Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Retrontario: Toronto Mike'd #117

Episode Date: April 7, 2015

Mike chats with Retrontario about retro Toronto television from TVOntario to CityTV. We share memories of old ads, jingles, psas and all the nostalgia you can stomach.

Welcome to episode 117 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything, often with a distinctly Toronto flavour. I'm Mike from torontomic.com and joining me this week is Ed Conroy, better known as Retro Ontario. My very first question is, if you share the O in retro with Ontario, is it still retro Ontario or is it like retro Ontario? Well, you know, I guess it should be two words, but it looked kind of silly when I first typed it out. Well, you know, I've never said it before.

Like I always write it and it's, yeah, it's perfect for writing it. You share the O and then when you say it though, now I was like, wait a minute, it's not really retro Ontario. It's like retro Ontario. So yeah, it's a tough one. It's like the blogger Bloge Salming, like the handle's perfect when written, but when you have to say it, it's like, is it bloggy? Is it blogey? The handle's perfect when written, but when you have to say it, it's like, is it bloggy? Is it bloggy?

Well, it's funny because Breakfast Television did a spot about a year ago and they were sending people to my website, but of course they were saying, it's retroontario.com. So that's just life. What can you do? What can you do? The best laid plans of mice and men. But I actually, I've been a fan for so long that when I was first, when I first discovered

your stuff on YouTube and I started linking to your stuff, you were going by the handle WNED17. That's right. Which is our Buffalo PBS affiliate.

Yeah, old school. And I'm still trying to figure out your age because we have like similar memories, but I can't tell. Is that a top secret? Am I allowed to ask?

No, no, no. I was born in 76. Okay. You're a bit younger than me. But ballpark because I was 74. But I always remembered Goldie Gardner and the drives, the constant drives. Yeah. Everybody remembers the toll-free number because it would interrupt Sesame Street.

Yes. And if you wanted to watch the Ken Burns baseball documentary like I did, that was important stuff. Absolutely. Goldie Gardner would want to, you know, get your pledges first. Yeah. But she's retired. Yeah, it's not the same, is it, really, WNED?

You know, I took that handle, you know, it was the early, early days of YouTube, and I hadn't quite figured it all out, but I just thought it was an homage to a station that I had spent a lot of time with as a child. Yeah, yeah. Sesame Street. And my name was Ed, so I figured it had a little bit of a tie in, but quickly realized

that the real WNED17 wanted to be on YouTube as well. And I was taking their name, so it made more sense to come up with a new one. And there's Retro Ontario is way better anyway better anyway and that's like you can own that that's yours absolutely cool so how long ago did you start with the handle retro Ontario so I believe it was 2008 yeah okay you know so whenever whenever I'm feeling nostalgic or I just like feel feel like strolling down memory lane, you're the first stop. It'll be your YouTube channel is my first stop to see what...

I only recently discovered you were an Ed. I just figured your birth name was Retro Ontario. Yeah. Well, you know, it's flown by really. I was on YouTube right from the very beginning. And when I started putting the older stuff up there, I wasn't really sure what the response would be. It was more sort of amusement for myself and my close circle of friends and it very quickly evolved

into a much bigger thing and here we are in 2015 talking about it. So that's pretty cool. You've made it because you're on Toronto Mic'd. This is, you know, the apex. Yes, absolutely. You're Magnus Opus. We're going to, you know, we're obviously going to stroll down memory lane, but let's start by finding out, like, who are you? So are you Toronto born and raised? Yeah. Yeah. I was born in downtown Toronto, Cabbage Town. I grew up in Scarborough and then lived in the city for most of my teenage and 20s and 30s and have since moved back to Scarborough. Okay. And the big question you must get asked all the time is where are you getting these clips from? Did you record these to VHS or do you have access to somebody's vast VHS library? Tell us.

It's the kernel secret recipe. Uh, you know what? It's, it's a mixture of stuff. Uh, really, that's the best I can, I can put it. When I started, it was indeed stuff that I had recorded or my parents had recorded. Um, but very quickly that morphed into tapes that I found, you know, at thrift stores and garage sales and tapes that people gave me. And as it started building up a reputation online, I had a lot of people from the industry that got in touch and said, hey, I love what you're doing. Here's a bunch of stuff I did when I was at City TV or at CFTO. Cool. And so, yeah, the collection has just grown.

That's how it works. It like, yeah, snowballs basically. You become the guy. Like, I got all these VHS. I got to call Retro Ontario you know, yeah, well, I mean, it's, it's a great thing too, because it's, it's like, like I said earlier, I started doing it just sort of as a joke really as a, as a fun thing to do. And now, you know, there's actually a lot of people doing similar stuff, which is great. Cause it's, it's sort of born out of this idea that, uh, if nobody else is going to do it, it's up to sort of citizen archivists i was going to say that like and this is where i find always felt

like you were a kindred spirit like this desire to archive i have had this forever like i had it way before the internet right and then at toronto mic.com that's been going since well as a blog since 2002 but even longer like today i learned roscoe p coltrane passed away okay yeah i had a site uh toronto my site before it was a blog i had literally had a tribute page okay this is way back in the 90s a tribute page to duke's a hazard okay with animated gifs and everything awesome and that's like i felt like i needed to archive this stuff somewhere and um bill borilko too i had this Bill Borilko, too. I had this Bill Borilko tribute site.

And then somewhere you could go for one-stop shopping on, who's this Bill Borilko guy you learned about in the Tragically Hip song? So this archiving thing, I totally get. Even now, I have scrapbooks and stuff. And I'll scan them and just post them. So there's somewhere, there's a digital artifact that you've put out there. So you're not just linking to stuff. You're actually, it's like original content.

You're the king of like putting stuff out there so guys like me can embed them in our sites and, you know, talk about it. Yeah, I mean. I love it. That was absolutely the impetus of this whole thing was to put the material back out there so that we could, whether we're buzzing out on the nostalgia of it or as a, as a young person exploring it, that this world that existed before they,

you know, knew what was going on. And, uh, you know, the internet and especially social media and websites like YouTube have freed us of the tyranny of physical space, right? So it's this unlimited amount of space to put all this stuff out there and to continually build upon it. It's great because before that, you know, I think about the, when I really got started was like, as you said, uh, before the internet, you know, I collected tapes and I collect actually my, my first experience with realizing the importance of this stuff was, uh, I was at a party and I was, you know, we were talking about the films, the 16 millimeter films they used to show in public school. So, you know, they were talking about the films, the 16 millimeter films they used to show in public school. So, you know, they'd wheel in the projector and that showed driver's ed or sex ed movies.

If we were lucky. Yeah. If you were lucky. Some of these things were absolutely, you know, brutal. Like they would never, ever get shown in today, today's climate. And we were recalling a school bus safety film that had been shown to us in, I guess, grade one or two. And it was just gore soaked. I mean, it was like kids sticking their arms out of the school bus and getting pulled off by trees and people's feet getting run over by the wheels.

That's amazing. Absolutely terrifying film. And we sort of started saying, well, how could we find this again? I mean, this thing has totally disappeared into the black hole of culture. And so I started getting really interested in this idea of uh ephemeral you know educational films and i and i found out that uh at the time the scarborough board of education around the mid to late 90s were literally just dumping them all and and going out to landfill because they didn't have the money to transfer them to vhs and uh you know they they obviously were out of circulation they couldn't be shown to any kids

you know of the of the 90s generation right and so i got a tip off about where some of these films were being dumped and i went out with a bunch of buddies and we got rescued all these films and you know we were so happy that we had them but then it was like okay well what do we do with them now right you know if there's no for you know no no place to exhibit them. And then thankfully YouTube came along and video bandwidth and everything picked up. Yeah, you're right. It's all perfect storm. Like the technology meets the, yeah, perfectly.

