Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Larry Fedoruk: Toronto Mike'd #254

Episode Date: July 24, 2017

Mike chats with Larry Fedoruk about his years at CFTR, CKFM, CISS and CKTB.

Welcome to episode 254 of Toronto Mike's, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a local independent brewery producing fresh craft beer. And propertyinthesix.com, Toronto real estate done right. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me this week is broadcaster Larry Fedorek. Welcome, Larry. Nice to be here. Thank you. You don't live too far from here. This is not a far jaunt for you. I'm in the hood, yes, generally speaking. You're in the hood. You're this side of the Humber River. Is that fair to say? Yeah, in Etobicoke for almost all of my Toronto life. Oh, wow. I went to high school at Michael Power when it was at Islington and Bloor area.

Right, right. And now it's condos. Yeah, exactly, like everything else. I was the last graduating class before they sold the property and moved to near Centennial Park area there. Yeah, so I know the area very well. Welcome, welcome. I actually, when I heard you were coming on, and I'm very honored to have you here.

You have a great, like, a great, like, resume of big stations that I always listen to, and it's just going to be a great chat. But I reached out to my new friend, the Callahan man. Ah, yes. Bob Callahan. And I just said, hey, you know, Larry Callahan man. Ah, yes. Bob Callahan. And I just said, hey, you know, Larry's coming on. FYI, if you want me to say anything.

And he said just basically, please ask Larry about his stand-up comic days. Oh, my, yeah. Okay. And we can just touch on this now, but this predates your radio career? No, it kind of is in the middle of the radio career. I was already in radio many, many years out west,

and I basically moved to Toronto to be a stand-up comic. And within about a couple of months, I did start to get a regular slot at Yuck Yucks. I was able to book slots at Yuck Yucks and move away from Amateur Night. But six months after that, The Tonight Show was not calling. I couldn't figure this out,

how I had not risen to stardom. And so I needed to work and I got back into radio and kind of did both for a while and then the comedy just fell off as I realized I probably had talents in other areas. But there's a lot of overlap, I think, in terms of, you know,

because we'll talk later, but your show in St. Catharines, it's just you, right? Right, it's just me. That's a stand-up comic to you? Well, yeah, and performing live was probably the best thing for radio ever because you sent,

I think at least I got a better sense of the audience and what they would react to because you got that from a live audience. Right. And it struck me a lot of guys on the radio were saying things that you would never get away with in front of a live audience. And, you know, relate more to the people

and say what they want to hear more or less. And so it helped me out a lot. Cool. He goes on, Bob Callahan goes on to say that you also wrote comedy material for other comedians. At least that's his recollection. So did that ever happen? Well, I think everybody did a little bit.

I did end up writing comedy material for other radio people, more so than other comedians. Other than the odd joke that you would write for somebody, you know, you work with a yuck-yuck, you'd say, hey, would you try this joke? And they'd go, yeah, and maybe they'd use it. But for other guys who wanted to try and use comedy as part of their radio act and maybe didn't have the skills,

I would write for a couple of those guys, yeah. So you're the wizard behind the curtains. Yeah, well, I was for a couple of guys, yeah. You can't drop those names, eh? We need to expose those people. But they paid you for this service? Okay, cool. So it's nice to have a little extra money on the side, a little bit.

Excellent. Great. Let me play a little track. Now, I should tell everybody that you're not here to kick out the jams, but you did tell me your favorite song of all time, which later in this program I'll play it, and I want to hear from you why you love the song. Okay. And I'll tell people that song sounds nothing like this song, which is Linkin Park's In The End. And this is the

first recording we've done since Chester Bennington took his own life last week. And I guess I want to just, I have a lot of men in their 40s and 50s that listen to this show. And from what I gather, and what I've read, and what I've heard, men in their 40s and 50s, it's a high-risk sector for suicide.

It's sort of, we talk a lot about, you know, teenagers and young people, but men in their 40s and 50s are at risk. And part of the reason is there's a stigma that men need to buck up and just deal. Like, you know, you don't need to talk about it. But I guess I'm just, anyone out there,

I'm just going to say that's complete, pardon my French, that's complete bullshit. You need to, if you need to talk to someone and you have no one you can talk to, you can even talk to me. But talking helps. I think men in their 40s and 50s who are dealing with a lot, who end up tragically deciding to take their own life. I think if we drop this stigma and just talk about it with somebody, I think talking can help a great deal. We talk about mental health a lot on my show.

I'll never miss an opportunity to talk about it. I mean, the phrase for years, and it continues to be a phrase, is man up. You know? Right. Like, that's, for a man, that's what you do. You're not allowed, you know, these feelings. You're not allowed to feel lost, alone, depressed. You have to man up.

And that's just, that is, to use your term, that's bullshit. Right. And I absolutely agree. I absolutely agree. Talk about it. Talk to anyone you can. Talk to anyone you can. Talk to anyone you can. And if you don't have anyone, honestly, write me a note.

Just send an email to mike at torontomike.com. Complete discretion, I promise. But just talk about it. I think a lot of men are dealing, whether it be debt or work problems or marital problems or whatnot, this does have a weight, and talking helps. Sorry to lose. By the way, Linkin Park, which is a 2000s band, I quite liked Linkin Park, and I went and saw them in 2008 at Downsview Park, and they were excellent, and Chester was great. Sorry to hear the news that Chester Bennington is no longer with us. Larry, I'm going to encourage people listening to your episode here to go to patreon.com

slash Toronto Mike. If you can't remember that complicated address, go to torontomike.com and click the orange buttons on the side and pledge to help keep this passion project going. Give what you can. Even a dollar a month helps a great deal. So I encourage everyone to do that. Larry, do you enjoy a cold beer on a hot summer night? Well, yes. As a matter of fact, good guess.

Thought I'd take a shot there. And because you're from the hood, or close enough anyway, are you familiar with Great Lakes Brewery? I am. They, as you know, they're on, what's that called, Queen Elizabeth Boulevard, which is, I always say, down the street from the Costco. That's how I'd say it.

But somewhere between the Queensway and the Gardner. And they want you to enjoy that six-pack. You're taking that home with you. Well, thank you very much. 21st century where Costco is a landmark. Is that right? That's what we say. That's right.

I'm down from the Costco. I'm near the Walmart. Do you have a membership? I don't. No, neither do I. I know. And the little trick for people who don't have a membership is you can still go in the other door where you get your membership to get those cheap hot dogs and pizza slices. Oh, good. Okay. That's a pro tip for you.

All right. Thank you. And I think, I hope I'm right. I think it's like two bucks for a hot dog and a drink, which is a pretty good deal. Yeah, it is a good deal. The best deal this side of Ikea. Yeah. Yeah. I do a lot of walking. So that's a good tip when I'm in the middle of a long walk, I need a snack and I'm near a Costco. And then you can head over to Great Lakes. They have a nice new patio, and you can get a $5 pint on their patio there. Well, thank you for this. Enjoy, and you're going to need a pint glass.

If you're going to have cold Great Lakes beer, you're going to want a pint glass. So that pint glass, propertyinthesix.com, that's courtesy of Brian Gerstein, and he'd like you to take that home as well and enjoy your beverage in his quality pint glass. Thank you very much for the pint glass. I can only drink out of a glass, by the way.

I can't drink out of a can. I can, you know, I can. Can or bottle? Nah, can't do it. So need a glass. It's a glass of beer that I like. Larry, you came to the right place. I'm taking care of you here. More about Brian here. Propertyinthe6.com

I urge you all, if you're going to buy or if you're planning to buy and or sell in the next six months, give Brian a call at 416-873-0292. Just by meeting Brian, you'll also receive a free property in the six pint glass and a six pack of Great Lakes beer. Just for having the conversation. As they say, no obligation to buy. Just chat with Brian about your plans to buy and or sell in the next six months, and he'll hook you up with the same pint glass and six-pack that Larry's getting right now. Brian Gerstein is not only a huge Tim Raines fan on his way to Cooperstown,

because Tim's being inducted into Cooperstown. Yeah, finally. Good news. And as an expo, which is exciting. That's great. Because Kid Carter went in as a Met, I believe. And Andre Dawson might have gone in as a Cub, maybe? Maybe I'm misremembering. But I believe this is a big deal that he's going in as an expo.

It is. First pro ball game I ever saw was the Expos in the Big O. It was quite the experience. The Big O. O-W-E. That's the one. The big O, O-W-E. That's the one.

Brian Gerstein is a real estate sales representative with PSR Brokerage. All right, Larry. I'm good friends with a gentleman named Fred Patterson. Ah, yes. Who records with Humble and Fred. They're still doing a daily podcast. I know. Friends with both. Worked with Humble for a while. At CKFM. We're going to still doing a daily podcast. I know. Friends with both.

Worked with Humble for a while. At CKFM. We're going to get into that for sure. For sure. But so Fred tells me that you were the very first morning man he ever worked with. Back in the, back in 79, he tells me.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's the dark period of my radio career. No, no. Not because of Fred. But I worked at, this is one of those stories you tell at a point in your radio career where, yeah, I worked at the disco station. And that was the time that I mentioned when comedy was not making any money for me. And I still wanted to do it.

So I applied around to all the big stations and they were all full. And I applied to a radio station in Brampton. And I, so I had already been a morning man in Winnipeg. Uh, their morning man had just quit. I walk into the station with a morning man resume and they're like, can you start tomorrow? I mean, it was, and it was, uh, it was CHIC in Brampton. CFNY was down the street at another house. Is that the yellow house? There was two yellow houses, yeah. And if you had to do production in FM, you had to get in your car and drive over there. I suppose you could walk, but you didn't.

