Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - The CHUM Requiem: Toronto Mike'd #179

Episode Date: June 14, 2016

Mike chats with Marc Weisblott of 12:36 and Ed Conroy of Retrontario about the fall of 1050 CHUM as a Top 40 radio station and the coinciding rise of MuchMusic.

Welcome to episode 179 of Toronto Mites, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a local independent brewery producing fresh craft beer. I'm Mike from TorontoMites.com and joining me this week is 1236 author Mark Wiseblot and retro Ontario archivist Ed Conroy. Aloha. Welcome back, Mike. Welcome back to both of you. And I was saying earlier before you got here, Mark, that this is a little dangerous that all three of us in the same space at the same time. It's a security risk

as far as I'm concerned. Should anything happen to this home at this time, Toronto will be in trouble. And if people want to go back and listen to Mark Weisblot's first appearance, I will direct them

to episode 173. Was that okay? Did I do all right the first time? I will direct them to episode 173. Was that okay? Did I do all right the first time? I go to my brother for these things, my brother Steve. You did great. He loved it. He told me he was mesmerized by your delivery style. Is this your natural speaking pattern?

Yeah. Is that what people come to your basement to talk about, defend the fact that this is their actual speaking style? Because when Jeff Woods was here a couple of weeks ago, I saw you got a bunch of comments, people wondering if it was a put-on. And you reacted by saying, well, he talked to my two-year-old and my wife and my dog in the exact same voice. You don't have a dog, do you? No dog. But he phoned me up and it was the same voice. So basically, if that's Jeff Woods putting on a voice, he's doing it all the time. And some of the other people you've had down here recently, Mad Dog, I think maybe a lot of people assume he's doing a fake radio voice, but no? No. And Mad Dog, I don't even think he sounds fake. To me, that sounds like a natural speaking pattern.

But my brother said to me, he gets a Gilbert Gottfried vibe from your delivery. Then I listened back. Yes, at times it is Gilbert-esque, but you're telling me that's how you talk. Nothing I can do about it, Mike. Stuck with his voice for life. It's a voice made for radio slash podcast. But Annette, your voice is not as memorable, but it's the content I love from you. Oh, thank you. And you haven't yet hooked me up properly with Maestro Fresh Wes,

because I'm still waiting for the final confirmation on his appearance. It will be worth it when it happens. Trust me. But you did hook me up with PJ Fresh Phil. Of course. What did you think of his ep? I thought his ep was great. I mean, he's a fascinating guy. Very interesting history. I know he went off on a tangent about his adventures in

California, but I think his fans don't really know about that era, so that's good stuff. What got me is he talked about how he was really into design and everything. And then I actually looked at him and he looked really stylish to me. And I said, oh, yeah, I can tell you're into design or whatever. And then he told me, no, this is just some junk he threw together. You know what I mean?

Yeah, he's a very modest chap, Phil. But you got him doing his impersonations, which is, again, a good talent that he has. No, it's fantastic. Before we dive into the purpose for this meeting of the minds, and we'll dive into that. It's about the anniversary of 1050 Chum leaving Top 40 Radio for favorites of yesterday and today in that format and the rise, the coinciding rise of Much Music. But before we get into there, Ed, I saw on, I think it's YouTube, but I saw you talk to the Train 48 people. Tell me what, how did you get involved with this Train 48 reunion and what was it like meeting the Train 48 people? Yeah yeah it's been a crazy ride on train 48

uh you know train 48 when it was on in uh 2003 to 2005 i believe uh you know i skimmed past it i thought it looked horrible uh you know i never really bought into the the conceit of it um and it just kind of disappeared and and that was the end of it. And then years later, I got to thinking about it again, and of course, looked online, and there was virtually nothing, no video clips, no history. So I wrote a little piece about it for BlogTO. And I got sort of obsessed with this concept, because it was sort of born a little bit too early. If it had come along a few years later, with the rise of social with this concept because it was sort of born a little bit too early. If it had come along a few years later with the rise of social media, I think it would have played out differently.

And I guess because my article was one of the few things online about it, when this company, Syndicato, came along and decided to start showing it again on YouTube, they asked me if I was interested in hosting a reunion. And their exact words were, can you play Charlie Rose to the cast of Train 48? I'm insanely jealous that you got to do that. A sentence that no one had ever previously spoken. Can you play Charlie Rose to the cast of Train 48? Oh, it's so true. But, you know, they were absolutely amazing people

and they all had, you know, incredibly great memories and stories about the making of the show and they all felt it had really been given

a raw deal by Ken West and they were really excited that it was coming back and, you know, nobody knows what people are going to make of it now,

whether it's the fans that are going to revisit it or a whole new audience. But it's coming back. It's the old ones. It's the old ones. Yeah, it's not like they're making new ones. Well, the door is a little bit open.

Do I play my breaking news clip here? If the reaction to the classic episodes is there, there's certainly an interest in a proper reunion. I watched this clip because I remember Train 48 and the great theme song, na-na-na-na-na-na, train. Which was bought. It wasn't composed specifically for the show.

They just bought it from this American band. Did they just add the train part at the end? No, no, no. The train part's really there? That was actually there. They were looking for a song that had some reference to trains. They Googled song lyrics, train, and they couldn't afford Train songs because that guy's a big deal.

I just saw him sing the national anthem before the Sharks-Penguins game two nights ago. Mark, you're a big Penguins fan, right? No. What happened exactly there? The guy from Train, Monaghan? Pat Monaghan. That's the man. He sang the national anthem before the game.

He's got a new album, Led Zeppelin II, tribute album. Get out of here. By Train. You know who's a big fan? Because I see her tweets. Aaron Davis is a big fan of Train. Wow. That sounds about right.

I was going to say, this Train 48 thing is, what, just 12, 13 years ago now. And it takes a long time for the nostalgia machine to kick in, right? Last time I was here, we were talking about a lot of lost internet history, how people don't even remember things from 15 or 20 years ago. You can't Google a lot of the websites that were out there in the early days of internet journalism. So I think it does take time for something to settle into the point where it can be something that people look back on with some sort of fondness. And maybe you've hit the sweet spot that Train 48 is no longer a punchline. And if it's still going to be a punchline, it's out there for everybody to hate watch. And you get to play Charlie Rose, which is cool.

Hey, it was the coolest. And, you know, they had free beer. It wasn't as good as your Great Lakes brewery, but... I could hook them up with Great Lakes. It can upgrade. Hey, I know I mentioned off the top that Mark Weisblot is episode 173, and yes, it was a great episode. I got great

feedback. People loved hearing you. I wanted to come right back and do it all over again. Well, what is this, 179? You're like, yeah, six episodes ago. Usually I make, I made Mad Dog wait. He was 92. I made him wait till 178. Well, there was a significance to doing a podcast in this week.

And we'll get to that. We'll get to that very soon. But I need to point out to Ed that Ed is making his third appearance, Very soon. But I need to point out to Ed that Ed is making his third appearance, which ties him with Mark Hebbshire and Fred Patterson of the Humble and Fred show as the only three Pete guests. I'm honored. That's big company. I just thought you would like to know that.

I love to know that. But if people want to hear your previous two, and unfortunately, there's no Hammy Hamster song because I messed that up, but the first appearance was 117 and the second appearance was 167. And here you are back for 179. Mark, can we talk about your truther movement, the Ann Romer truther movement? Where are we at with that? Well, last week the city was shaken by the discovery that Ann Romer was back anchoring the news on CP24. Last Wednesday night, suddenly made a reappearance. Now, we've been down this road before because back in 2010, Ann made an announcement. She was leaving the news media to

work in the aviation industry. There were tributes and articles, coverage all over the place that this veteran broadcaster was taking on a new challenge. And what, six months later, she was back anchoring again like nothing had ever happened. And that's key. They never acknowledged the fact that she was back or that she had ever retired in the first place. She just was back. And it was just they moved forward with Anne as like lead anchor at CB24. And that was, you're right, that was in 2010. And I'll let you pick up the story, I think, five years later.

Yeah, well, she pulled off this switcheroo once. Why not do it again? So here we are seven months after Ann announced that she was retiring, and there was some speculation from her former colleague she was doing it to spare somebody else's job at CP24 or Bell Media. Going off to new challenges, maybe retirement was the word that was used, although she was still young enough to take on a whole new career if that was available to her. And that was last November. June 2016, Ann Romer back on CP24, billed as the lead anchor as if nothing ever happened. That's what gets me. Twice they've gone back to this,

well, there's cake and gifts from colleagues and parties, and there's Instagram photos and Tumblr blogs, and bye, Anne, what a legend, good luck in your next venture. And then to bring her back so quickly twice, as if nothing had happened, blows my mind. So I did talk to, and I have to be careful how I phrase this because I protect my sources always, okay? It's like Woodward and Bernstein

over here. Be careful here. But I have impeccable sources that tell me that the aviation retirement, the first retirement was so Anne could recapture the happiest time of her professional life when she was a, were they called stewardesses? Is that the appropriate nomenclature? Okay, stewardess, when she was a stewardess. It was called stewardess back then. Right. What is it now? I should know this. Waitress in the sky? Air hostess. I like waitress in the sky. That's good too. Okay. And that this, you know, she's going to be a stewardess again and she receives her compensation plan and it's much less than she could do that for. And she very quickly negotiates a return to CP24. This is what I'm told. I published it on trinomike.com

if people want to read it all and then this next this last chapter so the retirement in November 2015 and people are like this doesn't make sense you got to be an elected MP and I understand the the the you know the some logic missing here but she was determined to become Attorney General of Ontario I don't know if that means she was going to run for an MP. And then she had, of course, her name, her father is a big deal, carries a lot of weight, her father, and she was going to kind of lean on that. And she was going to become Attorney General of Ontario. This was the goal. Yeah, I don't quite believe this. It doesn't seem to check out. How could she be promised such a position if you have to be elected and have certain credentials? Like everyone but one. I did the homework because I thought you had to be a lawyer. And it turns out you don't have to be a lawyer. But every single attorney general has been a lawyer except for one.

OK, so that seems a bit sketchy to me, but you did put it on torontomike.com. I wrote what my source believes is to be true, and I trust the source. But, of course, I won't know for certain everything until I get Ann Romer herself in that very seat that you're in right now. So the post made it on Reddit. It was clicked by several hundred people through uh 1236 and uh there's more than enough opportunity for somebody to step up and correct you tell you the truth right any response any reaction zero nothing and i'm tweeting at bell media pr like i because i actually i hope I hope it doesn't come across as I'm somehow an Ann Romer hater. I'm happy to see her face reading the news on CP24. I'm pro-Ann Romer.

