Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Rewinder: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1756

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

In this 1756th episode of Toronto Mike'd, and first episode of Rewinder, Mike chats with Blair Packham about what's happening in the Canadian media landscape. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, the Waterfront BIA, Blue Sky Agency and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail].

Rewind up with a pack of mooh is also known as Blair and Mikey Boon Boon too. Rewind up. Looking back and yippy hopping on the air for the quarterly review. Rewind up. Skidly bodily bludely. Rewind up. Fibbidi-Bobbidi-Noodly. Rewind up.

With a pack of moo is also known as Blair and Mikey Boon Boon too. Toronto. great theme song, Blair. I haven't heard it since last time we did it. It's the first time we did it. It's aging like a fine wine. As are you.

Retsina. Welcome to episode 1,756 of Toronto Miked. Proudly brought to you by the new and improved Toronto Miked Patreon. Go to patreon.com slash Toronto Mike to become a member by Great Lakes Brewery

a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh

homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Toronto's Waterfront, BIA. Check out what's happening on Toronto's waterfront this summer. Yes, it's still summer. I checked my calendar.

Blue Sky Agency, the official distributor of Cylent's quiet, comfortable, and customizable office pods. Create sanctuary within your workspace. Recycle MyElectronics.C.A. Committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. And Ridley Funeral Home, Pillars of the Community since 1921. Today, returning for this. this second episode of Rewinder. It's Blair Packham.

Welcome back, Blair. Thank you, Mike. Hello, Mike. This is our second, is that your normal voice? That's my normal voice. Is that your radio voice? As soon as you put a microphone in front of me. Do you have a radio voice?

Do you turn it on? Well, no, only a little bit and not really, I would do it as a joke. You know, I'm Kevin Nelson. You know, that kind of thing. Okay, yeah, we've talked quite a bit about your U of T radio experience and your show Rock Talk on 1010. Yep, that became,

it actually fairly shortly became in the studio because we felt we needed to have a new name because I was the new co-host. So it ran most, for most of its life, 11 years, it ran as in the studio. How long was it rock talk? Rock talk for, well, I think it was four years before, before I came along.

So I think it ran for about four and a half years. Oh, so did you, did you ever host? Rock Talk? Yeah. Yes, I did. I took over for Greg Godovitz. God, you know, Godot. Yeah.

Godot posted on Facebook, like about a year ago, that he was being interviewed by the infamous DJ John Derringer for a, some kind of a local rock history documentary, but I haven't heard boo about it since. But Godot, who's also an FOTM, like you, Blair, he did, he kind of let the cat out of the bag, but I'm curious to know whether it died on the vine or is this something that's still coming and is John Derringer like a hired gun to do the interviews or is he somehow financing this?

I have a lot of questions, Blair. These are good questions and I have none of the answers. When I think of John Derringer, though, I think of being on the 6 o'clock Rock Report and John Derringer introducing me to the Q107 audience as Fudge. Ah, Fudge Packham. Yes, exactly. I get it.

That's casually homophobic, maybe. Exactly. A different time. I think that probably describes a lot of people at Fiona 7 at the time. Oh, so I hear. So I hear. But here we are progressive-minded people in 2025. We would never make such a comment.

No, we would not accept with some resentment on my part. Hey, listen. It's the jitters. Wow. Hey, I have some jitters news. Well, can I, I think I know what the news is. let you make this announcement because I took a note about the jitters and that's why I'm playing the jitters

listening to this in the headphones in 2025, Blair, you wrote this song, you sing on this song, you are the founder, lead singer of the jitters what do you think hearing this song in the headphone in 2025? What are your thoughts as you hear this? I think I wish it was smaller

in terms of production. That's actually what I think. You think it's overproduced? Well, it's just, we went when we wrote the song, when Danny Levy and I wrote the song, we thought, hey, well, let's flip the typical song craft on its head and let's make the chorus the small part

and the verse is big. And the producer of the album. So we recorded a version of that before on our own, self-produced, and we put it out. It was on the Q107 Homegrown contest. But then the producer of the album Paul Gross,

not the actor. He was in slings and arrows, right? Paul Gross? Different Paul Gross, but yes. But just only because the the person who wrote that show and created that show was a guest on a show I produced this morning. Oh, no kidding.

Her name is Susan Coyne. A sister of Andrew Coyne. Oh, interesting. And her dad was like a governor of the Bank of Canada. And this means nothing except it's such a small world that things connect like that. Because that was earlier today. Susan Coyne was on Joel Greenberg's podcast, Life and Stages. But back to your story about a different Paul Gross.

Well, I should say that I'm not, I'm not sure, but I think Andrew Coyne possibly went to the same high school idea. Jarvis Collegiate. Maybe Susan did too. I don't know. Wow. Yes. So Paul Gross, not the actor, thought that the chorus is, you know, it's a normal thing to think.

He thought the choruses should be really big. And so in this song, in this version, the choruses are big. I just think it's cooler the other way. That's all. But the grass is always greener. Yep. Exactly. If it was the other way, you'd be saying, oh, it should be like this.

Yeah, and this one got played on the radio a lot. So, you know, I feel like, okay, I guess he was right. Like, this song will outlive you. Well, like, so somebody's going to be singing. Did you know something that I don't? Well, everybody dies. Yes, that's true. Oh, no, wait, what?

Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. Yeah, that's right. So what is your big news and we'll see if it's exactly what I wrote here in a note? Yes, and Blair is now playing with his new measuring tape, courtesy of Ridley Funeral Home. Because you mentioned Ridley Funeral Homes, and I'm not going to make any measuring jokes at all. Do you have like a bowl full? of Redley Funeral Home measuring tapes at home. Like, every time you visit, you get one.

At Christmas time, everybody gets one in their stocking. That's actually a good idea. I should put Great Lakes beer on everybody's stalking. What's your big news? And then we'll see if it matches my big news. My big news about the jitters is that we are reforming to play at Hughes Room in Toronto on the 28th of November. That's the same news I have.

The jitters are reuniting at Hughes Room. Shout out to Jane Harbury. Yes. In Toronto on November. 28th, 2025. So people can get tickets and see the reunited jitters. Who's in the band? Who's in this version of the band? Well, it's myself, David Quentin Steinberg, playing drums. Matthew Greenberg playing bass. No relation to Joel Greenberg? Or maybe there is a relation? There might be. I'm going to find out from Joel. Yeah, I don't know. Matt was also known as Matt Black.

And he was also known as Matt Ine. And he was known as Matt Diplow. He didn't like that. one actually. He's like Johnny Fever. He's got all the names. He had a million names. Yeah. And then on keyboards, Victor Darcy, who played on that song we just heard, that whole first album, played with us a lot in the early days. And then on guitar, substituting for Danny Levy is Michael Zweig, who is a long time. FOTM, Michael Zwaig. Yeah, exactly. And a long time friend of mine. And brother of Alan Zweig. That's right. Yes, yes. The Zweig brothers. The star of the TMLX event at Palmer's Kitchen. That's right. Oh, the one at Christmas time? Yeah. Yes. Yes. Okay.

What a wonderful small world we live in. Michael, wonderful guy. Yeah. And he used to go by Michael Z. Right? Yep. Yep. He made a record produced by Bob Sigourini. Yes. And I think it was called 5-7, maybe 5-8. And it was on, that's referring to

his height. And it is. I'm not kidding. No, I do remember this. Yes. Yes. Yes. And the producer, it was on Ready Records. I'm just a font of information. Well, that's actually why you co-host this quarterly episode of Toronto, Mike. It's called Rewinder. And basically, we have to go over things that have happened.

I don't know, in the zeitgeist, the Canadian media landscape over the past quarter. And this quarterly series, which is called Rewinder, exists as sort of a counterpoint to FOTM cast, which looks inward. It's very meta. It looks into the TMU. And the purpose of this is to look sort of beyond the TNU. TMU, and then between the two shows, you get the whole universe we live in. It's an amazing universe.

But you mentioned David Quentin Steinberg. I did. You were at TMLX-19, which happened in late June at Great Lakes Brewery in South Atobico. I saw you there. I was there. I enjoyed it. Did you hang with the snowman? Remember the, it's funny because that opening bit I love that you created, which is

to rewind your theme is a spin, like a spoof of Informer by Snow, and Snow was at TMLX19. Did you get any time of snow at TMLX19? We said, we said hello, we hugged, it was nice to see him. I guess neither of us had that much to say to each other. I mean, it had been a long time. We were on the road together for three weeks. Yeah, he did, definitely did.

And I, of course, him. So, yeah, we connected. I mean, we didn't sit down and have a, deep chat or anything like that. Well, you got to hang up the snowman, and I'm going to connect all these dots before we dive into it. Okay. But Paul Farberman. Paul Farberman was there.

Was also there. Yeah. So many places I want to go, and it's going to tie into this song I'm playing. But did Paul Farberman give you an album to give David Quentin Steinberg? Like, did somebody give you an album to, or just show you an album, maybe? I think he just showed me the album. Okay. But he brought an album to show you.

Yes. Like an old The Mods maybe or something? Yeah, I believe it was a Mauds album. Wow, it's funny, I can't remember. I know that I dutifully related to David. I know that, but I don't remember what it was specifically now. Okay, so I want to give a shout out to Paul Farberman,

who's always, like, thoughtful in thinking of others. Yeah. And he was thinking of, you know, you and David Quentin Steinberg. He knows how close you are. David's going to be playing with the jitters, reuniting at Hughes Room in Toronto on November 28th. On Tuesday night, I was at the Who concert. You went. That's great.

I went with a, I've told the story too many times, but I'm so excited and proud that I had a pizza pizza promo code that got me lawns for $11 and $11. Wow, that's amazing. And you could have also had the same deal, but it was not a special Toronto mic thing. Nobody told me. Because you don't pay attention to the FOTM chat.

Apparently that's it. I learned about it. Right. Usually somebody like Mark Wiseblatt will say, hey, $11 tickets to see The Who. But I was in the lawns. I hooked up with, hooked up sounds kind of dirty, but I hooked up with VP of Sales. And we were watching Tom Cochran on the lawns. Yes.

Then I got a text after Tom Cochran, who was great. Are you friends with Tom Cochran? No, I'm not friends with Tom. But I've met Tom many times, actually, over the years, but not friends. Do you golf? Not friends. No, I'm not a golfer. Well, that's why you don't get to hang with Tom Cawrin.

Exactly. Okay. So I get a text from Paul Farberman who says, hey, come say hi. I'm like the second row of the 100 section at Budweiser stage. And we're on the lawns, right? So I make the long trek to where the rich people are. And I'm hanging out with Paul Farberman.

Long story short, because of the great Paul Farberman, a beloved FOTM, who's now back in his home in California, because of Paul, Tyler and I, who that's VP of Sales, alter ego, we got to see the who from the center the second row of the 100 center it was the best seats I've ever had at Budweiser stage it was so close to the stage because Paul had some spare seats

well he didn't have spare seats but he had a plan and it worked and the plan was you would just take over somebody's seats yeah that's a good plan wow I want to try that at a bank but Paul as he was leaving he kind of he winked at me as he was leaving

this is a Paul move and he sends me a text and says I always deliver. Well, I think that's probably true. There you go. A little fun fact. And I want to say, I thought the Who sounded great,

and I actually enjoyed the whole show. But a highlight for me was this song. I forgot how much I love it. Because I know it better, believe it or not, I know this song better for a pearl jam cover of this song that they did for an Adam Sandler movie. Oh, wow. So, like, yeah.

So, and I love, I think this, this was a highlight for me. It was this song. Sure. Yeah, that's a great song. What a great song. song. I saw The Who a few years ago with Stephen Page opening at Scotia Bank Arena. It was the Who with, it's the only time I've seen them, and it was with an orchestra, and Zach Starkey was still playing drums, and I was sitting with, you'll love this, I was sitting

beside Chris Murphy, who was sitting beside Moberg, who was sitting beside, oh God, who was it, I don't remember, but it was, it was like Trans-Canada Highway Man. But two of them were on stage. Was Craig Northy there? Yeah, Craig was in the event. Yeah, no, but he was... But he wasn't there. He was playing with Stephen.

Okay. Yeah, he was, he's in the... Craig is in the Stephen Page trio. I think Chris Murphy and Moberg are very, very good friends because they live pretty close to each other. And when I went to the Sloan garage sale in West and Toronto, I, like, not as west as us, of course, but I, Moberg just kind of waltz by with his son and just kind of was hanging out.

Right. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So they're good friends. So I want to ask you about a Toronto mic guest. Before we get into it, because it's well-structured, highly produced, quarterly episode, these episodes of Rewinder. Rewind. How do you know recent guest and now FOTM, Emily Whedon?

Oh, I met Emily when she was, and this is eons ago, when she was dating Paul Brennan, who was the original drummer in The Odds, who left the odds, I shouldn't say The Odds, who left odds after, because there's no The, but everybody says the odds. But he left odds and moved to Toronto basically

after I think their, before their third record, good, weird feeling. Which is a great album. It's a great album. And Paul moved here and he was playing with a bunch of different people, but he played with May Moore. And he played played with my ex, Arlene Bishop.

F-O-T-M-R-Lene Bishop. And made an album with her. And Paul is a terrific player and a lovely, lovely guy. And he was dating Emily. So I met Emily through Paul. Then that ended, but that I would just see Emily play here and there, playing music. And then I got invited to a singles event. Apparently, I am tragically single.

Are you currently single? I am currently single, yes, yes. Okay, we should put the word out there. Ladies. You're available. Okay. Yeah, that's right. Um, so I went to, uh, I've never been to it like somebody's party where it was deliberately, um, a singles event, sort of like everybody here is single. And the idea is we're going to dance and we're going to drink a little bit and we're going to joke around. We're going to dance and drink and screw. Well, there's nothing else to do. Unfortunately that none of that. Well, the only some of that happened. But, uh, anyway, but, um, but that was at Emily's house. And, uh, wow. That might have been the last time I saw her. So that was probably five or six years ago. Well, I, so you know.