And so I started a morning show at the station in Brampton and played disco songs that were all 11 minutes long. And it was called 790 Disco. 790 Disco, possibly. 790 Disco. Would it surprise you to learn that I actually had no idea there was ever a 790 Disco until I heard this story from Fred. I had no idea.

I don't know how long it lasted. It was about a year. But it was great. I mean, you know, got up at four in the morning and drove out to Brampton every day and did the station. And there was really not much else to do. So at 10 o'clock, I was home by 10.30. That's not bad.

And not a lot of show prep when you're playing 11-minute tracks on your morning show. You know, here's the weather, and now here's 11 minutes of Do You Think I'm Sexy by Rod Stewart. I was going to say, what is it, like Le Chic or Le Freak?

Oh, all those. Patrick Hernandez. And, of course, everybody liked the Stones and the Beach Boys. Everybody had a disco record at the time, so everybody was playing all that. And then I had a new baby, so it was great. Spent a lot of time with the baby at home. It was a great time. And Freddie P was your sportscaster.

That's a crazy small world. I'm trying to think of the only person I would know from that time that I would still know or know where they are or anything like that. What happened to 790 Disco? What happened to that station? I'm trying to think. Was it the

Allen brothers who owned the two stations? I hope I got that name right. They went into receivership. Their company went into receivership. And at one point, one of them, Ted Wallachian has great stories of those two owners. receivership and one of them got put in jail for stock manipulation stock fraud or something and one of my jobs was uh in the morning when i'd come in if the news guy wasn't there yet i'd go to the old uh uh press uh teletype thing and rip up the copy and put it in order you know the ticker tape or whatever it was so i'm i'm ripping it and you always got those attention station managers you always got one of those it's like a radio story so. So you're like, oh, what's this? And I'm reading, and it's my boss, my owner. I'm reading that he's in jail.

That's great. And suddenly I hear a voice behind me, who didn't wipe their feet when they came in? Because it was an old house, right? And I look behind, and it's him. And I'm like, but you're in jail. Like, what do you say? Aren't you in jail?

It was, was oh my gosh one of the greatest uh I still have it somewhere as a newspaper article I think the Toronto Star did it uh we had uh approached the receiver because they went into receivership we had approached the receiver as a staff to buy the radio station so whatever it would have cost at that time if there was 50 of us if we could all somehow finance a station. So whatever it would have cost at that time, if there was 50 of us, if we could all somehow finance a few grand each, whatever it would cost, I don't know. And the Toronto Star did an article about us,

and we had a big picture of the entire staff out in the front of the house and stuff. We bought the radio station. And of course, it did not happen. But that's the last I know of it, really. And it became something for a while, some other kind of format. Because right now, there is no 790, am I right?

Because 740 is the Zoomer thing, and then 640 is, there's 640. But what's, I don't know, 790, I don't think there is anything there. Can you fit anything in there? No, I don't think so. I don't know. Maybe you can pick up another station from somewhere that's 790. I don't know. That's amazing.

But it was wild times, wild times. We never did buy it. And then I eventually lost track of what happened to that frequency. There you go. If anyone out there listening knows what happened to 790 Disco, I'd be curious. I'd post it in this entry. So I'm sorry, I did start you in 1979.

Please, if you want to go back and tell me sort of how it all begins for you in radio, since it sounds like it happens out west. Well, yeah, because Saskatoon and area is my home, and we had just moved to Saskatoon when I was going into grade 11, so grade 11, 12. I don't know a lot of people. You know, it's kind of a tough time

to make new friends, high school, whatever, and I can't wait for university because all bets are off, right? You're going to be forced into adulthood. Now you've got to do university. So I go to the University of Saskatchewan. And I'm going to take, I don't know, I've got like five philosophy classes and a sociology class.

Sounds familiar to me. Absolutely useless education, right? I think, what was it? Jay Leno used to do an old joke about it. It took philosophy and university. It's like, open up a philosophy shop. Hey, life is a hamburger. That'll be $5, please.

So that kind of of my thing but on the first day uh they had a tour of the campus and since i was kind of new to the city i took the campus tour and part of it was the radio station and uh at the end of the tour they said can you uh if you'd like to work here if you'd like to sign up as a volunteer, it was all run by volunteers, student volunteers. And I was like, work at the radio station? Like me? Like, well, yeah, you know, you can do little things. Maybe you could get on air eventually. I'm like, I'm in.

I mean, this is just great. And that was sort of the end of education at the university. I stopped attending classes all the time at the radio station. By my third year there, I got the only student paid position, which was program director. So I became program director of that station. And we were a licensed FM station. I was going to say, a student gets that job? That sounds...

We had a general manager that was a university employee, couldn't oversaw the whole thing. But the students ran it, ran the asylum. We had a general manager that was a university employee, couldn't oversaw the whole thing. But the students ran it, you know, ran the asylum. And we had an eclectic mix of ethnic programming and folk music and classical music. We ran some CBC shows, a bunch of stuff, just for us to learn how to, you know, edit and talk and play records. That's a great way to learn.

Yeah, hands-on. Like baptism by fire. And FM. So we're going all over the city and all over the surrounding countryside. So it's not just a student little closed-circuit radio station. We were on the air, a regulated, licensed FM station. And we had this show called,

it was five nights a week and Sunday afternoons, and it was called, ready for this, I know you're going to want this name for yourself, The Groove Yard. Oh, that's great. Isn't that a great name for a student? The Groove Yard. That was the get. If you could host a Groove Yard show, you were the coolest guy on campus,

coolest guy, girl on campus. So there was six of them, five weeknights and one on Sunday afternoon. And I'm at the station one Sunday afternoon. I'm station director at this point. And I love this guy's name always. Terry Roebuck was this cool guy that was doing the Groove Yard.

And he came to me, he goes, I want to play George Carlin's Seven Words You Must Never Say on Television. And we'd had the F-bomb on our station before. me he goes i want to play uh george carlin's seven words you must never see on television and we'd had the f-bomb on our station before and you know little things and so i said well like why and he goes well i want to do a little thing about freedom of speech and censorship and i'm going to do a little thing before it and then i'll do a disclaimer ahead of time and then i'm going to play it and then I'm going to play it, and then I'm going to play the animals. Please don't let me be misunderstood at the end of it. So it's all going to be this piece. I'm

going to think about it, think about it. I'm like, yeah, you know what? I like it. Do it. Do it. So he does it. So unbeknownst to me, the Archbishop of the Diocese of Saskatoon had apparently been gifted a brand new hi-fi by his parishioners at some point or by the parish or the church or somebody and he he had had as the story was told to me he had had some nuns over for tea can this get any worse no it's great and he's he's showing off his new hi-fi unit they don't know what to play on and he goes you know somebody says why don't you play the university station those students there they play some nice classical and folk music. And he says, that'd be perfect. Which we did.

We played classical and folk music. So he turns it on Sunday afternoon at 3 o'clock, and there's George Carlin. Oh, my goodness. Ripping through the seven words repeatedly, as you know the bit. And he didn't call me or my boss. He called the dean of the university, who called called my boss who had me in the next day. And they had me up in front of the radio board, which included the dean and several dignitaries of the university. And they were going to fire me.

And we at this point, our radio station and the student newspaper and the student union were all in the same building. We all knew each other. So we got together and this was going to be our, you know, like our Berkeley. We were going to protest signs. We're going to organize the people and we're going to get out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I found a clause in the constitution that said no person can call a meeting of the radio board except for the station director, which is me. And I didn't call the meeting. So how can you call me in front of a meeting if I didn't call the meeting? I've declared this meeting invalid. So as the chair of this committee, I declared invalid. The dean goes, vote for a new chair. All in favor? Carried. New chair. I vote for Mr. Graham. Carried. You're out. You're fired. And then Christmas happened, and we came back from Christmas,

and none of the students wanted to protest anymore. It was kind of fat on turkey. That's right. So now I was out in the real radio world. I had to get a job. That's how I got in. And is this when you moved to Toronto? No, I had got a job at the local AM station,

the one we looked down our nose upon in our cool FM days, as a disc jockey. And just an all-around guy. Did stuff, whatever needed doing at the station. And a couple on air shifts. And then applied to a job for the same thing in Winnipeg. Got the all-night job in Winnipeg. Hired by Bob Washington, if you know the name.

No, I don't think so. The voice of K-Tel. The original voice of K-Tel. He just passed this year One of the greatest guys Wash, everybody called him He's like our radio dad He's not that much older than us

But at the time You know, just old enough He wore the suit We wore jeans and stuff So he was our radio dad Bob Washington, the voice of K-Tel Just could do 45 seconds worth of copy In 30 seconds

He was that guy I owned a lot of K-Tel records growing up. Yeah. Well, that and everything else, the record distributor thing, the thing, the record filer and all the gadgets. He had them all. And met some great people there.

Some of the people from Winnipeg are my friends to this day. Some of them still in radio. And just a great time. That was our... That and CFTR was kind of the young turks part of your life you know where we were just going to change everything and take it over in Winnipeg we kind of did that uh we just took over the radio station as all the young guys and did uh played rock and roll and lived the life and you know in Winnipeg at the time there's nothing

to do but house parties that That's what you did. So you made friends and eventually, then that's when I moved in 78, 79, moved to Toronto to be a stand-up. I had enough of radio, so. So you try stand-up, Johnny Never Calls, so you end up at 790 Disco, which just, I love knowing it's 790 Disco and not 790 Disco.