I don't want to see these little broadcasters. Keep going. As long may you run, as Neil Young would say. I'm pro-Ann Romer, but you retire twice and come back like nothing happened. Inquiring minds are going to want to know. That's what's kind of frightening to me about all this is that they are banking on the majority of people really not caring or not even noticing

or remembering that she was gone. And Toronto Mike is like Roddy Roddy Piper and John Carpenter's They Live. Like you put the sunglasses on and you see what's going on and you're trying to call it out. what's going on. Love the reference. You're trying to call it out. That's why you're here, man. Rowdy Ray Piper's my favorite.

Piper's Pit was can't miss TV for me back in my day. Nice. But who knew there was such loyalty to Ann Romer out there, right? There are tweets about her, people that were so excited to see Ann back from the abyss, Excited to see Anne back from the abyss on their screens, comforting them in the evenings, giving them Toronto's breaking news, repeating the same stories 30 times an hour. People were taking selfies in front of their TV. Yeah, exactly. It was crazy. So maybe we are being swept up in some sort of viral marketing campaign that this is all entirely deliberate,

meant to play stooges like us. If it happens one more time, I'm on that bus. This is intentional. Let's see how many times we can have retirement parties for Anne and just bring her back like it never happened. That's a good theory. So that beer, in fact, Ed's already started uh drinking that's your second one actually that's great lakes beer you all get and i got note to great lakes i'm actually tapped now we're gonna

need a new delivery mad dog mad dog is recovering alcoholic i still gave him beer was that an appropriate uh move on my part or should i not have done that it depends i mean there's some recovering alcoholics that can have it in the house. I don't know if you asked him. During the episode, I did ask him, like, was this grossly rude and inappropriate as I'm giving him the beer? I sure wasn't going to let him crack one open in front of me.

But he said he was going to re-gift it to somebody right away, and I felt it was okay. I'm not a big drinker, but of course, I got my prize here for being a Toronto Mike a month ago. And I have to say that the Canuck Pale Ale was the favorite of the Great Lakes Brewery samples that I had. Into another one right here. I got to say, the Octopus.

That's my favorite. Octopus fights. It's amazing. That's my favorite. And it's really hard to get. I go to the LCBO and Liberty Village is sold out of it all the time. While you're in the hood, Queensway in rural York,

that's where it is. I gotta go there. You gotta do it. If people want to help crowdfund this initiative, so like somebody that's out there actually putting at 1236 and at Retro Ontario in the same room at the same time, which I think is important.

Like, even if I'm not recording this, this is exciting for me. Go to patreon.com slash Toronto Mike or click over from torontomike.com and give what you can. And if you like what you hear, do it up. Do it up. All right, let's dive in here after that 18-minute introduction here. We were going to gather on June 6, 2016. That was the plan, the best-laid plans of Mice and Men and all that. We were going to gather because that was the 30th anniversary. It was 30 years ago, on June 6, 1986, that 1050 Chum flipped formats and left Top 40 behind. So we're going to spend some time here today discussing the legacy of the legendary Chum and the rise of Much Music that coincided with the station's decline.

That is the plan, gentlemen. Are you ready? Yeah. I mean, we're a week late on that anniversary date. This was a podcast I was waiting 30 years to be a part of. And what happened? Ed, your daughter's daycare closed for the day. Ed had a good excuse.

I'm sorry, guys. Ed had a good excuse. But you know what? At the same time, I don't want to be one of those people who's going on and on and on about things that happened 30 years ago that I remember from being a young teenager. And the reason is because I'm old enough to remember when there were always guys from the 60s hanging around. Remember? Did you encounter any of these people? When I was first getting started in the media game, there would always be these old hippies who would never shut up about the fact that they got to experience the 1960s and you were born too late. So sit down, young fella, and let me tell you about how great things used to be.

And I would hear this from people who never really did anything of any significance, right? They just happened to be there. They were taking in what was going on around them. It would be like, well, I remember Woodstock. And you would ask them, oh, were you there? Did you see it all happen, Jimi Hendrix, all the rest? And it's like, well, no, not exactly. My mother wouldn't let me go, but I remember hearing about it.

And I was here as it was in the air. It was all happening, man. Groovy, you should have been there. Anyway, I don't want to be one of those guys 30 years later. I got to say, that was a great, great intro, but let's go back. First, let's set the table by talking about May 27, 1957. We were like not even a thought in our parents' minds back in 1957. So back in May 27, 1957, that is when the Top 40 era begins on 1050 Chum.

And this was the very first song played on 1050 Chum back then. All shook up. Some guy named Elvis. on 1050 Chum back then. All shook up. Some guy named Elvis. This is not the song covered, but I'm just remembering Don't Be Cruel was covered.

Do you remember the cover of Don't Be Cruel in the mid-80s by... Cheap Trick. Cheap Trick. That's exactly correct. Who I saw open for Pearl Jam in 98. They didn't play Don't Be Cruel

during that concert. So what... Do you know, Mark, the role of Alan Waters in all this back in 1957? Yeah, well, I mean, he was the one who ran the station. The whole thing was his idea and his operation. The best I can recall reading about it was his idea to pivot from what was one of those sleepy, reading about it was his idea to pivot from what was one of those sleepy full service radio stations to uh latch on to this whole rock and roll thing that was happening and he built up an empire from there yeah and you know of course we're not around for that but my understanding is i guess it all

you know was it blackboard jungle what's the what's the movie that opens with uh the bill haley and the cometss rock around the clock? This is Blackboard Jungle? Yeah, Blackboard Jungle. Ed's looking at me like, dude, I was so far from being born. How do I know about Blackboard? But yeah, this is like the birth of rock and roll, 1957. And at the same time, from what I've heard on Rock Radio Scrapbook and other sources out there,

Chum was still kind of a sleepy radio station. Here, this whole rock and roll thing was happening, but the presentation was still far from the dynamic approach they adopted around 1968, when they brought in this whole idea of playing songs repeatedly over and over again, ramping up the presentation and the whole idea of the radio DJ as somebody who was part of the manic energy of what they were putting out there rather than this sort of sleepy presenter. We all remember Bob McAdory, who was on global TV through the 80s and 90s. He was one of those people that got blown out when Chum was trying to electrify itself and turn itself into what became a powerhouse

through the 1970s. They brought in a lot of DJs and talent, even behind the scenes, from the United States. And a lot of the names associated with the station were, in fact, Americans who moved here. Let's do a little name dropping of these larger-than-life personalities. And I always heard the tales of, like, they'd be at the C&E, and I'd talk to my mom, and my mom would talk about, like, she was a chumbug, and they would go to the X, and then the popular DJs at the time would be there, and they were, like, rock stars in this city. Like, it was just,

it was like American graffiti, you know what I mean? Well, Jay Nelson became the morning man in 1964, so he got to ride the whole Beatlemania wave, everything associated with that, and he stayed with the station through the end of 1980. So he was very much the front man for the operation in that regard. He had a background, I think, doing children's TV. Didn't he work as a clown something in Buffalo?

But on Chum, he was really considered, after a while, the voice of reason, the adult supervision, the guy that was the anchor of the station. So as things transformed through the 1970s, he was really the rock who was holding it down while things got a lot louder than they had been when he first arrived. And what about, is it Chuck McCoy? Is that another guy from the 70s? Yeah, the Chucker. This all is really before my time, before

I started listening. I mean, yeah, but these are the people that built this city on rock and roll. They're the ones that were synonymous with the station. J. Robert Wood, the architect behind the scenes,

he's really credited with turning Chum into this magical brand within Toronto. So you had the Chum t-shirts, the Chum astrology buttons. That was a genius promotion. I don't know if you've seen those even in recent years on eBay and stuff. I have not seen those, but Ed's wearing one right now. No, seriously, right on point. I like that.

They had buttons for each of the star signs for the radio station and tapped into a kind of vanity marketing, right? You would want to wear a button for a radio station if it was specifically representing your sign in the Zodiac, even more so than just a generic one. But the t-shirts were definitely a big deal. You know, it reminds me of in the 80s, it was a big deal for these Toronto tees,

the City TV Toronto tees. Did you ever have one of those, Ed? Oh, yeah. No, of course. And I mean, just hearing Mark talk about it, it's obviously drew its inspiration from the Trump t-shirts. Yeah, I just learned that now. I feel less impressed now by the Toronto Tees.

Yeah, I know. You just took something away from the Toronto Tees. Come on, you're ruining everything. Hey, I'm going to play, I want to get a feel for these guys, these DJs and stuff. So I actually have a Chuck McCoy clip from June 1970.

And let's just hear how that sounded back then. That's the assembled Mazatune. back then. borough fair donated by concept 376 it's coming to your home today family fairs first annual we dress your family in style yeah these clips uh have a lot of ads in them which i normally like but here we go you are literally glued to the radio with this sticky weather more of it tomorrow cloudy and warm scattered showers or thunder showers uh may just cool it down a little tonight and tomorrow overnight low 60 high tomorrow 75 and the current temperature 75 degrees I'm feeling it. Well, there you go. That was the formula, right? Keep it real tight.

The formatics were very precise. This was known as the Drake radio format, which was brought to Toronto, not named after Aubrey Graham. I was going to say, we have a new Drake radio format in this city. But it was really, really all about making as much noise as possible,

turning the radio station into a representation of what Marshall McLuhan would call the central nervous system. If you were dialed into what was going on in a station like that, the idea was that you would never want to tune away because there was always something about to happen, even if it was all just hyperbolic. And the music, that AM radio music, which is a look back today with such fondness, even though at the time a lot of it was real dreck, that was part of the package, part of the engine. But it wasn't that the music would stand on its own. You needed the jocks in there to put it all together. they are to put it all together.

When I had KJ on, I spent an inordinate amount of time pestering him about Tom Rivers because he was my morning guy when I was in primary school and I was waking up to go to primary school. I would listen to Tom Rivers, the morning, is it the Air Force? Tom Rivers morning show on CFTR 680.