Emily Whedon. The aforementioned Alan Zweig, let me know that he knows Emily Whedon. Yes. Emily appeared in one of his fine documentaries. Yep. And I didn't realize how interesting Emily was until I sat down and chatted her up for 90 minutes. She's so lively and she's had a lot of life experience and she's got a lot of opinions, which I think is, you know, really those are attractive qualities. Absolutely. Good writer. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Hemosapiens is her new Release. Oh, okay. Out now, I believe,

the Hemos sapiens. Okay. And it just happened that she dropped by like the day before my annual hematology appointment. So all this HEMO talk came together nicely, as it often does. So normally I begin with radio because of the fact that I loved radio when I was a kid. Yes. But we're actually going to start this first segment. We're going to be talking about television, television, drug of the nation.

and I'm letting you know Blair Packum that this segment of Rewinder is brought to you by Palma Pasta. I have in my freezer a large lasagna, a frozen, obviously it's in the freezer, it's frozen.

A large lasagna for you, Blair Packum, you're going to enjoy some palma pasta. That's awesome. That's fantastic. And I know your boy loves it. Yeah,

and we actually waited a little while before we had the last one. So it was only about a month ago. We had the last one. We're ready. Well, every quarter you're getting a lasagna. Yeah, that's fantastic.

So this is going to save you a bunch of, And, well, I've directed people to Palma pasta because it's so good. And I've gone there not just when there's a TMLX event going on because the food is so good. Well, bless your heart. It's the real deal. And don't forget your Palma pasta when you leave today. No. I would like to start talking about a major happening this past quarter in Canadian media,

Nelvana. Now, they didn't shut down Nelvana because existing properties will be managed by Chorus Entertainment, which, as you know, has had some financial problems of late. But they've announced that they're ceasing new development. So nothing new coming out of Nelvana for the time being. Please share with me any experiences you've had in your professional life with Nelvana. Well, the first experience I had was I met Mike Northcott, who was a music supervisor there.

or no, he was assisting, I think, a fellow named Stephen Hudecki, who was the music supervisor there. And I met him and he was a jitters fan and was, you know, was impressed that I was the guy from the jitters, which, you know, was fine by me. But I was also impressed by this. Well, I know. And so, yeah, so that's why we're friends.

I'm only friends with people who are impressed by that. People who worship you. Bit of knowledge, yeah. But anyway, Mike Northcott, a great guy, played bass, played guitar, wrote stuff and so forth. He then brought me in... Well, first, he actually suggested

that Arlene Bishop, my ex, work with a composer named Martin Kuchai, who is from the Czech Republic. I'm making the story longer than I need to. It's okay, I got two hours for rewinders. You're just eating into the radio time. So Martin Kuchai, composer from the Czech Republic, he was given the job of writing a theme song to this kids show that was going to be they projected

would be very popular with little boys and and he but he being a Czech native speaker he wanted to collaborate and have someone else write the lyrics so he contacted Arlene Bishop Arlene and I were married at the time and I said to her and I was already writing music for film and TV and I said to her do you want to do this and she said I don't know maybe and she was enthusiastic. Meanwhile, I'm thinking, I want to do it. So she said, I'm going to give him, I'm going to give him an hour. And I'm going to tell him that right at the beginning of the call. So she says to Martin, who she doesn't know, I'm going to give you an hour. And if it doesn't work out, I'm going to excuse myself and go. And he said, okay, they did it. They wrote

something together. And then the next thing they did was the, well, wait, yeah, I'm mixing it up a little bit. In any case, I ended up co-writing with Arlene the lyrics to Bayblade, which became a very, very popular show for young boys, particularly young kids. But at the time, they were... Huge, because I got kids into my... I know my third born Jarvis was a huge Bayblade fan. Yeah, well, so Arlene and I co-wrote the words, not the music, to Let's Bayblade. I wrote that part. Let's Bayblade. And that's the best part. And it is. And so Bayblade became a big deal. And because of that, I wrote a couple of other things with Martin Kuchai that didn't end up flying.

But that meant that Mike Northcott, I was on his radar as a composer now. So he just kept throwing things my way. So regularly a couple of times a year, Nelvana would offer me stuff. And usually one out of those two or three or four times, I would land one of them. And so I have a few running still. You know what, we're going to, I want to hear some names of shows, Nelvana shows that you compose theme songs for. But I'm going to shout out fellow FOTM, Stu Stone,

who got a ton of work as a child to start. Like, when you see the list, and he'll be on the show again soon, if you see the list of Nelvana credits that Sto Stone has, it'll blow your mind. Don't kidding. It's lengthy, lengthy list of Nelvana productions. As a voice actor. As a voice actor, exactly, exactly.

And lest we forget, one of the founders of, Nelvana, Clive A. Smith came by last summer, so the summer of 2024. And we did a pretty damn deep dive into the history of this company and basically, was it rock and rule that almost ruined the company financially? Like they were done because this was such a bust and it was so damn expensive. And they salvaged everything. What I'm saying it now is I say, oh, Care Bears. Yeah. Sorry. The Care Bears movie was such a hit. It's saved Nelvana. That's amazing. And I don't doubt it for a second. That sounds... So rock and rule, if you're keeping track at home, okay, here's how it went. So

rock and rule devastates Nelvana. Yeah. Then Care Bears reignites the flame and Nelvana rises. And at some point, these founders cash out because Chorus Entertainment buys Nelvana. That's right. And it is Chorus Entertainment, which is having, you know, you can Google this, huge financial difficulties. They were close to bankruptcy, according to some sources. But they have ceased production as the end of an era. Name check some of these shows that you, Blair Packham, wrote theme songs for. Well, I think my favorite is one called Spliced.

It's about a doctor, a crazy scientist who splices different species of animals together to come up with new animals on an island, Dr. Moreau kind of island. That sounds cool. So let's listen to the theme song from Spliced. All right. Uh-oh. That's the instrumental version. I can sing it live.

Can you? Go. Oh, no, you have to start again. I'll start again. You know what's funny? I should disclose that I was recording with somebody when you had this idea

to pull some theme songs. And remember I said to you, because I couldn't hear it. I said, I can do this about hearing. So I literally went to YouTube. I put in splice theme song. And then I created the MP3, but I've never heard the MP3.

Can you sing it if I play this instrumental again? I'm saying, I can try. Okay, let's try. Okay, here we go. On a tiny little island in the ocean called Pacific, there's a little dendrit creature who is really quite horrific. No, I can't. That was pretty good, though.

That was pretty good. So, did you, you also composed music? They have all been spliced. Yes, and I played every instrument we're listening to. Okay, let me hear a bit more. And Frank Northie sang on it. What a small world. From odds or the odds?

Which one is? From odds? Simon Law played drums They have FOTM Simon Law They have all been spliced Yeah I can't make the words Okay well

You know this is what happens When you don't listen to the audio Before you load it up and play it live Okay I should learn a lesson here Splice Splice Simon Law Was in soul to soul Yes he was

He wrote Back to life Back to life Back to reality And I believe you introduced me to Simon Right Yeah Okay so Simon great episode

I can't believe he's the back to life, back to reality. Like, that song was so big. Yeah. It's still huge. When the London Olympics happened, they played it as part of the opening ceremonies. It was, yeah, it was, it's amazing. Simon is the loveliest guy who was introduced to me by David McKenzie. David McKenzie is married to Jen Whalen of the Baroness von Skechers.

Oh my God, and Leslie's sister. Exactly. It's one of the four Baroness von Schetch people. It's a small, small world. And I can't remember the Leslie. talk. I think now I think that was before the recording but we had a lengthy Leslie Taylor talk and I feel like that was for the live streamers

only. Yeah. But okay. That's okay because all the matters that you and I are entertained. Name check another Nelvana show that you did a theme song for. Okay, another one would be Truck Town. Okay, Truck Town. Let's see if they're all instrumentals. Who knows?

Let's see. What's up, trucks? Truck Town! Hooked together. Truck Town! Come on, let's go with playing truck town there's always lots to do let's rev it up today in truck town every day it's something new we'll build it up with jack and his friends smash it down build it up again every day it's a fun new game truck down it's where i want to play come on let's go and play in truck town

there's always lots to do let's rev it up today in truck town every day it's something new Let's down Jumping bumpers Come on let's play in the Dropdown Who's doing the vocals? That's Jonathan Evans He's an Ottawa composer

and musician and a lovely guy I've only met him a couple of times One of the times was when he sang that vocal Okay so you wrote the lyrics and the music I wrote the lyrics and the music with Mike Northcott Who was the music supervisor at that time at Nelvana Mike passed away about five years ago of cancer And sorry to hear that.

Yeah, six, maybe it's six years ago now, but really the loveliest guy. And he said to me before we did, before he brought me truck town, he said, you know, I really want to, I want to get you one of the big ones. You know, Timothy goes to school or, or Berenstain Bears or one of those, like, you know, and he said about, he said, you know, Stan Meisner built a cottage based on, on his Berenstain Bears theme, you know, and, and he said, I just want to do that for you. I want, you. I want, you. I want, you. You know, and so he brought me truck down. It didn't end up flying. I did pitch on Paw Patrol. I pitched on a bunch of shows. Because that would have bought a huge. Oh, yeah. Yeah, though.

Exactly. But would you invite me to this cottage you would have bought. Of course I would invite. And you're invited already. You're invited now. Because I actually had this. So I was kayaking the Humber River and I was thinking, I think I'm the only guy who doesn't have like a friend or a family member with a cottage.

I'm, I'm that guy too. Yeah, we're going to buy a cottage together. Did you go to anyone's cottage this summer? I went to Debbie, Okay, small world again, Debbie Lillicoe's cottage. Debbie Lillico rents her cottage out. Chris Finn invited me as his friend. You and I, yeah, and Chris, of course, wrote for this hour has 22 minutes,

and he wrote for the Mercer Report, and he's a stand-up and he's a stand-up guy. And for the last few summers, when Chris has rented this cottage, he has invited me for a few days. This just tells me that you beat me. I didn't get a single invitation to a... I almost got two. In fact, because Chris almost invited me again. So, but it would have been the same product, so it doesn't really count.

Stop rubbing it in. So we're going to do two more quick hits on theme songs you wrote for Nilvana and get your final thoughts when you hear the news that Nilvana has ceased production. Yeah, I have some thoughts. So name check, another show you wrote a theme song. Well, for some reason, I think when they thought of talking trucks, we need a theme song. we'd better call Blair Packham. So, because I did another one called The Adventures of Chuck and Friends.

Okay, here's the Adventures of Chuck and Friends. Let's go me and you, over around and blue. Trust's going to do. So let's go me and you. And my name is Chuck. I've got the world that how are you. What's your voice?

Yeah. That's you. I recognize that voice from the chorus of If I Had a Million Dollars. Okay, so is it the actor who's doing the singing? Okay, the actor of Chuck, I guess? Yep. Okay, and it's great that you can totally recognize. It's sort of like when you hear You're Sovain by Carly Simon, and you go, that's Mick Jagger.

Yeah, Mick comes in and you really, yeah, even when I was a kid. Once you know it's Mick, you know you can't miss it. It doesn't sound like anybody else as soon as you hear it. When I hear this, I hear Blair Pack. Oh, there you go. And that's all done in my little studio, which is about the size of your little studio, which I always think is neat,

that you can do a band-sounding thing, you know, and make it. I can do orchestras in my little studio room, if need be. Stop showing off, Blair. Well, I just, no, it's the gear. It's, you know, I happen to know how to run it, I guess. Okay, let's play one more and get these final thoughts. Okay.

Do you want to tell us what we're going to listen to here? I don't remember. Okay, so it's called Brush Your Teeth. Oh, okay, you found that one. Yeah, there's a good thing. You know, I haven't listened to any of these audio. There's a good story for this one. Okay, let's go.

It's time to rush, brush, brush. Oh, yeah, yeah. Every morning after you eat before bed time, you gotta brush your tea. Ooh, deep voice. That's me. But don't just stand there, make it a party. Oh, brush, brush, brush, you're just getting started. Let's go.

Brush your teeth. And that's Lori Pellon. Brush your teeth. Brush your teeth. Let's go. And that's Keisha Fanfare. Kisha Fresh. Who should be a guest on your show?

Sold. Oh, bad time, you gotta brush your teeth. But don't just stand there, okay, make it a party. Brush, rush, brush, brush, you're just getting started. Brush your teeth. Okay, now everybody, brush your teeth. Woo, woo, brush your tea. Now on three, one, two, three.

Oh, no. Brush your teeth. Oh, wow, and know. Brush your teeth. Oh, yeah. Okay, that's brush your teeth. Okay, that's brush your teeth. Was there more at the end that I over?

No, I went into another thing, I think. Okay. Yeah, so that was the last, that was probably the last thing I did for Naldana. I did work on a whole series called Esme and Royd throughout the pandemic. That sounds familiar to me. It was Sesame Street co-production. I ended up writing, co-writing the songs with the co-creator of the show, and we never met. never met in person. It was all all by email and I did a bunch of songs for it and I produced

the actors vocals in my house while they were in their houses because it was COVID. And so that was interesting. But this is the last thing. And what set this up, which I thought was really interesting. Yeah. Is I sent a note to the music supervisor who took over after Mike Northcott passed and his name Norm Beaver. He's now retired. Lovely guy. great name. Yeah, and great name. He, um, uh, I said, and at this point, I've been very fortunate in my career. Things just come along, you know, I, I don't chase work very often. I've only made about three demos, like for my TV music work. Um, so, but things were slow. And so I sent, I sent, I sent Norma notes saying, hey, things are slow. Um, you know, have you got anything that I could work on, that I

could pitch on? And he said, he sent back an email and all it said was call me. So I thought, uh-oh, So I called him, and he said, yeah, Chorus is all about diversity, Blair. That was the first thing he said. And he said, so you're an old white guy, because we're friends, he could say that. You're an old white guy, so we're not going to be sending anything your way anymore. And I was, for a moment, I was mad as hell. I was just like, that's not fair. And then I literally thought, like, really it was a moment, like a half, half a minute.

