Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Alan Cross: Toronto Mike'd #66
Episode Date: January 30, 2014Mike chats with Alan Cross about his days at CFNY 102.1, the Ongoing History of New Music, Martin Streek, Dean Blundell, Edgefests, Indie88, Courtney Love, the future of terrestrial radio and more....
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Welcome to the 66th episode of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything,
often with a distinctly Toronto flavour.
I'm Mike from torontomic.com.
Joining me is legendary broadcaster and author Alan Cross.
Legendary.
Legendary.
And hosting this audio file are the good people at Core Fusion.
Welcome, Alan, to my little studio here.
That's very nice, very homey.
I do like the Jason from Halloween goalie mask overall.
You know, I'm losing this room in a couple of months to my, at this moment, unborn son.
Wow.
And I'm getting booted to the basement.
Well, you know, there are some things to be said for basements.
I intend to move my office to the basement one day when I can afford to finish it.
But at least it'll be quieter and more private.
Well, yeah, and in the summer it's cooler.
And in the summer it's cooler, you're right.
Now, if it's okay with you, I'm going to title this episode The Ongoing History of Alan Cross.
Yeah, you can.
Just don't call it the other name because I don't own the copyright to that and we could get in trouble.
Yeah, we're going to get into that.
I have a few questions about that name, that unspoken name.
And thanks for doing this today.
You brought with you a little warmth.
It seems like this polar vortex has taken a little break.
Oh, yeah, I hope so, because I was in California all last week,
and it was very difficult coming back here because I was sitting, you know, what's today?
Thursday.
Thursday.
So last Thursday, I was sitting outside in downtown Los Angeles having a burrito in the sunshine.
I got questions about this trip to L.A. as well.
Yeah, there are plenty of questions about that trip.
And one last thing is that you should know
that Justin Bieber's in town.
I don't know if you heard anything about that.
Oh, no, I have a tame paparazzo friend,
and he had his people out at 52 Division last night
taking pictures of the crowd, of the other press,
and of the beepster going in.
So, yes.
Because he wanted to come on today,
and I said, no, I have Alan Cross. So, maybe next week. Maybe next week. Suck it, yes. Because he wanted to come on today. And I said, no. I have Alan Cross.
So maybe next week.
Maybe next week.
Suck it, Justin.
Back in 1989, I was working at a game booth at the CNE, the exhibition.
Yes.
And I...
What was the game?
Do you remember?
It was called Papa Ball.
I remember it well because I actually worked at it.
And it's gone now.
It actually, I think, after...
I worked it for three years.
It was right by the Polar Express, and then it left.
But I was there 20 days out of 20 days, and I would walk the grounds,
and I would come visit you, and you would give me stickers.
I would be in the old CFMY boom box.
Right, exactly.
Yeah, we used to have to go down there every single C&E and broadcast live from there.
And that was a bit of a chore simply because that boombox was either too hot, too cold.
And the food that we – the only food that we could eat was midway food.
So by the time we were done, we had gained about 14 pounds.
And we never wanted to go to the X ever again.
You know, it kind of ruined me for a long time.
So I did three years at the X, 20 days each year, and I couldn't go back for like 10 years.
I just couldn't go back.
I don't think I've been back since, honestly.
I may have gone during, you know, walking through the grounds to see a show at the amphitheater,
but I don't, I can't remember the last time I was at the X.
So you don't have memories of a guy, he looked like me, a little skinnier, and he didn't have any white hair.
Do you remember that guy asking for stickers?
Was that you?
Yeah, you and me.
I thought so.
Now, if you don't mind, I know we don't have a lot of time,
and I've got like six hours of questions, so I'm going to compress it.
But how did you get into radio?
And then most importantly for the people listening to this show.
How did I start there?
How did you start here?
Okay.
I got into radio because back when I was six years old for my birthday, my grandmother gave me a transistor radio.
And I grew up in a small town outside of Winnipeg, a million miles from nowhere, where we had three TV channels and one of them was in French.
So I was pretty isolated from the world at large, except through the radio. And at night, especially in the wintertime, you could tune in these faraway
voices that would give you music and information, entertainment from God knows where. And I thought,
I would like to do that one day. So I sort of kept that in the back of my mind all the way through
high school. When I got into university, I got a job at the campus radio station, which was CKUW
at the University of Winnipeg. And I had every intention of being a newscaster, a journalist,
an anchor, a foreign correspondent. So I took all the appropriate courses in university.
And then when I got my first full-time job, which was at a radio station in Kenora called CJRL,
I got to be a news person for 23 days and I hit it every single second.
Fortunately, there was a station in Brandon, Manitoba called KX96 that I had sent a demo tape to earlier
who called me and said,
would you like to come and play FM radio rock jock?
I left town so fast that the landlord,
the place that I was renting,
sent the sheriff after me for non-payment of rent.
Wow.
