Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Scott Carpenter: Toronto Mike'd #1020

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

In this 1020th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike is joined by Scott Carpenter as they talk about his career in radio, most notably at 1050 CHUM in the 1970s. So much great CHUM talk in this one! Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Canna Cabana, StickerYou, Ridley Funeral Home and RYOBI Tools.

Welcome to episode 1020 of Toronto Mic'd. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times, and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. StickerU.com. free local home delivery in the GTA. StickerU.com.

Create custom stickers, labels, tattoos, and decals for your home and your business. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Ridley Funeral Home. Pillars of the community since 1921. Canna Cabana. The lowest prices on cannabis.

Guaranteed. Over 100 stores across the country. Learn more at cannacabana.com. And Ryobi. Join the cordless revolution with Ryobi's 18-volt 1-plus system. There are over 260 tools in the system system and it's available at Home Depot. Joining me this week, making his Toronto mic debut

is 1050 Chums, Scott Carpenter. Welcome, Scott. Hey, thank you, buddy. I appreciate it. Listen to those pipes. You, my friend. Okay, we're going to get into the name, Scott.

But you made the mistake of writing me an email because am i right you uh you listened to the mike cooper episode of toronto miked oh yeah i sure did yeah mike was a wonderful uh wonderful jock he was uh as i mentioned in the email he was a superstar from the day he came in he was very young right and uh you know mike is one of my my all-time favorite people. And, uh, you know, all of us at Chum were family, but Mike is very special. So you made the mistake of writing me to tell me you enjoyed it. And then that, then I pounced, right? Essentially I smelled like blood in the water. You did. Yes, you did. And I'll never forgive you for that ever. And now you're,

now you're trapped. You, you, you said you're going to just stay here till I'm done with you. Now you're trapped. I am trapped. You're going to just stay here until I'm done with you. So, Scott, you're okay if I call you Scott? Sure. Because I know you radio guys have to have, although not all of you, we'll get to that, because I know Roger Ashby is a Roger Ashby from what I understand.

But are you willing to share your real name? No. No, my name is Patrick Bergen. Okay. So Patrick Bergen. Okay. So Patrick Bergen is... So when I correspond with this Patrick fellow, I'm really talking to 1050 Chum Scott Carpenter.

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. The very one and only. Well, there are about five or six others, but, you know, the only important one.

The only one I care about. Listen, I'm excited. We're going to... If anyone listening who remembers listening to 1050, and I was just on a Zoom with Fred Patterson from Humble and Fred who grew up in Scarborough. And, you know, he was talking about how like in the 70s,

he said, there's only a handful of stations anybody listened to. The FM dial wasn't even a thing yet. So you're on the AM dial. And he said, yeah, sure. There's CFRB if you want what's going on at 1010 there. But then there's 1050 Chum and then maybe CKEY. And he mentioned a country station. But, I mean, this is a time when, and of course, in the 70s, there's no alternative broadcasts.

You're listening to the radio or nothing. So you had an enormous audience listening to you on 1050 Chum. Yeah, yeah. a million a week wow imagine what would they do today to get a million people to tune into their radio station i think they'd have to commit suicide on the air you know i i just don't think it would be possible and it's not because of a lack of talent or anything like that it's it's just the fact that you have so many alternative options in media and including this. Well, exactly. You know, somebody will choose to listen to this instead

of tuning in whatever's going on in the radio right now, CHFI or whatever. So a lot of ground to cover, but just because I'm fixated on names, my understanding is you don't actually start as a Scott Carpenter, right? What do you start as a Dean Scott? No, I started using my real name, Pat Bergen. And I was Dean Scott at CKLW because Pat Holiday worked at CKLW at that time, and they didn't want two Pats. Right. So I came up with this name, and I thought I'd pulled it out of the clear blue sky,

Dean Scott. But as it turns out, there was sky Dean Scott but as it turns out there was a Dean Scott at CKY in Winnipeg and obviously I had listened to him see I was stationed in Minot North Dakota when I was in the Air Force and I used to listen to CKY constantly and I must have heard him on CKY and that's where the name Dean Scott came from and when I got to Chum J. Robert Wood mentioned well there there's a Canadian guy, or actually he's an American, but there was a guy in Winnipeg named Dean Scott, and what name would you like to use instead?

You know, he didn't want me to use that, and I couldn't think of anything, and he said, how about Scott Carpenter? And I knew, of course, Scott Carpenter was an astronaut, but that didn't make any difference to me i didn't care so i said sure that's that's what it'll be see today that would never be suggested because the thought would be seo like okay we need a name that people can like google and find you and if people are googling the name scott carpenter they find the astronaut right who actually became a friend of mine. Really? How'd that happen?

I'll tell you. We're taking a little detour here. No, no. I love detours. So detour away. Okay. Well, I was working at the time in Baltimore. I was living in District Heights, Maryland. And it was a long-distance call to call the radio station.

You had to dial an area code, right? One day I was trying to reach the studio and I forgot to dial the area code and a lady answered the phone and there wasn't any lady on the air at that time. So I thought, what the heck is this all about? And I said, who's this? And she said, who's this? And I said, Scott Carpenter. And she said, dad, I got Scott Carpenter's daughter on the phone by mistake. That's amazing. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. That's amazing. And then later, I used to have him on when I was working in talk radio and all kinds of other formats.

I'd have him on every year on the anniversary of the Aurora 7 flight, which was the flight that he took right after John Glenn, right? Right. And he would relate the story of how he got lost, basically, and it took like three hours to find him in the ocean. Wow. I can't believe the odds that, you know, that woman that you accidentally called was daughter of the more famous, globally anyways, Scott Carpenter.

That's amazing. You mentioned something, oh, there's no woman on the air. Who is the first woman that you heard on the air? Oh, you mean as a jock? Sorry, as a jock, yeah. I don't mean as like a traffic. Probably Liz Kiley. Liz and I worked together at WPGC,

and then she went up to WABC, and I think that was the first time I actually heard a young lady on the air as a jock, because I wanted to hear what she sounded like on WABC. Interesting. So coincidentally, so we're recording. This is episode 1020, if you will. By the way, my brain is now thinking of ideas for episode 1050, but I'll talk to you more about these ideas later. But I have ideas like like I have this. What if like why couldn't I get I'll just name some random people. Because what if like, why couldn't I get, I'll just name some random people. What if Roger Ashby, Mike Cooper, Jim Van Horn, you and Mike Holland, for example, all got together on Zoom and just talked.

Yeah, we'd do it. That would work. Look, Chum is a family. And there's no other way of putting that. We get together or we used to before the plague hit. Right. You know, we used to get together every year for a reunion and we get together all the time. Like a couple of years ago, Roger Rick Murray, who was my operator and Dave Wolf and myself, we got together down in Florida

and went to, you know, some games down there. So we get together all the time. A couple of years ago, a bunch of us got together in Detroit and Bob Wood, who was the program director at Chum, and I drove in the Woodward Avenue parade, the greaser parade that they had, the dream cruise. And we drove in my mother's 86 El Camino up and down Woodward Avenue. So, you know, we get together all the time. We're best of friends, and we have been for all these years. So now I'm thinking definitely we do something for episode 1050. But tomorrow morning I'm dropping episode 1021, which is 1021.

And I had – why did I bring this up again? It'll come – oh, yeah, that's right. Now I remember why I brought it up. But I'm going to have a bunch of people who worked at CFNY in the history of CFNY. So David Marsden and a bunch of them. Dave, yep, yep. Yeah, and included it. So May Potts is there.