And then I thought, I've had a really good run. I've done a whole bunch of things for an Elvanna over the years. And, you know, I bought a house and stuff, you know, like I did reasonably well. So then I said, so that's it. And he said, well, unless you can find a person of color who you think is talented, who you want to work with, who you could collaborate with. And I said, well, that's easy. I said, what about Keisha Fresh?

And he said, the rapper? Like, he knew who Keisha was. Okay. And I said, yeah. He said, you can get her? And I said, yeah. So I said, he said, you get me an email from Keisha Fresh, saying that she will collaborate with you, and I will send you some stuff. So I, Keisha sent him an email within half an hour and said, and so we worked, so Keisha co-wrote that with me.

Interesting. And was the rapper and sang the choruses on that. But we also did four other things together. And she was great. And the idea was, you know, to bring in somebody new who had never done TV stuff before. because Keisha's got quite a career going as a rapper. But things slowed down so much at Nelvana and Keisha's career picked up sufficiently

that I don't think Keisha's done anymore or TV work. But that was the idea, it was to bring somebody new in. Okay, now Nelvana has slowed down to the point where there's no new development at Nelvana. I can't believe it. What are your thoughts with this big news we're leading off with on this episode of Rewinder? Well, it's sad because they developed

a lot of projects right from the ground up. Now, what they also do, though, is they're a production company for hire. So if you and I decide we're going to do an animated story of the Tragically Hips Life, that's an angle, by the way, I think it's pretty good. Well, Jake Gold's on line two. Oh, there you go. He's already working on it. Yeah, okay.

So let's write a treatment for that, Jake. But let's say we're going to come up with a, so, and we would then hire Nelvana to be the production company, and they would coordinate the animators in Korea. and they'd coordinate the composers here and the sound effects people and all, you know, the voice actors, they would do that all. They'd manage the project. But for a fee, as opposed to developing stuff from the ground up. So if it's development that's going away at Nelvana, that's sad, but it isn't the end of things.

But a lot of local animators and people from Nelvana got, like last Friday was their last day. Yes, yes. They're gone. Now they're going to look for other things or whatever. So it's absolutely sad. But, you know, this is all part of the chorus collapse, if you will, financially. Yeah, and it's the end of an era. But, you know, it's a symptom of a wider problem.

I was, I know we're going to get to radio, but I was talking with a radio friend yesterday, and it sounds very dire in that world. We have a lot of radio to cover, as you know, and we will, I absolutely want to hear about that, and that's going to tie in nicely here. But you did mention Sesame Street a moment ago. Yes. So the big news today is that, you know, Sesame Street, I think, I think it was licensed by HBO or something.

And, you know, there's huge, speaking of hardships, PBS is having their funding cut. Yes, the corporation for public broadcasting has been, has had its legs taken out, its funding taken away from it. Between the Corp. The Nelvana News and the PBS News and Wild Brain, that was big news too. Like there's a, it seems like these big animation supporters are going the way of the dodo. Yeah. Oh my goodness.

Okay. But Sesame Street announced today that they're. library, their archive of content will be coming to YouTube soon. And I think that's cool for a number of reasons, but primarily because everyone gets YouTube. Like there's no, there's the

HBO, like a lot of people who need Sesame Street simply couldn't get HBO for example. And that was the glory of PBS. But YouTube, that's the most accessible, I put this in your quotes, television station on the planet. That's right, yeah. It's certainly democratizing the access for sure.

Did your son watch Sesame Street? I have to think about that. No, I don't think he did. No, I mean, maybe when he was really little, but that seems so long ago now, that would be 20-something years ago. Well, no, I was thinking that, because I have a 23-year-old,

and he kind of came up in an age of, like, speaking of chorus, Treehouse. Yeah, that was... But when I was going up, for example, there was no Treehouse, so Sesame Street was a bigger deal, like what came on TVO or whatever, CBC, whatever. Yeah, Owen watched Treehouse

and teletune. Yeah, that would be the two big ones. But Trial's had no ads, but it was for a younger, a younger audience, if you will, the toddler said. Okay. That last thing, the brush your teeth thing that you played, that's from ToonBops,

which was a Nelvana initiative on YouTube, like specifically on YouTube, not for broadcast. Interesting. Yeah, so that, from my point of view as a composer, not as interesting as being on broadcast TV, because there are, the royalties are much, much lower.

Absolutely. So. Sesame Street Library coming to YouTube. Also, here's news. Do you have any awareness of the hockey analyst

known as Bob McKenzie? No. Okay, so Bob McKenzie, that's okay. You know, I can tell you, he's been over a couple of times.

He's been on Toronto Mike. But Bob McKenzie, most recently was at TSN, like a TSN insider, their number one hockey analyst guy, like for trade deadlines or the World Juniors, whatever was going on at TSN. So the news in the Bob McKenzie camp that came out during this last quarter,

he had semi-retired, so he'd come for big things like trade deadline, I don't know, draft day, World Juniors, but now he's 100% retired. So Bob McKenzie is going to enjoy retirement. He's not working at TSN anymore. That's news from the past quarter. He's going to go to his cottage and not invite you or me. Well, you know what? He does have a cottage, a beautiful cottage, from one of the first.

I gather, and he does not invite me. Yeah, right. And we're going to see if we can fix that. Bob, if you're listening. Bob, I'm trying to remember. Bob has some cool stories, but one is that he's a huge Howard Stern fan. I'm going to talk about Howard when we get to the radio segment. But he did, like, you know how he had the, not a, like a post show.

Like Howard wasn't on this. I think maybe Bubba Booie or other people would host this, like where they would talk about the show and everything. He was on one or two of those. Oh, no kidding. He was on the Howard Stern Sirius XM station. The wrap-up show or something. Those are the words I'm looking for.

That's why you're here. I used to listen to Howard Stern daily, but I had a girlfriend who objected. And I was happy that Howard Stern had evolved in many ways. Yeah, less strippers and stuff. Yeah, exactly. But at the same time, when I did think about stuff he had done and said, I was kind of vaguely horrified.

So, I mean, I listened to. I was a big Howard Stern. Actually, I feel like we're going to get to Howard Stern. Okay, fair enough. But my last note on that is that I distinctly remember him using the N-word, for example. Really? Yeah. I don't remember that.

Had I known that, I would have tuned out at that point. And he did a DMX. Well, he did a DMX parody. I remember, and my N-word was kind of the repeated chorus. And we are going back, I don't know, 20 years or so. Wow. But, you know, we're not going back, you know, 80 years. But that's not him saying it.

Yeah, he said it. Oh, really? I heard him say it. Don't like it. But his argument would be he's using the soft, the A. The A at the end, right? Yeah, yeah. That argument doesn't work for me. I dare you right now, Blair, to say it with any of the end. I'm not going to do it.

No. This reminds me when Scott Thompson was over, and he wanted me to say the F slur. Like, it was like a big, he said, just come on and say it. But, uh, because. The F, F slur? F slur for homosexuals. Oh, okay, okay, yes. Yeah, but Scott, like, yeah, he can, yeah.

I, uh, I worked with Bruce McCullick, a month. about a month ago. Did you tell him to come on Toronto Mike? I didn't. I'm sorry. We were busy. Can you text him while I read the next story here in the TV segment here? All right.

I'll text him. He and Sean Cullen came over and sang some vocals. As a dream team. Yeah, it is a dream team. They were lovely. And I think I did a good job. Okay, well, I got Sean over here. I've got to get Bruce over here.

I've tried. I've tried. Now, the last piece I wanted to discuss with you in the television segment before we pivot to radio. and radio is brought to you by Great Lakes Breweries, so maybe we can even crack a beer. But this is from Patricia Juggernauth. Do you know the name Patricia Juggernaut? I don't.

So Patricia was a longtime weather specialist, like not a meteorologist. That's part of the problem, actually. But she would read the weather on CP24. Okay. Like for years. Okay. And she quit the job and filed a suit against Bell Media.

She felt that she was a victim of racism and that she couldn't get a full-time gig. She was always pay-as-you-go part-time, and she felt that was racially motivated, and she sort of had a bunch of grievances with Bell Media. So this was something we were kind of following. We talked about it quite a bit when Mark Wiseblot would visit every month, for example. But the note that came out from Patricia Juggernauth

since we last recorded, Blair, reads, The parties have resolved this matter to the mutual satisfaction of Bell Media and Patricia Juggernauth. There will be no further comment, sorry, there will be no further public comments about this matter. So that's it.

So there's no insight into, you know, what happened, just that neither party is going to discuss this ever again. So that is the update that it's over and we don't know anything more.

Well, there you go. Yeah, I mean, I'm, you know, I wasn't even familiar with her. I stopped, I stopped my cable a long time ago. And so I haven't seen broadcast TV except in a waiting room, you know, where I might see CP 24.

But I would say this, I worked for Bell Media at News Talk 1010, and I don't have any expectation of ever getting hired by Bell Media again. So I can say they are a very tight-fisted company, and the bottom line is everything. And I would be surprised, but of course, I can't insert myself into that situation. but I'd be surprised if there was any other motivation for that policy of theirs of in terms of what Patricia was saying other than money. I'd be surprised.

That said, as Norm Beaver said, I'm an old white man, so what do I know about that? Well, what I know is that I personally reached out to Patricia to invite her over to talk before this... Before the announcement of... Before this announcement of there will be no further public comments about this matter because this podcast is right. rather public, and very comment-y.

But I said, Patricia, please be my guest. I said, we'll chat about everything. I would love to hear your side of this, and it never happened. So I did my best to get Patricia over here to discuss. Now it sounds like there will be no further public comments about this matter. And I think this might be the last time we talk about it on Toronto Mike, unless Patricia changes her mind and wants to come over. So there you go.

That's your final update. Do you want a beer, Blair? Sure. Yes. So I put a cold premium logger on the table. That's from Great Lakes Brewery. Yes. And I...

It is cold. It's great. It's fresh from the fridge. Yeah. And I have a... In fact, these are like an endangered species because they did the last batch. They brewed the last batch of Sunnyside Session IPA. So I have one of the last cans. I think there's still some cans available, but they're...

Much like Chorus is not doing any more development. Great Lakes will not develop new... Session, sunny side session, IPA until next spring. Oh, okay. For next summer.

It'll come back. It's a season over. So three, two. I'm late to the party. There we go. That's okay. Two crickets is better.

So cheers to you, Blair, back of them. Thank you very much. I love that you're a part of rewinder because we get to hang out at least once a quarter. So that's,

it actually limits my appearances here. It's good for you because otherwise you'd have me on every month. Well, you've got to eat, right? And you got to drink. So I do have some fresh craft beer

for you from Great Lakes to take home with you. Oh, that's so nice. That'll keep me for another day or two. That won't even get you through the day. But thank you, Great Lakes Brewery for your support and for sponsoring this segment of Rewinder. This is the radio segment. That's right.

So I have a bunch of stuff. And then again, sometimes you'll have something to say about it. Sometimes you won't. Sometimes I'll just sit here dumbly sipping my beer. Do you know Bob McKenzie and you'll be like, nope? And then I'll let everybody know the man is retired. And he's a nice guy, by the way. I had a great experience of Bob McKenzie.

Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I have a sports void. That's the thing, and you know that. You know, I don't, you know, there's only one little minor sports item, I think, in this radio segment. But I'm going to start by telling you, well, maybe I'll ask you, I'm putting on the spot here, but it's funny. We talked about Nilvana, that's Chorus Entertainment, and their headquarters is Chorus Key, not too far from the GLB Brew Pub, home of TMLX20 on September 25th at 6 p.m. Oh, back at the brew pub.

That's nice. Jarvis and Queens Key. Yeah, nice. That's a good spot. Very close to there is the Chorus Key. Mm-hmm. And in that building, not owned by Chorus, but they would broadcast a station known as Element FM 106.5. Mm-hmm.

Do you have any awareness of Element FM 106.5? No. You're not alone, actually. I think this is part of the problem. But I did get a tour. Doug Thompson, who came over to talk about the history of 1050 Chum, because he worked there for many years. He was doing work with El. Element FM 106.5, along with FOTM Dave Charles.

And I got a tour of where they broadcast from. It was in the chorus key building there. Well, the news I have to report is that midnight on August 31st, that's only five days or so ago, they stopped broadcasting the station. It went off the air. It is no more. So Element FM had a mandate for a certain percentage of their programming

would be indigenous artists. but there was no listenership that I could detect because when they had these numerous ratings, they would get a 0.0, so I have no idea, like, how it rounded. Oh, wow. Yeah, but that's just people carrying the device. And, you know, that's a whole different conversation. But this station in Toronto, this FM station, is no more.

So I thought we should lead with that. It's gone. That's, you missed it, Blair. I missed it, the demise of radio. I love radio. But I have to say, I haven't been listening much. I used to listen avidly to CBC Radio 1. But less so now?

Much less so now because I'm listening to podcasts. And there always seems to be a podcast to listen to, including this one. And Emily Whedon might come on Toronto, Mike. Didn't you want to catch up with her? And I did, and I, yeah, and Emily has a great radio voice. I mean, she sounds a bit like a kid. It's sort of like a kid, a really smart kid, precocious kid doing radio. She can have a voice over.

Yeah, I think she did. Well, you're right. I got to re-listen to the episode. I'm sure we talked about it. So we tip our Great Lakes beer to the late Element FM 106.5, no longer on the air. This radio item is a little sportsy, but are you familiar with a TSN radio show that's also on TSN television? I already know the answer is going to be no. But Overdrive, this actually ties into John Derringer's nephew, Brian Hayes.

Oh, okay. So Brian Hayes is one of the three hosts. The other two are former NHL players. Noodles and O'Dog, which is funny to say that out loud. Noodles and O'Dog. And then, of course, Brian Hayes, whose dad is an FOTM. So shout out to Bill Hayes. Great voice.

Yes, Bill came to a TMLX event that I was at. I think my first one at the brewery where I sang Last of Red Hot Fools. So Bill Hayes was there. I can't quite remember who shows up to all these things. But that's cool. was there, yeah. Always got a great voice. Yeah.