That is absolutely –
And there's still a warrant out.
No, I've been back to Canora.
I think we've settled that situation.
But – so I was in Brandon for nine months, and then I moved to Winnipeg to a station called Q94,
which doesn't exist anymore, and I was there for two years.
And then I got into a fight with my boss one night or one afternoon. I was the music director, and I came into his office, and I was there for two years. And then I got into a fight with my boss one night, or one afternoon.
I was the music director, and I came into his office,
and I said, look, I think we need to play this song.
It's a good female-friendly song.
It goes with the rest of the radio station.
It's a hit.
And he says, well, we can't play that song
because it's by someone who used to be in a rock band,
and we don't necessarily play songs by people
who used to be in rock bands. and we don't necessarily play songs by people who used to be in
rock bands and i thought oh god i'm 23 years old i do not want to spend a second more working for
this guy what was the song do you remember in your eyes by peter gabriel wow yes so i came in that
night and i decided that i was going to put together a demo tape and send it out to a couple
of radio stations one was k97 in edmonton and the other was CFOX in Vancouver.
As I was sitting, well, let me back up.
So I come in at two o'clock in the morning because if you're going to be
using station property to get a new job, you have to do it on the sly.
Right.
So I was going to go to Dan's studio and use Dan's studio.
But it was locked, which is weird because Dan never,
ever locks his studio.
So I had to, okay, well, I'll try George's studio.
But George always locks his studio.
Well, guess what?
It was unlocked.
All right.
That's a sign.
That's a smile.
Just wait.
So I go in there and I put together my demo tapes.
And as I'm dubbing off the last one onto cassette,
this is how long ago it was, I'm dubbing it off into cassette,
I notice that there's a magazine sitting on the console.
The magazine was for RPM,
which was an industry publication
sent out to radio stations,
record stores, and record labels.
Very expensive,
360 some odd dollars a year.
And, you know, this is back in 86.
Sure.
And there was a rule
that any issue of RPM
could never, ever leave the office of the music director
because, well, it was so expensive, so valuable,
and if you wanted to take it, well, you had to sign it out.
Yet there it was, and I knew this because I was the music director,
and I was the one that was going to make sure that it didn't happen.
So there it is sitting on the console.
So as I'm dubbing off this cassette, I pick it up
and I start flipping through because I hadn't even read it yet. And I noticed that there was,
in the classified section, a posting for a job in Toronto at this place called CFMY, which I had
heard of. And I thought, I don't know. I just, I don't know enough about that music. I don't know
if I'm good enough to work in Toronto.
They looked around and I said, I had one extra envelope, one extra resume,
one extra cover letter, and just one extra cassette and just enough postage,
which was 76 cents, just enough to stamp it and send it away, which I did.
And five days later, I was hired.
I love this story.
Yeah, it's the number of things that had to happen for me to get that original job at CFMY.
It's mind boggling, just mind boggling.
What did you know about the station?
I knew that it played weird music, that it was behind the Caspi Awards,
that it had a reputation as being very different from any other rock station around,
and that it was something of an underdog.
And I did know that Rush had written a song about them
because I was a big Rush fan.
I remember bringing home the Permanent Waves record
and seeing a little note at the bottom of the liner notes
that said,
inspired by the spirit of radio,
alive and well and living in Brampton.
I thought, wow, maybe one day I'll work at that station.
And who knew?
And I'm going to try to keep this chronological because that's the best way to kind of keep
track.
But,
uh,
I have a note.
It's one of my favorite Alan Cross facts that,
uh,
you know,
you were,
you actually married the gal who read the news at,
uh,
102 points.
So,
uh,
at what point?
So you, you get to CFNY, you get there in like?
86.
86.
Yep.
And how old a man were you at the time?
23 when I started.
And Mary Ellen was doing the news for Pete and Geetz.
I was doing the overnight show.
So we would cross paths each morning at about 4 o'clock.
And we got to know each other.
And one thing led to another.
And in 1988, I guess we moved in together and we got married in 1990. and one thing led to another and in 1988 i guess we
moved in together and we got married in 1990 that's awesome too together ever since i remember
i used to listen to 102.1 all the time i remember mary mary ellen benninger doing the news absolutely
she works for ch5 now cool a station i uh don't actually hear very often no i mean it's it's but
it's it's the most popular and most highly rated, most profitable radio station in the country. So at least one of us has a job.
That's right.
We'll get to that too.
Tell me about the name I wasn't supposed to say at the beginning, the ongoing history of new music.
Okay, so this is the way it worked.
In 1992, there was new management at CFNY.
At the time, CFNY had a lot of baggage and really needed to be blown up and rebuilt.
It was time, which happens with the radio station periodically. So new management had come in and
they said, okay, we're going to rename the radio station The Edge. And we're not going to change
it to country, which was a real possibility at the time. They were thinking seriously about
turning it into a country station. And what we're going to do is we think that, you know,
there's this thing called grunge and all this Lollapalooza stuff.
