which was the famous last punk show at the horseshoe after the owner decided they didn't want the punk rock anymore. Yeah, but before we leave the Gary's era, we got to shout out

the police show. Yes, exactly. That was like one of the famous international acts they brought in was the police. But it was before Roxanne so at least the way the Gary's tell it, they say there was like 15 people there. 15 people is what

they said. It was like totally dead. 15 people is what they said it was like totally dead so and there's a photo of uh you know gordon sumner their uh sting i guess uh with shirtless on stage like i've seen the photo like it sounds like it's one of those kind of moments in history where maybe now possibly now hundreds of people say they were there but uh they weren't so yeah exactly so yeah they brought in some amazing like amazing acts like that before they were famous and then and then the horseshoe kind of went through a bit of a it's only kind of like up and down era was the late 70s early 80s it sort of um they would try to go back to country western but it wasn't really working and it even changed its

name brief and for a year was called stagger stagger leaves and was like a 50s themed restaurant and then i heard yeah you know i read about that in your book uh i didn't know that so it was like a 50s like so is that like the pulp fiction restaurant maybe yeah kind of that's what i think of like you know where that's the the great scene obviously in pulp fiction when uh vincent big it takes uh mia wallace to the 50s themed restaurant. That's what I envisioned. He took her to the Horseshoe Tavern in 1982. Or staggered lease. And then it came back as the Horseshoe Tavern with new owners.

And basically stayed, I think, pretty much under the same ownership ever since then, since 83, 84. And yeah, we sort of became the roots rock club it was you know blue rodeo got their start there and the tragically hip the worst you know we're i think like you know sign not signed there but we're you know seen by their label i feel like maybe the um jay gold did a showcase or something there yeah for labels yeah and then it sort of and and then the horseshoe became kind of like it became the sort of head hq of the canadian music business that's where you

know like they would they would their labels would have their showcases that's where you'd see the waltons or the watchmen or hands like that in like the early early to mid 90s and then dave bookman rip started his New Music Tuesdays, which sort of went alongside Elvis Mondays as being like one of the free new band nights, you know, somewhere if you were starting out and looking to break into the club scene, you'd, you know, send your demo tape to Dave Bookman and get onto a Tuesday. And so those are like, yeah, there there was in that era in the mid 90s

there was so much you know music you could go out and see for free right you didn't have to pay cover to see great stuff and the Horseshoe New Music Night became one of those and then the Stones played there as well in 97 and that's written up a lot in there's a book about

the Horseshoe actually David McPherson has a book called The Legendary Horseshoe Ta so i was about to shout him out he's come over uh we had a deep dive all about the horseshoe tavern so shout out to david mcpherson it's a great book on the topic and uh yeah people like craig lasky and jeff cohen have been keeping it have been keeping it strong since the mid 90s and still you know still a great place to play and they did a great live stream with the sadies back in the summer wow which i was which i checked out so okay so johnny here's where we're at so i do have some questions from listeners for you but i want to let you pick but we're here so here we are

it's a queen and spadina oh how's it going we're masked up here it's a look looks emptier than usual but uh if you had to pick and we're almost almost at dovercourt i see but if you had to pick, and we're almost at Dovercourt, I see, but if you had to pick one or two venues that is west of Spadina on Queen Street to discuss in this episode now, which would you pick? Well, for me, you know, my sort of sentimental favorite is the Drake Hotel, but not the current era of incarnation of the Drake Hotel,

the early nineties Drake Hotel, when it was called just known by its street address, 1150 Queen street West and William New booked it. Elvis Monday's Kingpin William New booked it for, yeah, sort of a run equivalent to the, to the edge. Like it was open for a year and a half or something under that, under that incarnation. And that venue was like really, it was really important for me personally, because it was really like the first club where I really felt like that sense of community

that you get at going to shows where I started to, you know, meet friends. I made friends with people who were in bands, who were part of the music scene. I started to make friends that weren't from school or work, you know, like that. And that's one of the things about like about being part of a music scene is you have this, this whole world that kind of doesn't really fit into your sort of mainstream categories, you know, like it's like an alternative world that

you, that you're created, this created around mutual interest, you know? And, and I guess some people get that out of sports and everyone gets that out of whatever their interests are. But, um, like that was felt really meaningful to me and I met, met people that I was still friends with like Brennan Canning and Noah Mintz and, and, you know, I just, I, oh, so sorry. I didn't mean to stomp over your grasshopper there, but, uh, I just had no, no one mints on the show. Like, I don't know,

a few weeks ago, but it was fantastic because i loved head that sounds it sounds interesting when you say it out loud but i mean it two ages i loved head too i saw them so many times i saw grasshopper so many times and and bands like that i got that i got to write about in the book like flag camp and king cod steely and dinner is ruined and um I've, you know, got to discover local bands that I really felt like a kinship to and that really excited me the same way I was excited about bands that were from other parts of the world.