And we were talking about Chick. So there was a Chick where the- In Brampton. Right. Because the CFNY evolves out of Chick FM, basically. That's right. Yep, yep. And May potts was talking about where the girls are and how novel this was that there were like women on the air at this station chick yeah yeah and now that you mention it i do vaguely remember that station but i never listened to it so i can't say i ever heard yeah all right where by the way where

do we find you today are you in the gta whereabouts are you in oh no no i'm i'm in fredericksburg virginia i'm in hillbilly country that's far away i don't have any teeth i moved here in my teeth filler well you can make those jokes i feel like if i make those jokes uh i can't yeah that was absolutely you'd be arrested in five seconds in canada trust me although we have our own, you know, we have our own bumpkins I learned during the truck. I've seen them. So there are, it depends where you are

in the, this wonderful province. Okay. So, I want to get you to 1050 Chum and then I want to dive deep and you're going to

tell me all the stories you can recall. But maybe the good ones can't be told, but who knows? Maybe you save those for episode 1050. I'll tell them anyway. Tell them anyway.

Tell them anyway. You can edit them out. I love listening to your voice because like it's, I'm going to play soon. I'm going to play some audio that you pointed me to a Facebook page you have with audio of you on 10 50. And when I listened to Scott Carpenter on 10 50 chum high energy, like it's just like, woo. Like I did my heart rate starts going.

Like I just want to run through a wall. There's a story behind that. Okay. Well, how about this? Yes. Don't forget to tell that story, but how the heck did,

I guess, how did you get the gig at 10 50 chum? And maybe even if you want to step back even earlier, like what made you get into radio? Because you sounded like that. You had to go to radio. No, no, no, no. I was a musician.

I started as a musician. I was a studio musician when I was 15 years old. And, uh, and I did so many gigs, uh, you know, uh, it got to the point where every time I turned around, well, let me just put it this way. My junior and senior years in high school, I played six nights a week in bars in Flint, Michigan. So, uh, yeah. Wow. Did you have to get a special note or something? My mother, my mother went to the club and sat there until I was finished.

I'm not kidding. It's funny. Uh, quick aside is that yesterday the Maple Leafs play the New Jersey Devils and, uh, I'm watching and the guy in net for the New Jersey Devils, and I'm watching. And the guy in net for the Devils, his name is Daw, Nico Daw, and he's the nephew of Rob Pruce. Now, Rob Pruce was the keyboardist for The Spoons and Honeymoon Suite later. But when Rob was on this program,

he was talking about playing. He was a 15-year-old keyboard phenom, like a prodigy. And he needed a note or something he needed some special paper that was probably a union thing it was probably a union thing because he was under well they said it was an age thing like because the 15 year olds couldn't get into the bar but he had a special piece of paper so he could play like these these clubs and bars with the spoons doesn't sound right with me but it it may be. I know in my case, she actually didn't have to be there. But I played a lot of gigs in Detroit when I was way underage.

And the cops had come in there. They wouldn't even notice. So I wouldn't put too much credence in that at all. Just so people are clear, because we talked about how you were on the air in Windsor, and now we've got you in Michigan. So are you American or Canadian? No, I'm an American citizen, but I'm pretty much half Canadian, if you will. I am really.

I mean, you know, I think more Canadian probably than I do American. So, okay. So this is just to get this distinction here. So keep going with this great origin story. So you're a musician, but how does that get you on the air? Well, uh, because I spent a lot of time, uh, you know, as we did in those days, you'd cut these records, they'd be local records. They wouldn't be national ones. They'd be regional. And, uh, then, uh, the DJs would want you to come in and talk to them

and interview you and things like that. So I did that quite a bit. And I saw these guys, they were, it was marvelous to me because they were entertaining thousands of people with nothing more than a couple of turntables and a microphone. And I was schlepping this drum set around, the thing weighed 900 tons. And I've got to drag this thing up to the stage, you know, and I've got 200 people out there or less. And I thought these guys are the ones that are, that are really pulling this off. I mean, they're entertaining all these people and they've got nothing except these turntables and this microphone and that transmitter out there. And I looked at that and I thought that's the way to go. Plus they were nuts, which was a big deal to me. I'm six bricks short of a load, I admit it.

And these guys were nuts and they would pull these stunts, and I would just listen to that. I'd be fixated on it. So at some point, I decided, I think I'm going to move away from the music thing and go into the radio thing. It looks like a better deal. Let me ask you about your voice at the time. Did you sound like this? No, no. I think that, you know what,

I don't really know, but I do have a suspicion that maybe all those years on the air, you know, you know, exercising my vocal cords in that way, I guess maybe that probably added to it. Okay. Cause I asked Jeff Woods from formerly from Q107, but I asked him how, how do you get that voice? Cause he's got this amazing voice. And he says, you got to start smoking and drinking very young. No, I have never been a smoker. I smoke cigars, but you don't inhale those things. That's not going to make any difference.

Well, that's right. But Jeff, he's got more of a little more. Well, I'm sure he does. But I sure as hell don't. Well, again, later in this program, I'm going to ask you about Wolfman, Jack. I thought you might be breaking into it. And Wolfman. Wolfman, good friend of mine.

Smitty. Love it. You know, and again, I grew up watching like the late great movies on City TV. This was like my bag. And I loved it whenever American Graffiti came on. Like I was in love with this movie. All this is coming very, very soon. But okay.

So what's the first station you work at? First station was KCJB in Minot, North Dakota. I'm in the Air Force. And I find out that they're looking for somebody to work part-time. And I zipped right down there and they hired me on the spot. And I was on the air the next day. And I didn't get off the air for probably 35, 40 years. That's right.

So at this time in North Dakota there, you're Patrick Bergen, I guess, on the air. I'm Airman Second Class Patrick Bergen. Okay, yes. I love it. Yeah. Okay. Two stripes. That's all I ever had.

Okay. I wish I knew more of what that meant, but it's more stripes. It meant that I was pretty much useless. Okay. Well, you're still two stripes more than I ever got. Good for you. Good for you. Okay. So where do you go from, where do you go next in your radio career? Well, I worked at two stations in Minot on a part-time basis, and I was also playing in clubs every night. So I was a musician as well.

But when I got out of the Air Force, I went to Grand Forks, North Dakota, worked at KNOX. And then I just kicked around to smaller radio stations, eventually wound up back in Michigan. And I was working for a horrible radio station in Midland, Michigan, and my career was going nowhere. My dad wanted me in the worst way to get out of radio and go to work in Flint at General Motors at the AC where he spent 30 years, you know. And I had, at his behest, I went down there and applied and the lady told me, well, we don't have any openings right now, but you're a veteran and we prioritize veterans. We'd love to hire you. So I'm back in Midland, Michigan. I'm working part-time managing a donut stand and I'm doing the morning show on this little piece of junk

radio station. And my career is, like I said, going nowhere. Get a call from the AC and they say, come on down. We have an opening for you. And I said, I'll be right there. So I get dressed, I'm ready to go. And as I'm walking out the door, literally the phone rings again. And it's Dave Kushner from WKNX in Saginaw. And I had left the tape with them like six months prior. And I didn't think anything was ever going to come of this. And Dave said, we have an afternoon drive drive opening would you like to come to work for us and KNX had a 60 share in that area Bay City Midland Flint or not Flint but Saginaw and all up through the through the thumb of Michigan and that was the start of my career. I missed out on being an AC slug by that much. Wow. And for the non-radio people listening, 60 shared,

does that mean 60% of radio listeners are tuned in? Yes. That's amazing. 60% of the radios that are on at that time are listening to that station. And this is an era, of course, when there was lots of radio listeners. So you got to get even more perspective there. Okay. So what brings you to Ontario, Canada?