We think that that music has a bit of a future.
But in order to do it properly, we need to place it in context for the audience.
So what we need, among other things, is to have a documentary show
that explains this music and
where it all came from and we want you to do it i said well i i don't want to do it and they said
well here's the deal if you don't do it uh we'll pay you out and enjoy yourself in your future
endeavors i just bought a house i'd just been married i couldn't really afford to do that so
i was i was given this and actually i was my my employment was terminated. I was fired but then hired back on as an independent contractor. Instead of doing afternoons, I was doing weekend mornings in this other show throughout the week.
So it was – okay, I could just roll over and quit or I could just try and make lemonade out of these lemons and they were big lemons.
And that's what happened.
And then nine months later, they made another decision.
This is okay.
You can come back and do Afternoons again but you have to keep doing the show.
Fine, whatever.
And that's still a contract or is that – That was still a contract.
It stayed a contract.
or is that that was still a contract the state uh state a contract that would have been the fall of 93 and it was would have stayed a contract until 2001 when i went to uh hamilton to be the
program director why 108 so chorus owns the ongoing history of new music? They do. Most radio is done on what's called a work-for-hire basis,
which means you are hired to do a job,
and the output of that job is the property of the people paying the freight.
So yes, they own the name, they own the domain,
they own all the old programs,
they own all the material that went into the programs.
It's a standard sort of thing so that answers my
next 18 questions which are all around basically is there anything we can do to hear these things
not legally i mean they're out there people i remember my sister when she was living in chicago
towards the end of the 90s uh sent me a picture of some cassettes that were being sold from under
the counter at a record store i'll bet in in Chicago because people were pirating them off the radio and selling them that way.
So they're out there.
So there's no legal channel if I wanted to go back and hear the episode about Pearl Jam or something.
No, I wish there was.
Now, I am currently in negotiations with another party to try and license back
or somehow acquire permission to use some of these programs and the materials for other things.
But that's, as of today, that's still a negotiating thing.
Well, I know the guy.
I mean, I know a little, and I know enough to know that it would be difficult
to work with Chorus on these copyright things.
I know that Humble and Fred got a letter saying that their names were owned
and they wanted five grand, and I know they had to pay up $5,000
to get their names back and all this kind of shit.
We're taking a different approach to it.
We're asking to do like a revenue share on any future profits that we can derive from it because these programs are sitting there.
There's 691 programs, and they're just sitting there unused, and that seems to be a shame.
And both sides recognize that it seems to be a shame. So let's try and figure out how we can do a deal that would resurrect this stuff
and maybe have certain things transfer back over to me.
Like I would really like access to all the old interviews.
That's a big one for me.
The Finnish programs, they're done, they're done.
The name, the domain, I would like all that stuff, but we'll see.
I'm actually optimistic.
These things take a while.
We're already talking to the people in charge of copyright at uh at course so well keep your
fingers crossed so were you more than just a voice did you also you wrote these as well or no no i
did i i researched them i wrote them i um voiced them and then uh i had one uh one guy robbie jay
put everything all together for me yeah i'm uh
robbie jay's twitter friend yeah yeah yeah he's like i put it all he did it all and and uh
you know it was it was a really good working relationship well let's hope i mean if you ever
literally dozens of people uh what would like to start something like a kickstarter campaign
or something like that like whatever it takes if it's a money thing.
Wouldn't that be interesting?
I never thought about that.
What would we be trying to buy?
Well, I don't know if it's like course.
I don't even understand it enough to speculate.
The problem is with a Kickstarter thing, it's a licensing thing.
They own the stuff.
So there's two things that could happen is that
you could create a deal whereby both parties share in the proceeds or which is more unlikely
uh buy them outright and i think that the price on all this stuff would be so high
and the return on it you know would be so we wouldn't cover your costs right so let's say
i'm going to throw a number let's say i'm gonna throw a
number let's say it's thirty thousand dollars or fifty thousand dollars however much they want
um okay so i would have to somehow earn back fifty thousand dollars to you know to to to make good on
the kickstarter thing and i i don't know how that could be done i'm not a businessman i'm i'm
just a content creator right that's a shame uh do you know if they
actually create new episodes of a different voice do you know i think they're in the wild
no it's gone i think they tried to but i think they deep sixed it interesting what kind of
relationship did you have with martin streak at one or two point uh a really good one actually
martin was one of the first friends i made at the radio station because he was in charge of the CFNY video roadshow back in the day.
And as the low guy on the totem pole, I would try to do as many of those roadshows as I possibly could simply because I needed the money.
So I knew Martin.
Martin was one of the very first people I met.