Rivers Air Force. Yeah, Air Force was something else. Air Force was a CBC radio show, I believe. I also would hear in the house periodically. You're right. I'm sorry about that. Yeah, that's right. So Tom Rivers, at the time, you hear this big voice that wakes you up

and plays the top 40 hits that you want to hear on 680 CFTR, and then you learn that he was one of those chum guys that your mom was into or whatever. Do you know, so he's an American, Tom Rivers, and is chum, 1050 Chum, is that his first foray into Toronto radio? Yeah, he was one of those people that Jay Robert Wood brought into Toronto

who had experience in other markets. One of the secrets that's come out more recently is the fact that sometimes DJs were brought to his attention at CHUM because they were rival radio station program directors who wanted somebody out of the market. So the whole idea is that they would send tapes and recommend them and suggest them so that the competition would be lured elsewhere. And Toronto was a hotbed for bringing those people over and offering them the money that they needed to come north of the border and become part of this powerhouse here.

Let's hear Tom Rivers in December 1970. More music, 10-50 Chum. 9-0-8 on Chum's Million Dollar Weekend. Tom Rivers proudly presents the President. 5-10-15-20-25-30. If that seems to be like the speedometer On your car tonight, baby It better go the other way

Hazardous conditions in and around Metro It's 39 degrees These are the presidents Last game forever now You know, I can listen to these sound checks all day long Like they hit the post It just sounds It's fun

It's just It's energetic. It's cool. I just love it. That was their entire artistry right there. Just putting that little bit together, making sure that it fit the time of the intro of the song. A lot of the songs through the glory days of Chum that became big hits reached reached that status because you you could do the talk up they had a long enough intro that they worked in tandem with the dj like we heard there and nowadays if

you've ever had the pleasure of watching a radio show they've got the digital timer now and they know basically every song that's pre-programmed in the computer the different posts too some songs have like multiple posts and you would time yourself so you say oh yeah 16 seconds before this part and 34 before the lyrics or whatever and to me i just had this chat with mad dog he's like kj and the vets from back in the day he says they don't use that digital cheat sheet if you will uh they just know and they just go with it and sounds like tom rivers who hits it perfectly there and did it how many times a day, he just knew. But nowadays, I don't think there's the compulsion to fit that much data into one little diatribe, let alone risk losing your breath before you get to the song.

I always want to hear the clips. At some point, somebody screwed up royally, right? They must have had times when they trampled over the lyrics or whatever. I want to hear the clips. At some point, somebody screwed up royally, right? They must have had times when they trampled over the lyrics or whatever. I want to hear those soundchecks. I don't know if they were. I think Retro Ontario needs to do something about this. Find me the mistakes by the great legendary Toronto DJs. I'm on it. If they were really good, they would never miss hitting the post.

That's what the magic was all about. There's a guy in New York City today on WCBS, Broadway Bill Lee. He posts videos on Facebook showing off his ability to get it right every time, although he's only posting specific videos. So there might be some times when he misses it. I'm not sure. I'm glad that he's gone by Broadway because there's a spaceman, Bill Lee, who used to pitch for the Expos, and we don't want any confusion there. So I'm glad that he's gone by Broadway because there's a spaceman, Bill Lee, who used to pitch for the Expos.

And we don't want any confusion there. So I'm glad. So, yeah, there's at least one guy still doing it in the United States of America. You know, lately I'm on a radio role. Music radio, I mean. Like, Ingrid Schumacher came over, and then Jeff Woods came over, and then Mad Dog was just here. And then we're doing this episode about Toronto Radio. But, you know, in the past, I've done a lot of sports media, a lot of sports media, like, you know, you name it.

Be it Mike Wilner or, you know, Greg Brady or James Duthie or Ron McLean, whatever. So one guy who's been on TSN forever, Jim Van Horn. I wonder sometimes, my sports media follower friends, I often wonder if they are aware that Jim Van Horn has a top 40 DJ background. And Jim Van Horn was on 1050. I'm not talking about the team, which we'll talk about in a minute, but I'm talking about the actual, this legendary top 40, 1050, Jim Van Horn. Let's hear how he sounded so you can hear where he's come from. This is 1973.

Seven o'clock at Trump Toronto. How you doing, babe? This is Jim Van Horn coming off strong with the sound of summer of 1973. Got tickets to give away to the Summer Series of Stars. We're full of Pontiac Astra GT hatchbacks. Go on the line starting Monday in the summer of 73. Saturday night in the city with Chief Van Horn. Time to take it cool with Tony Orlando and Don. You're right. They say a lot of stuff in those brief seconds before the lyrics kick in.

And consider the fact that he's introducing tie a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree. And yet making that song sound like the most exciting thing that you've ever heard. It sounds like Zeppelin's Black Dog. That's how cool that's going to be. That's right. And this is Jim Van Horn. And Jim Van Horn, so they made some noise. You were mentioning this before we started recording that when Jim Van Horn was going to Van Horn, so they made some noise. You were mentioning this before we started recording, that when Jim Van Horn was going to be on the Team 1050, so, yeah, and this is not the TSN 1050 we have today, but this was the previous sports radio incarnation on 1050,

that they were talking about a return of Jim Van Horn back to the 1050 on the AM dial. Yeah, for a very small fraction of listeners compared to what he had 30 years earlier. Well, I asked Ed if he would do a Venn diagram of this for me. Let's take a look at your Venn diagram of 1050 listeners and then the 1050 team listeners. Okay, it's just two circles.

Okay, I got it. Thank you. But at the same time, Toronto back then, and this comes up a lot, definitely in a lot of Ed's research, Toronto was such a sleepy city back in the 1970s. And so what they managed to project on Chump, this loud, noisy excitement, this cacophony, wasn't really matched out there in the streets of the city. They packed it all into what was happening on the AM radio station. By the time I tuned into what was going on there, really late 70s, early 80s, they sort of mastered this. And I think for me, this is where I became such a devoted listener because even though it had already peaked as a station, the audience

share was moving to FM. I mean, that's where you went if you were seriously into music. What they were doing on Chum, even though music itself was at a low point, I mean, the late 70s, not seen as any sort of pinnacle in pop history generally. But Chum retooled its sound after disco to something that really drew me in. And it sounded like this is where everything was happening. Pretty much all I needed to know in the world could be accessed by listening to this one radio station. And who are some of the other personalities at the time when you start tuning in in the late 70s?

Like, for example, is this John Majors there? Yeah. So John Major came to Toronto 1975, another one of those American recruits. And he managed to become, within the space of 10 years, one of the biggest celebrities in the history of the Toronto media. How this all happened was really a consequence of the reputation he had on the radio, but then getting a job on this show Video Singles, which Ed knows all about, which was on Channel 47, CFMT, and their attempt to capitalize on the whole MTV thing, which didn't yet have its own station in Canada. And, of course, the guys like me know John Major is Toronto Rocks. That's where he ends up for many years, I guess.

Toronto Rocks, John Major. Yeah, and, I mean, someone like him, what was he known for? Just kind of mugging for the camera, introducing videos, but I don't know that the barrier was so high. Little known fact, he did a show on City TV called Lunch Television,

which I believe it only lasted about six months, but it was an attempt to sort of replicate the success of the Ann Romer success. Breakfast Hour all comes back to Ann. Thank you. You pipe in any time you can tie something back to Ann Romer. Don't hesitate.

I can mute this guy if you need me to. Don't worry. But yeah, John Major was an amazing figure. I mean, really charismatic on those AM airwaves and had something unique going on within Toronto. He died in 2007, age 53, I think, a real tragedy. I met him somewhere along the way, did a sort of interview with him, and he was really generous with his time. As far as sharing his philosophy about having maybe gone to the top of celebrity status within Toronto, packing up and leaving for L.A. and then finding himself auditioning for the same parts as a hundred other guys who look just like him. And in that bigger pond, not really being able to find a position that could live up to what he wanted to do for himself, he ended up back in Toronto on a series of radio stations trying to find his place. His name seemed to mean a lot in the 1990s.

It had this nostalgic resonance of somebody who was known back then. But I don't think he did anything that was as notable as being one of those on the front lines of 1050 Jump. And when he was in LA, he had to go up against Shadow Stevens for everything. So nobody wants to do that.

Come on, Shadow's going to take that every time. Mark, I got a question for you. We talked about this when I was last on Toronto Mic. Why do you think it was that John Major wasn't a much music VJ? Great question. Because it's natural. Well, they brought him back to Chum when the station was really on its last legs. They gave him the job of being the morning man.

This is a position that a few years earlier would have been a big deal. But in 1985, when they brought him in to salvage what was there and try to make it work, it really was sputtering out. I don't know that there was anything he could have done to save it. When they switched the favorites of yesterday and today format, they replaced him with a guy named Don Percy. He was a DJ from Vancouver, been around Western Canada, and he was kind of like Wally Crowder.

He was one of those nice guys that would wake you up in the morning and never say anything that would offend you or upset you or cause you to veer off the road. This is where it was all going when they got to 1986. Major, as far as I'm able to tell from researching the history, he ended up walking out in a huff. And they were going to give him another position, some sort of constructive dismissal situation, and he balked at it. And that's when he flew to L.A. and tried to make it there. So Major, John Major and Tom Rivers are a couple of those jocks in the 70s who died way too young, both in their 50s, I believe.

Yeah, and Jay Nelson also. Jay Nelson too. And Terry Steele, that was another name from back then, who passed away in the mid-90s. So the lifespan for these radio jocks didn't go very high. The odometer tended to run out pretty quick. Great exception to that would be Roger Ashby, who's still on the air today at 104.5 Chum FM. There is a Rock Radio scrapbook clip of Roger Ashby doing his last show on 1050 Chum prior to when they brought John Major back. And they put Ashby on as a temporary fill-in. Tom Rivers had left for CFTR. There was a contract dispute. He ended up suing the station. A whole bunch of drama in retrospect. It was front-page news in Toronto in 1982.

And Roger Ashby had been the longtime utility player there. They gave him the morning show temporarily, ended up doing it for three years. In 1985, the clip I'm referring to is him talking about how he's done with the morning show, handing it off to what became John Major. He'd be going back to working in Chum Management. And, of course, what happened instead, they steered him toward Chum FM. He's there to this day, 31 years later. And that's amazing because there seems to be renewed energy. They're now a two-man booth. Forever, he was part of a three-man booth.