It's way better that way. It is, isn't it? 790 Disco, which just, I love knowing it's 790 Disco and not 790 Disco. It's way better that way. It is, isn't it? 790 Disco. But so what happens? So why do you end up leaving 790 Disco? I guess it implodes, I guess, with that story you told us. And I mean, receivership was there. So we were still, you know, getting a salary and things like that. But I didn't know how much longer it would be there none of us did and uh a friend of mine from winnipeg who had gone to montreal ended up uh as the program director of cftr a guy named reg john so i still stay in touch with this big uh

radio guy and uh he called me and said well you know i, I don't know if I have an on-air opening, but would you like to come on as a writer or something so I can get you in the building? And I'm like, absolutely. Just, you know, love the people, Brampton, at the station, everybody's great, great, great, but we don't, I don't know.

And I got a family. So yes, I'll take this job. So went there. Listeners of this program know that when I have people like yourself or the Callahan man or KJ's been over, Bill Hayes has been here. We'll talk more about these guys. But CFTR was my station as a young man.

I woke up to it. I listened to Tom Rivers in the morning. That was my station. So please bear with me. I have lots of CFTR questions. So when you started CFTR,. Yeah. So you were, when you started CFTR, how do you get on the air?

And is that with Tom Rivers initially? No. I was just a copywriter, but that ended up being a job where I wrote a lot of the station imaging and stuff before we kind of called it that. We wrote the promos. We put together stuff. And always wanted to be on air and continue to be. I had been on air. I wrote the promos, we put together stuff and, uh, always wanted to be on air and,

and like continue to be, I had been on air. I was, I think at one point somebody told me when I was morning man in Winnipeg that I was the youngest morning man in Canada. That might've been for six months or something. I don't know. Way too early in my career to be a morning man. Hated it. Getting up three in the morning. What is this? But, but, uh, good times. So wanted to get back on the air, was on the air and in brampton and uh copywriting was great but how do i get back on the air uh eventually uh i think they had this weird it was like two yeah two weekend evenings and three all night shows shift it was kind of the leftover swing shift or whatever they called it back in the day.

And I wanted to do that. I applied for that and got that and was on air. And eventually a guy named Bob Saint ran the station for a while. And he said, you know, I don't know about you on air. What about the promotions job? You could be creative director, promotions manager of CFTR. So then I went with a career choice. Yeah, do I stay on the air?

Comedy things. So yeah, I take that job. Now I'm management. Air quotes. So now I'm going to the management meetings. I'm doing that. I'm doing that. I'm doing that.

And I was always a writer and things. So creative director, promotions. All of that. And once Tom Rivers joined, we started to contribute to the Tom Rivers Show. And I'd say we and my friend recently departed, Mike Reed, one of the great producers of all time. That's where I last saw Bob Callahan at Mike's funeral. And we would start to do bits, like audio bits

that we'd put together, song parodies or what have you, and eventually I'd just leave those for Tom if he wanted to use them. And he did, and eventually just started inviting me on the air to talk. point he uh we did a parody of uh sunglasses at uh no we did we did sunglasses tonight but we also did one night on young street one night in bangkok right so murray head yeah so tom hired me to do the video we shot a video on the cheap and uh that was it i just started going on the air and we developed this other persona named cory fedorek because i because of the sunglasses song and i he literally asked me on the air just as we're about to go on the air, he goes, I don't want to interview you. I want to interview this other guy who's like your brother. I'm like,

what? What? And okay, please introduce... And Corey Fedoruk was kind of born out of panic one day behind the microphone that I had to... So it was that character and then me, and then I just... Eventually they said, you know what? Why don't you be a team with Tom?

And those were great times. Tom is rightfully a legend. Yeah, tell me as much as you can about Tom Rivers. We lost him way too soon. But that was mornings to me as a young, impressionable guy, listening to your top 40 music on CFTR and all the different bits. And I'm going to run down the roster soon because of these names that we heard on that station in the, I guess, early 80s. But what kind of guy was Tom Rivers?

Tom was just, he was a big man, number one. So to say that Tom was larger than life is actually true because he was just absolutely huge and Tom was the guy and this this is to me and I don't I don't want to sound like one of those guys you know and we were we did it right these kids today but but the thing I miss most about radio today is the spirit of Tom Rivers where it's like management tells you to do one thing how can we screw with this how can we be we be funnier and crazier? And they said we can't do this. How can we still kind of do it and get around?

Like always trying to break the rules, whether they were the rules of comedy, the rules of convention, the rules of radio, the rules of management, whatever it was, that kind of rebel spirit, that was Tom Rivers to me. And I mean, I think we all had that at one point, but Tom Rivers was that personified and a great reminder of that's what we Rivers to me. And I mean, I think we all had that at one point, but Tom Rivers was that personified and a great reminder of that's what we wanted to do.

Like, these are silly examples, but we had one of the first big, because 680 CFTR was massive in those days. And we had this mobile home, the biggest RV you could possibly get with a radio antenna, what do you call those, radar antennas on it, so we could broadcast suddenly studio quality from anywhere in the city,

one of the first people to do that. And it was all logoed, and it was all beautiful, and it was just this huge, massive billboard. And Tom looked at it, and forget, we had a cool name for it. Tom looked at it, and he goes, boy, it looks like the bookmobile. So he started calling it the CFDR bookmobile, which is not a great image. It's not cool for a rock station or what not. So he started calling it the bookmobile. So every day, memo, no, Tom, could you not call

it the bookmobile? Yeah, no, I was just kidding around. Next day, CFTR bookmobile will be it. And just stuff like that, that just Tom always did. It was small, big, whatever. Let's hear a little bit of Tom. This is a radio ad from, I guess, the later 80s, but Just stuff like that, that just Tom always did. It was small, big, whatever. Let's hear a little bit of Tom. This is a radio ad from, I guess, the later 80s, but let's hear some Tom Rivers. I'm going to give away more CFTR Morning Man Tom Rivers. This Thursday morning, you could win $5,000 if your birthday matches the one in this envelope.

It's so easy. Just put your radio on CFTR. That's 680 on your AM dial. Then listen at 7 715 Thursday morning. We'll announce the birthday in this envelope. If it matches yours, you could win five grand. CFTR, more music, more fun, and more free money. Somebody's going to win five grand Thursday morning at 715 on CFTR.

Somebody like you? There's a little Tom Rivers. Those are great. I'm in one of those commercials. I'm in a couple of those commercials. They're on YouTube, if you want to find them. The birthday game commercials were. Oh, yeah, I know. I'm in them, too.

So those were fun to do. We did them in Nashville, Tennessee. Cool, yeah. So Tom Rivers, you're on Mornings with Tom Rivers. I'm going to run down, if it's okay if I run down the roster of this. I'm a CFTR fan from the early mid-80s here. But Bill Hayes, who's been here, you worked with Bill. Yep, just saw Billy.

Bill, his brother, of course, is John Derringer. Have you heard of that guy? One of our operators. So none of the jocks at CFTR ran their own equipment, which was super cool. Everybody had an op 24 hours a day. There was no such thing. And some of the greatest guys in radio started out as ops at CFTR, including John Hayes. Oh, wow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember him when he was just an op at CFTR, the great John Derringer. And always, there was guys you looked at in those days and said, that's a talent. And John Hayes, John Derringer was one of those guys you could tell right away. It's like, he's going to be bigger than this. Wow. And another big name that was at CFTR at that time, Mike Cooper. Oh, yeah.

Tell me about Cooper, who's now happily retired, I understand. He was on CHFI with Aaron Davis. Years, yeah. He got the cake and the happy farewell. But how was it working with Mike Cooper? I didn't work a lot with Mike, but just a great laugh. You know, just a guy who could be really funny and also just had this great laugh.

So when you made Mike Cooper laugh, it was fantastic. And then for years, Mike did Mike's stupid joke of the day. Yeah, 510, right? The 510 stupid joke of the day. I still 510, right? The 510 stupid joke of the day. I still have the paperbacks. We did two books or three. Gosh, I still have them at home. And my job at that time,

when I was partly on air and partly in promotions, was to read all the letters that came in to kind of vet the jokes, or we did this one, or this one's just dirty, we can't use this, or if we clean this up we can do it this way and then give mike you know well here's the 10 jokes that you got in today and then he'd pick one that he could tell and tell the story and then eventually we edited those down

into a paperback a couple of paperbacks i think stupid joke of the day son of stupid or whatever we did we did two or three of those books so i worked with mike on that joke of the day for a long time uh Steve Gregory. Oh, yeah. Now, I see Steve on Facebook all the time. We haven't stayed in touch that much. But yeah, just what a great voice, too. And you mentioned off the top, we talked about the Callahan man, Bob Callahan.

Right. Yeah, go ahead, please. Just remind me. Yeah. Steve Gregory. Yeah. How did this work? Dated for a while.

Gee, I... Yeah, this was public. I can't... I'm telling stories suddenly I'm not supposed to. Dated Mila Mulroney's sister when Brian Mulroney was the prime minister. And... I did not know that. And a couple of...

I think one year at least spent a Christmas while we're going to my sister's. So they went to 24 Sussex for the Christmas. Get out of here. And I'm like, you know, Steve, this wonderful voice, Brian Mulroney, this wonderful voice. And I'm like, was it the Battle of the Pipes? Who could talk lower? Well, Steve. It's true.

Brian Mulroney had deep pipes, man. Oh, yeah. He smokes. Yeah. Absolutely. Oh, that's funny. Emila was a good-looking woman, so I'm sure her sister was good-looking as well.