Okay. I worked at WKNX. I worked down at WTTO in Toledo. And then eventually I made my way to CKw in detroit now cklw was another monster that that station i got literally i received a hitline call from the arctic circle oh wow guy on a ship went through mars which was the uh uh the what is it uh yeah no it's a uh it's a network of uh radio um private shortwave or no short well not shortwave what do you call it radio i i okay but it's somehow you got you it was it's just a short wave or not not a short wave here i am going in circles

um it's uh you'd own your own little transmitter and uh you know that kind of thing amateur radio okay amateur ham radio ham radio there you go there you go that's what it is a network of ham radio operators and they transmit these signals you know uh through their their various little radio stations and And this guy called me through the Mars system and requested a song from the Arctic circle and a ship up there. That's unbelievable. That's quite the signal right there. Amazing.

So, okay. So that's where your Dean, your Dean Scott, when you're at CKLW. CKLW. And I was only there for about a month and a half. And J.

Robert Wood was driving through Detroit on his way back to Toronto. And he heard me on the air. And at that point, Don Regan, who was also at CKLW at that time, had already been hired by Chum. So Bob asked him to bring a tape up with him. And I remember while I was on the air, the operator was saying, now do a really good job tonight. Do a really good job tonight. He knew what was going on. I had no clue. And so he made the tape. Don Reagan took it up to Bob Wood and Bob Wood hired me. And Bob told me, as a matter of fact, when we did the dream cruise, he was in the car with me and he said, when I heard you on

the air, my hand was shaking. And I thought he he's got to be kidding you know i didn't think i was anything special but he obviously did and that's how it happened well he knows talent and he heard something in the timber of your voice and he felt you'd you'd fit on uh 10 50 chum well he sure did and that is bob wood i can tell you talk to me about bob wood because uh yeah please tell me everything you can about your program director at 10 50 chum bob wood well he's a great guy number one okay there's no better guy in the universe than bob wood but the the thing about bob was he could hear somebody on the air and he could tell that guy will fit in, right? It wasn't, you know, I didn't do any bits.

I didn't do anything special at CKLW. He just heard something that he thought would fit in. That is the essence of Chum in the 1970s. Here's the thing. None of us were particularly, we weren't fantastic in any way, shape or form. We were okay. I thought, you know, I didn't think I was anything special. And the other guys didn't think they were particularly special because we've had these conversations and they said the same thing. But the secret was that Bob Wood made the whole greater than the sum

of the parts. Every guy on that radio station fit in perfectly with the other guys. We were best friends. We were coworkers. And we still are best friends. That's why episode 1050 is going to be a monster. I'm already excited. Okay, so Bob Wood gave you the name Scott Carpenter. Did you ever learn what the origin was or did it just sound good?

Sounded good. Okay. Alright. That's good enough for me. Now, I want to play some of you on 1050chum before we dive deeper. And I have some great questions. A lot of your fans heard you were coming on and I got some fantastic questions for you.

But let me play this. This is how the sausage gets made. I'm going to paste that Facebook link into my browser. Oh, boy, that's going to work great. Here we go. You ready? It'll probably be a commercial. No, no, no.

No, it can't. Yeah! Just pick up my... Da-da-da-da-da-da. Da-da-da-da-da-da. 1109 at Chum. Even Chum fashion's on again. Right on, right on Pick up the next Chum Sock

Up tomorrow night at Atobico Collegiate Hosted by Mark Cooper Music Radio 1050 Chum She's a straight-shooting woman. You've got to watch her when she gets loaded. It ain't the straight-shooting woman. It's her straight-shooting father. I work on 1113 at Chump No. 1 with Scott Carpenter. There's a feeling around.

It's a song, it's a sound. MCP. My woman, you see, is at Women's College Hospital tonight because she had to have a little old operation. And she called me up a little while back.

She said, look, I want you to play this song because i really dig this song and all the girls up here want to hear it too so this is it olivia newton john from chum and i love you i honestly love you do you want to hear more i could keep going a little longer do you want to hear more um no it's all right i mean that pretty much sums up what i did okay so i talked about the energy Do you want to hear more? I could keep going a little longer. Do you want to hear more? That's all right. I mean, that pretty much sums up what I did. Okay, so I talked about the energy. Where did that style come from?

It's a high-energy style you employ there. Well, I never started out that way, I'll tell you that, because the guy that I wanted to pattern myself after was a jock named Joel Sebastian onastian on wxyz and he was cool he was a cool guy right i wanted to be cool like this guy like when you say cool do you mean like david marsden on uh 104.5 like that i'm not talking dave mickey who was completely bananas completely different he was like that it's like i think david goes to like montreal and he comes back to uh to chum fm and he's totally like this cool mellow cat like is that what you're talking about i'm just trying to find a no no that uh i'm sorry to say it but it and in david's case it's not it's not true i

mean uh it sounds like an affectation right that is actually dave i know dave very well and he is a cool cool guy but uh in in the case of of of Joel Sebastian, he just sounded like what you would call a cool cat. You know what I mean? Back in the 50s, there were these hip guys, hep guys. Yeah, like hep cats, sort of like Ned Flanders and his parents in the episode of The Simpsons. There you go. That kind of guy. Groovy, man.

We're going down the street, man. We just chugging. We chugging now. That's right. Hey, here we go. That kind of guy. Groovy, man. We're going down the street, man. We just chugging. We chugging now. That's right. Hey, here we go. That's what Joel sounded like, right? He just sounded cool. And I wanted to sound cool.

Well, Bob Wood didn't want me to sound cool. And one day I was ill. I had a sore throat. I think I had the flu. And I was kind of down on the air. And Bob called me up. He said, oh, can you pick up the energy a little bit? You know, it's starting to drag a little bit. And I thought, Oh man,

I feel like crap Ola and this guy wants me to pick up the energy. So I thought I'll fix them. And, uh, and I went on the air and I started that whole yelling and howling and jumping up and down and pulling out my hair kind of thing. Right. Bat phone rings again. I'm thinking okay okay he's going to tell me no i don't want to do this after all calls me up scotty that's just what i want hey so there you're stuck now you got to put that so is it is it difficult like do you i don't know like how do you have to snort a line of coke or something to get up there? No, no, no. Please don't say that.

I'm asking the tough questions here. Oh, yeah, you sure are. No, it has nothing to do with that. It's just I remembered a guy once. He was on WXYZ, too. His name was Lee Allen. Okay. And he was a very high-energy jock.

So I thought, well, okay, if they want that, then I'm going to. I had to have a, you know, I had nobody in my life that sounded like that other than listening to Lee Allen on the radio. So I based it on him. Okay. Now where does the nickname, now we talked about how you're a Patrick and you're on the air. Everybody knows you as Scott Carpenter in this market. Where does the nickname, the boogeyman come from? Okay. Back in the seventies, boogie was a term that was just used constantly i mean you're gonna boogie down the street what does that mean i mean good luck with that um you're

we're gonna boogie tonight whatever that was that was the word so i used it all the time shamelessly on the air right and one day my operator bob human it came on the spot back and he said, you're the boogeyman. And I thought, Ooh, yeah, baby. So that was the boogeyman right there. Love it. Love it. It's like, that's like a nickname on a nickname when you think about it, which is what I always joke with, uh, Jay Michaels.