I stayed in touch with Martin the entire time that we were there.
touch with martin the entire time that that we were there um it was uh one of those it was a weird sort of situation when and it wasn't just with martin but when i became program director
at the edge i ascended from being everybody's co-worker to being everybody's boss and i
wouldn't recommend that for every anybody because that's a very difficult transition to make um but
uh one of the people you know know, so I was Martin's boss
and there were some challenges there because Martin had his demons, but I, uh, refused.
I absolutely categorically refused to, um, do as I was told on a couple of occasions and get rid of
them. I would not do it because I said that if, if Martin goes, um, he has no structure in his life and he will be in danger.
So I refused to do it.
And, you know, without going into any detail, I stuck by Martin for the entire time I was there.
Kudos to you.
That takes, you know, that takes a big gonads to.
It was tough.
It was really tough because Martin didn't make it easy.
It was tough. It was really tough because Martin didn't make it easy.
We don't need to go into the details, but Martin did have his issues that I was determined to help him through.
And by the time I left, I was confident that he had gotten over the worst of it.
I really was.
Remind me what year you left.
2000.
July 2008.
July 1st, 2008.
And why did you leave?
I was offered another position in what I believe to be a very important growth part of the company,
which was the interactive online division of the radio part of Chorus.
And we were going to head up a new thing,
this explore music.com thing. And we were going to revolutionize radio.
And,
but you know,
here's the problem with that sort of thing.
I mean,
it was,
I thought it was a really good,
we were making some really good progress and we were doing some really cool
things,
but there are certain parts of the online world that seem to be incompatible with thinking in the radio world.
And there were many clashes on that level.
And again, we don't need to get into them and just say that the outlook and the way of doing business and the return on investments are all very, very different.
And over the course of a couple of years, things morphed, technology changed greatly,
which impacted what we were doing. And ultimately, it was decided that now this is we're gonna we're
gonna deep six this whole thing. And, you know, here's your choice, you can either
maybe neither pay you out, or you can go do afternoons in Hamilton. That was my choice.
And I decided that,
no,
I'm,
I'll take the,
I'll take the risk.
I'll go do something else.
So that's what I did.
And when,
who succeeded,
who took over as program director at Edge?
Was that Ross Winters?
It was Ross Winters.
Yeah.
Okay.
And he's the one who eventually deep six to let,
uh,
Martin Street go.
Yeah.
And Barry Taylor,
I think was on the same day.
Yeah, same day. That's right.
And two months, of course, after Martin Streak was let go, he took his own life.
Yes. I remember seeing Martin.
The last time I saw him was at a Jane's Addiction show at the Molson Amphitheater,
and he looked fine to me.
You know, I've talked to several people who were close to Martin at this time and they all
have the same comment that he seemed positive about the future. And he did, he did. I mean,
he had been at the radio station for a very long time. So any severance deal he would have received
would have been pretty good. Um, he was very well-known personality. Um, Martin was always,
um, at that point he had become quite the entrepreneur.
He had brought some new business to the radio station, which was pretty cool.
So when he did go, it was quite a bit of a shock to a lot of us.
And I don't think we'll ever understand his motivations or understand his reasons or state of mind, which of course doesn't make it any easier. But, um, you know,
that's one of those things that's going to stick with me forever and ever and ever because, uh,
of the relationship that we had while I was his boss and I was always his
friend and what I thought of the road that I thought he was on after I left.
And this shows that you don't understand people sometimes.
Well, this week there's been a lot of talk about mental health issues.
And I don't expect you to know what Martin was thinking.
How could you?
But there's two sides to this.
There's a sound mind and body individual deciding to just opt out, you know, check out, I'm done.
And then there's, of course, the demons and mental health issues that cause depression, etc. a sound mind and body individual deciding to just opt out you know check out i'm done and then
there's of course the demons and and mental health issues that cause depression etc and then
you take your own life do we have any no i i honestly i honestly don't know martin was was
sober he was clean um but he was obviously distressed um one thing that does happen to a
lot of radio people they don't necessarily take it that far, but when you do radio for a living, you tend to make that a gigantic part of your persona and a
part of who you are. You have that microphone, you have that podium, you have that forum.
And in order to do radio right, you have to give a lot of yourself as a person to it. You do it for
a very long time, it becomes very difficult to separate yourself as a person to it you do it for a very long time
it becomes very difficult to separate you as the person from you as the radio person
some people can do it i'm pretty successful at it because i've never i've always kept it
separate from the beginning but there are many people who can't um they once they lose their, their, the radio end of things, who am I?
What can I do?
What, you know, I'm no longer well known.
I'm no longer special in terms of, of pop culture in my, in my city.
And, and let's face it, radio doesn't necessarily leave you with a lot of portable skills.
I mean, if you're an accountant at one firm and you're let go, well, you can get a job
as an accountant at another firm. Right. Uh go, well, you can get a job as an accountant at another firm.
You know, what do you do with radio?
Radio involves you sitting in a room by yourself,
talking to a piece of metal that's hanging in front of your face.
If this were any other situation, they would institutionalize you.