I think we met her sister at parties, whatever, when everybody brought their dates. And Bob Callahan, any memories you want to share of Bob? Just one of the greats, one of the true blue people. No surprise the direction his career took, I guess. one of the true blue people. You know, no surprise the direction his career took, I guess, for people who don't know.

But he... Well, he... I mean, we never revealed his real name or anything, but he did share with us on the podcast that he's now in, we'll call it law enforcement.

Yeah. He's a police officer. Yeah. Detective. Just a solid guy. And we used to always hang out at this one bar. It seems like every day. Can't have been every day.

None of us would have survived that. But there was a bar down from CFTR called Mr. K's. Kind of a, eh. When I was doing mornings with Tom, I'd be walking from the parking lot about the two blocks to CFDR, and you had to pass Mr. K's. And this is 4 or 4.30 in the morning, you're going to work. Right.

And invariably, somebody would be coming out of Mr. K's. Now, you can't stay open till 4. But there's always this one guy there. He was like a bar manager or something. He's like, Larry, Larry, you want to come to the poker before your shift? You come play poker with us. I'm like, poker? So yeah, instead of getting up at 3 in the morning, I'll get up at 2 in the morning and go and play poker for a couple hours at Mr. K's and then go work on the CFDR morning show. Yeah, thank you.

Well, that's radio, right? I remember. Anyway, sorry, I digress. But to me, one of the faces there was always Bob. You walk into Mr. K's, familiar faces there. Not always. Not that he was always at the bar. Don't take that, please.

When we got together, it's just one of the great faces and people I remember there. And you can now on Boom, which is a station in Toronto doing quite well, you can hear KJ. And KJ was Chris James on CFTR. And he's been over here. And I told him, and I'll tell you,

we all know him as Chris James. And he rebrands somewhere. He decides he's been over here. And I told him, and I'll tell you, we all know him as Chris James. And he rebrands somewhere. He decides he's KJ. Yeah. But it's not obvious to people that KJ is Chris James, is it? Am I the only one who didn't connect those dots for a long time? You have to know that Chris was spelled with a K, which we know. But yeah, I don't know.

It took me, because I feel I'm pretty radio savvy. You know, I do this. And it took me a long time to realize KJ on Boom was Chris James from CFTR. There you go. Well, KJ, I worked with a guy at CKTV called Kevin Jack, and he automatically became KJ. And then that's not good enough, that short form. Cage is then the short form of KJ. Oh, yeah.

Which is a cool name, Cage. Yeah, it is. It is. But Chris James, to me, and I've heard him on Boom. I remember I kind of didn't hear him for a while, and then I tuned in Boom one day a long time ago, and I went, this is probably one of the finest, purest, best disc jockeys on radio ever.

Can take that 18 seconds of intro to a song and pack more personality and information in there than a lot of guys who are given, you know, five minutes to do the same. It's a skill. It's a talent. Man, you know, KJ, if you hear this and you hear the word underrated, please don't. I know people think a lot of you, but one of the most underrated to me always from the CFTR days was Chris James. Jay Mad Dog Michaels tells me that the finest DJ he's ever heard is Chris James. Jay Mad Dog Michaels tells me that the finest DJ he's ever heard is Chris James.

I would agree. And Gary Bell was there? Yeah. And here I'm going to drop in funerals like we're all 100, but I just exchanged emails with Gary Bell because Kenny Shields died. And this is...

What's his name? Street Band? What's it called? Street Heart. So I was very young in the 70s. I'll just pretend I missed, basically I missed the 70s, so I'm an 80s child. I did not know about this band. They really flew under the radar if you don't remember the 70s.

Well, and they were good, but Canadian content helped. So when they did Under My Thumb, Stone's cover, and there was a song that everybody already knew and could sing along, and it was by this great band with this great singer, and it countered his Canadian content.

Why not? They had some other great songs as well, but Gary Bell and Kenny Shields were best friends. They go back to Saskatoon. I was going to say, is this a West Coast? Is it because I'm a Toronto guy that we don't know Streetheart? When I was a kid, and he's not that much older than me, but when I was a kid, I listened to Gary Bell on the radio.

So one of the guys I wanted to be was Gary Bell. So to work with him years later was like, wow. And then Gary and Kenny Shields were friends back in those days like uh gary's wife also knew kenny shields gary's wife turns out she lived a block over next to me in saskatoon they kenny shields was in a band called witness incorporated which uh was the saskatoon band that had a record deal and were played on the radio so when you were saskatoon and a local band actually had airplay it was like wow they're superstars. Kenny Shields was lead vocalist. Their drummer I went to high school with.

So, you know, big connection. So I wrote Gary a nice little note, and Gary and I touched base again. The Spaceman. Spaceman, yeah, Gary Bell. That's what he is. That's what he calls himself. And that was, you know, at many CFTR dinners,

if you sat next to Gary Bell, you got the early version of the spaceman because he would tell you how the election of Ronald Reagan influenced the World Series that year, how this whole fix was in. He was an amazing guy, still is. He's a guy who can fill lots of time

with content without callers or anything like that. And he does a great job doing that. And I'm going to burn through, but in news, Dick Smythe, Dick Smythe was at CFDR

doing news. Yeah. And I mean, I saw him in ads. He's in ads now for some arthritis pill. Cream or something that he does.

He looks fantastic. He looks like George Carlin to me now. He does. The ponytail, the white hair, it's perfect. Yeah, it looks good.

And what was it? Is Dick what I think? He just looked like a real news guy, like one of those old school news guys. Like you want to go back to the Big Eight, Windsor, Dick Smythe, part of that team, and eventually of course a fixture of Chum and City and CFTR was lucky to get him. Must be Dick Smythe.

And just a core, core news guy with great, great opinion as well, which, believe it or not, a lot of news guys didn't have at the time. They weren't, you know, they were great at gathering and reading the news, but just to bluster on about stuff.

Yeah, his commentaries. I mean, at some point they were airing, I don't know if this is after it went all news, but they were airing his commentaries on CMFT. Like you could see him and Evelyn Macko, I think, too. And Evelyn Macko was at CFTR as well. How many women in news today owe Evelyn Macko? It's endless. It's countless.

I'll tell you quickly, CFMT was a purchase of Rogers when Ted still ran things. You would still see Ted at the radio station occasionally and and uh and he knew your name mostly and uh they bought a television station at the time Chum had City so they were this powerhouse because they had tv backup and they had extra exposure so CFMT though multi uhilingual, we wanted to try and leverage that into our TV station at CFTR so that we could get extra exposure

for our guys. Right, because on City you could see like Roger Ashby would host the Top 30 Countdown or whatever, which was the chum, I guess they eventually moved it to the FM station, but it was the chum, Top 30, so you're right. You could kind of... So we tried to. One of the ways was we put a newsroom,

a special TV studio in the newsroom at CFTR and commentaries were done from there. Also news breaks were done from there. And those were on CFMT. So hopefully gave us a little extra exposure for those people filling out diaries. They put CFTR because they saw it on TV. And we had this woman come in from,

I don't know where she was from originally, but she was a news person named Beverly Thompson. And she did one of the news breaks on TV. And about two days later she was gone. CTV was like, yep, come with us. Was it CTV or Global? Or maybe I missed, was it CTV? Beverly Thompson, CTV.

Yeah, you're right. You're absolutely right. Yeah, of course. And Larry Silver, another Larry at CFTR. Oh, I saw Larry, yeah. Larry Silver, God, that. You're right. No, you're absolutely right. Yeah, of course. And Larry Silver, another Larry at CFTR. Oh, I saw Larry, yeah. Larry Silver, this guy's a genius. And sports, I mean, the roster,

and we're almost done here for those who are bored by my CFTR thing, but Eric Thomas was doing sports. Yeah, I see Eric occasionally still. He's a host of this Raceline Radio, which he... Yeah, he's made a...

He's got a niche there. He's the race guy. He was always the race guy. That was the thing too, because it didn't matter with all due respect to Eric, who I love dearly was that, uh, spelt with a K by the way,

E R I K was a thing, I guess, uh, the, uh, wherever, when Eric did sports, uh,

for example, on the Tom River show, it, the British open and the world series and the thing could have happened all on the same day. Eric worked in a motorsports story somewhere in the thing. I also worked with Eric and Rivers again at the Mix, 99.9.

And same kind of thing. And Gary Slate used to come in and go, what do you got the motorsports for? He always loved the motorsports. I'm so glad that he actually turned that into his livelihood. It's brilliant. I remember Chicken Man, I guess, was the big cereal. Was it Chicken Man? Am I a Chicken Man?

Obviously, I didn't write that one. That was all Tom. Oh, man. I'm trying to remember. They're all kind of bleeding together in my mind. But there was a Chicken Man, which might have been a cereal, maybe. Maybe it wasn't done by CFTR. Maybe it was licensed and played on CFTR.

No, I think it was Tom. He's everywhere. He's everywhere. Chicken man. Okay, well, we won't let that derail us. I'm sorry. I'm not coming up with anything there. No, it's okay. The unfriendly giant. Okay, it was the unfriendly giant. Yes, that was Tom. I think there's footage on YouTube

of you guys doing the unfriendly giant. You can see Eric Thomas in that clip, Eric Thomas, master of voices also, which is the great thing to have a sports guy there who could do, uh, just generic voices.

If you wanted, uh, you know, we need the voice of, uh, of a chicken or whatever he could do. But then he also did some of the great celebrities of, of the day out of sports and stuff.