Rick Hodge and Darren, give me the, Darren. Darren B. Lamb. Darren B. Lamb. But, you know, this whole idea of having multiple voices in the radio booth wasn't something that was done in Toronto prior to the late 80s. Well, Wally Crowder, I mentioned him. That was really the mole, just this kind of one nice guy, the master of ceremonies, sitting there telling you the time and the temperature, what was going on. Different people circulating to talk to him. Of course, Bill Stevenson with his sports cast, other characters and sidekicks like that. But we're talking about an era where a morning show was not a crew as much as it was one person anchoring the entire thing.

Let's hear—I don't have the—unfortunately unfortunately i don't have the clip of ashby saying goodbye uh but i do have a clip of ashby from 1976 on 10 50 chum let's hear how he sounded then that's a good idea right back to where you started from. Ben, 734 here in the Superstar Summer. This is Roger Ashby sitting in for Jane Elson. It's going to be a sunny day today. That's good news. Sunny today and tomorrow, as a matter of fact, with a high near 80 today. The overnight low about 60, and right now it's 67 degrees at Chum. And if my children are going to chew gum, I want them to chew the sugarless gum.

When did DJ switch to Celsius? That's what I want to know. I don't have any memory. When I was in the Chum CFTR in the mid-80s, it was to Celsius. That's what I want to know. I don't have any memory. When I was in the CFTR in the mid-80s, it was always Celsius. So this is 1976, and he's telling us it's 80 degrees in Toronto. Yeah, Ed, when did that happen? That was a government-mandated thing. Ed, you remember, right?

When your school switched over? I don't remember, but it's funny. This came up recently. There's a photograph on retro... Sorry, Vintage Toronto. I thought you forgot the name of your website. No, no, no. Vintage Toronto is a Facebook group

where there's a bunch of Vintage Toronto pictures. And there was a billboard that had it in Celsius, and there was a huge hundreds of comments arguing about when this actually happened, and there was a huge hundreds of comments arguing about when this actually happened. And there was no consensus. I'm sure somebody can Google it. April 1st, 1976. So we, in fact, just passed the 40th anniversary.

Did Ashby get the memo? Because I have the date. That clip we heard was August 10, 1976. He was one of those holdouts. He refused to conform. Okay, now I do remember there was a period of time when invariably they gave out both Celsius and Fahrenheit at once. So there was a transition period that might have even lasted five years, maybe 10.

You never know what kind of information you'll get from an episode of Toronto Mic'd. But thank goodness you had a device that could talk to the internet and get answers, which is good, because that would have drove me crazy throughout the rest of this episode. I think there should have been a podcast about the 40th anniversary of

the switch to Celsius. Forget about 1050 Chump. You missed that episode? Harold Hussain, perhaps? Don't forget your umbrella. It's going to be rainy today. Terrible Harold. Hey, I love Harold Hussain, perhaps? Oh, don't forget your umbrella. It's going to be rainy today. Terrible Harold. Hey, I love Harold Hussain.

Hey, another guy who had a, like Ann Romer, had cake and a party and a retirement celebration. Mike Cooper recently retired Aaron Davis's sidekick there on CHFI. He stepped down. Of course, that was a good reason. I tried so hard to get him on this show and it was kind of close. I think it was really close, but he wanted to spend time with his wife and he couldn't fit it in. His wife had some health issues and stuff. It was really close. I'm actually not giving up yet. I want Mike Cooper on the show. But this was an excuse for people to write about, you know, the infamous, famous Mike Cooper on the roller coaster at the C&E and all these great stories when he was a 10-50 jock. Yeah, Ferris wheel, not roller coaster.

Yeah, I should read more closely. That's why you're here, to correct my misstatements. So Mike Cooper was a, he was a chump, 10-50 chump guy. Yeah, and he was also one of the few that was Canadian, as far as where he came from, and managed to be known as the wackiest of the bunch, right? I mean, some of these were pretty serious guys with big voices. Coop was more like the court jester.

Yeah, he's the Don Knotts of the—is that what you're telling me? Something like that. The Flavor Flav, maybe? But yeah, he was really young when he made a name for himself on Chum, and I think it was all about the Ferris wheel and the fact that he pulled this off. Even though overnight a bunch of young thugs came and shook him up there, and he was all ready to go home and started walking away, I think it was some security guard there at the CNE who compelled him to turn around and finish the time.

That's a good excuse for me to play all shook up again. That's great. Mike Holland, just before you arrived, Ed and I are watching. The Jays were up 9-1, I think, when we stopped watching. We're just smoking. And this is a good excuse for me to play one of my favorite retro Jays songs. But what do we know about Mike Holland? Mike Holland, also someone who moved from the U.S. to work at Chum, had the chops necessary to be on the air. He was also a singer-songwriter in his own right, and at the same time he was on the station, put out a couple of albums, one of which at least made some good numbers on the Chum chart at the time.

made some good numbers on the chum chart at the time. So here's where we're at in the early 80s, a chum DJ who had an actual serious hit on the station with a kind of corporate rock song. It was called Do She Want Love? Maybe there was a pun intended there. But then, and Toronto, Mike, you've been the main archivist of all these cheesy Toronto Blue Jays songs, which... Excuse me? There's nothing cheesy about these songs. So these albums that they put out coinciding with every playoff run that the Jays had

more significantly in 1992, 1993, but there was a first round that they did in 1985, right? The original Blue Jays album, and Mike Holland was a part of it, and I think one of those songs, the fact that it made it onto the chum chart was a good signal that the end was near. This song, that's a good point. So this is like 1985, and this song,

We Got the Blue Jays. I played it the second time Mike Wilner came on the show, just when the Jays were clinching the AL East last September. I played it for him, and I think I said at the time that this song is too good to be like one of those, as you say, cheesy Jays songs. It's a great single. This is Home Run. It's credited to Home Run.

I think you're a bit colored by your 10 or 11 year old taste at the time there, Mike. Ed will be the decider here. Ed, listen to this. Remember, 1985, okay? Let's say you didn't know this was a novelty Jay song. I love the day games

The night games too I love the clinchers When they're tied in two This was a novelty Jay song. Give it, don't. Let it soak in here. 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 Come on, this is Debbie Gibson stuff. That's great. Yeah. This would be on...

Mark's a hater. Mark. Okay, well look. Two against one. We win. At the time this song showed up on the Chum chart, I had been following what was going on there devotedly for at least five years by that point in time. This is where I got pretty much my entire pop music education

from the songs that were on the chart. So there were a number of things that happened to this legendary Chum 30 that signaled that maybe this wasn't going to be around forever. One of those was debuting Michael Jackson's Thriller, that is the single, the one with the video, at number one on the chart, making that a number one debut. I mean, this was heresy. You know, this chart, which had a whole history of songs moving up and down, they plunked Thriller right there in the number one spot. So when that happened, maybe it seemed like the tradition wasn't being maintained.

I think that this home run, We Got the Blue Jays song ended up on the chart was another example of the fact they weren't taking it as seriously as they did before. But then we're talking about a time when I was eight, nine, 10, 11 years old. And my idea of what was important isn't necessarily what someone working at the radio station would have seen.

In that context, I can appreciate Mark, but you're right. From our vantage point, this is as good as any Debbie Gibson single I was hearing back in 1985. It might have even been ahead of the curve. This is like two or three years before Debbie Gibson. You're right.

The Tiffany Debbie Gibson era might be 87, right? More, yeah, we might be ahead of the curve here. So this might be the finest of the blue jays songs which is saying something because the term the ballad of tom henke is pretty epic so shakers rap come on shakers rap is right there and there is another one um i can't remember the name but we're tom and jerry rap yeah i know what you're talking about yeah and sorry Mike you might know this Who Dat? Who's Who Dat?

I do know this I'm trying to remember what I know about this because I went on the Humble and Fred show during the Blue Jay Fever last September October because Humble and Fred contributed songs to these Variety Village was always the benefactor of these albums Aaron Davis was the other one Aaron Davis was on

she's done three of these she did You know, Aaron Davis is the other one. Aaron Davis was on. She's done three of these. She was, you know, did a lot. Howard did it with the Mix 99.9. He did it. And then Fred did one with CFNY. And who dat singer who bought the rights to the CFNY one, which was called Sunny J's, and Freddie P did it in the guise of,

you remember Goo Head? Of course. Raise your hand if you remember Goo Head. So it was kind of like a Goo Head at the top of the dome, and then Freddie P did it in the guise of, you remember Goo Head? Of course. Raise your hand if you remember Goo Head. So it was kind of like a Goo Head at the top of the dome and then Freddie P sang it and it was sold for something paltry, like 1,500 bucks or something. It was sold to Who Dat Singer,

who owned all this stuff. And as far as I know, he went on to become some kind of an executive in the Celine Dion Corporation, believe it or not. So he ended up as a big wig. And if you think of these artists as the Celine Dion Corporation, believe it or not. So he ended up as a big wig, and you know, if you think of these artists as like corporations or whatever, one of the

big wigs that Celine Dion incorporated. So that's where Who Dat Singer ended up. Yeah, I need to talk to that guy. Chronologically, when we're talking about where Chum was around the late 70s, something that happened in July 1979 that was baseball-related.

Disco Demolition Night, which was in Chicago with the DJ there, Steve Dahl. And in July 1979, they invited people going to the White Sox game to bring their disco records to get them demolished in the middle of a double header or something. What could go wrong there? And the attention that it received, the whole idea of disco records going up in flames was signaled as the end of disco as something to take seriously.

And Chum definitely took it seriously because after that point, looking at the history of the Chum chart, once you're into mid-1979, they got rid of any music that could be mistaken for disco, and with that went pretty much any music that was from a black artist, because what they were putting out at the time was usually close enough to disco that they wouldn't want it on the airwaves. That's where the station tilted toward more of a new wave orientation. And maybe we spent a minute talking about these chum charts, which were a big deal, right? When these chum, the chum chart was a big deal.

It was even a bigger deal when they used to give them out in the stores. They would have the collectible ones. You see them on eBay, and they're seen as a great artifact. The idea that you would have to go to Sam the Record Man or whatever, pick up your own pocket chum chart, find out what was going on at the station. Eventually, they transitioned to printing the charts in the Toronto Star. Right. Yes, absolutely remember this. And in the last few years, it was a 1050 Chum singles chart accompanied by a Chum FM album chart.