But that's what radio is all about,
these one-way conversations to an imaginary audience.
And, you know, without making it sound too dramatic it does mess with your head because you have no idea
whether you're making any impact on your audience when you're on on the air until six months later
when the ratings come out and even then you don't know what you did or didn't do to make it good or
bad right but uh you know that that's people still recognize you people still appreciate you they'll come up to you and they'll quote you back stuff you said or stuff you played or something that was happening to happen on your show or they simply get all, you know expected to do that and if you didn't well you
were in danger of losing your job but when your job is taken away it's like oh god who am i now
and he literally had the logo of the station tattooed on his ass like he that's how much he identified with the spirit of
radio he was there hardcore from i want to say it was either 82 or 83 i mean forever and ever and
ever and ever and ever which is which is amazing in itself that in radio somebody could stay at
one station on air that long yeah i mean he was not on the air until Chris Shepard left, which would have been – he was just like a bit player on the – until Chris Shepard left, which – 92, I think it was.
And then he became the de facto club guy, and he was –
Live to air with Martin Streak.
You know, on Friday, Saturdays, and Sundays for a couple of generations of radio listeners.
Absolutely.
People grew up thinking one day I'm going to be able to go to one of Martin Streak's
live to air broadcasts in the club.
I'm going to have my first drink as an 18 year old in the club.
And that happened.
See, the people that would go to these live to airs, there's an age range, 18 to 22,
before you decide that you're going to go and do something something else that's the bulk of people were 18 to 22 and the number of of of generations in
that that that that age group that lived through that moved through martin's live to heirs i mean
do the math i mean it's no it's huge i mean when that all happened in that tragic day where he
he took his own life just the number of people commenting and communicating uh you know via my
site toronto mic.com was was overwhelming the amount of people who were first of all he was
beloved in the city by people who like a certain genre of music. Yeah. You know, just beloved. And he was the voice.
And the other thing that always disturbed me is that he had the face for television, if you will.
Like he had, to me, he could have done something else besides radio.
And he had so many possibilities.
Well, we had those conversations.
And for whatever reason, it just didn't work out.
Terrible. But you mentioned a name, on a lighter lighter note you mentioned a name that i get asked a lot about and i have
no idea where's chris shepherd these days you know what i somebody mentioned his name to me
the other day and uh i meant to follow up on it but i i don't know he's m.i.a he's off the grid
or something because i sometimes try to google him and find out where's shep at and he's just
missing an action you know let let me see if I can find out.
Okay, find out for me.
I honestly don't know.
I ran into him – I think the last time I ran into him in person
was when Love, Inc. played the 1998 Grey Cup in Winnipeg.
Wow, that's a while ago.
Yeah.
Wow, because that's another – I remember recording the overnight shows,
I guess, where it would be Shep live to air,
and he would – and the remix and Skinny Puppy and all that. He was also one of the guys that one of the very first guys I met because when I joined the station, Shep, we had we said yet to do any live to airs because the thinking was back then that nobody's going to dance to this music.
Why? Nobody's going to come to a club and dance to this music.
So he did his his DJ show in the studio.
And so on Saturday nights, it was 8 till 1, I think.
Something like that, yeah.
Yeah, and I used to, when I was just starting, they'd say, go sit in with Shepard.
He'll teach you some stuff.
So I would sit in with Shepard and just watch him do his thing.
And it was like, wow, what an education that was.
When he was not on the mic, did he with that uh that phony british thing he
does like that no no no i mean that's radio radio is is is show business sure i don't know of course
it's just uh you know madonna kind of puts on her british accent now i noticed it's kind of an
affection yeah no he's you know there are people who have their radio voices and then there are
people who who don't have radio voices and and it'll part of that voice is the show business,
the presentation,
the sizzles,
the hype.
And,
and Shep was really good at it,
man.
He made a,
he made a real good career out of it.
One last note,
uh,
edge fests.
What kind of involvement did you have in like picking a playlist?
I know we once corresponded via email and you pointed out the obvious,
which is that it's a business and you need to make money.
So you can't always pick the coolest band.
Sometimes you've got to pick the band that will sell tickets.
Oh, well, and sometimes you've got to pick the bands that are available.
Of course, yeah.
So when we first started Edge Fest, which was 1987, there were very few summer radio festivals by anybody.
So at that point, we could choose from an awful lot of people.
And,
and we did.
And for the first couple of years,
it was,
it was a lot of fun because we sort of booked everything ourselves and we
wanted to keep it Canadian because we had it on July the 1st.
So there was a heavy Canadian bias to it.
Then it got so big that we needed help from a promoter.