He could just nail those impressions. So that was great voice talent. And we'll close with the dynamic traffic duo, great celebrities of the day out of sports and stuff. He could just nail those impressions. So that was great voice talent. And we'll close with the dynamic traffic duo, who I believe, because I believe they're still there on All News 680. I mean, they were there in the 70s, so I get out a calculator and they get the record, I think, for longest period.

Got to be. Active anyways. Russ Holden and Daryl Dahmer. Yeah. And I guess they were in the copters and everything, right? Airplanes. Airplanes, okay, yeah. Only because, yeah, you know, to tell Daryl he's a copter.

No way, he's a pilot, flies an airplane. Yeah, I love those guys. I never flew with Daryl. I flew with Russ a couple of times. Okay, cool. And that was really interesting. I love that. I can't, boy, to do that every day as your job.

I don't know how much in the air Russ is. I've still heard him occasionally. But Daryl, you still, yeah, you still hear him out there. We're going to get to CKFM in a minute. And it's funny. I was once in a plane flown by Humble Howard Glassman. Oh, really? So he got a pilot license at some point.

And I think back in 2006, he's like, hey, do you want to fly? And I'm like, yeah, okay. Who's going to be the pilot? And he's like, just you and I, and I'll be the pilot. And I'm like, okay, let's go. I remember, I think it was at Buddenville. I can't remember where exactly. I think it was Buddenville.

But yeah, it's just crazy to be up in that little plane, and there's just the two of you. It's just an amazing sensation. Yeah, yeah. I remember once flying with Russ, and he had just received word of some traffic problems at an area that he had just flown over. So he said, OK, I'm going to go up, bank right, and then make a sharp right. So if you're ready, I'm like, well, whatever, go.

And all I remember is seeing out the side window nothing but the ground in the city of Toronto kind of going in a clockwise circle. And I was like, okay. And straightened out the plane, made this amazing turn just to get back over the traffic story. Yeah, that's great.

All right, now that's CFTR. Thank you for that. I know I needed to go down memory lane on CFTR because it's nostalgia is my drug of choice. This is a great time. Why not? And does it end for you at CFTR because they go all news? No, no.

Although people might not realize that FM was a bit of a non-starter in a lot of the 80s. It was there. It was great. It had a following. Ironically, I started on an FM station on campus out west. But the big AM stations, CHUM, V, CFTR,

that was what it was all about. But that started to change, as it should. And people started to go... I can't remember what happened to Rivers. How exactly that changed. Because Jesse and Gene end up doing mornings. Yes.

So I think Tom gets fired, I think. I think you're right, which Tom could do very well. But the whole idea of being able to get Tom from Chum was the FU radio that Tom could do afterwards. Yeah, you want to fire me? I'll show you what I can do. I'll go to the other station and kick your asses, which was also a part of Tom Rivers' mentality, which he could do. And they tried to get that at CKFM. But nevertheless, before that, things were starting to change, we were losing ground to FMs. The money wasn't there. I think Mike Cooper went to CKEY to do mornings. A few people started to leave.

Gary Slate had come to me and offered me a job as part of the morning show at CKFM, which was, um, Carol Alexander and Jerry Forbes. And Marty was the program director. And I had just started like the full-time morning thing with Tom. And I was like, I'm kind of not interested. A year later, the climate's different at CFTR. And I get the same offer exactly a year later. And this time I was like, yep, thank you. Went over there and worked with Carol and Jerry and Marty.

And for the casual listener who's not sure what CKFM is, so this is, you're there before they rebrand as Mix 99.9. Yes, as a matter of fact. That's because Jerry Forbes predates that. Yeah. And I don't want,

I don't want to get ahead of you here, but the flipping CKFM to the mix, that was officially done by myself and Humble Howard as a morning team. He's told that story on the air. He says he's the first person who said the words Mix 99.9 on the air. And the first song was Changes by David Bowie.

Of course, of course. Of course. So, okay, so you start with Jerry Forbes, and then the second morning guy you work with at CKFM is Humble Howard Glassman. Yeah. We started this broadcast by chatting a little bit about Freddie P. And Humble Howard has been his partner since, I think, 1989.

Yeah. And of course, your working with Howard is post-89, because Howard's at CFNY in 89. Then he leaves to go to CKFM, which is 99.9, for like, I don't know, 18 months or something like that. And he comes back. I'm kind of his co-host there.

I'm kind of his co-host there. I can't believe that he's not with Fred. Humble and Fred. Yeah. Humble and Larry. I was a listener. I was like, yeah, what's this? It makes no sense.

It makes no sense. Yeah, yeah. And then he came back. He ended up going back to CFNY to work with Fred, where he's still working with Fred. But what was it like working with Humble Howard? I really liked Humble Howard. And like, I love Humble Howard.

And it was interesting because I'd never, this was the first guy, he's from Saskatchewan, I'm from Saskatchewan, he's stand-up comedy, I've done stand-up comedy, radio, radio, so many similarities that it should have been magic. And I don't know why it wasn't and I don't know why it wasn't I don't know why it wasn't maybe you're too similar

maybe there's something to that like you need a yin yang thing and I had worked with Tom and I had worked now with Jerry and equal billing and all that but it was Tom's show, it was Jerry's show it was Humble's show and I kind of wanted Larry's show.

So I don't know if my attitude contributed well to it. There were the usual tensions of working under that administration, and Howard and I have become better friends since then. Is that? No, I mean, if I read between the lines, is it possible that two egos, I'm not calling you an ego,

but I mean, I know Humble very well. Humble made a speech at my wedding. Like, I know the guy very well, but there's an ego there, and a lot of morning guys have this, I've noticed, but there's a certain ego, and then maybe a clash of the egos where somebody i noticed in that humble and fred dynamic they seem to figured out each other's roles and then howard can kind of drive it and do the back selling and

kind of be the i don't want to say alpha male it sounds so sexist or whatever but and then fred can kind of uh support that it seems to be like they figured out how to share i don't know i don't know that humble and i ever figured it out. And then once we didn't have to work, then I realized what a great guy he was, and we've been friends ever since. I don't know how close we were while we were doing the show. We tried, but I don't know.

I don't know why it didn't work. So he went back to Fred at 102.1, and your old pal Tom Rivers comes in to two mornings with you at CKFM. Yeah, and that was the that was close to the end for Tom. Tom wasn't the Tom from Chum and from

CFTR. He had some demons and I don't want to go past that. I mean, he's still the great Tom Rivers, but he's a little harder to work with, a little harder to kind of rely on. And so is Tom fired at CKFM? I think so. I think so.

He told me the day that this was the beginning of the end for him. He had run in the parking garage. He'd run into our owner and boss, Gary Slate, and made some smart-ass remark about his Range Rover. And Gary didn't like it. So Tom came up and shared the remark, because that's so Tom, just to his boss, whatever, say whatever you want, whatever's on his mind. And I laughed at the remark. I wish I could remember what it was. And Tom said, yeah, this is the beginning of it from now. From here on in, he's working on how to fire me. Which is, it's not funny, but it was funny now, I guess.

It's almost a little bit of self-destruction, like self-sabotage almost. Yeah, a little bit of that going, I think, towards the end. And that's like that rebel without a cause kind of mentality of like, what are you rebelling against? What do you got? Yeah, that's a great way to put it. Yeah, I know personalities like, I didn't know Tom,

but I know personalities like that. And then Carla Collins. So this is a change, right? Because you have to kind of, I use that terrible term alpha male. I need a new term for that. But Carla Collins is a different voice, a different type of morning person for you to work with. Yes, yes.

And also a comedian. So there's that again. And then this was kind of like the first thing where I felt I had a show. And not necessarily that I had a show that Carla was on, because it wasn't. It was very much the two of us. But I really felt like I had a show.

So now Larry is really on, he was here first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the fourth morning person you worked with at that station. Yeah. So, and Carla was obviously destined for stardom. And, you know, one of our favorite things to do was, what was the name of the show?

It was on CFTO. It was just a Toronto CTV show from 11 till noon every day. And Carla and I became the fill-in hosts for that. Mostly Carla, but I did a few of them as well. So, you know, it felt big time. You're doing a morning show at 99.9, and then you wrap up at 10 o'clock. You get in the car, and you drive out to Scarborough to go to CTV and get in makeup and do the show.

And then go in post-production of that show and then go home and work on the next morning show the next day. And the times when we filled in, it felt like, man, I'm radio, I'm TV. I'm like, I'm a big star. King of all media, Larry. And then not.

Then you just get suddenly one day they call you in the office and go, I need your pass card. Yeah, that sucks. I've heard too many stories about that. So is it one of those things where you see like an HR person with a folder at a table and you know what's coming? No, that was even before that. It was mostly just your PD calls you and goes, you're done.

And I think that was the way it was done. I've heard stories of Gary Slate firing people even just easier than that. was done. I've heard stories of Gary Slate firing people even just easier than that. But it was actually JJ, the PD that fired us. And it was fine. I guess I don't know that our ratings were really there anyway. You know, you can go back and say, well, we could use more promotion. We could use more help. I don't know. Maybe we weren't the morning team. And I know they had wanted that guy from Edmonton for years. They'd wanted him and wanted him. Every morning show I'd worked on, it's like, if we could get him. What the hell was his name?

He went back there. He had, like, long blonde hair. Big hair. Beautiful hair. He was like the hair guy, yeah. So they finally got him, and I guess that was it. And it was nice, because Sharon Taylor called me the next day. That was a time when you were in, it was kind of cool

because you were in Gary Dunford's column when you got fired or when anything cool, like if you could be on page six, Gary Dunford, it's cool, right? Hey, look at me, I made Dunford's column today. And I got fired, and I called my son, and I said, good news, we can still golf tomorrow, but we can have breakfast first because I don't have to do a show tomorrow because I'm fired.