And the final Chum chart, the date on the final Chum chart, was 30 years ago today, June 14th, 1986. A raison d'etre, that's why we are here. But it was never printed in the newspaper because by then the station had changed formats. Right, and we're almost there now because this is 1986 and earlier we played Elvis Presley's All Shook Up,

the first number one song in the Chum Chart. This is the memorable Madonna hit Live to Tell, which was the final number one song on the chum chart. I have to admit, I had the Like a Virgin album. So the self-titled one had the kind of holiday and all that kind of dancey stuff. And then the Like a Virgin, I think it was called Like a Virgin. I had that kind of holiday and all that kind of dancey stuff. And then the Like a Virgin, I think it was called Like a Virgin. I had that cassette and I was a big fan of Like a Virgin. And then the next album

was True Blue. And I remember young Mike being disappointed with True Blue. It had lost something from Like a Virgin, which I liked very much. Well, this was from a film soundtrack, wasn't it? Probably. I can't even remember. Is that right? Yeah, at close range with film soundtrack, wasn't it? Probably. I can't even remember. Is that right?

Yeah, at close range with Sean Penn, who Madonna was married to at the time. No Shanghai surprise there. And here, really, you had the kind of song that was seen as justification for changing the style of 1050 Chum because Madonna, who two or three years before for changing the style of 1050 Chum, because Madonna, who two or three years before was seen as someone associated with MTV,

kind of bubblegum music of the era, suddenly she was making an adult contemporary ballad. The audience was getting more mature, sophisticated, or so they thought that they would appreciate a tune like this. And as the logic went, they should change the radio station to reflect the taste that was captured by a song like this. There was George Michael. He had a ballad at the time, A Different Corner. It was his solo single, Past the Age of Wham. The whole idea that this generation was growing up and they were ready

to mellow out. And here was 1050 Chum coming to the rescue with a more sophisticated sound. Let's hear the final, I guess the program director comes on 1050 Chum to sort of tell people that Chum, 1050 Chum is, as they knew it, was gone, and there was the rebirth, and we can listen to that here. This is June 6th, 1986, which would have been 30 years ago today if Ed hadn't foiled their plans. So let's hear this. today if Ed hadn't foiled their plans. So let's hear this. I'd love this album too.

I had a great chat with Steve Anthony about Boy in the Box. He claims Boy in the Box is about him. He's crazy, right? Lots of sweetener in that coffee. And at this point in the recording, I'm speaking over it because there's a lengthy period where they play waves, right? So we come out of Never Surrender by Corey Hart, some good sweet can-con in 1986. And you hear kind of just waves against the rocks here for a little bit.

And I'm not even sure how much this was leaked in advance that it was happening. There was Gary Dunford, columnist in the Toronto Sun, who used to write about radio. He might have been on to this. Media was so much slower back then, you've got to figure a lot of the people listening were not aware. I want to talk to somebody who heard this live and wondered, why am I hearing waves? What's going on? Is there some kind of a flood at the Chumbo? And what followed is so ponderous. I mean, they might as well have gotten Premier David Peterson to come on and make the announcement, or the Governor General, somebody in a position of authority who could explain. Program Director of 1050 Chum AM.

A few months ago, I asked you to tell me exactly what it is you want from this radio station i told you then that what you said would matter very much i'm here now to tell you how much after all the calls were listened to and all the letters were answered and all the research was analyzed we had no choice but to come to an undeniable conclusion. What it all came down to is this. Virtually every person under the age of 45 now, who grew up in Toronto, grew up listening to Chum AM. Now it's only natural that Chum AM should grow up with them. To give you an idea of what the new 1050 Chum AM will sound like, new 1050 Chum AM will sound like. Starting now, Chum AM is doing away with all commercials,

all news, and all announcers, all weekend. For the next 62 and a half consecutive hours, the new 1050 Chum AM will play only uninterrupted music. The music which represents most clearly the new sound of Chum AM. As of right now, 3 o'clock on Friday, June 6, 1986, this radio station will be known as 1050 Chum A.M., Favorites of Yesterday and Today. It's important to note that Chum A.M. has not become an oldie station. Favorites of Yesterday and Today means exactly that, favorite songs of the 60s, 70s, and 80s by such favorite artists as Lionel Richie, Simon and Garfunkel, Whitney Houston, The Supremes, Neil Diamond, The Beach Boys. The most comprehensive research in this radio station's history has showed an unfulfilled demand for this kind of music among precisely the people who grew

up listening to chum am in the 60s 70s and 80s the uninterrupted music sample of the new chum am starts now and continues with no commercials no news and no announcers until monday morning at 5 30 at that time our new morning show host don percy will officially launch the new 10 50 chum am until then spend this weekend with 62 and a half hours of commercial free favorites of yesterday and today on the new 10 50 chum am So from where I was listening, this was a complete betrayal of everything that I ever believed in. Because Chum was a station where I heard songs like Once in a Lifetime by the Talking Heads or Turning Japanese by the Vapors, Drugs in My Pocket by the Monks. I mean, this was like the vanguard of New Wave. This is where I turned to find out what was going on in the culture.

And here they were deciding that I didn't matter anymore. And everything that the station represented to me was going to be obliterated in favor of favorites of yesterday and today. And now the station was on the wane. I don't think I was listening all that much at the time, but there was a sentimental attachment, this idea that Chum would always be there. And on that day, June 6, 1986, as far as I was concerned, that message was that they were giving up on me forever. The equivalent today, I think,

would be if CFNY announced that they were going to become the spirit of radio and sort of return to playing the Smiths and just going back at that and bringing back in Scott Turner and let Alan Cross do his thing. That would be kind of today, like the guys our age

and a little older would be like, that's what I want to hear. That'd be the kind of modern day equivalent, I think. Just spitballing. Look, at the same time, Chum was no longer the ratings powerhouse that it had been before. CFTR had picked up a lot of its audience. This whole move of Tom Rivers over to CFTR turned out to be a ratings bonanza for them. The sound of CFTR was a lot louder, closer to what Chum was doing in the 1970s, kind

of more in touch with the youth. Chum had been floundering around all the years before. I mean, I mentioned the disco backlash and the fact that they got rid of most of the black artists from the radio station, going instead to more of this new wave style. A lot of that was adopted from what was happening at the time on CFNY, Q107, Chum FM,

kind of a diluted version aimed at preteens like me. But it was something I could relate to and I could understand. FM radio was for the musicologists, the people who knew all about the difference between one Pink Floyd album and another, or who memorized all the lineup changes of Genesis or Springsteen, you know, holding all of his lyrics sacred. The approach that they had on 1050 Chum at the time was something for me that was synonymous

with growing up in the city, the whole idea that it was tapped into everything. And here they were taking it away. But they had gone through a period where they were trying so many different things. Like I said, having John Major on the morning show. They had a video dance party. That was something they did at the time to try to tap into the young people. They also used to bring the history of rock around to the schools. Did you guys ever get wind of that? I wish.

They had like a lunchtime video presentation that was essentially a commercial for Chum. These were the things that culturally they were able to pull off. What about the Chum card? Yeah, the Chum card, kind of a precursor to like the loyalty programs of today, the whole idea that you would carry one of these things around in your wallet. I don't think the surveillance was quite where it's at today. I don't know if it could be scanned and they could follow your every move around. But yeah, the chum card, that was an attempt to recapture the thing with the buttons and the T-shirts.

And no other station had that kind of thing going on. But here you had Chum owning City TV, which they acquired in the late 70s. With that much music came along, the tide was definitely turning. AM radio couldn't compete, even though the CRTC had regulations in place to allow AM radio stations to repeat more songs, play more hits, the whole idea that AM radio would be distinct from FM. Chum decided to capitalize on that by going retro rather than adopting it for where things were at in 1986. Let's not miss an incredibly fun fact that I'm afraid we'll leave behind as we move to much here,

is that, and Ingrid Schumacher mentioned this, when she was on the show, she talked about how she was trained by Rick Moranis at 104.5 Chum FM. And Rick Moranis, I believe under the name Rick Allen, I think is the name he, the moniker he used on the air, but we would hear him on 10 50 chum. And I got a 1976, no, a 1978 clip of Rick Moranis.

Let's hear how he sounded on 10 50 chum. That's Ariel on chum and easy love before that Andy give everlasting love and Chicago with just you and me. It's nine 22 on chum. The style is for you. Toronto weather mainly clear tonight. Sunday, tomorrow, cloudy periods, chance of a thunderstorm. Tonight's low 16. Tomorrow, the high 27.

And the outlook for Monday is sunny. Right now, 24 Celsius at CHUM. That's Celsius. And two years later, they're back to Celsius. There you go. By the way, I couldn't let... If I had done a 1050 Chum episode and not played the Rick Moranis clip, then I would never be able to sleep at night.

I couldn't look in the mirror. So thanks for letting me come back for that. Not only did Rick Moranis go on to be the greatest of the entire cast of SCTV, right? Whoa, whoa, whoa. Those are big words. Okay, well, you know John Candy was in that?

But Moranis was the one that came from outside of the Second City system. His background was doing radio, other things, voice work. This is an episode

unto itself, biggest cast member of that SCTV because you got, those are heavyweights. I just, my head, please continue,

I don't even, I'm just, that statement, it's just begging for retorts, but please continue. Okay, so think about the fact that just three years later, he had a number one song on the chum chart, that here he was a DJ in the station in 1978 playing these songs, Walter Egan, Magnet and Steel, Hotel California, all this stuff, goes to SCTV.

And then he's back on the station in 1981 with the Bob and Doug McKenzie album, Takeoff, which was not released as a single. It was denoted as an LP track. Ended up topping the Chum Chart. Maybe another signal of the death of credibility as far as musical taste was concerned. Is this the one with Rush? Yeah, Geddy Lee. Right. They had the Bob and Doug album

and came up with the notion that they needed to have something that radio would play off it. So improvise this song along with Geddy based on the Bob and Doug tagline, Take Off A. And Dave Thomas isn't the first member of the family to have a hit single on the radio because his brother is Ian Thomas.

But everybody knows that fun fact. But someone out there is learning that for the first time right now. Okay, but even in that Moranis clip, I guess we're hearing the post-disco era. The songs, they are very much in the yacht rock genre, and that might have even been after midnight that he was on the air. There didn't seem to be any Canadian content in there.

Chum was notorious for ghettoizing the CanCon, keeping it as far from primetime as possible while still playing their 30%. But not quite at the stage that they reached in the late 70s into the early 80s, where they were being more avant-garde. So Chum was the top 40 AM radio station that was playing the Ramones. The Ramones. Music along those lines, which was considered too out there for American radio. Here you had an AM station in Toronto that found a way to fit this in what they were doing, made a sound out of it, and found a listener in me.