And the old 11, like the 1150, I think we called it, 1150 was such a great club. It was in a basement. You sort of went, you were going into this, like it was Parkdale, right? Like it was in a basement you sort of went you're going into this like it was parkdale right like i was coming down from scarborough i was still in high school going to shows there and it was it was kind of scary back then because it was still a little sketchy it wasn't like gentrified like it is now and you know uh the old drake hoax sorry the drake hoax hell was like a kind of a flop house and go through this sort of main entrance way and

be like am I supposed to be here and then go down the stairs to the what's now the Drake Underground and there was just like a little stage and everyone was sitting at tables and smoking and drinking Red Baron beer and you'd find a table and it was actually but it like it was really welcoming it was really people like strangers would talk to you and like ask you how you heard about the show and thank you for coming to see their band and it was just it was just this great community vibe that i'd never experienced before so that's like a place that like it holds a special like spot in my heart well that's great that's a great place to to leave the walking tour and now i'm gonna segue over to listener questions uh

charles cameron gordon is apparently a big fan of toronto mic'd and charles cameron gordon wants me to ask you uh did you have any interactions with michael snow and or any other ccmc alumni during your music gallery days? Oh, yes. I mean, it was limited because CCMC had, by the time I started working at the music gallery, which was quite a while from 2002 to 2011, CCMC were no longer doing their regular Tuesday and Friday night shows. I they they had stopped at that point um so yeah so they they they weren't really around much but um but I invited them back to play a few times and they performed a few uh they performed like a I think it was maybe a 40th anniversary fundraiser no no 30th anniversary fundraiser for the music gallery in 2006 and and and a few other and a few other gigs here and there. And yeah, I got to chat with them a little bit.

I got to know John Oswald pretty well over the years and had some good chats. And yeah, he's a really fascinating guy and they're really both incredibly talented artists. So I was lucky to get to sort of hopefully carry on a bit of the legacy that they left behind with the music gallery and we're not quite done here with charles cameron gordon uh he also wants me to ask you i'll read what he wrote he wrote i think johnny mentions a venue called sibony

in kensington market in his book where the my bloody valentine and other bands played in the late 80s i want to say maybe Pop will eat itself? In his research, did he learn anything else about who ran this venue or its backstory? I've peeked at the address in past Kensington visits, and it seems unimaginable there was a venue at that address. I was not able to uncover through my research who ran it i know that the garys promoted some shows there so we could probably find out more by asking either mr topper cormier who if they know who ran it because i'm sure that they have that information somewhere awesome okay and uh

another cam here it's all about the cams uh cambrio ask johnny dovercourt if he has any other book ideas maybe a sequel to the any night of the week book oh my gosh yeah i mean i i i was originally i still have the idea of doing a second a second volume because originally it was supposed to go up to the present day but i had to stop at 2001 because there was too much stuff from the last, you know, 15 to 20 years. Right. But I have been toying with the idea of doing like a wavelength oriented book that just might cover like, and maybe doing it in time for our 25th anniversary,

which gives me another four years, maybe making it a bit more of a coffee table book that more, more, more photo oriented maybe less text heavy, less dense. So that's one idea that I have. I mean, it's really hard to predict. It depends on what happens with COVID, right? Like, we're kind of like in a bit of a, we're sort of in a bit, when it comes to doing anything about live music, we're in a bit of a sort of, you know, not a pause. We're in the middle of a um sort of um you know not a pause a holding pattern we're in the

middle of a cliffhanger ending right we're waiting for the well that's my final question for you actually but you mentioned wavelength so i'm just gonna before i get to the final question uh is there a wavelength festival coming in february you can give us some sweet details on yeah so we um wavelength is we've always done a festival in February, at least since our first anniversary to celebrate, uh, Wavelength's birthday, which was the first Wavelength show happened in February 13th, 2000. So every, every February we've always done like a long weekend of shows, but now that we're in COVID and doing things online, we're doing, uh, like the original plan was to do a month long online, long online festival with four shows throughout the month.