It's like, I mean, I've had you talk about people kind of contacting you. So I often write about my memories and I'll write about like school memories will be like Elmer the safety elephant and Blinky. And I got a lot of Blinky memories and I'll write and then people will Google it. And then you're, you're like the authoritative voice on this now. So people will send me pictures of like Elmer,

Elmer statues they rescued from like the school system before they were going to landfill and stuff. And it's just, that's the best stuff. Right. And then you can actually share it with the world. So anyone who wants to learn about, you know, Elmer, the safety elephant, it's out there. Yeah, no, I mean, it was funny because when I started the YouTube channel, it was simply providing that service of getting the video content out.

And then I quickly realized a lot of this stuff on its own, it's kind of, it's totally bizarre if you don't know the context of it. So I started to write a bit more and research and track down some of the people involved in the production of these things. And then I got contacted by the publisher of BlogTO, who offered me a weekly column to contextualize some of this stuff. So that's been great, too, the last couple of years.

Okay, so that's good context for this, because the reason I actually invited you on this is that, okay, so you wrote an article for BlogTO on the best jingles, like Toronto jingles, basically. Right. Which we'll actually get to later. I have a couple loaded up here on the soundboard here. And then I, so you wrote that, and then you were on Indie 88 to talk about it. And I actually like Indie 88 for the music, okay? They're not very good at these in-depth interviews, but I like their music.

Raina's been here, and she's great, and she's at Indie 88.1 and i you linked to your appearance on 88.1 and i listened to it and i felt so like unfulfilled by it because i felt like it was like they basically they talk a little bit and you get in a couple of words and then it's kind of shut down let's move to the tunes or whatever like there was no long form in-depth interview with Retro Ontario, which I was craving. And I realized, like, I got to do it myself. Like, you know, 88.1 is not going to satisfy me. I have to do this myself. Well, thank you.

And you were nice enough to come in. Oh, no, my pleasure. Thank you for having me. No, this is great. Now, can we talk for a minute? Let's start by talking about TVO. So, I'm a couple years older than you, i was i don't want to say raised but that was my station as a kid was just tvo for the first years i remember yeah me too absolutely and uh i'm gonna we're gonna i'm gonna play something from tvo here this will be let's see how this goes

we'll introduce our first clip here but let me play it and then we'll chat about it for a moment. I realize it's now a minute clip, so maybe we'll... I forgot these things were a minute back in the day. But, okay, so... I loved this show. Yeah. And just like this, Dr. Snuggles,

Dr. Snuggles, friend of the animal world, and, you know, my name it, the land of... Simon and the... Right. Chalk drawings. And then Read All About It.

And is that the one with the boot? That was Read Along. Read Along. Okay, there's Read All About It and there was Read Along. Anyways, TVO. And one of the big TVO shows that I watched,

I just loved. It was like my... It was my crack, I think, was Polka Dot Door. Of course, yeah. And you actually linked to this. You didn't do it on YouTube and I use a quick YouTube to MP3 thing. and you had it on one of the other services what are those other services the

youtube competitive motion yeah probably daily motion okay so you did a transition of polka dot door to doctor who okay this is like the most traumatic thing for my childhood. And I would be watching Polka Dot Door and it would wind down. And very, very, very quickly, Doctor Who would start. And I'd still be in the TV focused on it. And then Doctor Who, I could only last like 30 seconds of Doctor Who. It scared the shit out of me. It's a terrifying introduction. It's two things going on.

And here, let me play the Doctor Who theme from this time period of my life, and then we're going to talk about this. okay even now like hearing that terrifying yeah is it so i'm glad to hear you say that absolutely yeah bbc radiophonic workshop at their finest i think uh yeah i mean tvo i think part of the reason why people of our vintage still talk about it is it was this really strange mixture of homegrown educational content so you know poke it out doorka Dot Door and Read All About It and The Boot and all this stuff. Right. Mixed in with these imports, usually from Britain. Yes.

From all around the world. I mean, Fables of the Green Forest was actually a Japanese animated series that was dubbed into English. And my other favorite at the time, Jeremy, was French. Right. That's right. Yes. So you had this just very strange combination of things

where, you know, you'd spot a location, you know, the toys from Poco de Dora would be at the CN Tower. Right. And then five minutes later, you'd have Doctor Who starting. And it was just, you know, there isn't really that eclecticism anymore in television.

That's true. You know, I think if your kids watch, you know, I don't know, Treehouse or YTV or things, everything looks kind of the same. And there isn't any of those massive shifts. But those shifts traumatize me. They were traumatizing. Like, okay, I have a feeling Toronto is full of like, at least, yeah, Toronto's full of people maybe in their late 30s, early 40s who had that switch from the polka dot door. And you have polka dot door and you see the

door they're wrapping up do do do because you did perfect with your daily motion video but it couldn't transfer it quickly yeah i mean the reason why that stuff i mean i have to be careful about where i put some of these things because you know youtube is very very you know particular oh sure i was gonna ask you get this often you get uh thankfully not often i mean i've kind of sussed what is bait you know what is red flag and so is it the doctor who theme yeah okay it's just it's not even worth the effort to try but daily motion is the wild west still yeah get away with stuff there but uh yeah no the tvo stuff absolutely i think and one of the sad saddest things about tvo is that they uh you know for for one reason another, were never very good about archiving and keeping their stuff.

So what ends up happening is all this content, the only copies of some of this stuff that actually still exists are out there on people's home-recorded VHS. Wow. Yeah, that's how we... That's, okay, very cool. And the other thing about that Doctor who song though is in addition to that haunting sound like to this day i know dr who i know it comes back in different variations all the time and people tell me hey mike you love dr who it's a non-starter for me yeah i will not even like consider like it could be the best better than the wire i'm not going to consider

watching dr who because i i can't do it i can't even play these clips on these stupid shows i'm not going to consider watching doctor who because i i can't do it i can't even play these clips on these stupid shows i'm so traumatized but it wasn't just that sound the visual was that that guy's face with the long curly hair right in that circle what was that like a yeah it was like a sort of weird uh tunnel that a time thing right because they do it whatever that was that vortex or whatever that was just i don't, I was like four years old and that thing scared the shit out of me. Oh, it was terrifying. And I mean, the other terrifying, traumatizing intro that TVO used to have was for a series called Magic Shadows. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

By L.E.O. Right. And that was a gorgeous, you know, animated intro. Right. And a really spooky song that was kind of a little bit sounded like Across the Universe by the Beatles. Clearly a riff on that. You're right. That's tattooed into my cranium

as well. Again, you'd be watching today's special and then that would come on and it would just befuddle this huge portion of viewers that were watching kids stuff. Yeah, that's right. The L.E.O. stuff, I think I didn't watch, it was all like

too sophisticated for young Mike, okay? But I look back fondly, I like to hear his voice and see his face and it brings back warm memories. Yeah, I mean he was just an absolute giant when you think about now.

There's nobody really like that in Toronto. If you're talking about classic Hollywood films, you you know you would probably watch turner classic movies that's probably the only broadcast that caters to that crowd but again in the 70s and 80s and the 90s you had this weekly program on tvo on saturday night of the movies and elwi was the guy he was happy and he knew his stuff he's still still with us, right? Oh, no. He passed away. He passed away four years ago, I think. Aw. His son wrote Speed, right? And his son writes The Americans,

which is a really great show on Showtime. Wow. That's cool. Graham Yost, right? Yeah. Graham Yost. Very cool. Okay.