He's a, well now he's in Montreal actually. Cause he, he he he left town but j michaels is a fake name j michaels but he put a fake name on the fake name because he went by mad dog and i just think it's like how many layers of uh how many layers of phony shtick can you pile on but there you go the boogeyman that's stuck okay so i'm gonna dive into some of the questions and i like this one from rock gulf because it's going to introduce us to canadian graffiti which i want to talk to you about but i'll read i'll read it he's got a bunch of points here but i'll start it rock golf says loved this guy there you go he loved you okay thank you rock golf i remember him hosting canadian graffiti on sunday nights yep another

60s year by the way counting down the top songs of the late 50s and early 60s he played ray charles's uh hit the road jack and said that's so good i want to hear it again and then he played it again yeah so the first question from rock golf is was that planned or was that spontaneous because this guy never forgot that you played that song twice in a row. It was completely spontaneous. I never planned anything. I would write out some material, some lines and stuff from the newspapers and stuff like that. But I never scripted anything else. Everything else just came off the top of my dumb head.

Good for you. Now, it's funny. We mentioned Canadian graffiti. So you mentioned earlier greaser and this so i again i'm a bit younger than you so i don't remember american graffiti in real time but i do remember loving and i also loved happy days so that was like one of my first favorite shows was happy days uh which kind of comes out of american graffiti if you will but i yes i mean r I mean, Ron Howard was in American graffiti. So I would love, one of my favorite movies to show up on Late Great Movies, when Mark

Daly would tell me it was American graffiti, I absolutely loved the whole vibe of American graffiti, like the strip and the 50s and that whole greaser vibe or whatever. So how much did that influence what you know how what the boogeyman became well uh the essence of american graffiti is the way i grew up uh you saw them cruising right we didn't use the term cruising we use the term bombing or dragging but we would bomb maine we would bomb Woodward. We would go all up and down Woodward Avenue. That was absolutely bang on. So what American graffiti did, it not only brought back memories, but it became a fashion, you know, uh the canadian graffiti show grew out of that um i was doing 1950s style

dances at schools in toronto i had a great big huge pa system roadies the whole works we would go and we would recreate the 1950s um style and so forth with these dancers these kids would all dress up like you know the actors in actors in Canadian or in American graffiti. And, uh, I was growing, drawing huge crowds. I mean, these kids would be right around the block trying to get in. So I, Bob Wood and I were talking about that. I was in his office and he, we, we got to come up with some way to, to, um, you know, leverage this on the air and sitting in the corner of his office were these record albums that were called Cruisin'. And they were reproductions of radio shows from the 1950s. And they had the original jocks, Dick Biondi, Russ Weird Beard Knight, and all these other guys,

right? And they would put them in between the songs on the record. And I thought, They would put them in between the songs on the record. And I thought, we could do this on here. And so Bob Wooden and I came up with this idea of Canadian graffiti, and that's where it started. And it was a 60-share show on Sunday night. 60% of the radios in Toronto were tuned to Canadian graffiti. It was incredible. That is absolutely incredible.

Now, before we say goodbye to Rock rock golf though, he has a memory and I, I always have this situation where I have a memory of something, but it's like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. And I don't know if it actually happened or if it's like something that just got implanted in my head through the years. And I think I remember it. So I'm kind of excited to find out for rock golf, the answer to this question. Rock Golf has a memory. I think I know the question. But he says he has a memory of you dropping the word MF-er, but not MF-er, but maybe mother-effer. Oh, no.

Yeah, so this is his memory. You drop MF-er in the middle of one of your traditional hyperbolic rants. He wants to know, is it possible he heard this? Or is this a faulty memory? Oh, faulty. I never, I never, ever, ever said anything. So, Rockolf, I don't know how many years you've had that bouncing around your cranium, but now we got the real talk from Scott Carpenter himself.

No, I couldn't imagine that would happen. I would not have said. No, didn't happen, didn't happen. And he asks about happen i would not have said no didn't happen didn't happen and he asks about i'm actually at the end of this he asks about somebody specific he worked with at 10 50 chum in the 70s but uh after we uh thank some sponsors i'm gonna actually run down the roster and talk to you about everybody because i know we talked about mike cooper off the top but i want to ask about these cats you worked with at 1050 Chum myself. But I want to get to Paul Hawkyard. Paul Hawkyard

is a cool name. Paul Hawkyard says, Hey Mike, for me Carpenter... Okay, I see. Ask him how heavy was the payola back in the 70s and in what form. So was there any payola going on in the 70s that you can speak about?

Not that I ever got. I don't know anything about that. And certainly at Chum, there would never have been such a thing. We had a very specific protocol that was followed about adding records and so forth and promoting them. And it was all on the basis of sales and what we thought would fit into the format. But not once, not ever did anybody accept any money. Now, there was payola back in Michigan prior to me getting in the business. And I know for a fact that some guys got paid in various ways, shapes, and forms, not always with cash, some other things

sometimes, but that never happened at any point in my career ever. Okay. He's got another question about a move. So we talked about American graffiti and there's another movie. I'm going to actually play the trailer just to set this up. But before that, I have a question. So I was reading about, you know, Scott Carpenter on Chum and you were a legend, my friend. And I was reading all about Canadian graffiti. And then I learned about the graffiti parade. And I want to ask you about the Big Honk event.

Please tell me all the details about this Big Honk event. Okay. Well, once again, I go back to those cruising albums, you know and and my memories of radio back in the uh late 50s and early 60s and these guys on the air were six bricks short of a load you know they were funny they they always and they always involved their listeners with whatever bits they were doing people would call up they put them on the air just like wolfman

did in american graffiti right right so um when I was doing the graffiti show, every week I would come up with something like that, that the audience could participate in. One day I was stuck for an idea. I was coming in on the subway and I thought, what am I going to do? I don't know what my bit's going to be this week. And I remembered a radio station in Grand Rapids, Michigan that had a neon sign in the studio window, which faced the street and cars had come by and the jock would hit the button and light it up and said, honk. Right. Right. So I thought, that's it. That's it. We're going to honk horns. So I get on the air and I get on the air. I

believe it was nine o'clock and I started counting it down. I said, it is nine Oh two. And wherever you are at nine Oh two, if you're in your car, honk your horn in solidarity with all the greasers in Toronto, you know, and if you can come by the station, please do that. Come and honk your horn outside the radio station. And I counted it down after every song. I said, we're now an hour and 47 minutes from the Big Hawk.

We're now an hour and 42 minutes from the Big Hawk. And we, as you may know, at 1331 Yonge Street, the newsroom faced the street and they had windows all along that wall, right? But they always had the blinds closed. And I was in the studio, which was basically in the middle of the station. I had no clue what was going on outside and i thought i'd take a look and see if anybody actually showed up right right so i went out there we opened up the blinds i figured maybe 10 people there were cars on both sides of young street i'm told from the lake shore to eglinton oh my god both sides of the street with the lights flashing and i thought

i am a dead well you said the word earlier mf you know i'm done right i'm fried and i was going to call it off but i thought you know what they're just going to hawk the damn horn anyway so i got on the air and i said it is time let her snort right and it went up like an air raid oh my god I mean it sounded like the blitzkrieg in London with those horns blowing right and uh it just it blew out the police switchboard they could not get a legitimate call in because everybody was complaining about this stupid thing that I did. Right. And a cop came down to the radio station. He was going to haul me in. Wow.