And I guess it would have been MCA concerts that helped us i can't whoever it was and they they they we they
uh took over the event and we they licensed the name from us and so there was a business
relationship and it was better for for us because they had much stronger contacts when it came to
booking bands. But then as we get into the middle 90s, a lot of other radio stations started having
these summer festivals, especially across the United States. And then the rise of more festivals,
especially across Europe. So the demand for bands to play was uh very very intense and some of these other
paydays especially in europe were very very good i can imagine and then for the stations for this
events in the united states and remember july 1st is awfully close to july 4th that's right
where they have a lot of these radio festivals uh you know companies would say listen you play our show for free or we stop
playing your records and that was the threat i mean we paid our bands but that was the threat
and like they had they had no choice they had to you know go do that and then there were competitions
from there was competition from from lollapalooza i mean, they paid their bands and they paid their bands very well. Right.
So it became more and more difficult to get bands across the border for one show and then back to where they needed to be.
And it got even stupider when the Canadian dollar took a dump.
And most agreements involving concert deals are paid or denominated in American dollars.
So what would cost $15,000 in the U.S. would cost $22,000, $25,000 in Canada.
And that quickly made it very, very difficult.
So it's the economics of this that it's just a pain in the ass.
You know, I love the Edge Fest.
I went to several at Molson Park in Barrie.
And, you know, I remember one that Green Day and Foo Fighters on the bill.
Well, I know.
There were some big ones.
But, yeah, see, okay, so that was one of the years that it was licensed to one of the big promoters, I guess, MC Concerts or whoever it was.
And we actually launched it across Canada, and there were like eight shows.
Right, right. was and we actually launched it across canada and there were like eight shows right right but you could do that back then because there was so much money to be spent by the record labels in promoting
these kinds of things right because they sold a lot of discs a lot of discs and then you know they
were able to sell lots of tickets and there could be you know they would do tour support and all that
sort of stuff that that the bands uh the bands needed back then and i remember there was one
interest i think there were eight dates across the country well and it was it was a fabulous
money maker was it was it was great um one of the things that really hurt us was the closing down of
molson park um because that was such a fantastic venue and there really isn't anything there really
hasn't been anything to replace it since i mean it
was a self-contained big park with a great stage excellent uh backstage facilities super load in
super load out and it was you know if you wanted to get away from the concert you can go sit under
a tree someplace and you know there was the flats you could have something else out there it was it
was it was my it was my maybe my favorite place to see a nice summer day certainly mine and i've
been to outdoor concerts all over the world, and nothing beat Molson Park.
But when they closed it down, there was nothing to replace it.
And the problem with Downsview is that you have three levels of government running a facility in a populated area that has an airport running through it.
Yeah, I was going to ask.
I've been to a couple since they moved to Downsview, and I actually think it's not too bad.
It's not too bad.
And the commute is much better for us. I've been to a couple since they moved to Downsview, and I actually think it's not too bad. It's not too bad.
I mean, the commute is much better for us.
I mean, it's right there on the subway line.
It could be a whole lot better if they invested in facilities, but that's only one part of it because you've got the whole, you know, the Radiohead stage collapse did not help.
No, I had tickets to that.
Yeah, that did not help. And, you to that yeah that did not help and um you know you need the
permanent facilities uh you know a lot of these that makes it really um attractive to the bands
and their management companies and their booking agencies and the promoters if you could say hey
listen we got this fantastic facility and the band say hey is it possible that we can go back
and play that place which was the case with molson Park. So everybody loved playing Molson Park because, you know, the stage was fantastic.
This concrete stage, permanent stage with a big roof that could hold all the gear.
Nice bowl-shaped amphitheater that could hold around 30,000 people.
There were trees if you wanted to go and hang out over there.
The backstage area was fantastic with, you know, like properly built buildings and showers and bathrooms.
And they would always, you know, build a little little uh you know you could play basketball back there there was
sometimes for even some of these shows they set up an arcade so you could play pool you can play
video games and it was it was really really good and that's never been replaced i went to the
farewell to molson park and barry i think the tragically hip and sloan and i was at that and
then a couple years later i did hear that like the van's warp tour was still at molson park yeah but they weren't playing on the flats okay they weren't
playing it at the uh there was a couple of years where uh see warp tour is completely self-contained
okay uh so they come with their stages on trailers and they just set up in a flat area which is why
they sometimes play in parking lots gotcha so they were playing up by the highway and they were not
using the stage area good i can see better sleep better tonight. It's been bothering me.
What did you honestly, like truthfully think of the Dean Blundell show?
Dean Blundell show was a very highly rated radio show, very popular.
And it lasted longer than any, I think it lasted longer than any other morning show
on that station since its inception.
Let me just do some math here. So longer than Pete and Geetz and longer
than Humble and Fred?
I think you're right. Yeah, not by much.
Well, Humble and Fred went to 640 in 2001.
Like early, early 2001.
I think Hummel and Fred would have been 19 – yeah.
12 years maybe.
No, no.
They were there in 1992, I think.
89, and then Howard goes to 99.9, and then he comes back shortly thereafter.
Right, right, right.
There was that whole thing.