The police were huge in Toronto at the time, early 1980s, and you heard a lot of them on Chum. The Rolling Stones were a big deal. One thing in going over the old Chum charts, which I'd forgotten prior to a couple weeks ago, was the fact that Rapper's Delight by the Sugarhill Gang made a little cameo on the Chum chart, sort of fell in the middle of the pack. And the reason for that was because it was a huge hit on CKOC. And even though Chum had sort of banished disco, R&B, black music, at one point anyway, they found it was essential for them to acknowledge that this rap thing was going on. But it was pretty fleeting. It was really much more of a new wave kind of radio station.

And then that transitioned into the period of the new romantic Second British Invasion era, playing more of those acts. But again, being very unique as an AM radio station that was acknowledging this stuff was going on. You know, we didn't mention him as a 1050 Chum DJ, but J.D. Roberts doing a piece for City Pulse about pay TV that I think will set the stage nicely for the much music, the birth of much music. For the last year, it was a hard fought first anniversary for the Celebrity Channel. First choice. A number of luminaries in the Canadian entertainment scene gathered together at Sparkles at the CN Tower tonight to wish them a happy second life.

Super Channel was also celebrating, but nobody knows who any of them are, so we didn't even send a camera. Even though two channels have gone under, another was forced to merge, and the biggie nearly bought the bullet. People are telling us things aren't that bad for the industry. Pay TV has become a $100 million a year proposition. It now reaches 11% of the 5 million homes that have cable TV in Canada, a level that took American pay three years to hit, and it has spent 21 million dollars on Canadian

programming. In the future, pay will have to concentrate on getting more viewers, and one move that we hear of could be lower prices. And on the occasion of their first birthday, Harold Greenberg, the president of Astro Bellevue Pathé, the new owners of First Choice, unveiled the pay channel's brand new president, former City TV general manager Fred Klinkhammer. He's the one behind his arm. Fred had left City a year ago to take over CableNet Cable TV,

and he said that he left that position because of terrific opportunities at First Choice. Mr. Greenberg, who I've known for many years... Yeah, I can't fast-forward my soundboard, so... ...came to me shortly... It's coming. ...after the 1st of January and began to woo me. We had a wonderful dance and we're now on the honeymoon stage. Did they say his name is Clinkhammer?

We hope that the marriage lasts... Fantastic. ...but let's not forget that the divorce rate stands at about 60% right now. And on the first birthday of Pay TV, it's appropriate that the CRTC is embroiled in hearings for more pay TV services. I spent the last two days in Ottawa following the applications for a music channel and sports license. City TV and Chum have applied for a music channel, Much Music,

which was heard on Monday. There are three other players in that category, and here's how it went for them. Gilles Chartrand and company from Montreal proposed CMTV, Canadian Music Television, a 24-hour service that in specific time slots would feature caricatures or stylized puppets instead of VJs, and a complicated independent FM support network. The FM hookup would carry CMTV's audio as well as sharing advertising sales responsibilities. The guns were loaded with money for yesterday's application by Rogers

Radio and Molson's Brewery's cooperative effort, the Music Channel. Their presentation was solid and any inexperience in television was made up by the financial strength of Molson's. The company, which had $1.7 billion in revenue and $62 million profit last year, has pledged $4.5 million interest-free to the music channel. The operation would be 24 hours a day of original programming in a format much like radio. Their application is judged the strongest contender against much music, composed on Monday by Chum Radio and City TV. But there was a point of concern with Rogers' proposal.

In their original application they stated rogers would retain controlling interest in the operation but before the crtc they unveiled a clause in which molson's could buy out control this change of ownership could happen before the channel even went on the air why should we accept i don't know it sounds like a conflict of interest uh City TV reporting on this. I don't know. A little bit of FUD there. Really, really snarky.

Yeah. That's how they used to roll, though. No wonder we loved that freaking channel. Yeah, they were real. The Super Channel disc was pretty epic there. No one knows who they are. We couldn't set a camera.

Come on. I remember when First Choice and Super Channel merged. They used to have the free weekends, and that's when you'd get the blank cassette in the VCR, and you'd record. And those movies that would play during the free weekend, you would end up seeing them like a hundred times.

Yeah, like The Terminator and Missing in Action. Or Supergirl. You wish that J.D. Roberts today could be as snarky about Donald Trump as he is there about CRTC hearings. What's this, Quebec? Instead of much music, this company was going to have puppets? They were going to have puppets. Actually, there's another clip I have on my channel where the guy

goes into much more depth, and it was pretty sound logic. The idea was that he could sell that around the world, and because it's not a human, they could just dub in these foreign languages. Kind of like the Just for Laughs. That's what I was about to say. Of course.

Just like, you know, it could play around the world because there's no talking. Yeah. It made a lot of sense. I mean, the Rogers Molson thing would have been cool as well, I think. Oh, but J.D. was rubbing his foot on that. That's the fear, uncertainty, and doubt you rub on the competition. Come on, they're going to change ownership before it even goes to air.

How can you give them the license? Okay, well, I know there's a lot of fondness for much music, but I think Canada missed out on the whole MTV thing. When I look on YouTube, some of the old clips, what I know from the history of the channel, there was a great oral history. Did you guys read that? A book that came out a few years ago that talks about the cultural impact of MTV. Here in Toronto, we got sort of a diluted version of it, I think, in different forms over the years. And the cultural force that it was never quite hit here, all because of our protectionist cultural policies.

because of our protectionist cultural policies. Well, you know, it's funny, Mark, because I think you must remember there were bars in Toronto that had satellite dishes that were showing MTV, and they would put that out front of the bar. Like now you see, you know, we're showing Euro Cup, come on in. It was, we have MTV on tap.

And yeah, like you said, we were never going to be able to replicate that, the powerhouse when it first hit. But I would argue that I think we did, certainly not in the early days of Much Music, but the late 80s, early 90s Much Music. I'll take the Pepsi Taste Challenge against MTV any day on that shit. Well, of course, MTV also had a legacy of being selective in how it portrayed what was happening in the music scene, right? We've seen that legendary clip of David Bowie confronting one of the VJs, Mark Goodman, about the fact that they weren't playing any black artists in the first couple years of MTV, the barrier that was famously broken by Michael Jackson and the Thriller album. 1050 Chum mirrored that as well.

Once Thriller started happening, they realized that the disco backlash had faded, and they started to put more black artists back on the charts. And I think it was a long history because there was, for years, And I think it was a long history because there was, for years, there wasn't any radio in Toronto that played R&B and hip-hop music. And so we went through the whole rest of the 20th century without really having that outlet there. It maybe left a lot of careers behind because they weren't able to catch on in that mainstream way. And maybe Much Music eventually filled that role as the years progressed. Well, to rewind a little bit, to tie it even more to the Chum story, I mean, when Chum City presented Much Music to the CRTC, it was pretty much a slam dunk. And there were a few shows that they put up there and said,

look, we've been doing this for a while. Give us the license. One of which was the Chum Countdown with Roger Ashby, which was on Saturday afternoons. And there was also obviously the new music, which was kind of even a forebearer to MTV, because I believe it came on the air before MTV started. And damn cool. And it was the coolest. And again, that all goes to a fellow by the name of John Martin, who I'm sure you agree doesn't get enough props, really. And a lot of it was done on a shoestring. I mean, for the way that Moses Neimer was running City TV, as cheaply as possible, what could be greater than the idea that record companies

would furnish you with almost all your content absolutely free? You didn't have to pay for your own production people. You didn't have to do anything. All you had to do was load up on these tapes that they were providing and play them. Instant programming. Canadian content that they could do as cheaply as possible, and definitely that was part of the formula that made City TV what it was,

and it made Chum, the owner of City, which bailed it out of bankruptcy, really, really rich. Well, and it's funny. You mentioned video singles earlier with John Major. And Mike and I talked about this the last time I was here. When CFMT was in the business, they were really treating their music programs like radio with pitchers. And they just sat there and they didn't really get excited about it.

But I thought that was the conceit that really Moses' gang brought, was to really step it up a bit and to bring that energy that the the chum jocks had which was that feeling of anything crazy could happen in the next minute you don't want to miss even a second of this because it's all going off and I think whether it was just because we didn't have access to, I think you have this huge segment of the population that grew up with Much Music and that feeling. And, you know, I'll jump ahead and say why it's why everybody's pissed off now that it's degenerated into what it has. So, yeah, we're talking about Chum in the 1970s, how it faded away. Here was Much Music replacing it on a national level uh doing very much the same

thing as far as its position culturally uh and its ability to influence uh you know what what we understand today was was all the important things that were happening at the time and everybody knows from playing trivial pursuit and from bar Trivia Games that the first song, the first video played on MTV was Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles. But do either of you know the first video played on MuchMusic? Yep. It was Rush, The Enemy Within. Is that right? Yep.

See, that I didn't know. And then I tried, so I'm trying to find, I figured this has got to be everywhere. I'm Googling away. And this is what they have on, I'm trying to find, I figured this has got to be everywhere. I'm Googling away. And this is what they have on, I think it's Wikipedia that's got this. But the first video played on MuchMusic was an early music-to-film synchronization short from the 1920s,

which featured Yubi Blake performing snappy songs. Well, you know what? They're half right. That stuff was playing when they were doing all the fanfare. Okay. There is a clip. I think it's on my channel. Because your answer is better. It's just easier to consume.

Well, it's, you know, that moment when it went live on August 31st, 84. You got it. And it was J.D. Roberts and Christopher Ward jumping through a green screen of fireworks. And, you know, it's all kicking off and they were playing that weird kinescope stuff but the actual first proper video video gotcha was rushed so big ups to that but funnily enough recently somebody picked a fight with somebody else at zoomer arguing that the spoons was the first video shown on MuchMusic. And somebody from Zoomer called me to ask me what it was. You were the authority.

I thought that was awesome. Just like Train 48 guys call you. They could have gone down the hallway and asked Moses what it was. That's right. You know, Christopher Ward answers emails. I've exchanged. He's in L.A. right now. Yeah.

Well, his book. Why is he coming here yet? Yes. His book is coming out in October. And I'm actually, I'm going to do a plug here. I'm doing a night at the Royal Movie Theater in Little Italy with Christopher Ward and some other excellent music VJs. Date TBD. It'll probably be early November.