So, yeah. So TVO, we've established that that was the big one for me. And then as I would get older, City TV was a big deal to me. Of course. And the Moses City TV and that everything just seemed one for me. And then as I would get older, City TV was a big deal to me. And the Moses City TV and that everything just seemed cooler. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it's untouchable. I still think that era, sort of, you know, City TV started in 1972 and he was at the helm until, you know, unceremoniously being chewed away in the 90s,

or sorry, the early 2000s. But for that stretch of almost 30 years, there's never been anything like that. The innovation that was happening at City TV was just off the chain. It was like every week there was either a new type of programming, things like Much Music was born out of that, Speaker's Corner, which is kind of like the original.

Which I loved. You know, it's the original YouTube. Where we all saw Barenaked Ladies for the first time. Barenaked Ladies and Mike Myers and all kinds of people got their start on Speaker's Corner. It was user-generated content, which is this big buzzword now. But there was this innovation in the early 90s. I used to go down there all the time and pop in whatever. It was a loony, I think.

It was a loony and it went to charity. It was like everybody wins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was an absolutely phenomenal time. And I think, you know, I don't know about you, but I know growing up, I kind of took it for granted, you know, that it was just always going to be like that. I want to get to this because I was actually literally just had an exchange with Master T's team, okay? Because Master T has this save much, kind of give it back to moses or something and i'm dying to like drill deeper yeah so i'm trying to get him to sit in that seat and we're going to

talk about it but the whole so going back to the city tv stuff like you had these quirky things like uh silverman helps watch it buddy like this whole silver like and this whole like notion of like the the anchors kind of standing instead of sitting behind a desk in this environment as he would call it and you had your electric circus kind of cool stuff going on there and you're right um and ed the sock okay who's been here who i love is ed the sock he was yeah exactly uh and he didn't ever hit his head on this which was nice but he was fantastic and um what other little quirky things you know your jojo chintos and you're just, you know, doing sports. You had McKinney, Jim McKinney. And just it was all very, you know, cool.

And that's even, I would argue, that's like the Channel 57 era. Right. Channel 79 era. When did the switch happen? So that was in 83. Yeah. So pre, like 72 to 83. So like the first 10 years it was channel 79. And I mean, when you

watch SCTV, that is what channel 79 really was like. I mean, it was held together by scotch tape and spit and they had no money, but it was all big ideas. So, you know, you mentioned electric circus. There was a program called boogie that was like the original electric circus. And it was just a dance show that they had at 99 Queen East. They had all kinds of shows about the paranormal and tons of shows that catered to different cultural

groups within the city. Again, nobody was doing that at the time. You're right. Speaking of the cultural groups, and this was the first station where you kind of had people with real names like new canadian names and the example i always throw out there's like ann roszkowski where at any other station or era she turns into like ann monroe or something like that right you know no and i mean

you know the guy who created electric circus uh is a good friend of mine his name is joel goldberg and he was a vj at another channel before and they wouldn't let him use his full name he was known as Jay Gold uh so you know yeah this no I have my friend Howard Glassman tells me when he was in Calgary they they he was humble Howard because they didn't want Glassman was too Jewish yeah you know even Martineau I think had issues with you know sure being French or yeah yeah wow but I mean again like you said City Pulse you, there's a very important thing they did, which was to, you know, make the news be more about the people telling the story than the story itself. And that was a very famous Moses dialect was this idea that City Pulse was more of a soap opera than it was just a very boring replay of what had happened in the news. And so it reflected the city.

I think everybody really appreciated that. And I think if you watch CNN or any, any broadcaster now, what they're doing is what city pulse originated at the time. And I do want to have a quick chat with you about the, uh, Rogers takeover of city TV, but first it is important.

We play this PSA for everybody. So just a moment here. important we play this PSA for everybody. So just a moment here. Wasted days, wasted nights, wasted life. Say no to drugs. And that, of course, was The Voice. Wow. Mark, which was just we took took that for granted. I used to, like, movies like Porky's and Revenge of the Nerds, and this is like, you know, today, kids, I feel kids are drowning in pornography, okay?

They can press a button. They've got, like, explicit full movies, but back in our day, like, that Porky's was our pornography, okay? You know, Revenge of the Nerds, when they're eating the pie, and it's like, this is our pornography. And they were played on the late great movies. And I would watch a lot of late great movies on Friday and Saturday night.

And Mark Daly was like your like your guide or whatever. He was just the voice. What was the voice? I mean, that was a remarkable time because, like you said, it was you know, they were showing just this really eclectic mix of of hollywood sort of tna movies like porky's but then they'd also show like shaw brothers kung fu movies and horror movies and french films and it was like just all over the map but you always had that constant of mark daly and depending you know what time of night it was he'd take the mickey out of the movie or he'd make these funny comments which you know i've since learned were all improvised. I mean, there was nobody writing that for him.

Cool. He was that kind of guy. Cool. And it was also cool because he was on the news, right? Yeah. He's like the guy who's announcing the late night movies is also on the beat when somebody got shot. And he's out there with the cops talking about, you know, very seriously about what had happened. Yeah, right.

And he left us far too early. Oh, yeah. Far too early. Terribly terribly and it was so fast i mean he was on the air and then he left and died very shortly after that and i think again you know we talk about what differentiates city tv you know now versus then i mean that would he was kind of like one of the last guys standing and when he left i mean it's just it's other than martin now i mean sure well martin i was i just made this who was i talking to uh maybe rick hodge maybe but i can't remember now somebody a recent guest i can't remember mike stafford maybe but i was telling martin was going to be

amber giro i think we're talking about diversity on toronto radio and we were talking about toronto am talk radio is very very pretty male damn male, damn male, but very white. Yeah. Okay. And we were talking about how on television there is more of better reflection on television in Toronto of our community. And then Gord, Gord's been there forever.

Did he start in the 70s? Yeah. Do you know? Yeah, yeah. So he's, that's amazing. Yeah. He, well, City TV launched City P pulse in 77 and he was the first host of city pulse so he's been there ever since wow only i think roger ashby can compete like because he's

been at chum since early 70s or something and he did the chum show on city right that's right right the funny thing about martin now i mean when i met him i said do you have the portrait of dorian gray in your eye because he looks exactly the same, pretty much. It's true. That's funny. And he'll be there forever. But, you know, Roszkowski got booted. So it's, you know, I don't...

Yeah, it's not, you know, really, you know, to clarify, it was CTV that acquired the Chum assets. And then they sold the city to Rogers. They had to sell it, right? They had to sell it to Rogers. So, you know, as much as, you know, it's easy to beat up on Rogers and sort of... It's very easy, though. It's very easy. You don't work for Rogers, do you? Okay, just it to Rogers. So, you know, as much as it's easy to beat up on Rogers and sort of – It's very easy, though.

It's very easy. You don't work for Rogers, do you? Okay, just got to confirm that. They are my ISP, so I have to be careful. Me too, actually. I better be careful. Yeah, but, you know, that really was one of the saddest things, to witness all of that innovation.

Like dismantle piece by piece, right? Just torn asunder really quickly, too. And, you know, I asunder really quickly too. Um, and you know, I always say this to people, you ask young people now, what, what do you think of city TV?

I mean, to them, city TV is the bachelor, you know, or a survivor, you know, it's, it's our modern family.

It's just Hollywood stuff that you could watch on any other channel. And I, no personality. See, I, um, so my news of choice, I know everyone's so subjective what

news would you watch but i i'll watch like so after work i'll watch uh i think it runs from 5 to 6 30 but i'll watch dwight drummond and ann marie meduike on the cbc toronto but that ends at they put on now they used to be a coronation street would come on now it's uh napkin man guy murdoch mysteries comes on at like 6.30. So sometimes like, cause this is just before my son's going to go to bed. So I'll put something on the background while I feed him before bed.