And he said to me, he said, you're not going to do this again, are you? And I said, yeah, I was thinking about doing it again next week. And he said, no, that wasn't a question. So you got a warning. The following week, and I caught hell too. I got a note from Dave Charles. He called me, I'm sorry, that night. night he said that's the greatest thing I ever heard it's the funniest bit I ever heard oh I love it I love it I love it and then I get a call the next morning from Bob Wood

and when Bob would call me and say uh Scotty I knew I was a deep crap right there he would use that approach uh Scotty we would like you to come down to the radio station and talk to us about that thing you did last night. So I went down to Chum and I went to my little mailbox and opened it up. And there was a note from Dave Charles, the same guy that had called me the night before, opened it up, read it. I said, that was the most irresponsible, ridiculous. What did you do? What did you do?

I thought, you son of a bitch. So anyway, I go upstairs, and all of the management is waiting for me. Yeah. You know, Fred Charette, Mr. Waters, Bob Wood, you know, the Pope, you know, everybody. And they read me the riot act, right? Right. Don't ever do that again. Don't ever do that again. I thought, okay, I won't do that again. So the next weekend I got up in the air and I said, I caught, I just caught, holy hell last week, please, whatever happens tonight at 11 o'clock, don't blow your horn. And I counted it down exactly the same.

And sure enough, this time, not only were they parked on both sides of Yonge Street, we had clowns painting faces. We had guys juggling in the middle of Yonge Street. And it went up like an air raid again. We did it twice. Shut the freaking city down. Do you remember what year this was? shut the freaking city down.

Do you remember what year this was? 73 maybe, something like that. I can't remember for sure. Whenever American Graffiti was out, it was right around that time. Right. Okay, so you get the warning, I guess, from the cops. You never did get arrested because when Mike Cooper was sitting here,

we talked about the April Fool's. I feel like that was 75, the April Fool's Day prank. So it sounds like you 1050 guys, the cops were friends, you know, it was not uncommon for the cops to be involved, I suppose. You had a lot of power. They would show up on occasion.

Yeah, yeah. Actually, we would just order some food from next door and we'd just, you know, hey, the buffet's right there, guys. Right. Wow. Okay, the great big honk event. What a time for this city.

I mean, we're all uptight over the noise of the honking, I guess, outside of 1331. But from Lakeshore to Eglinton, I mean, that's amazing. I would love to see like an aerial photo of this. That would be incredible. That's quite something. Please. Uh, I also saw when I was doing my homework that you hosted a weekly teen advice program called guidance. Uh, what was guidance? It was just a talk show. Um, I'd had some talk radio experience back in Toledo and I did this kind of show, you know, for teenagers. And, uh, so we had Johnny Gilbert who was there for, uh, the, the housewives. So I did one for the teenagers and it was on a

Saturday, I believe it was. And they would just call with, you know, teenage kinds of questions and problems. And I'd offer this sage advice from this clown that had no clue what he was talking about. Okay, cool. Now I mentioned another movie. So we talked about American Graffiti, but I'm going to play, and bear with me, it's a minute and a half here, maybe even longer, but I want to set the stage here. So let's listen to this trailer.

Okay. Now, face off. A touching story of love. With softness, beauty, passion, and one barrier. You know something, Billy? You never needed anybody in your life. Look at me. Cut it out, please.

Don't mind me, Billy. Sherry, I love you. I need you. I need you. I need you. I really, really need you. Go get him, Tipu. Go get him. For God's sake, Billy, stop him. Why'd you do it? Why?

You're just like the rest of them. No, I'm not. Because I'm younger and stronger and tougher. And that's why you dig me. I can't go. Go ahead, Billy. Have another drink to the establishment. To the system, you know? You're out of your skull.

Yeah, maybe, but it's my skull, okay? All right, Billy. Let's get something started. Faceoff. All about fighting your way to the top and finding no one there. No, we'll be free. Wow. Okay, face-off.

I remember that pretty well. Well, let me read the question from paul hawkyard again here let me dig it up here where's your question paul but it is uh hey mike um okay here it is uh any good stories from hanging around the filming of face off which is in paul's opinion is the greatest hockey movie ever made it was actually a very good movie, to be honest with you. I can't remember the guy's name that was the male lead on it. Do you remember? Yeah, Hinton?

No. Al Hinton. Hintle. Hintle. Right. Art Hintle. Art Hintle. Art Hintle.

Hintle. He was an actual hockey player. Art Hintle. Yes. Art Hintle. Go ahead. And he was an actual hockey player yeah art hindle yes art hindle go ahead and he was good yeah and uh so he did a lot of his own scenes uh one of the scenes involved him i believe that i'm remembering this correctly jacques platt they they brought in to to play the net right and director said okay jacques you got to, you know, you got to let the shot through.

Yeah. Yeah. So art wax. And Jacques goes, he could not let the thing through. He was incapable of letting it through. That was a funny thing. And then the other one, this is just me because, you know, I, I didn't, I didn't know much about hockey players

at all. And, uh, Derek Sanderson came out on the ice and I never saw a scarier human being in my life. He, he, first of all, he looked like he'd been out partying all night long. His eyes were bleeding, but, uh, he came out on the ice and that was the scariest looking guy I ever saw in my life. I thought to myself, man, I'm glad I'm on this side of this thing and not out there on the ice with these guys. You mentioned Derek there, but I've had Jim McKinney on this program. Jim McKinney, of course, is also in a lot of those scenes. There's a lot of Leafs, or I guess Ron Ellis is in this thing, Jim Dorey, Paul Henderson, George Armstrong plays in it. Yeah, right, Paul Henderson.

So, yeah, by the way, for those who aren't familiar with this face-off, because now there's a more famous face-off with John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, but this face-off is from 1971. And that great voice you hear, which I always hear that voice. I think, oh, that sounds like Leslie Nielsen. But it's John Vernon, of course, which people might know better from Animal House. John Vernon, but a great actor too. But anyway, that's kind of a fun piece of like Toronto history from the 19.

And you mentioned Trudy, right? That was Trudy Young. That was. Trudy Young. Yeah. She's a sweetheart. I knew her vaguely. I didn't know her real well, but she's a really, really nice lady.

Awesome. Okay, my friend, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to thank some sponsors. Now, I know you're in Virginia here. Wait, which Virginia are you in? You in Virginia or West Virginia? No, I'm in Virginia. Virginia, Virginia.

And my other one's up there in west virginia up there that different one virginia is for lovers they still saying that down there i think that was oh yeah and we are we're very much for lovers well if uh when i do eventually get to meet you scott and when i meet you i'll try to remember you're a pat not a scott but i might call you scott because heck that's how you're known here but i'm gonna be either one. I'm like Pavlov's dog. I drool either way. Maybe I'll call you the boogeyman. I'm going to call you boogeyman.

But I'm going to give you gifts. I'm going to have some lasagna for you from Palma Pasta. Thank you, Palma Pasta, for providing guests with lasagna. Fresh craft beer from Great Lakes Brewery. Delicious. People can get that in LCBOs or at the retail store near Royal York and Queensway. We have Toronto Mike stickers for you

that were made by StickerU.com. You can get that in Virginia. Go to StickerU.com to get your quality stickers and such. I want to thank Ridley Funeral Home. They sent over flashlights and measuring tape and some fun stuff for you.