So, Overdrive, the big news from them is that effective Tuesday, which is two days ago, they're going to be two hours instead of three hours. So this is sort of a footnote of changes. We talk about all these things. Overdrive shed an hour off their daily recording time. So I don't know what that means. Like, I don't know if that hurts the show or what Overdrive fans think of that. But basically, they'll go two hours instead of three.

If they need a new theme song, you could compose it and sing it. I was actually singing Overload by Alfie's Apacostka. Overload. Alfie's in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I'm pretty sure that song got him a cottage or something like that. No, because it was on the Dirty Dancing Two soundtrack. That's right. No, not two.

Wasn't it two? It was the first one? The first one? But in any case, it made a lot of money from airplay, but also from mechanical royalties, which would be paid out, you know, when the, when physical copies are made, and so many physical copies of that soundtrack were made. You're absolutely correct, as usual, and I don't know how much money he made from Pizza Nova for the Pizza Nova jingle, but you can hear it in the closing theme.

That's Rob Bruce put together, yeah. So good. Do you know the name Harvey Glatt? Yes, I do. I knew Harvey. Can you talk to us about Harvey Glatt? I took the first line from his obituary. He passed away, sadly.

But it said, Harvey Glatt, the man who always. almost single-handedly brought musical culture to Ottawa. What can you say about Harvey Glenn? Well, Harvey was a huge music fan, and he, I believe, you see, I don't know the actual story so much. I only know my own experiences with Harvey, but he started Treblecliffe record stores, I think, and then they started selling tickets. They were a ticket outlet for concerts in the Ottawa area. I think they may have even promoted concerts

and Harvey eventually was the owner of Shea 106 which was a highly influential FM radio station in Ottawa and that's when I met him I met him through Greg Torrington at Shea 106 when the Jitter's first album was coming out so it was August of 87 and I met Harvey and he was rather disconcertingly

wearing a full-on bicyclist cyclist outfit. Okay. Like the spandex. Yeah. And he was at that time, so I would have been

27 or 28, and he was probably 60 something. I don't know, actually I haven't done the math, but he was definitely an older gentleman in a very form-fitting suit, and it was a little disconcerting. And he was also sort of,

he was a quiet talker, so he would sort of speak like this. And so you had to be up close to him, which was a little disconcerting as well. but but a true lover of music um and uh uh i believe three offspring um uh nancy margo and i think rob uh but nancy ended up married to stan mizner for a number of years stan one chance miser who was a dear friend of mine president of so can the board for years and uh a terrific songwriter uh as well um and uh yeah And Harvey's wife, Louise, who pre-deceased him a few years ago,

they were both fans of my mother's paintings. And they owned a few paintings of my mums. And they would come to show. Yeah. So, yeah. So there's all these ties. Yeah. Yeah.

So we're sorry to learn of Harvey Glatz passing. He was a good guy, really good guy. But Ottawa, Mike would have definitely dove deep into that one, I think, for sure. Shea 106. It was in the byword market on the third or fourth floor of a little brick building, and it was a great station. They played the jitters a lot. As far as I'm concerned, Blair, any station that plays the jitters a lot is a great station.

But they had great personalities on the air. I mean, it was really, to me, it was a bit of a throwback. By the time I got there, Toronto Radio had gotten a lot slicker, and Shea 106 was not. as slick and not in a not in a small town unsophisticated way just in a friendlier way they were they they were they were great i really liked them a lot rest in power harvey glad yes speaking of ottawa uh again these are notes i literally take i have a living breathing google document and over like it's you know a quarter's three months did you know that i did know that yeah so you're here

we cover we drain the swamp and then for the next three months when something comes across my newsfeed or my mind or the chat or wise blot tells me about it it goes into the document and i have a great note here uh brings us back to the financial difficulties at chorus chorus cut all radio personnel in ottawa so if you worked for an ottawa radio station owned by chorus you were either relocated or lost your job in this past quarter wow well that's a big that's a big move um yeah it's um the you know The radio station I used to work for the longest, which was News Talk 1010 here in Toronto, CFRB, the crown jewel of broadcasting in Canada, the second radio station on the air in Canada ever, the station where the Beatles were played in Canada for the first time, although played

as a novelty by Ray Sonan. So before 1050? Yes, yes, definitely, a full year before. Maybe not a year, but a significant period of time beforehand, they were. played as a sort of a novelty. This is what's going on in Britain right now, that kind of thing. But anyway, CFRB, where my father was vice president of standard broadcasting, and he didn't get me my job. I'm not a Napo baby. I was going to say, are you a Nepo baby, Blair? My father had already had already passed away by the time I got my job at CFRB.

But when I began working there, they were at Young in St. Clair, and there were two radio stations, CFRB and CKFM, Mixed 99, and then that became Virgin Radio. And then eventually, after many years, we moved down to the Chum City Chum building. And so we were on, essentially on Richmond, but, you know, the back of that building. And you're talking about 299 Queen. 299 Queen, the back of a 299 Queen. And then, but as I worked there, you know, we started out, there was a full, you'd walk through what was kind of like the bullpen. There were areas where producers could put their shows together and there are lots of people selling advertising and so forth.

A big room full of people and a real hive of activity. And as we continued to do our show once a week, every week I'd go in and there'd be fewer people. Fewer people, fewer people. And then the newsroom got cut and it just became a ghost town. And I was speaking with somebody who still works there regularly. And he said, it's an absolute ghost town. There's about seven people manning this station now. Have they vacated that $2.99 queen?

Have they vacated that studio space for Asian court? No, as far as I know, no, because my friend is still going down there to... It's probably only a matter of time, I think, before they have to leave, I think. Probably, yes. And it's a shame because they spent a lot of money on it. I mean, it's quite a fancy facility. and they didn't need to because, you know, what was at Young and St. Clair was really good,

but I guess there were savings to be had. When I was hanging it with Humble Howard Glassman as he promoted a book, he came on the Jim Richards Show, which was a night show on 1010. We went to this location, St. Clair, I guess it's two St. Clair or something like that? Yeah, to St. Clair at West.

So, yeah, the three stations I remember being there, like I remember seeing 1010, I hope I get this right, 10-10 was there. 99.9 was there. And I feel like there was another one. 97.3, boom, boom. Okay.

Yeah. Okay, because that would eventually, that was, oh, it was easy rock because boom is, right. Right. Now it is.

Oh, yeah, because there was a whole, right, and they had a wonderful one of the time. It was owned by standard broadcast. Okay, keep it track over here.

I got a whiteboard over here. It's like track everything. So one interesting footnote on the Ottawa situation is that Colleen Rushholm, a beloved FOT team, who I chatted up at the Neil Young concert recently. Oh, nice. I got a good chat with her.

But she actually kind of got packaged out of chorus. She was on Boom because Boom in Ottawa is owned by Chorus. Like, it's kind of confusing. Oh. I know. I guess they licensed it. I don't know who owns the brand Boom. Yeah.

But our boom is owned by Stingray. The boom in Ottawa owned by Chorus and she got packaged out and they went to like a one person booth, but then subsequently, of course, everyone got purged. So, chorus, much like they did in Kingston, Ontario, when a friend of the show, FOTM, Bob Willett got it and a bunch of people. So they cleared out all the chorus radio personnel in Kingston. They did the same thing in Ottawa. Right.

Oh, well, that's, that's, it's ongoing. I mean, it's an epidemic. It's an epidemic. And it's, it's a shame. But, you know, when I mentioned the radio to my students at Seneca College, you know, how important it is to get on the radio, they're like, yeah, sure it is, old man, you know, they, I can see that. Yeah, they don't.

Radio means nothing to them. Like, how important you think radio is really shows your age. Like, I think there's, There's people your age and older boomers particularly who still live in this world where radio is like really important and it makes a lot of money and they sink a lot of money into it and they care about it. Meanwhile, I have a story coming up later. I'm going to tease it, but I'm going to go into detail with you when I get there. But it's clear that Bell Media, for example, doesn't actually give a rat's ass about listenership on the weekends to 1010. Like there's no one left to lose.

No, goodness, no. I mean, that's why our show, which was eventually called in the studio, that's why, you know, the pittance that they were paying us was too much. You know, it was easier for them to just rerun other material. They would play the Mark Maren podcast, you know, which they got for free. So it would be cheaper and easier for them to just run existing material. And I think the only live voice you'll get on 1010 on a weekend is Jason Agnew, FOTM, Jason Agnew doing Sunday morning trivia.

Oh, wow. That's amazing. He's still doing that. What my friend told me was there are no more freelancers there at all. And it's only literally seven or eight people, but no freelancers at all. And this was a drag for him because he did a lot of fill-in stuff. He was the go-to person whenever anybody was sick or had a vacation or whatever, he was the go-to person.

And now it means that the people who are employed on salary, they will cover other people's shifts as part of their salaries. Oh my goodness. So this is kind of ties into some, this is more TMU news, but it's also applicable to Rewinder. Bob Willett comes on every month for toast with Rob Proust. Bob Willett was here on Tuesday.

And he was also here last Tuesday because we did, we did August's toast at the end of the month. And then we did September's toast at the beginning of the month. So one week before toast, during that week, Bob Willett, he revealed this. to me on public, on the public airwaves, I guess, on the Toronto mic, so I'm not telling any tales out of school, but they terminated his contract with Indy 88, and Bob was on, he had a weekday show, it was like evenings, and then the, it sounds like he's being replaced by nobody,

like we're just going to do re-rolls, like we're not even going to pay for a body at this time slot, and that's Indy 88, which has been doing rather well, relatively speaking, as of late. So Bob is now just doing pay-as-you-go weekend work, but he lost the actual full-time regular slot. Become a freelancer. He's not on salary. Yeah, right. So, yeah, well, that's, um, that's, uh, too bad.

Bad for listeners, bad for Bob and he's a good guy. Bob's great on the radio and he's a good guy. Yeah. Damn good guy. Okay. Uh, hopefully Bob will bounce back. Okay. Yeah.

So, uh, Howard Stern, we were talking earlier about Howard Stern. Uh, there was a story out of like an English publication. I can't remember which one, some, some newspaper out of England, which was saying that's, when Stern's contract ends at the end of the year or whatever, he's done with Sirius XM. Like, that's the end of Stern. But then meanwhile, I caught wind of a quote from somebody at Sirius XM, like an executive saying,

we'll likely find a way to sign Howard Stern. So I guess the news is that Howard Stern's contract is ending, and it might look differently. Like maybe he'd work less or something for less money. But I think Howard Stern will end up renewing with Sirius XM in some format. I tend to think so. I mean, it seems to me that's just contract games. You know, your contract's coming up. You know, you're not going to say, yeah, and I'm happy to keep going because, you know, you're negotiating for more money. So I would imagine, or different terms anyway, and I would imagine

that's what's going on there. But I don't know. Um, you know, as I, as I said, I, I stopped listening. It really wasn't a, um, uh, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't planting a flag by, not listening to Howard Stern anymore, although I was aware that my former girlfriend had an opinion. Misogynist? Yeah, amongst others. And, you know, there's some truth of that, even though I feel like he's evolved enormously.

And I admire him for that. And I don't think that people should necessarily be held accountable for every single thing if they are evolving and working on themselves. But that said, I did just sort of move away from it. But I would say this, if I ever go missing, If you don't know where to find me, ask Sirius XM because they'll find me. They send me, I canceled my Sirius XM about six months ago, and they keep sending me. They phone me all the time, and they send me reminders, and I do not wish to re-up.

Interesting you mentioned that. I've never had a subscription, but once a year, usually for a week or so in the summer, I borrow a car that has Sirius XM. So I get like a, you know, a couple of road trips in with where I can hear Howard Stern. And to you, I think his interviewing skills are very good. Like, I think when he has a guest on, he's not afraid to go to the place you want him to go where I think a lot of interviewers, because I try to be like that myself. Like, I'm going to ask that uncomfortable question that everybody wants me to ask. But I think a lot of interviewers play it safe.

Like they don't want to upset or offend their guests. So they play like, we're not going to go to that obvious spot that everyone listening wants us to go to because that might make you uncomfortable. Yeah, and I think Howard Stern's really good at that. His Bruce Springsteen interview was the greatest. It was so good. But that might have been the last time I paid really close attention. You know, I heard Mark Mare, and I mentioned him before. And, you know, he's like the grandfather of podcasting as well as a stand-up, obviously.

But... And an actor. And an actor, great actor, actually, as it turns out, a total natural. Because he's, I found, every time I watch him, I forget that it's him. You know, I'm into the... No, he's a good actor. I've seen him. some movies and he was great but i heard him interview i think it was wyatt senac and white senac had left

uh the daily show under cloudy circumstances and um and was telling how i was telling uh mark mary his story and said something like along something along the lines of um yes well uh you know of course that all goes back to when i was 11 uh when uh my dad uh shot my mother or something like And Mark Maron is so into himself. Oh, he went right by it? He went, he went, yeah, that's tough. Well, you know, people's relationships with their parents are hard. My mom is really a narcissist.

And it's like, well, no, no, no, wait. No, no, no. So what I literally, what I've started saying is sometimes I'll, you know, I interview a lot of guests for many hours, okay? And somebody will say something like, not quite that exciting, but something like that. And I'll be like, I'll stop down and I'll look at him and I'll say, okay, back up the truck. Exactly. Hold on.