Your dad's fired. So we went for breakfast someplace at this diner, and I remember Toronto Sun was on the table, so I opened it up, and there was my name about being fired, and I'm sitting there the very next day uh about to golf with my son thinking well all right I'm I got the summer off I guess and Sharon Taylor called me who I work with at CFTR she was my program director at the end there and she called me and said I don't have anything for you but uh if anything comes up don't don't answer any call until you call me back. And that was like the best thing when you're fired.

Like somebody else actually cares, wants me maybe. And that was just the best call ever. And eventually I did go to work at KISS. And that's KISS with a C. Yeah. Chris with a K. KISS with a C. And that station, they can't decide, right? Like sometimes it was KISS with a K and then it was KISS with a C

and then it was KISS with a K, but I think it it's kiss of a K today. But I will say my mom loved that station and had the mug. You had those kiss mugs. Yeah. Mugs and kisses. Mugs and kisses, right. Who was I talking to? Goodness gracious. He's there now. Mocha. So, right. Mocha apparently, he told me some story about how he was in charge of the mugs or something. He had some role at the promotions department there. So, the Rolco got KISS, got the KISS

license in Toronto. It's country. And they also got CMT, Country Music Television, which was called something else at the time. And so sharon finally said listen would you want to work in television three three days a week and then do weekends at kiss and i'm like yeah it's a job done right uh and eventually they hired me on the morning show for kiss i was full-time back on radio morning show again but uh they so we did country

and and did the television and then when they then I was fired before they were sold to Rogers and became the Kiss of Today and everything else. So I don't know whether they did Mugs and Kisses afterwards or what they did. Well, let's hear a little, and I'm not sure if this is from your era or not, but let's hear a little 92.5 Kiss FM radio. We'll hear two of these really quickly.

I never thought it would happen to me. I mean, first I bought a tape by Alabama. The next thing you know, I'm at a Garth Brooks concert at the X, and now I have a button on my radio set to the new FM country station. 92.5 Kiss FM. Me, the old rock and roller. I like New Country music. I like it a lot. New Country is today's hottest music and there's only one radio station that plays it. The new 92.5 Kiss FM. Thunder rolls, the thunder rolls, and the lightning strikes. Another love grows cold on a sleepless night as the storm blows all out of control. New Country is today's hottest music, and there's only one radio station that plays it. The new 92.5 KISS FM. How much Garth Brooks did you have to play at that stage?

Oh, about six an hour. No, I mean, he was bigger than anything. You know, he was the biggest in all of music. Not, you know, who else? He hosted Saturday Night Live. He was on all the talk shows. Not just a country guy. He's a big star.

He was massive, yeah. And I interviewed him several times. Great guy guy one of the things i noticed about country music stars was their love of radio so i think in all the years in rock radio i met uh phil collins that's about it i can't i i'm sure they came in i i don't know but in country music and plus we were the only game in town in toronto quite a big size market gta gtha so you got everybody reba mcintyre was your best friend uh garth brooks dwight yocum i'll never forget a conversation i had about the space and time continuum with dwight yocum smart smart guy uh like all the big stars i actually was in a room for two hours with the band, not Robbie Robertson

but everybody else just hanging with Levon Helm talking these guys came in, they did interviews they played songs for you they did jingles with your name in it for fun

they just loved radio and gave themselves to radio. That was the fun part of Kiss. The other part of Kiss was, okay, this is new country. Please don't wear cowboy boots. Please don't wear a cowboy hat. No cowboy shirts. No cowboy. This is not cowboy. This is new country. We always had the speech how country and Western were two different genres of music till somebody decided to unite them back in the day and so on and so forth. And all the lectures to try and be...

I don't want to say urban cowboy was wrong also. You couldn't be urban cowboy. There's no cowboy. You had to be your usual Toronto self. Just you played and loved country music apparently. That was the deal. But was there a challenge with CanCon regulations?

I know that, is this before Shania? Is this, this is before? No, this was right around, is this around the same time? This is right around the time. Should I tell the story

of grabbing Shania Twain's breast? Oh my God, yes, of course. Okay, well, I'll have to. So it was right around then, but I mean, and being a Toronto radio station, Kiss was, we pushed it a little bit,

so you heard Insensitive by Jan Arden. Okay, okay. I don't know. Yeah, Blue Rodeo. That should be okay. It was good. It's kind of the Eagles of Canada, as people often said.

I think it's unfair because I think they're better and different. And then there was the Rankins, which was kind of the East Coast Cape Breton sound that we kind of labeled country or new country for the purposes of KISS. And then there was a few actual Canadian country artists that were able to play. So with that, I don't think Canadian content was a challenge, really. I don't know about that insensitive ruling, but I can see why you have to do what you

have to do, but I don't know. So we did commercials with the same company that we used at CFTR, which was a company out of Nashville. And just coincidence that we were now a country station and we did commercials in Nashville because it was a company called Filmhouse, and they were just really good at doing radio commercials. So we went down to Nashville during FanF. Fanfest? Fanfare. This is when all the country artists, big and small, have a booth. Cool. And people just go booth to booth and meet their artists and line up for autographs

and get pictures taken. And they do it every year and it's huge. And we went down for that because then we could get access to Shania Twain, who'd been up at the radio station. She was just starting to explode huge. She was now beyond. So it was radio station. She was just starting to explode huge. She was now beyond.

So it was great get. She was going to come down to the film house studio, and we're going to shoot a commercial together for our morning show. And the whole idea is, the premise of this hilarious commercial is, Cliff and Jackie were going to be doing a commercial, and I was going to come along with a cardboard cutout

behind a cardboard cutout of Shania Twain going, hi, this is Shania Twain I love the, and they're like, Larry oh, Larry oh, Larry, what do you mean it's Shania Twain on this cardboard cutout and then we'd do this thing promoting our morning show and then we'd cut away

to the logo spin and everything else come back and who's standing there, but real shania twain me cliff and jackie and shania has a line uh i love cliff jackie larry f here's uh i was called larry f i hated that and here's cliff jackie and larry f and listen to kiss fm and that was going to be the line terrific so she shows up dressed in the cardboard cutout outfit which was I Dream of Jeannie which is a little harem thing

with bare midriff and she looks, if anybody sees her on video thinks she's gorgeous, in person she's just so gorgeous. So little harem pants, she's fantastic. So at the end Of the commercial

She says to the director I've got a little idea, do you mind if I try a little something during this take He's like, yeah, do whatever you want Her idea was, as she says her line I'm standing on her left Cliff and Jackie are on her right She is going to put her arms up and put her arms around us to embrace us as she does the line, I love Cliff, Jackie, and Larry, I have to listen to Kiss.

So as she's doing this, we don't know she's doing this. We're all at that dumb stare in the camera, the stupid smile, because we have no lines. So the natural reaction is I should put my arm back around her. That's what you do when somebody gives you a hug. So I put my arm around her, and I realize, I don't know if I want to touch her bare skin. And to grab her, I don't want to grab her butt. Yeah, you've got to do hover hands. Yeah, hover hand, I never thought of that.

See, where were you? I should have thought of that. So I try and look for some material, and I put my hand. I'm basically cusping it, Mike. I'm basically cusping her right breast and I am mortified. I am mortified. Oh, please God, this was an accident. I hope they believe me. I'm just so dead. As soon as the guy yells cut, she's going to freak out. But I didn't know if it was cool to touch your bare skin. So he yells cut, and my hand comes down like a shot.

And she looks at the director and goes, so how was that? Oh, no. And nobody ever said anything? Nobody ever? She called me for months afterwards. No. I'm kidding. But she, I still, whenever I see her, I go, so yeah, I've touched her there.

She never said anything. Whose bed have your boots been under? That's great. I mean, Shania, I mean, that was, there was no bigger, speaking of Garth Brooks being a megastar, Shania was the next megastar there. Yeah, and we got to, we went to New York for three or four days, did our show from the plaza. Garth Brooks did a Central Park concert

with Billy Joel. You know, I mean, those kind of experiences you have because you're, you're the morning person. You get to go and travel and do cool stuff. And I know you mentioned

Cliff and Jackie, but that's Cliff Dumas, is that, and Jackie Donaldson. Right. Just to complete that and why do you leave the station? Why do you leave this? I'm fired. I'm fired. You got fired again. Okay. Just to complete that. And why do you leave the station?

Why do you leave this? I'm fired. That's fine. You got fired again. Okay. That's radio, man. It's like if you haven't been fired in radio, you're not doing it right.

Is that right? Somebody should tell that to Roger Ashby. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So twice in a career. That's not bad. I wear those with honor. And I don't know what it was.

I can't remember if it was ratings or what was happening. It's probably ratings. It's always ratings. But I think Cliff had moved on. That was it. He went to 820. I know that. So Cliff goes to 820 CHAM in Hamilton.

C-H-A-M in Hamilton. I think that's where Cliff... He returns there, I believe. Yeah. Possibly. And it's funny. The guys who replaced you have both been on the show. One is Jeff Lumby, who was with Humble Howard in Montreal.

That's true, yes. When they recruited him for the Humble and Fred show. And it's also on the Red Green show, Jeff Lumby. Right, I forgot about that. Good one. And Mike Richards, who listeners, he's been in here a couple of times, and he's now podcasting himself. See, when they left, I had the show for a couple of weeks with sam houston

and we uh hit it off on the air and it was our morning show we were pretty sure we were going to get the morning show and they had decided on lumby so um i haven't told the story to many people but sharon taylor um said i need to talk to you so i kind of knew what where this was going and uh i had a really great relationship with Sharon at CFTR and at KISS. And she hired me at KISS. So, uh-oh. She goes, but I can't do it here.