Canna Cabana. I don't know what the deal is in Virginia, but here in Canada, cannabis is legal, and we have this great retail store across the country called Canna Cabana. They won't be undersold on cannabis or cannabis accessories. What's the deal with cannabis in Virginia? Is it a no-go down there? It's illegal.

It's illegal. Yeah, it is in Virginia. In it a no-go down there? It's illegal. It's illegal. Yeah, it is in Virginia. In the district, it's legal, and I think they're probably going to legalize it in Maryland. This is a tri-state area. Well, one's not a state. One's a district. But anyway, I don't think we'll probably see legal Marajahoochee in Virginia,

but nobody cares. They smoke it anyway. That's right. You find a guy. But here you don't have to worry about the guy under the bridge. You can go to Canna Cabana. And RYOBI, I want to thank RYOBI. This is the first month RYOBI has been a partner of the program.

And I want to remind those who have any work to do on the home or in the backyard, the RYOBI 18-volt, 1-plus high-capacity lithium-plus battery provides four times more runtime, four times longer-lasting charge, and it's 20% lighter than the old NiCad batteries. It's an awesome system. There's like, what did I say, 260 tools in the system. All the Ryobi 18-volt OnePlus tools and chargers work with the same battery and the same chargers.

So you can maybe buy two batteries and 260 tools. You're good to go. My wife absolutely loves this system, and we talked about that last Friday with Becky from Ryobi. Okay, Scott Carpenter. I looked up the lineup from 1050 Chum, and I just randomly chose a year. Let me go to my notes here.

I decided to go with 1975 because i needed to start somewhere so i'm literally i'm going to say the name and you're going to share memory some of these people are no longer with us some of them are later we'll talk about what roster you can what what avengers like chum roster you can assemble for the zoom i want to record for episode 1050 but let's start with jay nelson yeah what can you tell us jay nelson was uh without a in question in my mind uh one of the top two or three inventive people that i ever met in my life uh jay um he could he could make anything funny and sometimes the things he made funny were things that probably shouldn't have been made funny. But that was just Jay. I mean, he just had this way about him that he would entertain you no matter where you were

and no matter what you were doing. You could be at a funeral and he'd be cracking jokes. And he wouldn't mean anything by it other than he wanted you to feel at home with him. He wanted you to be comfortable with him. And Jay was the star of the radio station. But of course, you would never know that because he would go with us to seniors. Remember seniors on Yonge Street? It was a restaurant.

We'd always go there after our, our confessions meetings with Bob Wood. Right. And, uh, and, uh, you know, we would, uh, you know, talk things over and do what wackos do when they get a chance to get together. And he was a, he was a hell of a guy at the red rooster too. That was the bar we all went to next door to the radio station. So, uh, Jay was a good friend and a fantastic air personality i loved him dearly now let's talk that way so i would say that would be if i took a random day in 1975 jay's on from 5 a.m to 9 a.m he's your morning show nine and then uh then gibby yeah john gilbert yeah john uh was the perfect host for that show previously Previously, Larry Solway had done it.

And Larry, I thought, was somewhat cynical and somewhat insulting to his listeners. He called them bingo players. And his boat, he had a boat he called bingo player. And I thought, you know, I just didn't think that was appropriate. But Johnny Gilbert related to his listeners, mostly housewives, right? And most of them stay at home. And some of them, you know, living on the poverty line, really. But he had lived on the poverty line.

John had come from very, very humble beginnings. I don't think he got past the eighth grade in school, maybe ninth grade. I'm not sure. I may be wrong about that. But he was able to take that experience and build empathy with his listeners. It was one-on-one with Johnny Gilbert.

No question about it. And that was the power of it. And he was absolutely the best for that particular show. It was unlike anything else. We were the only rock radio station in America, or in America,

in the world, really, from my perspective, to have a talk show on the air for two hours every day. So was there any music? Not on your show, no. Wild. Okay, so that's 9 to 11.

That is wild. Okay, so now since I think this is all in your brain, because you knew John Gilbert was coming up after Jay Nelson, who's up after John Gilbert? Probably Rhodey. Yep. John Rhodey. Yep.

So talk to me about John. John was and is to this day one of the most intelligent people we've ever known in radio. He had a degree in computer science. He came to us. Well, he was there before I was, so I can't say he came to us. But he came to Chum, I believe, from WRKO in Boston, which was a very major Drake station at that time. John was phenomenally dry with his humor and very intelligent with his humor. And he was one of these guys that could relate to almost anybody,

but he would, he would do so in such a manner that brought you up, you know, and, and more closely aligned with his IQ level, which was probably in the universe, you know, in outer space, probably 200 or something. I'm not sure. Sure. Can you score him for the episode 1050 extravaganza? No. I don't think John actually does anything at all. You know, he doesn't come to the reunions.

I haven't seen him since I left Toronto. I only talked to him once, I believe, since I left Toronto. I doubt he owns a winery. He has a winery now. And that's his whole life, as I understand it. All right. I can't wait to talk about this next guy, which is one of my favorite radio personality to talk about but talk to me about shotgun tom rivers mr reavers uh there was nobody like tom rivers nobody ever

like tom river he was my best well he and terry steel were my two best friends and rivers i mean um i would leave my front door unlocked because sure as hell, Rivers would be on my couch, crashed out the next morning. I have no idea where he'd been. And he had no idea where he'd been. You know, he was another one of these guys. His brain just went 150 miles an hour. He could come up with a bit so fast it'd make your head swim and he would

always be funny he would always be bang on with his uh approach on the air that meant his timing was absolutely impeccable and he was one hell of a nice guy he i missed tom rivers terribly i was uh i'm of an age where i grew up listening to Tom on CFTR. Sure. So loved my Tom Rivers, absolutely. Now, you mentioned his name, but Rock Golf also, I should just point out, wanted me to ask you about your favorite Terry Steele memory. So maybe talk about Terry Steele and then share a memory or two of Terry Steele. Well, Terry and I went all the way back. And from the day he arrived at chum we were close close friends he

did six to nine i did nine to midnight one guy uh called us the greatest one-two punch in radio history and terry terry was one of these guys that could do anything on the air he could be absolutely dead serious and sober you know in in one, the next bit he'd be off the wall, you know? And, uh, he was a very, very good friend of mine. Uh, Terry and I spent many, many a night, uh, down at the red rooster toasting one another and I, you know, up at his cottage at six mile Lake, I'd go up there and he came down with me. I had a little boat on Lake Scugog. We went out.

We'd go out on that. So he and I were very close friends and I missed Terry terribly. As a matter of fact, I learned that Terry passed away in, I guess it was 92. I was working in Tucson, Arizona at the time. Warren Cosford told me. And it was right then and there I thought to myself, I have got to get out of this business before it kills me. Well, you're still here, man. I'm not in the business anymore.

I was an it guy for 12 years. Okay. Well then I promise once we run down this lineup and I ask you about a few more names, uh, we'll find out what happened post chum with you because we got to bring it up to speed here, but okay. So you're on nine to midnight. Uh, talk to me about Scott Carpenter. Just kiddingenter just kidding just kidding i'm gonna just ask you about some names now uh chuck morgan chuck morgan uh he came to i can't remember where he came to us he became a

consultant uh a radio consultant and uh he did very very well he. He programmed a lot of major radio stations in the United States after he left Chum. He wasn't with us very long, but he was good. He was a good jock. Okay, so he was like overnights. And then here's finally, so I mean, other than Mike Cooper, who we talked about off the top, we haven't talked about any FOTMs yet. By the way, Scott, you're now an FOTM. That's a friend of Toronto Mike.