Anyway, 13 years is a very long time for anybody to be in one position at a radio station.
I mean, it doesn't happen so much anymore.
So do you have any insight into what happened?
What happened, as they would say?
No, I was not there.
I know as much as anybody else does and what everybody else read in the paper.
So you know what I know, which is that they fired Jason Barr,
and then later they fired Todd Shapiro, and then very recently they decided to cancel the whole show
yes and you know you read this story in the toronto star and any of the follow-ups
and that's pretty much all i know todd shapiro is going to come on this show next week and
he might know a little more so we'll see i would imagine todd might have something to say yeah
all right let's move on uh sorry for all the 102.1 questions, but the audience is demanding.
I get them a lot.
Okay.
What happened?
So afterwards, here's some things, some places I've heard your voice,
which, by the way, your voice is great.
If I had your voice, I think I'd be doing this for money somewhere.
But I think it's become like the authoritative voice when it comes to music history, which is saying something.
Well, that's those lemonades we were talking about.
I mean, somebody had to do it, and it turns out that I had a history degree.
So I thought, okay, well.
I do too, by the way.
Listen, I could tell you anything you want to know about the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War.
Nice, because that's my weakness.
Ah, there you go.
So we compliment each other.
Okay. So adding your each other. Okay.
So adding your voice to something gives it weight.
It gives it some integrity.
I hear your voice all the time on Aux TV,
which I do watch quite a bit
because it's the only station on the TV
that actually plays stuff I like.
Yeah, it's a good little channel.
I had a meeting with them this week,
and we're going to be doing some more stuff with them.
And the other place where I hear your voice quite a bit these days,
and I just want to check my notes.
Am I skipping some stuff?
Let's get to this because I have some questions.
Indie Radio 88.1.
Yep.
So this is the new kid on the block, and you're all over this station.
When I tune in, I hear your voice.
Yeah.
This is a station owned by a company out of Barrie called Central Ontario
Broadcasting when they won the license, and I realized that they were doing this indie format.
I thought, wow, that's really cool.
So I sent them a note saying, hey, congratulations on winning the license.
Maybe if there's anything we can do together, let me know.
And they said, yeah.
So I'm officially the station's guidance counselor,
which is a fancy word for, well, it's not a fancy word.
It's, it's a better word than consultant.
Sure.
In fact, as soon as I leave here,
that's where I'm going because Thursdays are my office days there.
Cool.
And I also do some of their imaging and voice work,
which I have to do this afternoon as well.
So it's, it's a, it's a cool little startup in Liberty village.
And it reminds me a lot of the way CFNY was back in the very beginning
even before I got there but even after I got there this you know we were in a strip mall above a
roti shop uh we had cockroaches in the kitchen you plug in the microwave and the kettle at the
same time the station goes off the air I mean that's uh not quite that this is the little yellow house in brampton no it's the 83 kennedy road south okay i was never
in the little yellow house uh oh hang on just a second here i have a phone call no worries uh
i don't know who this is hello hello Dan. How are you? Can you give me 15 minutes? Okay. I'm in the middle of something here. So 15 minutes. Okay. I'll, yeah, I'll call you. Okay. Sorry.
Sorry.
No problem.
Now I know I've got 15 minutes, so I'm going to talk twice my regular speed.
Okay, so 88.1.
Can you, guidance counselor, what does that mean?
How much influence do you have over the playlist?
I am the one who looks at things from a 30,000-foot view. I don't have say over individual songs, but I have a say or at least I have input on the overall image and presentation of the radio station.
Now, they can take my advice and they can leave it, but I'm the one that's been asked to offer opinions.
Have they been taking your advice or leaving it?
Mostly taking it, yes. Mostly taking it.
I feel like 88.1 has it tough because the expectations are sky high for this thing.
Well, it's not only the expectations are sky high,
but everybody else has different expectations.
Of course.
Because one person's awesome radio station is another person's piece of crap.
And when you start dealing with music lovers, it's very subjective.
It's very, very difficult to figure out to please absolutely everyone.
And then there are certain realities of radio
that have to be adhered to.
One of them is ratings and making a profit
and playing commercials.
And the other is you can't play too much obscure,
unfamiliar music because you may appeal to a small group
who think that you're super-duper cool,
but then you'll alienate a whole bunch of other people who don't necessarily want that level of obscureness.
So it's a real balance.
You're never going to please everybody all the time, but it's a balancing act, and it will evolve over time as we try to figure out who the audience is because let's face it.
The radio station has been on the air since Septemberember the first september the third to be accurate right
it was after labor day at the heart launch so i mean there's there's there's a lot of you know
experimenting going back and forth trying to figure out what works and what doesn't
um the station began at a very low frequency very low power which had to be bumped up which is now
in effect there was no marketing.
We were late to the street when it came to sales packages.
We didn't have people on the air until September the 3rd.
You know, there's a lot.