And I'll switch up one notch to City TV News and Gord Martineau. It's so sanitized. Like it's, to me, it's barely watchable. Like it's just, it's no Moses left at all. It's just been, it's been Rogers-ized. And they at all it's just been it's been rogers iced yeah and they're doing it to hockey night in canada too i noticed all the interesting parts and this chap and i wish i could get his name right now i can't remember thompson i think tim thompson or something

he did the montages for hockey night in canada these amazing to great tunes it'd be these great montages and they told him they didn't think they told him they didn't want that anymore, and they let him go, and it's gone. It was such a cool part of the Hockey Night in Canada broadcast. Oh, totally. And I'm way on a tangent here, except Rogers better stop messing with everything cool. Not everything has to be all corporate and sanitized.

Yeah, I mean, sadly, I think it's across the board. I think television just in general, it's this weird dichotomy because television as an art form is at its best right now. I mean, you mentioned The Wire. There's more great television programs now than there ever has been. Yet the medium as a whole is so vanilla and boring and no personality. boring, no personality. And you only have a couple of companies that own all the channels and they all put the same shows on, strip them across their various channels. So the channels don't have a personality. Like you were talking about when we grew up,

TVO had a very definite personality, City TV. I mean, everybody, you knew their logo, you knew their jingle, you knew their personalities. And now, you know, something that's on Space Channel is probably going to be on CTV. It's probably going to be on HGTV and, you know, and on and on and on. And what gets me now is some of the better shows I watch don't belong to a network. Like I just watch Transparent.

OK, this wasn't Amazon Prime. Like what? First of all, I don't know what Amazon Prime is. I don't think we have it in Canada. I didn't know this network is not I don't think it's a network. Of course, there's many examples, but I just watched, I burned through these,

uh, unbreakable Kimmy Schmitz. Okay. By Tina Fey. And they're, they're Netflix properties. Like they only exist. And then the new arrested developments are all Netflix properties.

It's like, these aren't, these aren't even TV shows. I can't leave city TV yet though. I need to play, uh, play a bit more of Mark Daly and and it leads into a show I just want to chat with you about very briefly here,

so let's listen. Sparring at High Park, this is City TV everywhere. Hi. Hi. From over 2,000 entries, City TV opens its vaults to bring you the greatest names from show business and the arts.

Okay, so after that amazing Mark Daly, I could just listen to him read a phone book. That's a great voice. This is City Lights with Brian Lineham. And I used to watch, I know it was, you know, Martin Short did a great kind of send up of it. Right, right. And it was very, but sometimes when I'm sitting down, like I'm sitting down with Strombo or David Morrison or something,

I like channel my inner Brian Lineham. I'm like, how would Brian handle this? Because Brian, he always did his homework. Yeah. So he always, you know, he always had that nugget of information. This is pre-Wikipedia days. You Brian, he always did his homework. Yeah. So he always had that nugget of information. This is pre-Wikipedia days. He had done his homework. And I just loved the way he conducted interviews.

And once at Run and Meet in Bloor, there's a little parkette. And I was walking through it. And I saw him in there. And I said hi to him. One of my very early celebrity meetings met Ziggy on a subway, too. Nice. There's my Ziggy. By the way, I believe Ziggy is working as an administrative assistant slash secretary type person for the Moses Zoomer stuff. Yeah, she's still there.

That's amazing. To me, that's an amazing story. No, the Zoomerplex is actually an interesting place because there's quite a few of the most loyalists to Moses are still up there, which is great because I think as a team they were unstoppable. Obviously, it's a totally different demo than what we're talking about. But no, Brian Linehan, I mean, totally, totally famous for his photographic memory. famous for his photographic memory. And that was why I think whenever people would come up here for the, for the Toronto film festival, they would always want to be interviewed by Brian.

Because they knew that he knew his stuff more than anybody had no vacuous questions from him. It was very pointed, important stuff. So those interviews are great. I mean, thankfully a lot of that stuff has migrated to YouTube. So.

Yeah, he was fantastic. I don't think he gets enough. No one, you never hear about him. No one talks about him, like great interviewers. You'll hear about Peter Zelsky or whatever, but nobody's talking about Brian Lineham. I think he was fantastic.

Yeah, that's true. You take a little bit of him, you know, you take a little bit of Howard Stern and maybe a bit of Strombo, you mix it up, and there you go. And it's funny that the theme music for City Lights was Tom Scott. And it's a famous track from one of his albums.

And that was another thing that the Moses era at City was famous for was they would just sort of crib pop songs for their shows. And they didn't necessarily always clear the rights. Is that right? So that was why a lot of that stuff wasn't able to be sold abroad or repeated. So like fashion television. Yeah, obsession. They used obsession. of that stuff wasn't able to be sold abroad or repeated. So like, you know, fashion television. Yeah, Obsession. You know, as I go through a lot of this older stuff, you realize like, oh, that

was an amazing theme song. But then it's like, oh, that was just somebody else's song that they used, which is cool too. I had the, it was literally this compilation cassette I bought when I was like 10 years old was called The Hits Album. That was the name of this compilation cassette, The Hits Album. It had Obsession on it. It was a great little track it actually even had

early in excess too it had the uh oh the one way the before kick i came up with the hit they had on the album before the big kick album but i digress um but that's what we do here we digress so um so great okay so city tv we agree, much cooler, more fun with Moses. Oh, I mean, all of those. Not even debatable. Not untouchable. Do you think there's anyone out there who's looking at the, anyone who remembers, I should say, because young people have no clue, but who look at the Rogers City and go, oh, yeah, this is much better. Is there anyone? I can't imagine so. I think young people now probably look to the internet and look to the Netflixes as their mainstream for content rather than broadcasters.

My kids, I have a 13-year-old and an almost 11-year-old, and YouTube is their favorite television channel. YouTube is the great repository of every piece of pop culture forever. Do you remember when, I think it was about 10 years ago, when Google bought it for like a billion dollars and everyone was suggesting maybe they overpaid for it? Isn't it clear they underpaid for this piece of property? That was a steal. Yeah, that's amazing.

You know, I used to record things that I used to think I'd want to see this over and over again. For example, the final game the Blue Jays played at Exhibition Stadium, I recorded it to VHS. And then the last game at Maple Leaf Gardens, I recorded VHS. But I did something I regret. Can you guess what I did? Right. And I, at the time, it took a lot of effort. And at the time, I thought I was a genius. Yeah. I think we all did. I mean, tapes back then were expensive. I remember they were 25 bucks when my parents got their first VCR.

And so you'd want to fit absolutely as much onto that one tape. And you could make the tape play six hours, but it looked like shit. So if you wanted it to do two hours and look amazing, you're right. That's not much time. It's limited space.

I don't get upset about that. I certainly come across a lot of tapes. I'm losing sleep over this, Ed. Come on. I come across a lot of tapes that are like that. And it is frustrating. It's even worse when a commercial starts to come on and it's something amazing and then it cuts back to the program. But it's just the way it was back then, I think.

It'll be even worse. It'll be even worse for the future because you think about now i mean anybody that's that's watching shows off pvr or torrent or anything like that and there's no commercial that's right where how are these things gonna ever live again in the future that's true uh it's too funny to me though that we're doing all this effort and work to like not have the commercials on the vhs but 20 years later really all we want to see are the commercials, you know? Well, yeah, it's bizarre too. I think, you know, you mentioned the passing of James Bast and Dukes of Hazzard. And I think, you know, you can walk into HMV right now and you can buy the complete series of Dukes of Hazzard and it's a great nostalgic thing. But when you watch it now, it's like there's just a little piece missing and it's almost like

the context in which that you would have watched it as a kid was with those commercials and with the station identification and all that stuff. But as long as you still have that voiceover going to commercial, you remember the car would be like in midair, okay? And you go, I don't know about you guys, but I'm a little worried about the Duke boys here or whatever. And you go to commercial. When you came back, that car hadn't jumped yet.