So you'll keep that designation for the rest of your life, my friend. Oh God, no. But here's another FOTM who's been over a couple of times. Talk to me about Jim Van Horn. Okay. Yeah. Jim is, once again, another one of these guys, all of them, in my opinion, are pretty much equal. They all brought something special to the radio station and to their time slot on the air. And they were all, as I said earlier, part of that group that made the whole greater than the sum of the parts. And Jim fit in absolutely perfectly. He was an absolutely marvelous on-air personality. His timing was impeccable.

He always had intelligent and eloquent things to say, and I can't say enough about him. He's a good guy, and we've kept in touch. He had an illness here not too long ago, and I'm happy to say he's better now, and I like him a lot. I always did. I always liked Jim. Yeah, I like the fact he's he's better now and i i like him a lot i always did always like jim yeah he i like i like the fact he's got the rock jock persona from 10 50 and then he's also got the whole tsn sports media where he had a great career there as well so we all love jim van horn here now uh this name you mentioned you're american and you know uh tom rivers i mean a lot of these cats are american this is something that uh cooper mentioned when he was over here a couple of weeks ago.

But a lot of these big voices, especially in the 70s, these chum, 1050 chum voices are American. What was that about? Was that just, I mean, excluding Roger Ashby, where I'm hoping you'll talk about him in a minute. And I mean, Jim Van Horn's Canadian as well, right? Yeah.

But a lot of these guys are american what's up with that uh just well it was uh we came from the drake format you know uh cklw and bob wood wanted to wanted to uh right streamline the chum right and so he brought in guys that worked in those format i i had worked with Mike Joseph, who was the ultimate format guy, and then later at CKLW. And it just so happened, we all had experience with guys, you know, programmers like Paul Drew and people like that. Duke Roberts was another one, you know. Most of us were Americans, but most of us acclimated ourselves to Canada very, very quickly. Well, let me ask you about another American, John Major. Yep. Yep. John Major, another good friend of mine. Sandy and I went down to South Carolina where he was working and we spent an evening with him, just as, you know, had a wonderful time, went

out to dinner and talked about this radio station that he was programming down there and and that was in charleston i believe and then wasn't a few months later he was dead i just couldn't believe it i was just mort i just couldn't i couldn't imagine john major being being dead i couldn't no he's well yeah we've talked about a lot of these guys too we lost too soon you know uh tom rivers terry steel john major gone too soon. Here's a guy who was around your station briefly I think at this time. I just had Jeannie Becker on the show so we kind of talked about J.D. Roberts being

on the new music with her on City TV but did you know J.D. Roberts? No, I did not know J.D. Okay, so no John Roberts Fox News questions for you. Two more names. One is a guy i learned about because i loved watching american graffiti as a kid but uh what can you tell us about wolfman jack

well wolfman was a very special character as you might imagine uh i knew him as smitty i called him smitty his manager hated that he always said call him wolf or wolfie and i said screw you you know hey what's going on smitty everything fine everything just fine it's all right yeah and uh you get him alone you'd get a couple of uh tokes in him this guy listen yeah he would come down to to uh or up i guess like it would be to toronto you have a pack of cool cigarettes, right? You reach in that pack and pull out a joint. Now, I don't know how the hell he got that thing across the border. He must have had a stamp, you know, machine to seal up the package, but he had a cool cigarette package filled with joints and he would smoke up

that radio stage. You walk in that door, boom, boy, it hit you like a rock. One time my wife and her her uh sister they would come up to the radio stage we give them albums to run up to seniors and get us something to eat right and bring it back right so there she's uh his manager wolfie's manager is at the door and he said now we want eight hamburgers we want four orders of fries we want three shakes and and sandy said oh must be you got a lot of people back there. He said, nope, that's just for Wolf.

When that guy got the munchies, boy, he really got the munchies, you know? Well, shout out to Canna Cabana. I love that story. Okay. Now, here's a guy. I'm going to play a song. So we're only about a couple of weeks away from the blue jays uh home opener here at the dome here and uh they're thankfully they got their labor dispute figured out they're playing

spring training games now everybody's got blue jays fever here's a song i'm going to play a bit of it maybe about a minute fade it down and i want to talk to you about this guy in this song here we go I love the day games The night games too I love the clinchers When they're tied at two I love the clinchers when they're tied at two. I love the coaches, the entire crew. I love the Blue Jays.

I love the diamond and the pitcher's seat. Who's on the schedule? Who can we defeat? I'll buy a hot dog, cause I love to eat. And watch the Blue Jays. Blue Jays! Scott, do you remember this song? No, I don't, but I love it.

Yeah, it's good, right? It's too good to be like, yeah. So it's called We've Got the Blue Jays. And I understand it was Mike Holland. Really? This is my understanding, yeah. And I know Mike Holland's not his real name like many of you guys. I don't remember.

Is he supposedly singing it, or did he produce it? I think he's singing it, and I believe so. Okay, now we're going way back. Before I had a podcast, I had a blog, and wrote about this song because I've had this in my, I have a collection of like Blue Jays songs and I've had this song. We got the Blue Jays, but this Blue Jays, but this one always stuck out to me as being too good to be like a novelty

song. Like it sounds like a legit great song. And I wrote about it. Well produced. Yeah. Very well produced. And I wrote about it, Mike,

you know, and then I got an email from and i what's his real name mike boulier do you know i don't i never knew his real name okay so i think it's mike boulier something to that effect uh living in the states he goes i used to be mike holland on uh 10 50 chum and this was my song and i got all these details and i just wondered if you had any memories of this song or mike ho Mike Holland's production or anything but it sounds like no but you're digging the jam here yeah I do and I had no idea who is a singer of course I'm a singer too you know and a drummer so uh Mike if you're listening to this let's get together up in Toronto at the next chum reunion

and we'll uh we'll knock out some we'll kick out some jams that's what we'll do we'll kick out the jams mf love it kick out the disc shout out to mc5 love it so much okay love it so much now uh and if you can get maybe we can get mike holland on that 10 50 chum episode who knows but okay so now i want to find out post chum what what why does it end for you at chum in the late 1970s um i wanted to do something with a more adult approach, you know, and I just decided it was time to move on. And also, I wanted to buy a house, and I couldn't do it in Canada. I have a GI Bill. I can buy houses, you know, in the United States with the help of the GI Bill. I couldn't use that in Canada.

you know, in the United States with the help of the GI Bill. I couldn't use that in Canada. So the opportunity presented itself for me to go to Washington, D.C. And Dan Mason called me up and the first question he had was, Scott, what kind of beer y'all drink up there in Canada? I said, yep, that's the guy right there. So I came down to D.C. and worked at WPGC. And we were number one. I was anyway. I had a 12 share in D.C. And I was able to take that to mornings in Baltimore and then later to Los Angeles, New York, all over the place. You would fill in for Larry King.

Is that right? Yes. Yeah. I was Larry's sub for a year. Yeah. That's amazing too. Just a radio, not on TV. Right, right.