Let's go to the back and have a smoke. I'm like, all right. So she, it's only funny now. She tells me, she's got a bunch of papers, of course, that I have to sign or read or whatever. And she tells me that they're making a change and she has to let me go. And she breaks down crying because she didn't want to do this. So I ended up consoling her.

So I'm just fired. And I'm like, it's okay. It's okay. You're going to be okay. I'm tapping your shoulder. You know, so it's like, I'll never forget. It's the weirdest firing ever was ever was I have to console my boss because she's upset about this.

So that's what happened. Fired there. Well, I'm going to tell you a little story that was told to me by Jesse and Jean of all people.

So Jesse and Jean, their second tour of duty at Q107. Right. So not the first one, the second one. Apparently there was a party, an active party

was happening with Jeff Lumby and his morning show from y108 or something that was going to be the new morning show on q107 like so this is done and something happened with whoever was in charge of that station like so the detail i can't remember but somebody who outranked the people who were gonna sign uh jeff lumby and his crew and i don't think mike richards was there anymore but he might have been, but it was definitely Lumby to be the morning guy at Q, phoned them at the party to celebrate that, phoned them to say,

okay, Jesse and Gene are coming back. So basically we're changing course. Jesse and Gene are going to come back to QN07. And Lumby's coming in again, by the way, for those who love the Lumby episode, he's coming in again to kick out the jams with me and I'll get him to retell that story. But yeah, it's literally,

they got the phone call at the barbecue to celebrate that Jesse and Gene were going to come back again. And I got that story from Jesse and Gene. And that's just such a, to me, the whole Toronto radio scene is so small, really. Like all the pieces kind of come back and just the way you have relationships with Humble Fred, Lumby, and all these different

things, but you're gone from Kiss, which is a shame. I think that was, like, in 1998, I want to say, possibly. Right around there, yeah. What happens, like, is this a chance for you to take a break or whatnot? Like, I know today, of course, you're, in fact, after this

episode, you're going to drive to St. Catharines. Is that right? Yes. So tell, what happens between News Talk 610? How I become a talk show host? Yeah, give me this story. That's what I want to hear. Talk show host.

I wish I would have been doing it forever. It's like a great experience is at all the stations, great people, but I look back and boy, boy, I should have done this earlier. What's the matter with me? I didn't do anything for a couple of years. My friend, Mike Reed and I worked together on commercials.

He was a great producer, television, radio. So we had a few clients. We did radio. We did television commercials. What else did I do? Picked up little freelance gigs here and there, just did whatever, and thinking, is this what I do now? I'm just a freelance guy. People can make a living that way. Can I? But he called me one day and said, my show runs on CKTV, and they have a new program director, and she's looking for some people. I told her about you.

You should give her a call. And I'm like, yeah, okay. I could do some fill-ins there occasionally. That would be great. So I drive out to Niagara. Now, the instructions were get off on Ontario Street. This is how much I know about Niagara at the time. I exit every Ontario Street along the way. I'm in Beamsville.

No, it's the one in St. Catherine's. There's seven in Ontario. I don't know how many there are. There's lots. It's a recipe for disaster. But I left lots of time. I get there on time. She's like, here's the deal. She goes through my resume. She says, wow, okay. Here's the deal. I got a couple of fill-ins, a couple of part-times. Are you interested? I'm like, yeah, absolutely. How

much do I get paid per shift? Okay, sounds good. Let's do it. And it's going to be part of my freelance life. And my first shift there was, I don't remember the year, but it was December 24th, Christmas Eve from four till six. Would you fill that in, please? So, okay. And I had done through one of my freelance gigs, we did these infomercials where it was a pet food thing. So I would interview these people and talk about pets and pet health and things. So I'd done some talking, you know, just I'm not thrown to the record. I'm talking. And I go and I'm putting together a show and I'm like, you know, four to six on Christmas Eve day, nobody's calling.

Nobody's concerned about what the prime minister said or anything that's going on politically or otherwise. So you have to be prepared to provide two hours worth of content. Can you do that? So I did. And that kind of became what I, like, right from there became what I did so you have to be prepared to provide two hours worth of content can you do that so i i did and that kind of became what i like right from there became what i did because every fill-in i got was these absolute dead times when nobody's around uh larry can you fill in here yeah so i drive out there and it was worth the the cost of whatever to drive out there and then uh i was i was like full-time no what's the phrase full part-time temporary no yeah I was like full-time. No, what's the phrase? Part-time temporary?

No. Yeah, because you're full-time permanent is your part-time temporary, I guess. But I'm almost full-time, but I'm temporary at some point. So they don't have to give you benefits, basically. Yes, yeah, which is fine by me. Actually, when I got, they said, do you want a job with all the benefits? And I'm like, I think I took a cut in pay. in pay i'm not sure but anyway the uh but you don't get vacation days yeah you know exactly and again benefits and things so uh that that was kind of it i ended up mostly well always afternoons there but various uh time slots one to five two to four with a break from four to five for, you know, this.

And eventually this shift I have today. But so, yeah, just got my 15-year watch full time. First of all, good on you. That's a long time. And I mean, people in... I got the luggage rack. I chose the watch. That's right.

It's Monty Hall, I think. It's true, actually. Is that right? Yeah, go to your 15 years. Go to the website. Here's right. It's Monty Hall, I think. It's true, actually. Is that right? Yeah, no, yeah. You go to your 15 years. Go to the website. Here's what you can choose. And I'm like, well, I don't need this.

I can get one of those. I can get this luggage rack for the top of my car. Well, a lot of companies will give you nothing right now. So that's actually better than nothing. I chose the watch. You chose the watch. CKTV, so yeah, I'm trying to, so what time is your slot right now? I know you're here now, and it's like lunch hour, so you've got to get to St. Catharines.

Are you going to be okay? Are you going to get to there in time? Yeah, three till seven. Three to seven. Three till seven. And you don't take calls. I do, but I don't, but it's just my style has developed over the years to more of a, here's a story.

I love to tell stories. Here's an interview about that story. And that's kind of it. People are always welcome to call, but it's more of a talk interview show than it is a call in show. I don't close off the phones, but Hey, I've worked, I've worked all morning for details on this story and how to tell this story. And I have, I have a person behind the story who's one of the lead researchers or whatever. So if you're going to call me, you, I need better content than what I've already worked on for the six hours before the show. You know? I mean, I know that sounds condescending.

No, but you want to go this direction, not backwards. I personally, and this is a personal thing, and they've kind of allowed me to do it, man on the street, I've kind of heard enough of the man on the street. You know what I mean? You realize now, the man on the street is not that bright or educated on this subject. What are you going to tell me? You love Trump and we wish you had a Trump

in Canada? All right, that's great. Thanks for your opinion. But you know what? I don't want to get this into a pissing contest of people saying, no, that guy's so crazy. I don't see the value in that, personally. I don't... As I said, if the caller has something to add, don't interject in the story

unless you've got something to move the story along or add to. And that's kind of what I look for in a caller. I don't hear a lot of talk radio outside of maybe CBC. And I'm not saying they're great. They have their flaws too. But just outside of that, where do you get that? And that's sort of inadvertently how my show developed because I started out shifts where nobody was listening.

So I don't personally listen to a lot of talk radio right now, but I have friends who listen to a lot of talk radio, and they tell me that you are the finest talk radio host, and I don't know if I can call... You agree with that? No, no. St. Catharines is not the GTA, okay?

Can I call them the GTA, or is that offending people in the Niagara region? That's offensive. I don't know why it suddenly became GTHA. Hamilton is being swallowed up. So now it's the Greater Toronto-Hamilton-Niagara area when people are talking about housing. And I'm like, no, people in Niagara don't want that. I think you're right.

I think once you get to Oakville, I'd say now you're at the edge of the GTA. I don't even think Burlington should be. Yeah, I would agree. So're at the edge of the GTA. I don't even think Burlington should be. I would agree. I shouldn't call it GTA, but in the listening area that you can get in a car radio here, that you're the finest talk radio guy. My question to you is,

15 years at News Talk 610, CKTB in St. Catharines, is your desire to end up at CFRB, News Talk 1010? Is this something you would aspire to do? Have they come calling? No.

We're all one family now. We're the Bell family. That's right. So I, during my tenure at CKTB, tried to get to News Talk 1010. At one point, they had weekend mornings open up. So I applied for and got that. So I did seven days a week for two years. The longest stint I went without a day off was 73 days. So most of the time, a staff popped up or a vacation popped up. So I had some days off.

So I don't want to sound like I worked seven days a week for two years. But I did that for two years. I did that for two years. And some of the stuff that I did during the week was recycled, recut, and used on the weekends. Like a best of show that would air on 1010. Yeah, it wasn't a best of because I was there live. I was there in the studio live at 1010. But if I talked to the most interesting guy of the week,

the big story of the week, and I had that guy from that story on my show, why wouldn't I play some clips on the weekend? And here's what he said about that, and play those clips. So I did that, let go from there, replaced with the Mott's. I don't know what that's about so uh so i don't know aspirations to get back to 10 10 i don't know it's like they had their shot they're

happy with who they have you go through their lineup it's like super solid and i'm not just saying that to be a corporate guy i love the guys there like who would you replace somebody would have to just leave suddenly for who knows so uh yes and no i guess i um it's interesting it's like when you have a lot of talk shows in canada i have one i'm lucky enough to have one yeah i know absolutely and i guess what would be like if you were an accept they call it a quadruple a guy like you're i think there's no no i don't mean any disrespect to cktB at all. It's a big, great station, and you have a great show there. But the big smoke, and it sounds Toronto-centric,

but the show is called Toronto Mic'd. I have to be a little Toronto-centric here. So if that's the big leagues, let's say that's the big leagues, and AAA would be 610, is there a possibility you could be too good for AAA, but maybe there's just no room for you on the major league roster? I don't know. Maybe I'm not as good as I think I am. You go through that as any performer does, anybody in creative field.