You know, come on. The car was in midair.air i went to commercial why is it back on the other side come on the magic of television it was and was that voice over waylon jennings it was waylon jennings yeah that theme song's amazing still oh it's still untouchable and i was thinking you know since since he passed uh there's an episode towards the end of the series and even as a kid I knew something was up. The plot of that particular episode was that they replaced Coltrane with a robot and the episode was actually called Robot P. Coltrane and it was like, okay, they're clearly running out of ideas

getting used to the 1982 era. This series, which I worship that series but did they really think they could get away with the cousins? The cousins came because they're Bo and Luke Duke's cousins. There's a blonde guy. Oh, the Scout Dukes, yeah. Yeah. And what was it?

Names again. Coy and Vance. Oh, you're good. That's why you're here, man. So Coy and Vance, like, come on. Yeah. Even the 80s audience, which clearly was nowhere near the sophistication of audiences now,

they weren't having that. They threw the money back to get the original guys to come back. Please. At least we had Uncle Jesse. I still have these vivid memories of Uncle Jesse. He went blind in an episode. That's right. And they bandaged his eyes so he couldn't see.

And I still remember the scene like i i've only saw it the one time when i started i think i signed a syndication like 83 or something i don't know but they're taking away the bandages and i still remember this pause everybody's nervous can uncle jesse see and there's this silence and then at some point uncle jesse says something like can you pass me that apple that's over there? And it's like everybody, Daisy starts to cry and everybody's cheering because he can see the apple.

Dick moved by Uncle Jesse, right? Why not right away say, I can see. Like what's with that like 30 seconds? The family's in agony there. For 30 seconds, he keeps them on pins and needles and the smart ass decides to subtly and cryptically let them know he can see, asks for the apple. Yeah, he's messing with them, yeah.

What a guy. Anyway, Uncle Jesse. And if you tell kids today about Uncle Jesse, they think you're talking about the full house guy. Come on, Stamos. Or even if you mention Dukes of Hazzard, they think about that. Oh, yeah, that's terrible.

That was garbage. That was garbage. And Dukes of Hazzard, they think about that. Oh, yeah, that's terrible. That was garbage. And Dukes of Hazzard that we watched, that flag, the Dixie, what do you call that flag? Oh, yeah. Is that called Dixie? Flag Dixie, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Today, that flag means racist, right?

Yeah. That was on the top of that General Lee the whole series, right? Yeah, and I mean, as a kid, I had the dinky car and I played with it. Yeah, me too. It never even crossed my mind that it was a hate image, a hateful image. Listen, I'm going to get a Gemini Award. I know they don't exist, but I'm going to get a Gemini Award for best segue. Because I'm going to play you.

I got this from Retro Ontario's YouTube site. One of the ads I remember best as a kid. It's another PSA. I think I really like the PSAs. But speaking of the General Lee, let's hear this. Dad, can you fix this?

Sure, buddy. Go to bed now are you sure your drinking isn't hurting anyone something to think about from the ontario ministry of health i'm still scared when he says now yeah like that's that's and that did need a visual it wasn't that they didn't make that ad for radio but that's a drunk dad and the kid comes up to him and i can't keep really a kid goes up to him with his general lead that's broken like the wheels off and drunk dad can't fix it because he's just blitzed on the couch there and he snaps at his kid and go to bed now i still bring that out of my kids like tongue-in-cheek i'll do the and go to bed now i still bring that out of my kids like tongue in cheek i'll do the whole go to bed now scary shit right at the time it was terrifying yeah i think the fact that

it was a general lee meant that all the kids we all related to identify with that poor kid wow but yeah the psas had a way of especially then they weren't as regulated and so they could get away with sort of scaring the shit out of you. And I think, you know, I don't know if you're familiar with the Construction Safety Association of Ontario who used to run these PSAs, like, during the cartoon hour. And they were people on construction sites, you know, falling off of ladders and stepping on nails and getting asbestos in their eyes. And they had scary synth music that would just get really loud at the end. I saw that as a kid, and I'm like, why is this on during Scooby-Doo? And then you see it as an adult, and it's even more absurd.

Because that target audience is all messed up. What kids are working on the stories? The one I remember is Play Safe, Astra. I can put my arm back on, but you can't, so play straight. That one, that one I saw a hundred times. And that one certainly got a good run. I think that was probably on for about a decade. Some of these things are really funny

because we kind of misremember them as being on for a longer time than they were. A great example of that for me was the Joey Moss, Wayne Gretzky commercial because that one, when I started looking through old tapes, I thought, oh, this is going to turn up. Big in my schoolyard. Yeah, it was. Well, I mean, it was like that was, I think, across the board. That was the insult du jour.

I mean, it was like if you wanted to make fun of somebody, you said, get ski. And so when I finally found it, I realized it probably only ran for like a couple of months but because it got picked up as a schoolyard insult we did that for years so it gave this probably still doing it i'm gonna ask my kids they're probably still doing it i'm gonna play it i was gonna play it anyways uh i'm gonna play it and then i'm gonna we're gonna talk a little more about this because you're right in my in the schoolyard i was in my schoolyard this was the most like referenced piece of television next to i think the aliens on v we talked a lot about these aliens on v and elizabeth and charles okay this is my good pal joy moss every day only on one side here while the bear

preparing things for our team. Another great radio bit, Ed. But we get in there. Joey's not like other guys his age. And you know, with a little understanding and guidance, I've found that people

who are mentally handicapped, like Joey, can really surprise you with all the things they can do by simply being part of our lives. Thanks, Joey. Open up your life. Let people who are mentally handicapped be part of your community. KT! Here's the money shot. Listen, are you the guy who rips that too?

Why am I only getting that audio on one side? I don't know. There's another one like that too I was going to play that I noticed. But I just want you to know. Yeah, there's technical imperfections. I mean, it's 30-year-old content. What can I say? Okay, so that ad, and I remember there was a story, right?

Gretzky was dating his sister. Is that real? Yeah, yeah, that is true. And supposedly, I mean, I don't know if the punchline of this is that Joey's actually saying taxi. Yeah, because I wrote about this after you, you, I think, was my source for that. And I wrote about it because in the schoolyard,

yeah, so we'd all take, and this is not politically correct. We would never do it today. But we'd take our hand, and I'm doing it. And again, this is great on audio podcasts. But we would go, gritsky. That was our, like, you know. But, you know, the R word was, like, not okay. I mean, yeah, it was okay.

Like, we never knew the R word was bad back then. Well, it was used in advertising. Yes, mentally retarded was what they called it. But he was actually saying taxi. That debate certainly still rages on to this day. I mean, people are arguing under the video on the YouTube channel about what is he actually saying. He clearly is saying taxi. But he's saying taxi.

And it's some inside joke about him and Gretzky and his sister and something. Who knows? You know, Joey Moss is still with the Edmonton Oilers, which is amazing too. That's 82 that ad came from, I think. The other commercial that has just eluded me after all these years, and it's not even anything great,

just another one that I thought would have been easy to find was the original Alomar McCain fruit punch commercial. And I get probably more requests for that stupid thing than anything. Because you have a version of it, but you don't have the original. I have the second one yeah the first one where the kid says who's your favorite pitcher and he says the one with mccain catch the taste and i've had you know sports writers from the star you know write me and say i'll give you 500 bucks if you can find it and i thought you know i've been through everybody taped the world series you know

92 93 it's got to be on there you know it's not on there it's just elusive for whatever reason that's interesting yeah that is definitely one we all remember for sure um very interesting there's another ad here let me just check here this is another toronto ad that was sort of popular uh now we didn't reference this one in the schoolyard. I might have dropped the line once or twice on like an icy day or whatever. But let's play this Toronto ad. Hello again. Ben Wicks here asking you not to slip up this winter.