That's what Maestro tells me, TBD. And we're going to show classic clips from Much Music. And we're going to do a big Q&A. And it's going to be the most amazing show in town. So everybody come out. That is amazing. And now that I know Christopher Ward's in town, we've got to get him in here. Oh, for sure.

He'll totally do it. He said he would, and he said his big problem was geography. And I refuse to do a phoner. I've had a rule since, like, episode 50. No phoners. No phoners. No phoners. Even before they signed on with MuchMusic, Christopher Ward was hosting City Limits,

which was essentially a demo for Much Music. The same approach, the same format, except it broadcast overnights on the weekend on City TV. This was a big favorite of mine. I was able to watch pretty much all of it, partly because Rogers used to have a cable channel where they would rerun city TV shows. One of those utility channels. Maybe they only went up to 36 or something on the old converter box.

Is this UHF? Is that what we're talking about now? I guess we're talking about a cable channel that they were doing nothing with. So they would rerun shows from channels 47 and 57, 79, whatever it was at the time. So they would rerun it throughout the week

so it was actually possible even if you couldn't stay up all night to watch city limits in its entirety uh throughout the week and city limits i mean the other great thing about city limits is not only did it inform much music but also uh the city tv that we all revere from the 90s, which was this, you know, using stock footage from old like Japanese monster movies and a lot of the stuff that would turn up on Speaker's Corner. All of that started from the editors at City Limits who were just trying to fill backfill the running time. And so they had, well, we've got all these weird B movies lying around. Let's cut out these funny clips. So, you know, not and again, in addition to that, you have people like Master T and Dan Gallagher that were working behind the scenes at City Limits who went on to become personalities in their own right. And yet, for some reason, I had the sentimental attachment to AM radio.

For some reason, I had this sentimental attachment to AM radio. There was something about it that had an authenticity that I didn't see in these music television shows, that it was somehow closer to my own personal ideal of what media was. It's something that was live all the time because much music was only on a certain number of hours in the day, and they would rerun it, and maybe spontaneity, unpredictability, like I said, that whole central nervous system thing that I associated with radio. So even though all this video stuff was happening, I was watching it all the time, I still turned back to my old friends on Chum through all those years, hanging in there, because it was what shaped my idea of how we got this information. And for me, the radio had a purity to it that the video really did not. I don't know where you're at on that, Mike.

I mean, you always talk about your own personal love of radio at the time when video was supposedly killing the radio star, and yet here were these stations that were still going at it all day and night. I just spoke in front of a class of grade seven students. So I was, believe it or not, and I'm talking about the podcast and, you know, they just want to talk about Justin Bieber, who I've yet to get on the show. But somebody, the topic came up. One of the kids asked about these YouTube stars. These are like, these are the big, these are the VJs of today's youth are these YouTube stars.

And they're big freaking deals to these kids. And they were talking about like, why am I not doing YouTube and I'm not doing video? And then it's like, I'm thinking the truth is I actually just personally prefer, uh, and I watched a lot of much music and loved it, but I prefer the, there's something romantic about the audio. Even when there's a blue jay game on, I want to go outside and listen to the call on the radio. Uh, if I can, instead of the video footage. It's just something about it that just taps into something I liked as a kid of my transistor radio underneath my pillow listening late into the night. And I just like that audio feeling.

So are we witnessing a generation gap here? What do you think, Ed? No. I mean, like the podcast phenomena obviously isn't going anywhere. But I don't know. I mean, you kind of hit it there with the kids. It's probably all older people listening to podcasts. Well, this is the thing.

So they were wondering, why is this not a YouTube show? Because that's how they're consuming this stuff on their tablets and smartphones, et cetera. And then I realized, yeah, the kids I'm talking to, the grade seven, they're not listening to any podcasts, audio only, but they're listening to a ton of popular YouTubers that are not on terrestrial mainstream television. I'll tell you the thing too, I've heard this comparison of YouTubers and VJs and it does get on my nerves a little bit because it's kind of an unfair comparison, right? The VJs

were live, right? They were out there when stuff broke down and stuff didn't happen, right they they were out there when stuff broke down and stuff didn't happen they had to roll with it these youtube assholes have got all of this editing technology at their fingertips and they can re-edit too many jump cuts right it's lazy you know it's lazy and it's totally artificial right and i know it makes for a better end product possibly but it's it's not a fair it's a false economy i think to compare those things. And, you know, the VJ phenomena. Yeah, let's talk about that. Let's get back to that. Yeah, I got a list.

One of the things that burns me up all the time is when you hear, I don't think he's still the president, but that fellow Kevin Krull from Bell, you know, a couple of summers ago, talked about how, well, you know, we're gutting much music because kids don't watch music videos anymore because they're all on YouTube. Again, just an absolute kabuki theater, really, that this

is all about music videos because I don't think it was ever really about music videos. Music videos were obviously a big part of it, but it was the personalities, it was the flow, it was the personalities. It was the flow. It was the programming. Again, it's very similar to the radio situation.

But that's what made that station so unmissable. It was not about the music videos. Okay, can we just talk about some of these personalities? So we've already mentioned guys. We've mentioned Christopher Ward and J.D. Roberts. But, I mean, quick trivia question. Who's the first female VJ? Laurie Brown? Oh, Denise Donovan.

Neither. Eric Hamm? Catherine McClenahan. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. See, I had no idea. That's not even, and I thought I was watching since day one. I might be mistaken. Maybe I didn't have cable at the beginning.

It was pay TV for the first four years, right? But I remember, I can tell you the grade, because I remember phoning my friend Derek, because I heard the video for One Gun by 5440 aired. And it was the first time it was on my television. You're right. There was a period of time where we just didn't have that level of cable. It made watching some Blue Jay games difficult, too.

They would go on TSN. It was a satisfaction pack. It was first choice, TSN, and much music. Only the rich kids had that. $15.99 a month. Right. So, yeah,

it's Catherine McClanahan who doesn't, yeah, who I, you don't hear about unless you're trying to research who's the first female VJ.

I think she said she was fired because she was too waspy for what Moses Neimer was looking for. Well, Christopher Ward was pretty waspy too but uh

yeah the other big names back then kim clark champness uh of course legend have you met him yeah yeah i know he's he he actually lives not too far from here really let's get this son of a bitch in here he's around man and he was in that horror movie right uh does wasn't he like a kid and some children of the corn or something mark Mark, am I thinking of somebody else? Do I have to sit here and Google it? Yeah, a British horror movie, right? So not Children of the Corn. Where the kids were zombies.

Okay. Well, this happened with Kim Clark Shamness. Okay, Terry David Mulligan. I've had Stu Jeffries on. Stu Jeffries only gets that Good Rockin' Tonight gig because Terry David Mulligan, TDM, is going to take a gig at Much. Legend as well. Can I call Terry David Mulligan a legend? No, totally. And he was the express train from the West. I mean, he represented

the Vancouver sound. And, you know, for the snobs in Toronto, he did a great job of it for sure. For sure. And we're freaking snobby here. Erica M. Untouchable. And again again uh big ups not a lot of people know this she got her start you know there was all this stuff about how she was moses's niece or something and it's all rubbish she got her start on toronto rocks she was like a background

dancer in in one segment i didn't know that. And she used that as her audition clip for Much and that's how she got it. I heard. So is Ziggy related to Moses? That was the rumor in my primary school. No, but I'll tell you a very funny anecdote. Go ahead. I do hang out at Zoomer sometimes because it's right next to where I work and I know some people that work there. And we

were talking about Moses and all the stuff that's going on and comparing him to Charles Foster Kane from Citizen Kane. And, you know, the beginning of Citizen Kane is the classic close-up of his mouth, and he's whispering, Rosebud, right? And the whole movie is like, what's the mystery of Rosebud? The Simpsons ruined this for me. And somebody said, if it was Moses, what would his Rosebud be?

And somebody goes, Ziggy. Well, she's still the receptionist there, right? She's not a receptionist. She's like a producer. My buddy, Humble Howard, was there at some point when he was between gigs trying to work something out with Moses and he phoned me excitedly to tell me

that Ziggy was the receptionist. She's still there and she smokes a lot of butts and I see her outside. She's on the darts. Every day on the darts. And it's crazy. I mean, she still looks pretty much the, and I see her outside. She's on the darts. Every day on the darts. And it's crazy. I mean, she still looks pretty much the same. I met her on the subway once, and it was a big deal. And she lived in a pink house.

This is what we all believe, too. I don't know if that's true either, but we were told Ziggy's house was painted pink. Venus Avenue, right? That was the show, yeah. Is this really what people talked about in the schoolyard? Yeah, these are the things. Who Moses Nimer was related to? Yeah, there was a rumor

that... The cast of his channel. Oh, lots of things. Of course. It ran the gamut. It wasn't just the stuff you hear about today where, what's her name,

was born a man. Jamie Lee Curtis. It wasn't just that stuff. And there was a lot of the stuff that you hear everywhere. But we had a lot of like, there was a lot of like,

a lot of Wendell Clark stuff, of course, because he was everywhere back then. Come on. You know, that guy's a legend of like a lot of wendell clark stuff of course because he was everywhere back then but come on you know that guy's a legend okay all heart that son of a gun okay back to the vgs i could do forever on the ziggy but yeah obviously michael williams michael williams utter legend michael williams yeah uh steve anthony and his uh yes sweet coffee but he's a sweet guy in fact i've got to point out In fact, I've got to point out, my sources on the Ann Romer, 100% not Steve Anthony.

I just feel like I owe him that because I actually did talk to Steve Anthony via email when Ann Romer came back for the third round here. And he pled ignorance. He claimed he knew nothing about it. So Steve Anthony is not my source. And that's all I'm going to say about him.

He was no help at all. I wanted to add that Village of the Damned was the name of that British movie that Kim Clark made. Which was remade by John Carpenter, who we referenced earlier. Yeah, well, this episode, it's worth the... I don't know how long it's going to go. We're going to try not to go too long. Well, I'll tell you something funny about Steve Anthony. Do it.

I love Steve Anthony. about steve anthony do it i love steve you know before he was a vj uh master t uh made it made a video video called the much music groove and it's was actually the very first hip-hop music video that was entered into the much music library before maestro before dream warriors and it was basically a promotional video because he wanted to big up all the VJs. And he obviously wanted to have a calling card. And Steve Anthony, I think it was like on the first or second day Steve Anthony started at Much, he shows up in this music video. And it's quite hilarious. It's on my channel.