I'll say, back up the truck. Right. Your dad killed your mom, whatever. Or whatever the story. I can't remember exactly. Whatever it was. And then I absolutely delicately sometimes. Sometimes I've got to be careful, but I'm definitely going to seek more detail and see what

they're willing to share. You can't just drop that and walk away. But I've heard podcast interviewers where the guests will say something like that. Oh, yeah. When my dad shot my mom, my mom. And like this, the interviewer will go to the next question that he's scripted it. On his scripted. and yeah or his or her script and i'm like how do you not pick at that comment so what is your so what is your favorite color or when you write songs what comes first the music or the lyrics you know right which by the way never asked that question please billy joel was asked that question by how we're certain because i played it on an episode toast a couple of weeks ago and billy joe talked about how he always writes the little i'm trying to get that whatever way he always does it for we didn't start the fire he did it the other way yeah and it's the only time he did it the other way anyway i just that it was well well

Well, I think that, yeah, that's, you know, if Howard Stern has a failing, bringing it back to Howard Stern, I would say that he, because he loves music, he presumes that he knows more about it than, than he does. So he'll make pronouncements and, you know, about how this must have been written or this must have been made. And they're, like, from my point of view, as a lifelong musician, I'm like, no, that's not how it works. But he will make that. And I do find that most people are like that. When I write music for film or TV, and I have to deal with a director, the director will have opinions about music and they'll, and it's because people love music and everybody owns a record player or an MP3 player or, you know, now I'm dating myself

completely. But, you know, everybody feels an attachment to music. So they feel like they know it and they have their favorite bands. And so they'll give an opinion. And Howard Stern, in saying that, kind of reveals I don't know to me it's not it's an amateur sort of well we're none of us perfect but he's entertained me

for many hours but to that former girlfriend I don't listen to him anymore and you know he evolved but you yeah you move on too that's fair that's all fair in love and war here

okay my last point on series X-N when I had it for like a week every summer and this has been going on for a long long time I forget Howard Stern for a minute when I listen to something, I like Alt Rock, so I'll tune in a station called Lithium, and I'll be like, oh, I like this playlist. Two things that make me

never want to subscribe to Sirius XM. One is the Alt Rock is very American centric. So you don't get your odds. No. You know, you don't get, I'm looking for, I won't, and I'm looking for Sloan, okay? It's very American, firstly. So gin blossoms instead of

lowest of the low, basically. But the other thing is how shallow, like you have all the music in the world at your fingertips. I will listen for two hours on a road trip, and I will already hear repeats. It's the same 20 songs. How shocking is it that Series XM has such a shallow playlist

for lithium's alt rock station? Yeah. So, like, no thank you. Like, I'll stick to my premium YouTube and create my playlist or whatever. I have a comment about radio on the live stream. It is somebody who's billing themselves as a radio lady. Somebody who's billing themselves.

I like that. You sound so skeptical. The question about Element FM is she, you know, she wants to know. We don't have an answer here. You're presuming she's a she because she says radio lady. I know. You're presuming she's a she because she says radio lady.

But what if she's not? That's my question. And I know that she drove you to Pete Fowler's back here at once. She did in fact, yes. Will that frequency go back? Will it be available again? She points out it is a shitty signal, but even shitty signals in Toronto,

especially on the FM dial, have value. So we'll have to see what happens to the frequency. What was the frequency? 106.5, I think, or something like that.

Did I say that? That's close to Q. It's close to Q. It's close to Q. Which is a very strong signal. Yeah. I don't know. That's a great question,

though, Radio Lady. Radio Lady, that gets, 106.5 element FM, no more. So we will find out. And hello to everybody on the live stream. DJ Dream Doctors there points out to his ears. Indy 88 doesn't sound much different

From Edge to my years, I hope I'm going to trouble for it. I think Edge's playlist sounds better to my ears now because Indy has so broadened their playlist that they're going to play like, I don't know, a Peter Gabriel's song from the 80s. And they're just, they're adding in these like boom type, greatest hits type songs. Right, and they're playing Bruce Springsteen. Yeah, like they'll play, I'm on fire or whatever. As much as I like Bruce Springsteen, I feel like that shouldn't be on an indie, you know, self-styled indie station. They're trying to, I believe they're trying to get some boom.

listeners to switch over. And to do that, they have to really broaden that playlist. You know, play a heart song or something like that. Okay. Hello to Andy, who said I pronounced Patricia's name wrong. I was saying, I guess, more of a juggernauth. It's Jaggernauth. Like, I got to go on the heart on that A. So thank you. VP reminds me, Bob McKenzie's nickname is Bobby Margarita. He's probably at the cottage right now enjoying one of his margarita. Not inviting us. C. Fry's 86 says her son loved Chuck and Friends. Oh, no kidding. That's nice. So there's some love for Chuck and Friends.

Oh, Leslie's telling me, she never told me Cousin Janow, I think this was before we press record, that I thought she was going with Cousin Janow to the Who. I might have misread or maybe I assumed she went with her friend Leo, who is a fantastic songwriter and a musician in his own right.

I think Leslie has mentioned Leo to me. Is that true, Leslie? I feel like you mentioned, and you said that Leo's not terribly ambitious or something and that... Oh, but Leo might hear this and be offended. No, no, no, she didn't, I don't think she put it in a derogatory way at all. She just meant that he's enjoying life. He writes for himself and so forth, but she wondered if I should meet him sometime. So, Radio Lady points out something I do know, because I actually live close to

the new owner of Indy 88, because this person has an Indy 88 car once in a while that I think they share with Mimico Joe. This is a lot of detail to say that, yeah, there's new ownership of Indy88, and that's kind of maybe resulting in this new, uh, new, um, DJ Dream Doctor says if Indies playing Springsteen, they will fold soon, I predicted. Well, you can say that about any radio, say, every radio station except maybe the one radio station that will, like, survive like cockroaches, which is 680 News. I feel like 680 News might be the only safe, well, definitely the only safe AM station in this country, if you ask me. Okay, we got to move on here. We get talking, okay, quick hits.

Kella, this is how she was billed. Kella was fired by Q107. So Q107 listeners who enjoyed an on-air personality named Kella, haven't heard Kella in a while because this last quarter, sadly, she got pink slipped. She got the tap on the shoulder. So you don't know Kelly. I'm going to assume. I don't know Kele.

Okay, we wish Keller well in her future endeavors. Okay, here's a little sports item, but Joe Bowen, who I met at the GLB Brew Pub. You know this name. What is his catchphrase? Do you know, Blair? I'm Joe Bowen. No, I don't know. It's Holy Macon.

Oh, of course. I know that. That's him. I didn't realize that. They made a Holy Mac and a logger at Great Lakes, actually. Well, he announced that after this upcoming season, one more season, his 44th calling Leaf Games, he's going to retire. So one more year of Joe Bowen calling Leaf Games. That's amazing.

Good luck to Joe Bowen. I have an item, because I know how I want to close the TV. There's an item, sorry, this is the radio segment. There's an item I missed in the TV segment, okay? So I'm going to play this, and then we're going to talk about it. It should have gone in the TV. Somebody's going to be fired for this mistake here. But let's listen.

Oh, hey, everybody. We got a great show for you tonight. Senator Adam Schiff was my guest. We harmonized on Seven Bridges Road. What a voice, I cried. But before we start the show, I want to let you know something that I found out just last night. Next year will be our last season.

The network will be ending the late show in May. And... Yeah, I share your feelings. It's not just the end of our show, but it's the end of the late show on CBS. I'm not being replaced. This is all just going away. And I do want to say that the folks at CBS have been great partners.

I'm so grateful to the Tiffany Network for giving me this chair and this beautiful theater to call home. And of course, I'm grateful to you, the audience, who have joined us, every night in here, out there, all around the world, Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea. I'm grateful to share the stage with this band, these artists over here every night. And I am extraordinarily deeply grateful to the 200 people. who work here. We get to do this show. We get to do this show for each other every day, all day. And I've had the pleasure and the responsibility of sharing what we do every day with you in front of this camera for the last 10 years. And let me tell you, it is a fantastic job. I wish somebody else was getting it.

And it's a job that I'm looking forward to doing with this usual gang of idiots for another 10 months. It's going to be fun. Yeah. You all ready? You're going to lock in. You're going to rock in. You're ready? Let's go.

You all ready? Okay. That's all I wanted to say. Dante? Let's do the show. Jazz Cowboy! Brop it on the Poof! So this announcement came out during the last quarter.

The late show is going to be no more. Yes. I was a fan. I love Stephen Colbert. Not always, not all the time, not every word out of his mouth, but for the most part, he's very, very funny and a really good interviewer.

We talked about Howard Stern being a great interviewer, and I think Colbert is a great interviewer as well. I think that I feel optimistic about the voices of sanity in America, rallying, you know, given, like, in, rather than, when his, the end of the show was announced, it was suggested that this was a way of corporate America shutting down dissident voices, which is sort of weird for a big mainstream show like that. But I don't think that's what's going to net out, even if that was part of the consideration. Okay, so a couple of quick facts on that matter is that,

Paramount, which owns the show, they had settled this lawsuit that Trump had against 60 minutes. Yes. This was like just before this announcement. Meanwhile, you might know that Stephen Colbert spoke out against this, what he called a frivolous lawsuit against 60 minutes. Yeah. And then he got fired.

That's interesting. But also a little reminder to you that there was this big deal where Paramount was acquiring Skydance, which is like a media company founded by the son of billionaire Trump backer Larry Ellison. Yes. And that the, I think Trump, they had to, the FCC, not Trump necessarily, but the FCC had to approve this acquisition before it could go through. And this was a huge acquisition. So the timing is interesting that Colbert got it just before the FCC approved the acquisition of Skydance by Paramount. Yes.

so all this swirls around and you can say that oh it you know it's time for late night shows to go and this was an expensive show and it was going to die but the timing is curious that one would raise a spokian eyebrow i agree with all of that and i think that you know the the you know multiple things can be true at once um so i think that it was getting expensive i think when they if they re-upped with him it would be that much more money uh and television is losing its dominance has lost its dominance, not to the same degree as radio, but pretty close. And so I can see all of the reasons. I can certainly see the political reasons for it. And I can see that Colbert is an outspoken critic of things like settling with, you know, with nuisance lawsuits. A critic of Trump himself. Yeah, a critic, very much, a vocal critic of Trump himself.

But also, you know, of that settlement and so forth. So I can see all of these things being true at once. But I am heartened by. the idea that, I mean, he's doing his new thing with Jasmine Crockett. Do you know about that? No, tell me. Is she a senator? She's a...

Congresswoman? Congresswoman, she's an outspoken critic of Trump. I've seen clips of her on, like, Reddit, et cetera. And so he and he and Jasmine Crockett are doing a thing together where they're spending their time criticizing the administration, which I think is just fine. I don't think there's anything wrong with criticizing whomever is in power. whoever is worthy of criticism. Yes, yeah.

You know, regardless of party or politics. So I'm hardened to think that there may be, you know, there may be a reaction to all of this corporate cowtowing to the administration in the states. And there, you know, there are probably people amongst your listeners who are thinking American politics, what does that have to do with us? It has everything to do with us, unfortunately. Like it or not, it has so much to do with us.

you know, paying attention is, as long as it's not to an unhealthy degree, is probably a good, good idea. Right. Well said, Mr. Packham, that's why you co-host, Rewinder. Rewind. In that little clip, you're like, shout out to snowman. I love that theme, man. So in that little clip where Stephen Colbert is giving the news, he's announcing the news,

he mentions the 200 people who work on the show. And all I can think, and maybe it's because one person works on Toronto Mike, although you did do the theme song for Rewinder, thank you very much. But 200, like, can't you get that down? Am I nuts to think a one-hour talk show on TV doesn't need to be 200 people? It's funny, you should mention that, because when I did in the studio with Bob Reed, my co-host. Let me guess two people worked on that show. Two people worked on that show.

We produced the show. We wrote the segments. We, you know, we booked the guests. We did everything, you know, that was required to get it on the air. Edited the show, et cetera. Bob used to say that about CBC because I was a fan of CBC and I'd mentioned some show

and Bob didn't listen to CBC it was the government broadcaster as far as he was concerned, why would I listen to that? You know, and I'm thinking, well, because your tax dollars are paying for it, so maybe you should. And it's fucking good. Yeah, exactly. And no ad break. But he would say they do it with, you know, 20 people on each show and so forth.

So he makes a point. Like Steve Jeffries on Boom who's not giving you any information really about what's happening in that Toronto City Council or having on somebody that, you know, from city council to talk about this decision, that decision. But Stu Jeffries produces his own show and he manns his own board. Yep. Operates his own board. And he, he's the host as well.

So one person works on the boom morning show. And Metro Morning does have a crew. Like there's producers on the Metro Morning show. There's researchers. But it's a very smart, well-produced program that it can't just be David common and somebody read in the traffic. And the thing is about, and no disrespect to Stu at all. I mean, he's a consummate broadcaster.

Rocking tonight That's right Which is where I met him And I wonder if he remembers But I'll ask him He's fantastic The thing is though He's still doing a show

That's largely You know music And so he's talking between songs Whereas Metro Morning For example As a morning show Is doing news items And they have political guests

And they have There's a lot to coordinate there That's way different than just spinning record not again not just spinning records i don't want to denigrate what stew does at all but no well this is obvious yes you need more bodies for metro morning than you do and absolutely here and they have a mandate over there right so they don't just have to play sweet car lines so that stew can sing sing along to it here but i did when i do it again i'm there stew knows i love him he was over here crying one day oh okay now i don't know what it takes

to make a tv show except that i think you could have a late show with stephen colbert that was well-ridden and Colbert would be well-hosted and have your guests. I think you can do it with a crew of 50 people. Yeah, 25% of the crew that he has. Sure, 50 people sounds like a lot too. So, sure. Yeah, I went high thinking I probably don't realize how many people you need. Someone's going to operate the camera.

Maybe there's somebody doing this. All that stuff, I don't know. But 200 people working on that show is where I thought, oh, that's why it's so expensive. Right. You know, okay, so these are all things we're talking about as if I know how to make a, No, Ed the Sock didn't have 200 people working on that late night show. No, he probably didn't. Quick hits again.