Remember, it's your responsibility to clear the public walk surrounding your home or business within 12 hours after a snowfall. Last year, you did a super job. So let's work to make this year even better. Then we can all take a walk on the safe side this winter. Be nice. Clear your eyes. A message from the City of Toronto.

That was Ben Wicks, who I bet you no one knows who Ben Wicks is anymore. No, probably not. I used to do a message from the city of Toronto. I used to drop that all the time. Be nice. Clear your eyes. And there was a Lloyd Mosby. Was it Lloyd Mosby?

There was a version with Wendell Clark and Lloyd Mosby that I liked as well. Because Lloyd would say something like this. You should see me at the baseball or something like that. Really great. You should see me at the baseball. That's a great line. Yeah, no, it was a great campaign. I mean, when you think about it.

Be nice, clear your eyes. Saying, hey, you know, we're all in this together. There's a bad snowstorm. Go out and clear the walkway. And you think about now, a lot of times you just hear people complaining and saying, well, when is someone else going to do it? Oh, yeah. That epitomizes to me sort of the difference of the city,

I'd say, 30 years ago versus now. Absolutely. So is there any other PSAs? Have you done the blog TO list of, like, best Toronto PSAs yet? Or is that in the coming? That probably will be coming. I mean, the thing is there's so many of them. I find you'd even have to go a step further and do, like,

the top 10 drinking driving ones right and like sexual transmitted diseases ones like there's so many of them i mean no doubt no glove no love is number one okay you know that ad where like they put the cups uh one after another and then just yeah that came back did you notice so what that was like hibernation for like a couple of decades or something yeah i mean that mean, that's an effective ad, but it's back. And there was another one that was two pint glasses going into cheers in slow-mo. And then that was really effective as well. Right.

Crazy. Okay. So is there any PSAs that we haven't talked about that are particularly memorable? I hate to put you on the spot like this. Oh, goodness. I mean, there you on the spot like this, but any, Oh goodness. I mean, there's so many, there's so many, like, I'll go back to the construction ones because that is a story that I've been sort of researching for a couple of years now because that company they actually made a feature length film that stars all the kids from Degrassi

junior high. And it was made, I guess, around the same time they did the first season of Degrassi Junior High. And to me, that seems, you know, an incredible show. There's still a huge interest in it. So the idea that there's this feature-length, like, graphic scare film about the dangers of playing on a construction site starring the kids of Degrassi Street, that's an important cultural artifact.

Where is that? So I hope to find that at some point. You know, if you're ever with a crowd and you want to know who you're dealing with or whatever and they're 30-somethings or whatever, I sometimes say, all the way with Stephanie Kaye, just to see if you get nothing back. And you know, like, okay, we can't be friends or whatever.

But sometimes you'll just drop a line, like, all the way with Stephanie Kaye, and it's like bam that's it are you kidding me totally and she went on to do that ctv show with lyle elzado that's right you know i didn't work out as well yeah the degrassi thing you know i actually did a top 10 degrassi episodes earlier in the year because you know the show never stopped right i mean they brought it back with next generation and drake obviously came out of there and a bunch of other people have come out of that and it's on like there's like 500 episodes or something insane like that and yet junior high to me that's still the definitive when somebody says yeah you think because you had the zit remedy and uh yeah that

was it and all that stuff and those kids looked like us yeah yeah yeah the new one yeah they might as well be in hollywood and you saw like yeah when you see like wheels as grandparents or whatever like that's just regular people you know you're absolutely right uh and there's a lot of class i remember joey buying the condoms for example you know it was so perfect and i think again i don't know about you but we sometimes were shown those episodes in health class so So it was like, it was part of the curriculum. The Sex of Sue one? Sue Johansson? That one or the one where they were shoulder tapping

to buy beer and somebody was drink driving and they had all these important lessons that you were learning in class anyway. So you'd see an episode of Degrassi and then you'd go home and it would be on TV. It was like this really special thing. Yeah. Jeremy Taggart, former guest on Toronto Mike,

but former drummer for Our Lady Peace. He's known for each of those equally. Like some people know him as the former drummer of Our Lady Peace. Others know him as the former guest on Toronto Mike. It depends who you're talking to. But Jeremy Taggart,

he never owned up to this yet, but I've done enough sleuthing to know it's him. He's running a Twitter handle, Wheels Dad. That's him. That's him. He's running a Twitter handle, Wheels Dad. That's him. That's hilarious. Yeah, Wheels Dad. I remember that episode of Wheels Dad, of course.

Port Hope, I think, was where... And his name... Yeah, Wheels is a sad story. Of course, I chatted with Jonathan Torrens about it because they tried to do a reunion on JonoVision and it was Wheels-less, but yeah, he was dead for five years before we learned about it. That was really sad.

And again, you know, if that, I always think that, I don't know why it is in Canada that we don't make bigger heroes out of these people. You know, you think, you look at America, American pop culture, and certainly in Europe, they do a lot to sort of immortalize people

that start in children's shows. And yet in Canada, a lot of those Degrassize people that start in children's shows and yet in canada a lot of those degrassi people kind of just disappeared and and he was the you know the ultimate yeah yeah just literally was work there'd be sightings of he was working at a you know mr sub in hamilton or something and and then he died and nobody even knew about it and it was just really heartbreaking and i think part of um part of why i this, why I'm so interested in this, is I feel these people deserve their due. I mean, even whether it's a guy, a newscaster on City Pulse

or somebody in a television commercial or people like El Wios, we need, as citizens, to sing their praises because the institutions are certainly not doing that. No, absolutely. I mean, I remember when Degrassi was like the big show to watch on a Monday night. One of the, I can't remember which one, blonde girl was working at the HMV at 333 Young. And we used to go to the HMV, the basement, and we knew she'd be there. And, you know, Joey was, I'm pretty sure he was delivering pizzas.

At least that's what I used to hear. I mean, in America, you know, the equivalent, you know, like Luke Perry wasn't delivering pizzas on the weekends or whatever. I got to go measure. How far are you from that microphone? Hold on. Okay. Of course, I'm going to say this like 50 minutes into the recording.

We got 10 more minutes. But just if anyone wants to complain, send your complaints to Retro Ontario. Oh, dear. Because I did warn him before we started. Sorry. It's fine. See, now we need to startro Ontario, because I did warn him before we started. It's fine. See, now we need to start again. I'm going to play another ad that, this was an ad from 1982 that I remember when it

was running, it ran a lot, at least again, it can be tricking you. I think it ran a lot as I remember it. And it stuck with me. So I'm going to play it. You gentlemen want the secret of how Cadbury gets the soft, creamy caramel inside the chocolatey pockets of the caramel bar. Yes, we know you have it. And my people are prepared to pay...

50 million. Not enough. 75 million for the caramel secret. Not enough. 100 million. Tops. Sorry. I'm for the caramel secret. Not enough. 100 million. Tops. Sorry.

I'm willing to pay anything. Anything. So that one stuck with me for some reason, that whole like anything. Well, that whole campaign, you know, how did the caramel get the caramel into the chocolate bar, was the brainchild of Gary Prowk, who was a Toronto ad man. Oh, yeah. He was kind of like a Don Draper kind of guy. Don Draper. And, you know, sadly, he passed away about two years ago.

And, you know, there was a few obituaries that mentioned his work. But I had so sadly been trying to track him down to interview him because I thought, you know, this was a brilliant campaign that spanned like 30 decades. And I'm still remembering 30 years later, 30 years and the devil. And there was the aliens and, you know, they tapped into sort of the interest in,

in paranormal stuff before X-Files and, you know, Cronenberg directed a couple of crab Cadbury ads. Yeah. So it was like this really cool Canadian story that, you know, again, not a lot of people know about it. And the guy passed away and there wasn't this, you know, a lot of interest in the media about it.