No suspenders for you, right? No. Well, Larry didn't have suspenders back in those days. His pants fell down. See, I only, he would get there. He'd sit down. His pants would be around his knees. And I said, Larry, you ought to get some suspenders.

And eventually he did. He took your advice and then it became his trademark, I'd say. All right. You mentioned, is it the department of the U.S. Department of Energy? Is that who you got your employee for before you retired? Yeah, I was a systems admin at the U.S. Department of Energy. All right. Good for you.

You're never too late to change careers. And I have a question, though, about your radio life because uh 10 50 of course well at some point it became an oldies uh it left top 40 for oldies at some point in the 80s and then it be uh famously especially for listeners of this program because i did a special micumentary all about it but it became the Team 1050. Shout out to Jim Van Horn. So it was a sports experiment that did not last very long. If you hear that episode, you hear from people like

Paul Romanuk and Mike Richards and Jim Van Horn who were not very happy with how that all ended. They were promised something, it didn't work out. But is it right that you come back, voice tracking shows post, so between the sports things. So tell me, how did that come to be? Well, thing it didn't work out but is it right that you come back as a voice tracking shows post so between the sports things so tell me like how did that come to be um brad jones uh knobby he was programming chum at the time when they went back into the music format and he he'd asked me if i

i would be willing to do it and i i honestly i didn't see how it would be possible to do it. And I, I honestly, I didn't see how it would be possible. How do you pull that off? So we kicked that idea around a bit, you know, for a while. And finally, um, we just thought we'd give it a try. So I went out and got a Comrex unit, which, uh, actually all that, that show was done over a standard landline telephone line. Wow. Basically in a modem, it uses a modem. Okay. Like the old fashioned ones we used to use to get on the internet. Sure. That in a modem. It uses a modem. Okay. Like the old fashioned ones we used to use to get on the internet. Sure. That's what it used. And it had like a 26,000 bit per second feed rate, which was fine for voice. Right? Right. So I was concerned that we wouldn't be able to get the voice thing down and we wouldn't be able to, you know, sound washy or it might sound phased. It didn't, it sounded fantastic. So I was able to do that from my house. I used PC

anywhere to connect to the station's tracking system. And we were able to do that. I'm proud to say, I was very proud of that because I had program directors and general managers contacting me and asking me if they flew me up to Canada every weekend to do that show. And I was sitting in my underwear, my SpongeBob boxer shorts in my house doing this thing. It was just fantastic. And I do have a lot of those shows on tape. They're not on tape, but on audio. Sure.

I used to, you know, listen to them every week to make sure that everything was right, you know. And I don't think we ever sounded anything other than completely live. It just, it really sounded good. But that's a little scary, right? Because, I mean, part of what I love about radio is that it's uh you know live and local but you can have uh you can have a guy in his underwear in virginia sending it over uh yeah well i mean i used to do my show in my underwear when i was a chum too but we don't probably should not talk now uh tom rivers this is the story i heard maybe you know if it's right or not but tom rivers uh had a similar comeback opportunity via the voice

tracking but i think he he had an issue of the fact that he was making less in 2002 than he made in 1972 because of this voice tracking uh yeah i didn't pay squat right well mark weisblatt uh from 1236 uh shout out to 1236.ca uh he he shared that little timbit and i thought okay that sounds uh that sounds about right but hey man you had a good time returning to uh the airwaves here in toronto i did and you know i got a lot a lot of uh response from that it's one guy uh that used to have listening parties at his house he'd have 80 people in his house listening to me on the air. And, you know, Scott, you know, all those years, you know, there's, there's a times of the day where there's not 80 people listening to 10 50 right now. I know, I know. And, and, and it just, it, it was, um, I never knew,

let me just put it this way. I never knew back in the seventies how popular we were. I had no clue. never knew back in the 70s how popular we were. I had no clue. I knew we were fairly popular, right? You had to be if you were on that station. But I had no idea in the world that people 40, 50 years later would remember what I did. I had no clue. When I left Toronto, I thought, that's great. That was a lot of fun. Now it's time to do the next thing. And I didn't really think much of it. And then people started contacting me, and I thought, what in the world? You know, it was just the most amazing thing. When I speak to Torontonians of a certain age, okay, I would, I'll just, maybe 60 plus, let's say.

I don't know. Yeah, yeah. 60 plus. That sounds about right. Baby boomers, let's say if you talk to a toronto baby baby boomer more than likely than not if you mention 10 50 chum they light up like they're a teenager again it's magic it's magic yes yes it is magic and you know what none of the other radio stations that i'm aware of at least have that kind of response. WABC, no way. WFIL, no way. KHJ, no way. They don't remember. But in Toronto, they remember Chumming. Here's why. Unlike CFTR,

unlike some of these other stations that competed with us, we were bang on 100% bang on, 100% micro-focused on being a Toronto radio station. We were Toronto in everything we did. If you look at our chum charts, no, those little music survey packets. Those, you will see that every time we took a picture and put it on the front of that, there would be a Toronto landmark in there. City Hall, Centre Island, right? All the places that people in Toronto went to. And everything we did on the air, we did focused like a laser on Toronto. We were Toronto's radio station. Scott, I'm so glad you wrote me after hearing Mike Cooper on Toronto Mic'd because it

let me pounce. And I'm so glad I did because I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed the last, you know, hour, 15 minutes. We just talking about your days at Chum and more. I'm glad you're enjoying retirement, but at some point you'll come back up here for some kind of chum reunion and then maybe you can sneak me in the back door or something and I can meet you no you you just you let me know and I will be more than happy to meet you at the front door and walk you in because no seriously all right those reunions are for all of us they're not just for the guys and gals that were on the air they They're for the fans as well. And we love the fans. We want to be around the fans.

Love it. And I am very serious. So again, tomorrow morning I'm dropping episode 1021, which is all about CFNY. I sincerely want to do a special episode for episode 1050 of Toronto

Mic'd. And if you could help me assemble the crew that would meet on zoom for this recording and we can record it ahead of time and then I can piece it together. But if you could help me assemble the, the 1050 chum Avengers or whatever we, you know, this group, I would, I would be indebted to you and we can celebrate this great station.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I've got some guys in mind. And unfortunately a can celebrate this great station. Yeah, yeah, okay. I've got some guys in mind. Unfortunately, a lot of the great ones are no longer with us, you know, and it just hurts me to have to say that. We'll pay tribute to them on this episode. We'll pay tribute to those we have lost, of course.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you've got a job to do here. I'll see you probably maybe later on this year. We may actually be able to do a reunion this year. We haven't done it for two years now. And I'll be there. Okay. And that brings us to the end of our 1020th show.

You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Patrick slash Scott slash Boogeyman. If somebody wanted to get in touch with you or follow you anywhere, is there somewhere we could direct them? Sure. Just go to my Facebook page. I'm on Facebook.

And, you know, now I'm a musician. So I'm playing jazz and, you know, all this other stuff these days. So, you know, you can listen to a couple of those videos if you want. And just drop me a message. And that's Patrick Bergen. Can you spell Bergen just for people? Yeah, B-E-R-G-I-N, not E-N. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery, they're at Great Lakes Beer.

Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Sticker U is at Sticker U. Ridley Funeral Home is at Ridley FH. Canna Cabana are at Canna Cabana underscore. And Ryobi, they're on Instagram at Ryobi underscore Canada. See you all next week. I know it's true, yeah. I know it's true.

How about you? I'm picking up trash and then putting down roads?