Then because of the new COVID restrictions that came in, we had to postpone two of the shows to the second half of the month. So now it's all happening between February 20th and 27th. There's some amazing acts playing. We have Backwash who won the Polaris Prize last year. It's amazing, like sort of doom rapper from Montreal. We have Beverly Glenn Copeland, who's this sort of Canadian singer-songwriter legend that I mentioned in my book

because he's a trans performer, a trans man who in the 70s was living as a woman and made some amazing folk records and performed a bit in Toronto. I think lived here for a while and had this amazing sort of late life renaissance and just rediscovered in recent years makes, you know, beautiful keyboard music.

Beverly Lynn Copeland was closing this festival on February 27th. There's also the OBGMs who are this amazing black fronted punk band and Hannah Georgia's the great singer songwriter on arts and crafts yes 10 acts four shows it's all free and it's all on youtube and that's that's that's the new venues online platforms are today's venues yeah and as as good as it is uh man do i miss the old venues yeah and like nothing nothing you know no screen will ever take the place of that feeling or at least three dimensions you know like even if let's say you and a couple hundred people like singing in unison and just like just just just some that

energy man and that's that's actually what i find so because my wife joked with me the other night that my lifestyle and covet is pretty much the same as it was before COVID. Like she just said, like, what would you do differently? I still do my bike rides. Like everything's kind of the same. Of course, I'm doing more Zooms than in-person conversations. But I did have it in the backyard before it got freezing. But I said, you know, what I really dug was that, and usually I'll admit, usually I got somebody left me on a list or I got a ticket for free.

I'll have to admit that. But I liked, you know, that bike ride to the venue, locking up outside and just spending a few hours in the venue, listening to live music. And then that bike ride home, like that's the high I miss. Like, I just can't wait to get back to that. So on that note, I know your crystal ball is as reliable as mine, but do you have a vision of what the COVID-safe concerts look like when they do finally come back?

Any idea? I think there might be a few, there might be a few distance shows this summer. I think like you might be able to, you might see a few shows happening in parks or other public spaces for like 100 people. Like so outdoor, maybe they do that circles thing

they did in Trinidad and Belém or whatever. Yeah, I think you might see a few shows like that. And maybe people will be wearing the Sippo mask, which is where you can... My friend designed this. It's actually a mask with a one-way straw hole in it. Oh, that's smart. You can sip your drink, but you can't exhale through it.

That's smart. And yeah, and you, you might, you know, maybe in the fall, you might see some limited, lower, you know, reduced capacity indoor shows, maybe with people wearing simple masks, it actually would make more sense indoors. I think you're going to see, I don't think we're going to see a gigantic like SARS stock return to shows. I think it's going to be kind of a slow tentative, you know, return to shows. But I think those first shows back, people are really going to remember them. They're going to be, you know, they're going to be cherished memories. Some out there like to point out that, Oh yeah.

Last time we had a pandemic on this level, it was 1918. And what immediately followed that was the roaring roaring 20s now of course we also had we also had world war one yeah we had that which was is significant to the roaring 20s uh there but but this that i do like that that thought and that that maybe maybe this launches some period of like creativity and energy and activity unprecedented because of what we're coming out of. Like, I like to hold on to that, like grasp at that hope. Yeah, but it's not going to happen without, you know, a green new deal and, you know,

proper and basic income and all these, you know, like proper, you know, steps to address income and equity. Not to get too political on there. No, I welcome it, man. I welcome it. Dude, I got to say for your Toronto Mike debut, you hit it out of the park and I'm now fantasizing about your second appearance. Yeah. Anytime. This is a great chat.

And again, tell people like, if you were going to lead them somewhere to pick up this book, where would you like them to buy the book from? Oh, that's a great question. I mean, if you want to just sit in your pajamas and order, you can just order it straight from our publisher, Coach House Books, chbooks.com. chbooks.com or you can also order it online and go pick it up curbside at Rotate This on Ossington Avenue. That's where I would

pick up my Sky Diggers tickets for the horseshoe. Yeah, awesome. Dude, awesome. Thank you, Johnny. Thanks, Mike. And that brings us to the end of our 794th show you can follow me on Twitter

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