And I was just amazed that that happened. You know, I think you and I are similar in that things that resonate with us that we think should be bigger deals. We're always surprised when there's like the mainstream media ignores it okay like things like i'm a i was i grew up a big fan of radio and then i'm still a big fan of radio and uh when there'll be a death of like somebody let's say a popular dj from the i don't know 80s and 90s in toronto will pass away big fucking to me it's a big deal big bfd here And sometimes weeks later, maybe something will appear in one of the mainstream newspapers,

but probably not. BlogTO will do something, or Torontoist will do something. Usually the Now will do something. Toronto Mike is going to do something, but if you're looking for the big boys, they're going to be awfully quiet. They're sleeping on it. Sleep on the Switch.

The great thing about BlogTO certainly is the editor Derek Flack is very much a renaissance man and he feels that while their currency is poutine restaurants and things that are current, that you also have to contextualize it with the history of the city and important characters from the city. And so there's a lot of great writers right now.

I do. They offer a service you don't get anywhere else where something like I'm always fascinated to be like, I don't know, 10, I don't know, streets that no longer appear on our street, phantom streets that disappeared from maps or something like that. That's the kind of crap, you know, I live in the city. I bike the city every day. This is my city. I want to hear about that stuff somewhere. That's interesting to me.

I got a question for you before we wrap up. If you track down Master T, you got to ask him about the Much Music Groove. Have you ever heard about that? Nope. So the Much Music Groove was a video that he created that is considered the very first hip hop video in the much music library. It was before my sir, fresh West before, before Mr. Metro.

It probably wasn't before that, but in terms of their indexing, it's considered zero zero one. Gotcha. And it was master T long before he was Tony young, Tony young before he was a, you know, a VJ and he was a guy, you know, he worked behind the scenes. That's how heony young before he was a you know a vj and he was a guy you know he worked behind the scenes that's how he he got you know dialed in there uh but he had written this rap and it has cameo appearances from all the vjs it has supposedly a scene where moses is break dancing uh and it's this hip-hop song about much music it sounds amazing and again it's kind of been lost.

And so I'm trying to track it down and I'd love to do a story about it. I'll ask him, yeah. Funny you mentioned that. I just, yesterday was the first Jays game of the season. So like every year when the Jays start up, I have a lot of the old Blue Jays songs, right? And I played Blue Jays rap again.

And it's like Tom Cheek and Jerry Howarth on this rap song. No, but I found out who who that singer is i believe it to be geats romo from the pizza geeks show vaguely offensive it was the worst thing i've ever heard he did a couple of tracks there's another one actually i think the only version of it out there would probably be on your uh soundcloud or something is that where you keep your audio yeah yeah yeah you've got a version of it somewhere but uh a friend of mine uh a listener who's become a friend stephanie actually sent me all the all the old blue jays cds that i used to

listen to so i could rip them all mp3 and share them nice but yeah who that singer that was the worst the worst because and i can't tell if he's because he's a it's a white guy doing it which makes this worse but i can't tell if he's doing a South Asian accent or if he's doing a Jamaican accent. I can't tell. It's offensive to everyone. But I can't tell which group particularly should be offended by this.

Anyway, that's the Blue Jays songs. Here's another. We're going to wrap up very soon, but I want to play another video here. And then I want to talk to you about Jingle. So this is a jingle. And the reason you're here is because 88.1

didn't dive deep enough. The journalists at 88.1 didn't dive deep enough to talk to you about Toronto jingles. But I'm going to play a jingle that I'm still singing these days. Well, more of a song than a jingle, right? Is this even a jingle? I think this is a jingle.

All right. He's a tumble and slide, and his train is here and his oaf. Alves Island. And then he gets to go. A cruise on the beautiful Muskoka River at Santa's village near Bracebridge is included in the one love... My grandparents took me there once. For what? I don't know.

They lived in Midland, Ontario, and they took me there. This is back in, I don't know, 82 or 81 or something. I don't know. It was exciting to get to go see Santa in the summer. Like, that's a big deal. Yeah, that was a huge... I mean, I don't know if you've seen the photographs of that place now. Like, it's dilapidated, right?

It's very, very creepy, yeah. Yeah, I think I have stumbled upon that somewhere. Was that another one of your blog TO? You know what? I didn't put that one. That didn't rate, unfortunately. I've got a question about blog TO. So I read.

Do they pay their writers? Yeah. So you get cash for writing for blog TO? It's funny the things I should know, but I don't know. I could never tell. Because Toronto Mike is one guy you know it's independent and uh he doesn't pay himself i mean look all these media outlets

devices of the world and the the bog tales of the world you know a lot of it is it's not huge money i think it's more for younger people that want to get that on their cv which is cool i i certainly don't do it for the cash i do it for no interest that I have and the ability to get the story out to a certain group of people. Yeah, you can reach, yeah. So you have a website, right? RetroOntario.com. Which is sort of the mothership of all this stuff.

It's funny how I always think of your YouTube channel. That's probably the problem you get now is that people are cutting out the middleman and they're going straight to the YouTube channel. But is there a lot of content on RetroOntario.com that does not appear on the YouTube channel? Oh, yeah. I mean... I got to change my home base.

Yeah, check out the.com because really the.com is where I put, I would say, the stuff that is, I think, the most important and that technically would probably get taken down if it was on YouTube, whether it's because of the music in it or the copyright. Sure. Here's my favorite Toronto jingle. Well, that was the Indie 88, people's favorite one as well. Is it?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's just like to the point, you know what I mean? It's just a goal. Two words. And I know 9, 6, 7, 11, 11. I mean, of course, that's great because that one actually is amazing because it puts the

phone number in your brain. And that was the thing. And the reason I wanted to draw attention to that one is that for years they used the same one and then they stopped using it. And if you notice now, it's a different intonation. And that happened when the founder of Pizza Pizza passed away. He hadn't even been dead 24 hours. Oh, so he probably wanted

to use the old one. He wanted to use the old one. And the new marketing department came in. His body was still warm and the new one was airing. Isn't that terrible? And I mean, that's why everybody remembers it. Not because of the quality of the product. That's why you should never die. Seriously. Because then you lose control. What are you going to do? Lights out. You can't do anything now. everybody remembers it, not because of the quality of the product. That's why you should never die. Seriously, because you lose control. What are you going to do?

Lights out, you can't do anything now. It's tough. That's too bad. Hopefully I had a nice long life, but yeah, Pizza Pizza, that's a great, I mean, there's a lot of good fast food kind of jingles, but that Pizza Pizza one was, and I don't know, somebody, I know there's some area code issues, right? Like, I know, like in Hamilton,

for example, is it 967-1111? I know there's some area code issues, right? Like I know like in Hamilton, for example, is it 967-1111? Or is that, I know there's some cities where like they couldn't get that phone number. Yeah, I kind of remember hearing something about that. Yeah, I know sometimes you'll be in some place in Ontario and you'll see the Pizza Pizza store and it's a different phone number up there and you're like, what the hell is that? And supposedly they used to use that at the border when they thought people that were trying to sneak in that weren't locals, they would say, what's the number of pizza? If they didn't know, then they knew they were

lying. That's funny. That's good stuff. Now, this one, you, at least on the 88.1 thing, I think this is the one you said was your favorite, which there's a lot of versions of this, too, but this is the one I dug up from 1982. Actually, did I get the right one? Is this the right one? Yeah, yeah, that's the right one? Is this the right one? Yeah, that's the right one. So that let's Go to the X.