You go like, yeah, I'm kidding, people. They're going to find me out today. So there's a little bit of that creeps in. So I don't know if I'm good enough. Who knows? Or my style just doesn't match what 1010 is doing right now, for example, or a 640 or whatever. Uh, the, you got to remember what I grew up in Saskatchewan and the prairies.

Uh, we used to, when I worked at, uh, the CKOM in Saskatoon, we used to, when I worked at the CKOM in Saskatoon, we used to drive our car out to the outskirts of town, summer and winter or whatever, especially winter, to try and listen to stations that came in on the car radio, WLS Chicago and CFUN in Vancouver and KSTP in Minneapolis, St. Paul, hear John Rekers' Landecker live on the air. And it was incredible.

And, and, uh, so Toronto was always a pipe dream. And I think, I don't think that's ever left me to say, cause we're in a business where, uh, market size, audience size dictates, dictates sort of, it's a measure of success. It's a measure, certainly, of the radio station's success. They can sell more ad revenue based on bigger audiences. So why wouldn't that naturally be a goal? It is for me still to work at a bigger market. No comment on the station I'm working at or the people I work with because they're fantastic. So it's just that. That little kid outside sitting in a car out in the

cold trying to pull in Chicago to say, boy, imagine working there. It's so cool. Years later, I had to introduce John Rutgers Landecker when he was a morning man at CFTR for a brief thing. I don't know if you... He's in the Hall of Fame or something. I just read this. Remember the big Landecker

has landed? That was pre-Rivers. That was an idea that didn't quite work out for CFTR. Yeah. It was his first morning show. He went from evenings in Chicago to mornings in Toronto. He was still doing evenings in his mind, in his humor. Right. And people in Toronto just didn't buy it.

I need to apologize to Jill Colton briefly here. So are you familiar? I need to apologize to Jill Colton briefly here so are you familiar so Jill Colton I would say she's kind of adopted this right wing I want to say alt right but I'm never sure what these terms mean anymore but there's a Trump style populism

that she's tapped into and so in the last episode I just briefly in passing might have called her a nut job I grouped her into a bunch and she called me out on it so i i apologize to jill colton for calling uh her a nut job that was not nice of me to say that but is there at cktb uh is there any do you find it's a more

right wing than you might have at a 1010 for example. And I wondered how you personally feel about that sort of Trump-style populism that's sort of more prevalent in that market, possibly? I don't think we have that. We don't have that person. We don't have that person. I don't think Newstalk 1010 has that person. I think Jerry Agar is the closest to a

conservative they had, an outright, you know, in-your-face conservative that they have. And that's just, you know, small-c conservative. There's your face conservative that they have uh and that's just you know small c conservative i'd uh there's the other the other thing and i have uh friends at american radio and who work in there and it's really difficult it's so divisive that's the thing that that has struck me about the the far right and i think clint eastwood had a line about the far left and the far right. They go so far that pretty soon

they're going to meet on the other side and they won't be able to tell them apart, which I thought was kind of a weird circle of life thing. But I don't like it. I don't think it's, I think populism is a misnomer. I think it's really not popular. I don't, I think it's a minority. I think most of the people are somewhere in the middle,

and that's where the discussion is in this country for parties like the NDP. Can you get more to the middle? The conservatives in this country, the big C conservatives, can you get more to the middle because that's where the people vote? And we don't have, like in this country, we have the liberals, we have the NDP, and we have the Greens. There's variances of your left. And for years, we never had a variance on the right. There was just this right. And the Reform Party didn't like that, but they were too far right. So the alliance, I can't remember what they went through. It took, and I give them a lot

of credit, Stephen Harper, to get that right and unite it somehow closer to the middle to say, this is where the people vote. If we want power at all and drive our agenda, we have to get closer to the middle. So that's where most people are. So when I see Donald Trump and the alt-right and the extreme right, I go, it's just too far. That's not where most people are at. I don't like it. I don't like it just as much as I dislike the radical left. I mean, I hate to be that guy in the middle, but I think that's most of us. And you're right. It's very divisive. And I sensed a lot of this, or a little of this, I should say, with the Rob Ford era that sort of started to divide now it's just like just put that on

steroids and it's kind of this Trump era but very divisive. I hate to be that can't we all get along guy but I mean I think that's the goal of the human race where we all wear jumpsuits and travel on a spaceship and we all get along with all the planets you know. I have a great tweet from

Photo Blair. He goes, this will be an awesome show. Get him to play his special version of The Game of Love by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders. Explain this tweet to me. Oh, geez. You know what? Funny, I saw that tweet and I was going to grab it because I don't know where it is anymore in my audio files. But Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders was just a song that goes back

the game of love book of love is it? the purpose of a man is to love a woman and the purpose of a woman is to love a man you wouldn't believe how easy it is to edit that

into the purpose of a man is to love a man and the purpose of a woman is to love a woman and the purpose of a woman is to love a woman so come on baby let's play the game of love love love love and i used that for an intro to something i think it was a bit i called uh the waning moments which were the last few minutes of the show where we just did a review of what we just learned today and uh i used that as an intro and it would just go by people nobody would and then every once in a while some hater would would hear it and go what are you promoting your homosexual agenda with your oh that's terrible that's you know it's not what my church tells me and i was and that i didn't think that was it the the people who heard it

either either uh who got a laugh out of it or just thought that it was clever, for whatever reason, loved it, and then once in a while a hater popped up. Oh, that's funny. That was that. So speaking of music, I mentioned off the top that you shared

your favorite song with me. Let's listen to this song, and then I'll fade it down and chat with you about why you love this song. And for people who like this kind of premise of somebody coming in and discussing their favorite music, because I love this premise, there are special episodes of

this podcast, Toronto Mic'd, which I call Kick Out the Jams episodes. In fact, Mike Stafford is actually coming in very soon to Kick Out the Jams. Say hello. Worked with Mike at The Mix, CKFM and The Mix.

Yeah, see, it's a small world because he was buds with Freddie P from CFNY. He used to be on the Pete and Geats. He was doing news when Fred was doing sports. The only guy I know personally who's been on Jeopardy.

Yes, that's right. He's told that story here. You're a great talk show host. He's also a great talk show host. He is. He's coming on. So let's hear Larry Fedorek's jam, and then we'll chat about it. Let's do it. Worlds are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup.

They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe. Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my opened mind, possessing and caressing me. Possessing and caressing me Shakuru De Nothing's gonna change my world Nothing's gonna change my world Nothing's gonna change my world The Beatles, Across the Universe.

Nothing's gonna change my world Tell us why you love this song. I told you in an email that it's almost impossible to pick my favorite song because I'm a big music guy and music has saved my life many times. Over the years, I think it has, where you get into an artist or a song and this just answers all your questions or at least it's your friend for a while

when nobody else will listen. But I'm a Beatles baby, number one. So Beatles can do no wrong for me and know way too much about the Beatles. And oddly, I'm a Paul fan, even though this is basically a John song. But when you said favorite song, Beatles had to come to mind right away. So there's got to be a Beatles song. And then I remember, of course, it's across the universe because I don't know that I know a lyric, a piece of poetry that is as lovely as words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup

and uh i remember doodling that on in school and when i'd take classes and stuff and i was bored and i would just start doodling words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup and then i heard the way um it was written out of john Lennon having an argument with his wife Cynthia where she just wouldn't shut up to be blunt and he just couldn't take it anymore so he went to another room and he wrote down words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup in a mean way like

will she ever okay you're right shut up and and then it became this other song and sure George has the Indian influence in it, and it's there. And I understand that even though they wrote separately by that time, McCartney would contribute. I don't know what he contributed.

But I'm a Beatles fan. I'm a McCartney fan. This is a John song. It's just a great Beatles song. The poetry just speaks to me. The wind inside the letterbox. And it's great. If you thought it was tough to come up with your favorite song,

and I've tried this, this is not an easy task, but imagine coming up with your 10 favorite jams of all time. If you ever feel like doing that... That could be easier, actually. If you ever want to do that, you are more than welcome to drop by at a later date, and we could do all ten. And I'd love to hear. That was a great story about why you love across the universe.

I would love to hear all ten stories at some point if you're into it. Challenge accepted. I mean, and nothing's going to change my world. That idea that I have to carry on. I can't. That's how I take it. I can't let the outside influence. I can't live and die by everybody's opinion. I have to go by what I believe and think

and feel. Larry, I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. You've had a great career and it's still going strong. You're literally going to blow out of here and end up very shortly. You've had a great career and it's still going strong. You're literally going to blow out of here and end up very shortly

you'll be on the air again at 610 in St. Catharines. Got to work for a living. That's great. So thank you. And that brings us to the end of our 254th show. You can follow me on Twitter.

I'm at Toronto Mike. Larry is at Larry Fedorek. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. And propertyinthesix.com is at Brian Gerstein. See you all next week. guitar solo Well I want to take a streetcar downtown

Read Andrew Miller and wander around And drink some Guin goodness from a tin Cause my UI check has just come in Ah, where you been? Because everything is coming out