Jeff Chalmers has replaced Brad Barker on Jazz FM. Both of these men are FOTMs. They've been over for great chats. Brad Barker, this all comes together with Mo Berg. Brad Barker is currently a member of the Pursuit of Happiness. And I'm not sure what's next for him, but it sounds like he left his job at Jazz FM, like, voluntarily. He didn't get a tap, I don't think. Brad, so Brad leaves Jazz FM

and Jeff Chalmers is recruited to replace, or I don't know if he's recruited, but he applied and got the gig. So Jeff Chalmers took over for Brad Barker on Jazz FM. Any thoughts on any of those three things? Jeff Chalmers, Brad Barker, or Jazz FM? Jeff Chalmers, I gave two air conditioners to

a couple of summers ago. How did you have two? My neighbor gave me a couple, and he gave me three and I only needed one. I think he's a really nice guy. What a great guy. So is Brad, of course. And Jeff is a first.

friend of um of karen pace who lived in the house adjacent to mine that yeah Karen pace who you should have on because she'd be an unbelievably entertaining i like entertaining guests she uh and she's worked with a million people and and so forth but she um yeah i was at uh i was at karen's house one night and jeff was there and we talked about the air conditioner is uh there's not much to say there really but the other guest of note other than me of course was um was andrew lug oldham who's managed and produced the Rolling Stones. Yeah. He had, he's the reason the verve, am I right, the Verve, Bittersweet Symphony. That's correct. Yes. And he was staying at Karen's house and that's huge. In East York. So yeah, so next time he's in town, Karen could probably get

Andrew Lugold. Am I kidding me? But Jeff was there as well and that was fun. Brad Barker and I've known each other for a long, long, long, long time from when he first, well, before he joined Pursuit of Happiness. He was in a band in Halifax. I can't remember the name of the band, but they opened every night for a week for the jitters. We would go on at midnight because that's how they do it in Halifax. We'd play from midnight till three in the morning. Wow. And Brad's band went on at like 10 o'clock or whatever, and he was in that band. And Brad, he was the bass player in Monteforte. You know Monteforte? No. Monteforte was Moberg's cover band. and after Pursuit of Happiness,

when they would take a hiatus from playing as Pursuit, they would play as Monteforte. They were named after Henry Monteforte, their guitar tech. And Tam Amabale, the lovely Tamabale, great singer-songwriter from a band called the Fatal's, but who had been in Pursuit of Happiness before

was the singer, and Brad was the bass player and the person who talked to the audience. So Mo didn't want to talk to the audience, and he would... Yeah, he's shy that way. Yeah, and... That's why Chris Murr. Murphy's in the TransCanada Highway.

That's right. And, and, and, and, and, and Brad, Brad would just make shit up. And he would say, I remember going to see them at the horseshoe. And, uh, he would, there was a guy like filming at the front at the time when you had camcorders, like before it was on your phone. Right. And, and so he starts talking about him, and he gives him a name. He says, this is, this is Felipe.

He's, uh, he's with the European film crew that's been following us around on our tour. And of course, Monteforte is not on a tour. They're playing one night at the horses. Right. But he makes up all the shit when he had me come up to sing. he introduced me as Blair Backham from Moxie from that great Canadian band Moxie

and so then there was a review in like Now magazine or I magazine and it said that Blair Packam from Moxie said in Brad is Brad is just so funny he's so funny and yeah and he of course he had a long long career at Jazz FM

Yeah, a long, good run. And if he's being replaced by Jeff Chalmers, that's a good, that's a good. That has happened, my friend. Okay. Here's another name you know. I wonder if you could tell us what you know about this gentleman. FOTM, Wayne Webster. Oh, Wayne.

I love Wayne. Okay, tell us, like, how you know Wayne, for those who, this is the news item. I'll do the news item. Then you can tell us how you know Wayne. But he's been the music director at Boom 97.3, I think forever. Well, before that, it was mixed 99.9.9. Because there was no boom. Yeah, but he, I first met Wayne when the Jitter's record came out,

and I was introduced to him at that time. So that would be 1987. And he was, and remains, one of the lowest key guys I've ever met. And I say that with love. I don't know Wayne that well, but I've been to his house. I went to his house to play Christmas songs one Christmas with Arlene. He's a lovely guy. He's a sweetheart, but he does kind of.

talk like this. You know, he's being on the, people listening to this right now can pause and go find Wayne Webster on Toronto Mike. And you're absolutely right. He's got fascinating stories, but he's super low key.

He talks. He tends to talk very intimately. And yeah, so Wayne, I knew him when my show was on CFRB. I knew him from the jitters before. And I also actually, he spoke at my songwriting workshop and talked about, you know,

what radio-friendly songs should sound like in terms of songwriting. So he's very helpful that way as well. Lovely guy. 48-year career. So he starts as an intern on Q107 back in 1977. That's the first year of Q. Yeah. Because Dave Charles taught us all that.

This is right after Humber College. So he kind of does that. He gets a full-time gig as music director at Chum FM. That's 1979 to 1987. Then he went to CKFM and he was music director and assistant program director of course ckfm would become mix 99.9 he was there 21 years and then easy rock which became boom so he ended up at easy rock in 2007 and then of course when they became a boom 97.3 he was the music director that's going back to 2009 so he has announced that he is retiring

now like i think they're like i saw a job posting for music director director at Boom 97.3, you should probably retire. But he's retiring now because it says the end of the summer. That's amazing. Yeah, it's a long, long career. Wayne stepping down. Well, what a good successful run because Boom 97.3 is punched way above its weight and done very, very well in their key demographic. He's much, Wayne is much loved and deservedly so. Okay. So I know how I want to close this segment, but news came down today that I just thought it kind of ties into weekends on 1010 and the AM radio and who's listening, blah, blah, blah, blah. But Chorus Entertainment, we've talked about quite a bit today.

Cash-strapped chorus entertainment. They're going to air a syndicated program called, and I always have to remember how to say her name, the Vashi Capitalist, so Capulist, Capulis, right? But Vashy is what throws me off, because the spelling of Vasi's name is V-A-S-S-Y, but she says Vashy. So somebody's screwed up there.

That's none of my business, but she can, you know, she says it's Vashi, that's fine. But this show is called The Vashikopoulos show. I know her from CBC back in the day, but she, what's interesting to me, Blair, and why I want to bring it up is because she is on many a Bell Media channel. Like, she's on the Bell Media news channel. She's on 10-10. Like, she's working almost seemingly seven days a week. And now there's a syndicated show from Orbit Media.

Orbit is owned by Bell Media. So Vashy is not leaving Bell Media. All of our bell media shows will continue, but now there's a two-hour syndicated program that's going to air on chorus stations, including 640. So it is interesting, I would say, it's interesting to note that Vashi, who's got all these bell media shows, including 10-10,

will have a two-hour slot on 640. 640 and 10-10 are arch rivals in the Toronto talk world. So that's interesting, right? Yeah, it's very interesting. interesting. Yeah. And it's going to be all vashy all the time. More vashy. But yeah, two-hour show and it's a debuting Saturday. So amazing. But that is even like, I don't know if any money even changes hands here. Like there's some speculation that might be a barter deal or something because Kora has no money. But the idea that Bell would have a personality that's so aligned with Bell properties like 1010. To be on a show on the arch rival station on weekends is something I don't think we would have ever considered in the past. wouldn't have imagined that at all. But I can tell you this. The speculation on your part that maybe there's some barter going on, I can tell you from personal experience that that's partly how we were paid when we did our show. Spill that T-Bler. Well, I'm not going to spill the details,

but I will tell you that it's worse than you think. Well, I think it's very bad. So how could it be worse than that. Well, yeah. I mean, the people who are getting paid, properly paid, are the morning and afternoon drive people. And I suppose the tech people are getting paid probably not properly. Well, I was at a party this weekend with a board op at who actually left 640 because when Amanda Coppito left this program director, this gentleman left. I knew her. I knew Amanda. Yeah. And of course, Mike Ben Dixon's back there now. Oh, is he? Not back there, but there. You used to be at 10.10. Yes, he did. And then you got let go. And he was my boss. He was your right. So, okay. Jack Berkovitz was over here last week. You got to listen to this episode.

Yeah. Because he talks about Ben Dixon. It's very, very interesting. But here we are in an era where 10-10 cares so little about their weekend that they're going to have Vasi go up against whatever airs on 10-10. Like they just don't care. There's no listeners on weekends on 10-10, and they don't care. They don't care. It seems to be the case. No revenue there. Okay, maybe radio lady can chime in about that. How I want to end the radio segment is by playing a song. It takes me back I have a sad story to tell you

It may hurt your feelings a bit Last night when I walked into my bathroom I stepped in a big pile of shaving, be nice and clean So there's more like that, okay, You're going to get the idea very quickly But young Mike looked pretty young, very amused by this song And that I would repeat it through the years

And I just found it on YouTube Because Well, this is a lot more Each time I say, darling, I love you She tells me that I'm full of shaving cream So there you go You think he's going to say shit But he doesn't say shit

He says shaving cream There's a lot like that Very amusing, like So where, if you had to guess Scandalous Where do you think I heard this song as a kid? Uh, Dr. Demento. You got it.

Yeah. Okay, I loved listening to Dr. Demento for stuff like that. Yes. Here's the news since our last episode, a rewinder. It's from Dr. Demento himself. Okay. I'm now 84 years old and have been doing this show for nearly 55 years. About two thirds of my life.

By the way, Dr. Demento's real name is Barry Hanson. Oh. That's a fun fact for you. I thought he was actually a doctor and actually named Demento. That would be awesome. Yeah. It's been a blast, but I have come. to the decision that I need to hang up my top hat soon.

The show you just heard is the last of my regular shows. Dr. Demento up in, I didn't, by the way, I didn't know he was still doing a show. I don't even know where it would be. But Dr. Demento, after 55 years in his 84th year of life, has retired. That is amazing that he was still going. I really thought of it as something from the 70s or the 60s. Yeah, I remember from the 80s. There you go.

Because it was on Chum FM. Like 8 o'clock maybe on Sundays. Sunday nights. Yeah, around the Sunday night funnies. Right. With Rick Hodge. Right, right. Yeah, no, the shocking thing for me is that he was still on the air.

So, Dr. Demento, we wish you well in your retirement. You and Bob McKenzie are probably at his cottage right now. I can see Dr. Demento at the cottage. Having a daquiry. Oh, right. Come on, it's Bobby Margarita here. My goodness. How's your beer, Blair?

My beer is empty, and I'm fine with that. I did get a little drunk there. No, no, I think I got a little out of control. You think so? Yeah, when I was talking about cold beer. I feel like I was going off on some tangents. You know what? You were talking about cold bear while you were drinking a cold beer. Very nice.

Nicely done. I can't believe I'm not on 1010 on weekends. Yeah, really, you should be. You should take over for my show from five years ago. Rock talk. That's right. Bring it back. No, in the studio.

Rock talk. I did do a little segment that I thought was quite funny. I wrote a little theme for it. We played it about three times. called Six Minutes of Stardom because we would have a new person on and they would and so I had a little theme.

It's your six minutes of stardom. Anyway. Wonderful. I could do that for you. We have a new segment here. It's called, well, we did it last quarter, but it's a new segment for today anyway. Journalism and I took notes on journal.

There's not a lot here actually, not a lot of meat on this point. That tells you, I think the summer's tough for Rewinder because a lot of people go away, nothing happens. I think we did fine. Well, we're not even done yet. We're not even over yet. And you're already pronouncing it dead.

Journalism, the segment on journalism is being brought to you by the Waterfront BIA. You have been cycling quite a bit, Blair. I'm proud of you, by the way. Oh, thank you. You're putting on, I, you're on Strava, right? I'm, I know, I know, I'm seen on Facebook. Yeah, yeah, you're seeing it on Facebook. Get on Strava.

I will do it. You have to pay for Strava. No. I don't pay for Strava. Well, you have to show me before I leave. The free account is sufficient. There are extras if you pay, but I do not pay for Strava. And, you know, your rides will be shared with people.

You don't have, you know, they don't tell you where people won't know where you live. Like, they do this thing where they chop off the last couple of clicks or something. But it would be fun to track your rides as a friend of yours. Okay. So I want to thank the Waterfront BIA for sponsoring this program. And I'll let you know that second city is at one York. So it's York and Queens Key. They have a show called Dual Citizens.

It's a fast-paced comedy spectacle stacked with razor-sharp satire, hilarious songs, and ridiculous characters. And of course, their signature improv comedy. So it's written and performed by a completely Canadian cast and crew.

This show joyfully skewers politics, pop culture, and everything in between. So come laugh with the second city as they turn chaos into comedy. That sounds fantastic. That's kind of like what we do here. Yeah, exactly,

except we turn comedy into chaos. I know some Second City people, and they are funny people. But, you know, I want to use this as an opportunity to talk about some comedy. I've been going out to see comedy lately. Tell me. Because I aspire to do stand-up, which to me sounds so daunting and so scary. I actually have this fantasy, too, where I use stand-up. Well, okay, so I have this fantasy.

My stand-up friends tell me it's not as easy as it looks, and they're very protective. It's a little bit of turf. enough about Simon Rackoff. Exactly. How did you know? That's amazing. So I went to go see Simon last night, actually. I didn't go, but I meant to.

That's just as good. But I did see him on Friday night last week. I saw him at Harout, Hirut, which is an Ethiopian restaurant on the Danforth. It's near Woodbine. And they have comedy nights there the last Friday of every month. I'm appearing in two months. So, well, not doing comedy necessarily.

But I have some communication. comedic songs that I make. Yeah. And it's, your season's coming up. Do you know what I mean? Oh, Halloween? Yeah. Yeah, well, it's on Halloween night. But that's your big, uh, so I can do one hit wonder. Yeah, one hit wonder. Yeah, so I, and I will do one hit wonder. So, but, um, but the host of the show the other night was George Westerholm. Now, do you know him? No. He is fantastic and I will recommend him unequivocally as a guest for this show. He's, uh, he was the host that night, but he did a few, few songs. And they were all hilarious. And I won't repeat them because it would diminish them

because they're better written than I could remember, you know. But I did see his Rockabilly band play on the island a couple of weeks ago. The Rockabilly Surf sort of band. And they did a couple of funny songs, which I will probably misquote here, but I thought they were hilarious. Who else is in that band? Somebody I know is in a Rockabilly surf band that plays on the island.

Well, they're called the Wild Wild Cats, which I love, The wild, wild cats. Is it Timbo Vacanti? I don't think so. Okay. He plays on the island, but not with those. Okay.