Yeah, that was the brainchild of another kind of Don Draper-esque Toronto guy named Jerry Goodis, who also founded the pop group The Travelers, a very famous Canadian band. And he tapped into, you think about it now it's so omnipresent but the 1950s nostalgia uh at the time it was really that film american graffiti yes the first time that it was like oh city tv used to play all the time that's where i was like now it's okay to be nostalgic about the 50s and so there was this huge wave of 50s nostalgia. Happy days tapped into that. And Goodest took the song Let's Go to the Bop and reformatted it for Let's Go to the X. And I think you see kids singing it.

I've been on TTC streetcars where the guy was singing it, the driver was singing it. And it's like, I don't know, do they still use it? I mean, I haven't heard it in a while. You know, I worked at The X for three years. So I write a lot about The X. And I'm usually like around, you know, early August, I start when the ads coming out. The buzz. Because I remember they did an Australian theme. And I think they did that same song with like an Australian accent.

Oh, really? They'll do like different versions. And then there was a period of time where this disappeared, the Let's Go to The X. And I missed it. Yeah, it defines the month of August in the city, really. But sorry, before I forget

about Back to Pizza Pizza. Yeah, go ahead. The guy who wrote the jingle, I did interview his team, and he said there was a reggae version of that that they pitched Pizza Pizza. Probably Who Dat Singer probably did it. But that was another thing

that would be an interesting curio. No, yeah, anything like that. You don't even need a reason. Just throw it out there. That's the stuff I live for. Just say it. Yeah. Tell me.

Okay. So that's any other jingles. I know there's an article on blog TO you wrote about your top 10 jingles, but is there anything else we should. Yeah. We should talk about, you know, the one that I really loved was the Terry Bush. Let's go to the zoo because that one, or I want to go to the zoo. That one, you know, that guy, he is another, you know,

I think if he was an American, he'd be revered because he wrote the theme song to The Littlest Hobo. You know, he wrote the theme song. Of course, yes. And he also was like the king of jingles. He did I Love My Commodore 64. I Adore My 64. I Adore My 64.

He did Canada Dry. And he did this one for the zoo. He did one for the Eaton Center. And, you know, he's just this really quiet guy now lives out in the suburbs and not a lot of fuss. And the Metro Zoo one, you know, you hear it, and it's just like this really gentle folk, folky song. And it really just transports you right back to the early 80s

when the zoo had the monorail. And the monorail, yes. All that cool stuff. The biggest McDonald's in the whole world. Which had hot dogs. Which had hot dogs, yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong, but before McDonald's introduced their pizza in the early 90s or whatever, didn't they have McDonald's pizza at that zoo?

They probably did. That zoo. They had special McDonald's products at the zoo. They did. Well, that was the largest McDonald's in the world. So it was kind of like they tested a lot of stuff. When did they shut down the monorail? You don't have to give me the exact year.

I think it was in the 90s. It kept breaking down Jurassic Park style. And I think some people got afraid that it might end badly. You know, I always remember that Simpsons episode, the monorail. What if the track would bend?

You know, not in your life, my Hindu friend. But yeah, I remember that monorail. That was the zoo to me back then. Yeah, absolutely. It was a huge part of it, for sure. And the elephants are gone now, is that correct? Yeah, Bob Barker. Bob Barker took them away.

That's probably for the best. Poor guys. What I remember is, as bringing my kids to the zoo is there's a canada section and there was an exhibit for the raccoons okay just yet this is the true story you can go to my twitter feed to see i'm not making this up but just yesterday i took the one-year-old to the park to sit on the stupid swing and he likes it we swing it and a raccoon started coming up coming close and like normally raccoons are scared of us it's during the day so i go up to the raccoon started coming up, coming close. And normally raccoons are scared of us. This is during the day.

So I go up to the raccoon, and I make some loud noises. He'll run away. No, he keeps coming. And he wasn't foaming at the mouth or anything. I'm like, I grab my boy, and I'm like, I think we'll come back another time. This was just the most brazen raccoon, and he just kept coming towards us.

And I took some photos. He was just, yeah. Anyway, true story, man. But you can go to the zoo and see raccoons and it's safer that way, I think. I'm going to tell you my retro-Ontario story. And I went long with you because I could probably do several hours

talking to you about the good old days of Toronto television and ads and jingles, etc. But there was a, I think you shared this and I'm going to play it. You can take credit for sharing it and then tell me if I got the wrong guy. But here's an ad that was very popular in the 80s. Have you ever gone hunting with a bowl and spoon? Well, you can with live bee soodles.

Elephants, lions, zebras, giraffes. Soodles are animal noodles. Come on, tell all your friends. Tell the whole bunch. I just had to have a vitamin for lunch. Say, have you ever gone hunting with a bowl and spoon? Get hunting with Livby's Zoodles. Hey, kids, now there's new Zoodles in yummy chicken sauce.

Zoo, zoo, zoo, zoo, Zoodles. Chicken sauce. I forgot about that. So, yeah, so that was a popular ad that ran all the time. And, you know, zoodles were like canned pasta. And there was another ad in the 80s that I used to love for Alfagettis. Oh, the gobbler. The Alfagetti gobbler.

So I've been doing the Toronto Mike thing since whatever, late 90s. And then I started, I couldn't find it anywhere, this Alfagetti gobbler. It was just in my head. And I can still remember the kids saying,, this Alphagetti Gobbler. It was just in my head and I can still remember like the kids saying, you're the Alphagetti Gobbler and like I can, the ad was in my head

but I couldn't find it anywhere so I would write about it so anyone who was Googling like Alphagetti Gobbler would end up on my site and this, we're going back now, I don't know,

2003 or something. At some point, there's a guy, one of the kids, there's three kids at that table when the Alphagetti Gobbler shows up and one of the's three kids at that table when the Alphagetti Gobbler shows up. And one of the kids,

I guess, was Googling Alphagetti Gobbler and found my site. He wrote me this long email and he's like, I have this ad on DVD and I'm this kid and he goes like,

and now he's like an investment banker or something now, whatever. But I'm like, dude, I need this. He's like,

I'll rip it and send it to you. And I'm like, you're the best. And he sends me like, I don't know, an MP4 or an AVI or something. Like, there's the video. I throw it on my YouTube channel and I have it now.

So this was my story. That's great. You know, a little retro Ontario activity from Toronto Mike. But then I actually did an interview with the guy. Like, we talked about, we talked, not an audio. This was before the podcast, but like a written interview. And he sent me some pictures of him today compared to before.

So this is the kind of stuff that interests me. Alfagetti Gobbler. Yeah, so thank you for doing this. Like not this interview, which I am grateful for, but thank you for like spending so many hours because it's labor of love for you. And it's clear this is not a lucrative thing to do. What's your day job?

I'm in marketing and writing and marketing. And so I'm hoping actually that out of this, there's a real interest now in sort of heritage marketing, which is going back for companies and looking at stuff they can bring back. Like we were saying that some of these campaigns can come back. Right. Yeah. So I've seen some success with that. So hopefully it wasn't just a giant hobby.

No, that's the goal. You do it as a hobby because you love it. Like this thing. I don't get any money for this podcast. I just want to share these stories of interesting Toronto people like yourself. Thank you. You know, if at some point down the road,

I could do this and make money, now everybody wins. So that is the marriage we're all looking for. But thank you very much. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. I hope you were

on the mic sufficiently because I hear about it whenever I have a guest and Rick Hodge is a little off the mic and I hear about it from many people and I have that,

you know that speech we had before I pressed record where I talked about being on the mic? I have it with everybody. You can lead a horse to water. What am I supposed to do? Hold the back of your head and jam it into the microphone.

But you were great. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Thank you. And that brings us to the end of our 117th show. You can follow me on Twitter at Toronto Mike. And Ed is at Retro Ontario. But it's not really retro Ontario.

It's actually retro, retro Ontario, R E T R O N T A R I O. See you all next week.