I'm going to your channel to find that right after this. And, of course, Steve Anthony, another piece of trivia about him is that he takes over for Pete and Geetz on CFNY, doing mornings on CFNY. This guy's everywhere, too. Okay, just a few more names here. Loved Dan Gallagher. You mentioned him earlier. Just an absolute cannonball of a man. Whenever I write about him, I say he was like the belushi of much music i mean

he just he brought that energy and he was a partier what is it with these guys he's larger than life guys they die way too yeah no because they because they're big well they because they everything is an extreme right they drink too much they eat too much they blow too much i love test pattern yeah i used to watch Test Pattern after school. But you know what? They ripped off so much from a show on MTV called Remote Control for Test Pattern. So here we're talking about the fact that you couldn't get MTV in Canada. It allowed much music to liberally lift ideas that were going on MTV. I'll bet. And no one would notice.

No one would complain. But MTV stole a ton of stuff from the new music and from YTV, from a show called Street Noise, which was kind of the first hyper-edited show of the 80s. And again, nobody in America was watching YTV,

so they didn't know. These things you could get away with before there was YouTube. You're right. We had no idea. It reminds me of The Champ. The Champ was a character out of market, and then it was taken, put on Q107 by Brother Jake Edwards, and

we thought it was an original, never heard before Brother Jake thing. We have no idea what's going on in other markets. A few more names, though. Suk-Yin Lee was a DJ for a while. Monica Diol did Electric Circus, which was... I had a buddy who would dance on Electric Circus.

The late Warren Blackwood. It was a big... He'd come into school on Monday, and we'd be like, we saw you dancing with Monica Diol on Electric Circus. That was a big deal for many years. Electric Circus was actually a city TV program.

Is that right? It was shown on much music, butcus was actually a city TV show. Is that right? It was shown on much music, but it was technically a city TV show. Is that right? That's right. Yeah, originally it was very much a Saturday afternoon kind of show. Really, for that era,

I think closer in spirit to the old-fashioned kiddie television programs like Krusty the Clown kind of thing where they just opened up the studio, kids would come in. I mean a little older than the Krusty the Clown demographic, but it was still very much in line with that 1950s style of television. Let's put on a show, open the window, let's see who drops in. And over time, they professionalized it, moved away from those rinky-dink roots. Yeah, and I mean, originally it was hosted by Michael Williams.

I don't know if you know this. It wasn't Monica Dior. And it was all R&B and hip-hop. And it was on a Saturday afternoon. And then they began to realize the real money is in the club kids and house music. is in the club kids and house music, and they moved it to a later time slot so that all the kids going down to club land on a Friday night on Queen West

would go and dance at Electric Circus and then go on to the clubs. There was definitely like a line in the sand when they basically upped the attractiveness of the dancers because I can tell you the aforementioned Warren Blackwood in the early years who could dance there couldn't dance there in the later years because you pretty much had to be like a model practically to be on.

Well, you definitely, definitely when when Wes is here, you got to get him to talk about his appearances on Electric Circus in the in the early, early days. And if there was a sound of the youth of Toronto in the mid-90s, it was that Euro trash sound. Which sampled Mark Daly. And you heard this music on Energy 108 and Z103.5, which is still around. And it was very much a kind of 905 musical phenomenon. And, you know, the whole idea that the club district of Toronto was colonized by the suburbanites, right, that would come downtown on the weekends and cause all sorts of disturbances on the downtown street. I think of Toronto of 20 years ago, very much in character with this sound, the pulsating beat of Euro trash house music. Well, Mark, you used to write for Now in that era, right? Yeah, iWeekly, yeah.

i, sorry. And yeah, that was also, I guess, one of the engines of the alternative weekly newspaper, all these clubs opening and closing all the time, fly-by-night operations, really, in the club district, something that has diminished over the decades. Oh, and I mean, you had HMV buying full-page color ads for, you know, Underworld and bands like, you know, that would never happen now.

Yeah, I think we've moved away from that, but a lot of nostalgia for it. The 93.5, the Move radio station that started a few months ago, very much in line with trying to milk what they can out of this nostalgia for the mid-90s. Do you have any idea what Billie Holiday is going to be doing on the Move?

Because she's tweeted she's joining the Move. Because I had Mad Dog on, so I had to ask about Billie. No, I'm not up on the latest Billie rumors. I know on her Twitter account, you can learn about what John Tory is doing. They seem to have some sort of connection, Billy and the mayor of Toronto. Wow. Well, I know we're running low on time here,

but I think it's important to get your opinion on this, certainly. And certainly I'd love to hear Mark's. Obviously we've lost a lot in Much music and what happened with AM radio. And where's this all going? And I hear a lot of people talk about Vice, not the brand, the linear broadcast channel, as being some kind of heir to the stuff we're talking about. And I really don't think that it is, but I'd be interested if you guys do. transparency that there is today. I think younger people are more media literate. They're tuned in to how their sausage is made, like they were not in a previous generation, and not as easily duped as we might have been when it came to getting a sales pitch. At the same time, though, I might

be seeing it through my middle-aged lens here. And in fact, you can always successfully market to young people. You just have to figure out how to do it cleverly. And Vice gets credit for being that kind of company, despite all the naysayers and all the people who think they have some sort of sinister motivation running some sort of content Ponzi scheme over there. Look, things have disintermediated so much in the last few years. We don't have the monoculture that we used to. I think that's why there's so much of a gravitational pull to the Retro Ontario YouTube channel because that's when things were smaller, more intimate. We could have that personal connection with the media. I'd argue that kids today, I think, are more naive when it comes to awareness about how they're being marketed to.

In my experience, I mean, at least we had Street Sense, you know what I mean? And I said this to Jonathan Torres, but don't we had Street Sense. You know what I mean? Like, where's, and I said this to Jonathan Torres, but where, don't we need Street Sense now more than ever? To decode where the marketing page is happening? Even just to educate that, you know, this segment here on this, you don't even know you're being marketed to. And I see this now that everything's Bell or Rogers now,

right up the line and you know what is it the new morning show is coming to uh ctv's got a new morning show uh with ben mulrooney and anne marie medawake uh and others and you know there's a whole thing there and you hear about it on bell media properties like uh i hope i got the right channel yeah like like CP24, and then there's this whole thing with the social, and it's just,

it's all kind of cross-promotion. Similar to JD talking on City TV News about their movement. You're right, you're right, you're right. So it's nothing new under the sun. I just think that there, I think it's less obvious than ever. Maybe because now it's everywhere.

I don't think it was everywhere, and now because now it's everywhere. Like, I don't think it was everywhere and now I think it's everywhere. Everywhere. You know, what gets me about people like Vice

and this new normal of content delivery is it's inherently negative and

I miss like hearing those clips of Chum and you know, miss hearing those clips of Chum and watching the old clips of Much Music. Of course, there was always horrible things going on in the world, but there was a sense of fun that I feel has just left the building. And Vice, I really want to like their broadcast linear channel. I love that they're in the television business,

but it's so bleak and and negative and you just come away thinking well what's the point in anything anymore i think you might just be too old ed i think maybe this is the point where you realize that the flotilla is leaving without you but i feel that way every single day. So welcome to the club. Welcome to the club. You know, it was fun, man. Al Music. I'm just going to leave on this happy note because Weird Al Yankovic would occasionally visit the Much

Music at Queen and John, and I think they gave him a whole day? Yeah, he would hijack the signal. And it was fantastic. Like, he would either be clips of interviews. Like, he would, there'd be clips of like interviews with people

where he would, they would play the answers but he would be the fake interviewer with different questions and it was just hilarious stuff and lots of Al

and I miss the good old Much Music days with Weird Al and the gang. Good times, man. Weird Al is an under, I think he's underappreciated. This guy is a treasure.

We talked about legends. I want to put Weird Al is an underappreciated... I think he's underappreciated. This guy is a treasure. We talked about legends. I want to put Weird Al down as a legend. I dear want you two to disagree. Come on. No. No, no disagreement here. And Al would do these shows actually for MTV. See?

See, this we don't know. We're going to plead ignorance on this. Okay, he would come to Much Music with the same material, and no one had seen the American version. Is that right? Yeah. He was able to pass it off as a Much Music show. This is like when Marty York came over the other day

and started telling me these horrible stories about Paul Molitor and Kelly Gruber. I said, next you're going to go upstairs and you're going to tell my two-year-old about Santa. What are you doing? I'm sorry for destroying everything you ever believed in. I like real talk, but only

to a point. Once you go into the world of Paul Molitor and Al TV, now you've crossed the line. You know what, guys? I could honestly do another two, three hours on this. I feel like it's just the tip of the iceberg, but at some point, there's a line where people are going to like, I can't give

any piece of audio that much time. So at some point, I got to tie this up. But this was amazing. Would you guys come back? Yeah, we'll do it again. I mean, look, Ed, there's always garbage from the 70s, 80s, 90s to discuss

here in the basement. Always. There's unlimited amounts of garbage from the 70s, 80s, 90s to discuss here in the basement. Always. There's unlimited amounts of garbage from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I was going to say, I'm going to have to call my contact and get a new delivery of beer because Ed has drank it all. I have no more beer. More octopus, please. I'm going to actually, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to ask, give me all of your octopus

because it's called Octopus Fights IPA. Is that what it's called? Yeah. No joke. And I've sampled many different flavors now, many different Great Lakes beers.

That is my favorite. It's dope, yeah. It's crazy. And they have a new Norm. I saw the Norm, not the Raptor, but the Counselor. He's got a beer

with Great Lakes. Oh, God. Yeah. Boom. Okay, we're going to do an episode at some point about the at norm Twitter feed. I think that'll be fun. Yeah, right after the Ann Romer conspiracy episode of the podcast.

And that brings us to the end of our 179th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Mark is at 1236. So one, two, three, six.

And Ed is at retro Ontario. See you all next week. And drink some goodness from a tin Cause my UI check has just come in Ah, where you been? Because everything is coming up Rosy and green Yeah, the wind is cold But the snow, snow Warms me today

And your smile is fine And it's just like mine And it won't go away Cause everything is Rose and green Well, you've been under my skin For more than eight years It's been eight years of laughter

And eight years of laughter and eight years of tears