So they had two songs that, I think one, one's called Dirty Motel. And it's about, it's about a motel where, I don't know, there are bodies buried or something, but very funny. Nobody was listening to the lyrics except me. I was sitting there. One of them was, put your clothes on. There's someone at the door, which I thought was hilarious. And so George is a very, funny guy and I have asked him

and I have not yet confirmed that he will be opening for the jitters on the 28th of November. I don't know if it'll be with his band. He has two bands, the flashbangs and he has another band called the Wild Wild Wildcats. I know the Flash bangs. James Clark. He's been over

here and he's tight with, I want to say, Cam Carpenter. Sure, and Moberg produced his records. Moberg produced his album. Yeah, he lives in Mimico. Yeah, he's a lovely fellow. Sometimes I'm biking in Mimico and I see him because he's got this noticeable gait with this long hair. Yes.

James Clark Institute. He and, he and George play together. Okay. And George would be a great guest. Small world. Okay. So I just checked the clock.

Okay. We're actually going to burn of gas. So I'm going to remember a couple of people who passed away, at least one of whom I think you might have a word to say about. Okay.

So under the journalism segment brought to you by Waterfront BIA, one interesting footnote is that I, in the last quarter, Sportsnet.C., turned off comments. So they no longer accept comments on sportsnet.ca. I just think that's interesting

as the kind of the beautiful thing about the internet, I think back in the day, I'm still blogging like it's 2004, was we felt it was very democratic. Everybody can have a voice. Everybody can chime in and give their two cents. And here we are in 2025 where we realize what a terrible idea that was.

We can't give anyone a fucking voice on our digital real estate. No more comments on sportsnet.com. No comment required. That's a death. I want to just share my condolences that Toronto's son

writer Mark Bonakowski, I hope I said it right, I never got the son as a kid. So sometimes I'm talking about these sun guys and I'm like, I don't know these guys. But this guy apparently, a long-time writer covering everything, he passed away at the age of 76

Bono there. But here's a name I think you might have something to say about because we know you're not a big sports head. But Donna Lipchuk. I only met Donna once, but she was much loved she was very much a champion of the Queen West scene back when that actually meant something before it got taken over by the Gap and all the corporate stores and so forth.

But yeah, Donna, an interesting writer and much loved, but I didn't know her really. But yeah, much loved and covering kind of a cool time in this city. Yes, very much. And sad to see that we lost Donna at the far too young age of 65. Yes, that's correct. Sorry to hear that. The music segment here is brought to you by Recycle My Electronics.com.

Because you know, Blair, if you have old electronics, old cables, old devices, you don't throw it in the garbage because those chemicals end up in our landfill. You go to Recycle My Electronics.orgia. Find out where you can drop it off to be properly recycled. Our mutual friend, Mark Wiseblot, linked me to a vulture article, and it was entitled, dude, where's my drummer? You mentioned the name Zach Starkey earlier in this conversation

right off the top maybe when I was talking about when you saw the Who last. Of course, Zach, Starkey is the son of Ringo Star and he was the Who's drummer for like 30 years or something. He was fired. He was rehired. He was fired

again. I did not see him on Tuesday. Meanwhile, foo fighters fired of course their drummer passed away sadly but then they had a guy named Josh freeze, kind of a legend, and he was fired. Then Josh joined 9-inch Nails, and funnily enough, the 9-inch Nails

drummer, Rubin, they joined the Food Fighters. So they almost traded drummers, which is interesting, but I'm a big Pearl Jam fan. And they had Soundgarden's drummer, Matt Cameron, for like, I'm going to say like 20 years almost, and Matt quit the band. So my question for you as a musician

who has the great David Quentin Steinberg on drums for the Twitter's reunion, the Jitters reunion. Is it difficult, in your opinion? Is difficult to find a good drummer that fits your band, your style? Yes, I would say absolutely yes. I remember reading an article once, an interview with Mark Knopfler and I'm not sure I can remember who the other person was,

but the quote, the pull quote from that article was, there are only three or four good drummers in the world. And as band leaders, that's what they felt. Wow. You know, because they're, you know, you're looking for somebody who just sits in the groove, who just, who supports the songs, who isn't, you know, drawing attention to themselves. And, you know, I think the Beatles, when they moved on from Pete Best and found Ringo, they've talked in interviews about at the time and, you know, way back when,

but also more recently, McCartney's talked about, you know, they looked at each other. They just knew this was the guy. Because it's a feel thing. And so you're looking for somebody like that. For me, I'm a big Tom Petty fan. I never thought Stan Lynch was the right drummer for that band. And even though, you know, he'd say that's ridiculous. But Steve Ferroni, when he took over, it was like,

suddenly for me, this was a great sounding band. And so, yeah, people, you know, a radio lady, I can hear her saying it right now. She always says to me, well, you're really hard on drummers, because apparently I said that once to her. And she quotes it back at me now. But I heard the same thing. Yeah, well, it's,

drummers are, drummers, like, I fired David Steinberg, David Quinton Steinberg, but that was because he was in law school. It wasn't because he wasn't the right drummer. Yeah,

but still, you know, but you know, we have the spinal tap, famous spinal tap stuff about drummers. And then, I mean, Pearl Jam,

for example, they have, their original lineup is completely intact, but they're on, I've lost track now, how many drummers they've burned through. Like, I know Matt was there a long time,

but they have, I had a number of drummers before Matt Cameron. And I just, to bring it back to the Food Fighters, I feel like Nirvana took that next step for, you know, for nevermind when they found the right drummer in Dave Grohl. Yeah, I think you're right. So it's, I mean, I'm not in the world of music, but we kind of, these drummers,

and finding a good drummer that fits. Yeah. Just food for thought, not as easy as you think. No, it's, and, and the right drummer, you know, I saw something the other day about, you know, the mystery of why Pete Best was, was replaced with Ringo Starr and stuff, but there's no mystery.

Pete Best didn't fit in emotionally with the band and like in terms of the joking around and the haircuts and everything else, but also he wasn't a great drummer. With Ringo, it just felt good and that's what you're looking for. And the proof is in the pudding. Yeah, yeah.

So speaking of haircuts, do you Blair Packham in your life have you ever had like a hair metal period or a time where you were listening to heavier music? I like heavier music, but you know what I don't like? I don't like the singer who sings really high,

like that kind of singer. It used to be when I was younger. I could go higher, but the high voice singer, you know, the poison, the Motley crew, that kind of voice.

I don't really like that. What about Skid Row and Sebastian? Don't like it. Don't like it. All those hair bands, they had that kind of singer, and I like singers with, you know,

if they're female, I like heart. They, you know, but they have that kind of voices. You know, or Anne Wilson does, but she's a woman and she's, I don't know. It hits you differently. Yeah, it hits me differently. So never really like that. You know, Brent Jensen, you met at my house?

Sudbury. Yeah. But he's not in Sedbury. He fools me every time. I always think he's in Sudbury, but it's no sleep till Sudbury. He's in Brooklyn, Ontario. But he is absolutely a hair metal guy. You know, I mean, it's funny.

When I met Rick Emmett, I didn't really know any music. of triumph at all and he's that kind of singer although he's a really great you know version of that singer but it's not my jam so I had Martin Popoff on the show last week where we were talking about

how Trump's tariffs have really fucked over his that's our exact terminology his mail order yeah it's a technical term but I propose to him that the I believe the biggest name that genre has ever had I'm talking about like a hair metal heavy metal

genre. The biggest name it will ever have is the name Ozzy Osbourne. Yes. That was my opinion. It's tough to argue, actually, but the reason I believe that is because he's got the Black Sabbath credentials, which might not be your cup of tea, but you can see how influential that is, right? Absolutely. And he has that solo career and all the mania around it, which might include biting the head off a bat or all that crazy around it. But then he's got this chapter in his life where it brings in people like my mom, which is reality star, married to a woman who would be on, I hope I have the right show, I've never seen it, the view or shows like The View, Sharon Osborne, right? So now suddenly a whole new segment of people are discovering, oh, that's Sharon, her husband is this guy

named Ozzy. Remember that reality show, the Osbournes or whatever? So I just wanted to mention that Ozzy Osbourne had his farewell concert, and then only a couple of weeks later, had a true farewell. He left the planet. He died. That's Tommy. Ozzy's dead. Yeah. No, I wouldn't, I wouldn't lump Ozzy in with the hairbands that I object to because his, to me, his voice, he was heavily influenced by the Beatles, which, you know, which of course makes him okay in my books. Um, but his voice was lower than those, those guys that I'm thinking of. And the songs were also, I thought, very, very tuneful, um, memorable. Um, yeah,

I'm a fan. I would say I'm a fan. but it's sad that he's gone. Sad that Ozzie's gone. I asked you this off here, but you never met Ozzy Osbourne. I never met Ozzy Osbourne. It's your loss. It's Ozzie's loss as far as I'm really.

Let's face it. He mentioned it to Sharon apparently that he never met. Sharon Osborne. Sharon Osborne, daughter of Don Arden, a great British manager, producer, promoter, not producer, promoter, apparently a true gangster. That's what I hear. Some of those stories are legendary.

I'm about to ask you about a name of somebody you did know who passed away this past quarter and this is the significant deaths there's only a few I want to cover all Canadian this is brought to you of course by Ridley Funeral Home and they have a great podcast called Life's Undertaking you should subscribe, listen to Life's Undertaking endorsed by Rob Proust of Spoon's fame

and you already enjoyed your measuring tape there for Midley Funeral Home using it right now please tell us your personal relationship with Stephen Lecky Wow. Well, Stephen and I can tell you, when Stephen appeared in Mrs. Petruillus' class 7A at Deer Park School, I was smitten. I loved him. I was so drawn to him. I didn't love him. I didn't know him, but I was so drawn to him because he was a rock star. He was a pint-sized rock star at a time when we were all just wearing Adidas and, you know, like Bell Bottom Levi's and so forth. And he came in to, he came in to, you know, He looked like he was in Alice Cooper's band. And, like, flaming red hair and a huge belt buckle and hiphugger jeans or hiphugger cords.

And he, like, he really looked like these, you know, he looked like he was a member of Uriah Heep or something. What grade is this? Grade seven. Wow. Yeah, that was at Deer Park School, Young in St. Clair, right near where I worked at CFRB years later. And your dad worked there. My dad was already working there. Yes.

I would go there for my allowance now and again. Because you're an EPO baby. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, but so Steve arrived and I was just fascinated by this guy. And in fact, my report card in grade eight in Mr. McLennan's class actually said that I would do better in school if I wasn't fascinated by a certain Stephen Lecky.

This is what the teacher wrote on my report card. And my parents spoke to me about it. Wow. And my mother said, he came over to my house a few times after school. And my mother said she didn't like that kid. He looks like an ugly little girl is what my mom said to me. And, but I was like, yeah, but he takes acid in class. Like, I was, I was so, like, impressed with everything he did.

Yeah, you thought it was cool. Yeah, and then he went off to Northern Secondary when I went to Jarvis, and we didn't see each other. I remember running into him at an Edgar Winter concert at Maple Leaf Gardens, and Yellow opened, by the way. And there was Stephen dressed like Edgar Winter. in a jumpsuit, a rhinestone jumpsuit, and with his hair, bleached blonde.

Like, he was a rock star. And then next thing I knew, the vial tones came along. And, and I was, you know, I was, I went to Jarvis Collegiate, and I was hanging around that, you know, young and Walsley and so forth. And there were posters up, and it mentioned Nazi dog,

which was his stage name. And then it mentioned, the articles mentioned Stephen Lecky, and I was like, oh, my God, that's where Lecky ended up. So, yeah, we had this, you know, we crossed paths a bunch of times when I worked at Comfort Sound

and I was just getting my band in touch with Bob Ezrin. Bob Ezrin had the great super producer had agreed to work with us on demos and then Stephen was at the studio and, you know, he was not very friendly to me after grade seven basically after grade eight. But so here I am working as an engineer in the studio and he's there and he wrote down on a note

Bobby Ezrin question. Mark, and I didn't know why. I found it later after he left. And I was like, Bob Ezrin's mine. Like, what does that have to do with Steve Lucky? But Steve loved him because Steve loved Alice Cooper. And Bob produced those records. So anyway, all this to say that I had some contact with Stephen at the end, meaning in the last few years, when he was a guest on my radio show on News Talk 1010. How did that go? Because I feel like you and I chatted a couple of times about Stephen and Lecky coming on Toronto Mike.

Yes, and I tried. I worked on it. I sent him notes on Facebook and said, you know, you should do this podcast and Mike's a great guy and he'll have great questions and so forth. And he either responded very vaguely or he didn't respond at all. Well, it never happened. Yeah, I'm sorry to say, I'm sorry to hear that because he would have been a great guest. He was full of life, and he had these rock and roll ideals. Like he really, like, much more than I do.

Like, he really felt like rock and roll. You're going to live and die for rock and roll. And I would think, no, maybe not, you know. But, yeah, he would have been a very interesting guest, for sure. Do you know the name Liz Worth? I do. She wrote, what was it called? The book you're trying to.

Treat me like dirt? Treat me like dirt, right? This is sort of like. Toronto punk rock history, yes. Correct. So I did connect with her. She's married to Kairi Papputz, who's been over because he directs cool documentaries, Alan Zweig style. Okay.

And Kiri Papputz's father is a founding member of the Vial Tones. Oh, I didn't know that. Wow. Yeah. Wow. I think Liz was a guest on my radio show when that book came out. Just wondered if you heard. I had them both on, actually, to talk about Stephen Lecky when Stephen...

Oh, I didn't know. Yeah, check it out. You know, we tried to be fair to Stephen and kind of talk about, you know, what he was about, what the violtones were about, what they meant to music. Because it'll shock, not shock you to know, a lot of the younger people,

less dialed in people, aren't quite sure what a vial tone is. No, yeah, the vial tones had a limited influence, but they were influential, for sure. It was just limited. Steve, Steve was not a great singer. But he was a great frontman. He was a great personality.

Right. And if he'd been a great singer, he would have been unstoppable, I think, because some of those song ideas were, you know, they were terrific. But anyway, I don't, I don't know, I don't want to speak ill of him. What a character. What a character, remarkable character in Toronto's punk history. David, David Quentin Steinberg would have a lot to say about Steve. He knew Steve well.

Doug McClemmet would have a lot to say about Steve. He also knew him well. reasonably, relatively speaking. And Dave Quentin Steinberg has stories about the last Pogo, where the violtones appeared. Of course. The film. Shout out to the Garees.

Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. Colin Brunton made that movie. Exactly. Oh, and the last Pogo returns was Colin Brunton again, but with Kyrie Papoots. Oh, I didn't know that. Helping out with this. It all connects there.

That's great. And David Quentin Steinberg did the legal for that. So in the first one, he was the drummer in the mods, and in the second one, he was the lawyer. That's called Evolution, Baby. It's Evolution Baby. Are you familiar? Were you familiar with the promo man,

legendary concert promoter, Nick Panaseco? No, only by name. Okay, I want to play a little clip. Nick came on Toronto mic, thanks to Bob Clannick, who wrote a book about Nick Panaseco, who was known as the promo man.

We lost him this past quarter. There'll be more about Nick's passing on FOTM cast because when we lose FOM to talk. but I just thought maybe this was an appropriate clip to play because of all the Who Talk at the beginning. So here's a couple of minutes of a promo man talking about Keith Moon. Tell me, if you can, Nick, about Keith Moon. You did Coke with Keith Moon.

Well, we were kind of forced into a situation. Other duties as assigned, yes. My friend, Jean Lou, who was the director of public relations, for quality records hired me and he opened a club called Coolies

which is up of Sam the Chinese Food Man in Toronto and it was being used mostly by record companies for artist promo nights and so and so forth

but the the roadies for the Who through a final party from the Toronto concert in 77, I believe it was. And Jane invited me up to look after and keep Keith Moon busy talking because he'd heard some of the horror stories about Keith throwing television sets out of windows and whatever.

So when I walked in to the room, it wasn't long before Keith and I were together, and he says, you've got to find me a spot here because they're watching. me, so I wasn't sure what he was referring to, but we went into the employee's washroom and they pulled out a bag of coke, which I thought he was going to maybe do a few lines, and he said, we're not leaving here until we finish this. A little bit undaunty, but if you take a look at the picture, when we locked out, John Rollins happened to be in the back kitchen also, and he snapped that picture, and it definitely looks like drugs were involved, and they're all smiles.

You know, that's when you know you're working in rock and roll, right? When you're snored in a pile of Coke with Keith Moon. Like, that's as rock and roll as it gets, right? So there's a little of the late-great Nick Panaceko talking about taking care of Keith Moon in 77. Amazing. I know. That's real rock and roll, right? Blair, have you done any bags of coke lately?

I have. No. No. The short answer, no. One more death I just want to acknowledge. It's a recent death, but a great actor, apparently a roadie for Crowbar when he was younger. Yes. Graham Green. Yes, the great Graham Green. I never, I may have met Graham Green. I don't remember. But, but yeah, certainly much revered, very respected, and a roadie for crowbar, which means he probably worked with Bob Roper at the time. FOTM, Bob Roper. That's right, yeah.

Who helped the band known as Rush, speaking of David Quentin Steinberg, get discovered by a station in Cleveland. Cleveland, that's right. Donna Helper. Yep. Yes, Crowbar. I was a big fan of Crowbar. So it occurred to me when I read that.

I didn't actually know that Graham Green had been a rowdy for Crowbar, but I used to go see them play at various high school dances and so he was probably there. I remember meeting Kelly Jay, the late Kelly Jay, who was the singer in Grobar, when he was a disc jockey on Chum FM. And he was so nice to me and knew my name.

And I was so thrilled that this guy from this band I revered knew me, knew my name. It was amazing. So anyway, that's not about Graham Green, though. That's about me. No, but what a loss, because by all accounts, a great actor,

just a funny guy, apparently had a great sense of him. humor and just a legend and gone too soon. A friend of mine saw him in a supermarket and did a double take. And all he said was, yes. See, great sense of humor. And of course, he was Oscar nominated, lest we forget for Dances with Wolves. One more segment to go.

This has been amazing. But this is a segment I call Canadianity. That's what I'm calling it. Shout out to Taggart and Torrance on that one. But, Canadianity, and this is brought to you by Blue Sky Agency, and Blue Sky Agency has forged partnerships with established office furniture brands like Silen and Green Furniture Concept and Ruleyard.

Doug Mills at Blue Sky is eager to chat with any and all Toronto Mike listeners who are looking for dynamic and creative work environments. Just write Doug at blue skyagency.ca.com, let them know you're an FOTM and start the conversation. All right, Canadianity. There's a few quick hits here. I've got to pick up my daughter at school, but I got a few quick hits here.

Okay. One is that they made an announcement this week that they have some new castmates on Saturday Night Live, one of whom is a woman named Veronica Sloakowska. She hails from Barry, Ontario. And by my account,

it depends how you view Bowen Yang's citizenship, because he's got, like, he's an American, but he's got some Canadian citizenship. He's got a dual citizenship going on Bowen. But depending how you want to qualify him, this would be the first Canadian castmate for Saturday Night Live since Norm MacDonald. It's been a while. Veronica is a cast member now.

That's amazing. Congratulations. Congratulations to Veronica with a K. Yes, that's quite an achievement. This happened since our last recording. It's about 40 seconds. I want you to hear it. And even though you're not a sports fan, you must have a word or two to say.

Here we go. Well, Tim, this is our last show. Yep. How many podcasts have we done? I don't know. This is our 313th. 313th. Yeah, we've been listened to all around the world.

It's just amazing how many different countries, you know, people download and listen to it. We've had 6.5 million downloads, which is pretty good. So how many? 6.5 million downloads. That's an awful lot. Thanks everybody, buddy, for listening. and Tooteloo. So this has been discussed quite a bit on Toronto, Mike.

We won't go too deep into it, except it was billed on the official X account of Don Cherry's podcast as the final episode ever. And as you heard in that exchange that Don had with his son, Tim Cherry, it's presented as the end of the road. This is it, final episode. So it's possible,

although it's been kind of denied with Warmington, that maybe it's not the finale. But Don Cherry may have signed off for the last time. and I just thought we should note it. Yep. Have you ever met Don Cherry?

I have not. No sports figures in your life. He's none at all. No sports figures. I know you have... I met Steve Podborski once. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

That's a skier. Yeah. Okay. And wasn't he married to Anne Romer? I think he was. Yeah, because I remember... Oh, John, I don't know if I could tell the story because Anne might hear it,

but John Gallagher was telling me a story that he was... He says, I don't know how he got... Could he have been invited to the wedding? I got a fact-checked this story. I need Robert Lawson to tell me if this true. But John Gallagher says They were getting married And that Anne Romer looked at him

Before she was going down the island And said down the aisle, not the island And said something like I'm making a huge mistake or something This is a John Gallagher story So I don't know if that's true Because you got to have a grain of salt What a story for you to reveal

Should I edit that out? I think you might I might have to edit that one. Okay, so let's get to you don't know Don Cherry But I know you know a good chocolate bar Okay Blair Packham Jersey milks apparently Jersey milks are apparently done.

Like, shout out to Reilly Funeral Home. There's no, they stop making, I guess Nielsen made it. I don't know who's making it now, but Jersey milk is done. I'm sorry to hear that. I've been eyeing that cherry blossom over there. Well, this is the last one. No, it's not empty. Oh, okay.

I might record myself eating my first and last cherry blossom. I've never had one. I've always thought of it as an old lady candy, but I sufficiently like sugar enough that I would eat it anyway. Well, I might make a big, make a big thing out of it, you know? Yeah, you should. First and last, Cherry Blossom. But Jersey milk, I did enjoy. Yes.

It's kind of a good chocolate bar if you're making s'mores, actually. I like the burnt almond. I believe Nielsen made that. Well, geez, end of an era. No more Jersey milk. And maybe a word or two about Richard Flohill because he went public with suffering he's experiencing,

but not in terms of his health. His health apparently is excellent. He's a 91 years old, and he's still going to all these festivals and concerts and he's living in a very exciting life, actually. But financially... It's been tough for Richard Flo Hill, and he disclosed he needs help because of some substack he started and the government's not giving him as much money now and he's on this fixed income, but it's lower than it was going to be, and he's in big trouble.

So he's sort of trying to get more subscriptions to his substack where you have to pay. And I think there might be a crowdfunding effort to help get money for Richard. I'm not too sure. But tell me maybe a little word or two about your relationship with FOTM Richard Floh Hill. Well, I've known Richard since I was 13 years old. I was a volunteer at the Mariposa Folk Festival. and I was sort of in the inner circle in a sense because the artistic director, Estelle Klein,

she was the mother of my best friend. And so she asked us to be on the special hospitality crew and Richard Flohill was on the board of Mariposa. He was known as Dick Flohill at the time and he was a dick. He was not a nice guy to us. I'm sure he was nice to a lot of people. But to, you know, we were just like Nats buzzing around his head or whatever. And so I didn't like him. But then when I became a professional musician, when I became a

songwriter and joined Capac, he was the communications director, I guess, not his official title maybe, but for Capac, which was the precursor to Socan, which is a royalty issuing body, a licensing, music licensing body. And so I got to know him a little bit that way through his role there. And I remember thinking, I'm not kidding, I remember thinking, if I can be as well known and as well respected as Richard Flo Hill, then I will, you know, by the time I'm older, I will have done my job, you know, and because I really grew to love him. He's a real character. He's at all the festivals. He loves music like crazy. And when he loves somebody, he becomes their champion. And he became that for Arlene, my ex, mother of my child. And he's exceedingly generous. He's

a terribly entertaining dinner companion. Doesn't eat vegetables at all. Somehow has lived to 91 without any fallout from that. And I just think he's terrific. And so I, yeah, I'm a big fan. He's had trouble because, you know, when you receive the old age supplement, the income supplement,

when you're older than 65, you have to make, you can't make too much money because if you do, they'll take it away from you. And apparently his substack crossed that line. And what it meant was it actually meant a huge drop in his income rather than, you know, his substack was doing fine, but not enough to cover the amount they were giving him. So suddenly he's making like thousands of dollars less.

And he's already, you know, as most seniors living on a fixed income, he's, he was already having trouble. So when he went public on Facebook with this, this problem, it was, um, It was good of him, I think, to do that because I think it demonstrated to him how many people love him and support him. And lots of people subscribe to his substack,

which is great because he has a million stories to tell and he's written down a bunch of them and they're available on his substack and I urge people to check it out. I have a letter that came in. It was actually not a letter, of course. It was an email, but it came in after the first episode of Rewinder. This will be like the mailbag segment.

By the way, if anybody wants a email read during the next Rewinder, send it to Mike at TorontoMike.com and put Rewinder in the subject line. Lieve Fumke did send in a question. We didn't really talk about it at the right time, but she wanted to know how we felt about Bob having less shifts on Indy 88 because she says she changed her car radio from boom to Indy because of Bob Willett. It goes without saying you and I are very disappointed in this decision. decision from Indy 88. Very. And Bob, Bob's a great radio guy.

Great radio guy. I think he should be on more or not less. Yes. Hickster just says, I vote that stew is referred to as the remarkable stew stone going forward.

That's an inside joke that Stu Stone described Donald J. Trump as remarkable. And if you know, you know, Brandon, this is the one I want to read to you, Blair, on our way out.

Brandon wrote, this is after he listened to the first episode of Rewinder. I thoroughly enjoyed this listen. I often throw episodes on while I'm cooking and eating dinner and in this case enjoying a warm, late spring evening. That's how long ago that rewinder was. Nice meaty runtime, but never dragged. You guys kept it snappy. Mike and Blair compliment each other in terms of knowledge areas and the

back and forth chemistry is good. I always enjoy the Blair visits, but episodes like this that feel like two friends just shooting the breeze are ones that I think are great. And definitely for the heavy-duty Toronto mic listener base. So Brandon loved episode one. We'll see if we maintain that level of excellence for episode two. Yeah, what if Brandon writes now and says, yeah, a bit of a let down. Well, Brandon, let us know. Yeah, that's nice, Brandon, though.

That's very kind. Thank you. Will I see you, Blair at TMLX20 on September 25th at PLB Brew Pub? You will not, and I'll tell you why. It's my son's 24th birthday. So unless I get away early and have to make an excuse to him, I don't think that's going to happen. Well, that's a good excuse. That's a good excuse.

So happy birthday to your boy. Yeah. If you're on the list for TMLX20, I can't wait to see you. Thanks for listening to this Rewinder. And thank you, Blair Packham, for making the trek for another episode of Rewinder. My total pleasure. Thank you. You're great.

You know that I'm your biggest fan. I think I said that last time. I'm Stan, your biggest fan. Oh, I think you did say that. Now, oh, I should say September 13th, I'm at sauce in the afternoon. Saturday, September 13th. playing with David Quentin Steinberg. It's from 4 till 7 in the afternoon on Saturday, September 13th.

Why can't David Quentin Steinberg get me Getty Lee? That I don't know. But you know what? Come to Sauce on the Danforth that day, Saturday, September 13th, between 4 and 7 p.m. And ask him yourself. When I saw... Maybe Getty Lee will be there. Well, getty Lee hopefully is there.

But when I saw Tom Cockren open for the Who on Tuesday, Alex Leifson came out. Yes, he was playing, yeah. Golf buddies. The owl will be there. Who knows? Come to sauce, September 13th from 4 till 7. And that brings us to the end of our 1,756th show.

Go to Torontomike.com for all your Toronto Mike needs. Remember, we're going to do a mailbag. So send in your emails about whatever you want to Mike at Torontomike.com. And I'll read it at the next rewinder, which is what? December? Is that how it works? I believe so, yeah. Okay, we'll see in early December.

Come on, radio lady. Write some stuff. Much love to all who made this possible. That's patrons like you. I'm trying to figure out this Patreon.com slash Toronto Mike thing. So become a member and inspire me to make it something special. Will you?

Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Toronto's Waterfront, BIA, recycle myelectronics.ca, blue sky agency, and Ridley Funeral Home. See you tomorrow with Lorne Honickman. Thank you.