And let's face it, 88.1 is not the most desirable frequency on the dial
because it's so far removed from all the other commercial stations.
So, you know, there's a real series of challenges that have to be overcome.
But I think that the station will overcome them because there's so much
passion within the building and because the people who like us really,
really like us, and they've become sort of street-level evangelists,
which is a fantastic thing.
I'm not going to be that guy
who picks at every song that you
might play too often, because those guys are
jerks.
I understand you've got to make a dollar at this
thing, or it's not going to make it.
But I do hear quite often Philip
Phillips' Home.
To me, I know that sounds very
Mumford & Sons-ish. I know that this guy
won American Idol, but you do play it quite a bit.
So it seems recently, in my opinion, I hear it in the shower and when I bike, I listen.
Maybe the playlist has got a tiny bit more poppy, maybe?
I don't know.
Again, it's a subjective thing.
And I know that the station plays songs far, far, far fewer times than a lot of other stations of its type, maybe half as many times.
There are some things that realities, for example, the station has a 40% CanCon level.
We have to play 40%.
And of that 40%, 60% has to be what's called emerging artists.
So there are restrictions on what we can and cannot do
and then it becomes a game of math and accounting because you got to make sure that you get you know
x number of spins in for these songs because they're big hits and then you want to introduce
new songs and then you want to play old songs then you want to play spice songs and then you
want to play you know specialty songs and then you want to be able to play uh all that can con that you have to play so it's it becomes a real you know the the moment
anybody sits down in front of a software scheduling system and tries to figure out exactly the best
way to present music on the radio is when their heads explode i'm going to read a really quick
note that was left so i wrote an entry on my site and said you have questions for alan post them
here and just going to read this and you can respond or not.
But it says,
ask him why he gave an overwrought over earnest speech during his throne of
glory,
referencing the spirit of radio and alluding to the little yellow house and
wax bombastic about how indie is going to save music when it's simply a
heavily formatted modern rock station.
Recent additions to their playlist,
red hot chili peppers, Adele, Gauthier,
Jack Johnson, Dave Matthews, I won't read the rest, but you too.
As well, they're starting to play novelty hits like Pass the Duchy and Bust a Move.
So this is one of those guys that'll never be happy. No, no, and you know, that's his take, and I respect it.
Again, what you have to do with with because we're dealing with a lot
of unfamiliar music music that has never been played on the radio in this market ever before
and remember we're dealing predominantly with a radio audience okay a people who listen to the
radio uh stuff like those hits are you know it's a spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down.
You know, if you're going to have a plate full of broccoli, which is very good for you, then maybe you got to have a nice, you know, buttered baguette on the side.
You know what I'm saying?
Absolutely.
And it's, you know, again, it's a work in progress.
We don't know what is the exact balance yet.
Having said that, I mean, songs like like you know past the dutchie and
i mean those those don't come up very often they're just there to make you look at your
radio and go what which is fun and uh you know i think that's i think that's that that's kind
of cool i mean i do a feature called crackle and pop which is i'm going through my record
library in alphabetical order and I'm pulling
out all these super obscure songs.
And some of them would fall into that category,
I guess,
but it's,
it's fun because it's stuff that you haven't heard on the radio for how
long.
And,
and sometimes it's just,
you know,
you know,
he talks about it being heavily formatted.
This is radio in the 21st century.
It has to be heavily formatted and we can argue about that all you want,
but I'll win.
But then he says that they play Pass the Duchy and Bust a Move.
That's not heavily formatted.
That's just like, wow, what the hell is this?
Here, as you mentioned the record collection you have, real quick,
Andrew Stokely helped me put this together,
and he tells me that you took a whole bunch of records from 83 Kennedy when it shut down.
Yeah, that's true.
So how many did you take?
7,000.
Yeah, okay, 7,000.
That's amazing.
So you have 7,000 records you took from 83 Kennedy in your collection.
Yep, they were going to throw them all out.
I wouldn't have that, so I backed.
Quite literally, and I describe this as it happened. I wouldn't have that. So I backed quite literally there.
And I,
and I described this as it happened.
I rented a rider truck.
I backed it up to the station and I loaded in as much as I possibly could in
the time that I had available.
And that included all the shelving.
They're in my basement.
That's awesome.
So all those records,
Chris Shepard used to play on Saturday nights.
You've got them.
I've got them.
That's wicked.
That's wicked.
Uh,
did you,
uh,
and I know I'm just up against it here. Cause I know you've got a call to make there, but Geeks and Beats.
Yeah.
So tell me about Geeks and Beats, your podcast.
Yeah, I've always wanted to do a podcast and I never had the time to actually do it.
So I was out for dinner one night with Michael Hainsworth who works at BNN and he had done a podcast called The Lesser Nerds Broadcast.
And it had finally run its course.
And I said, you know what?
You and I should do one.
So he came up with the name.
He does all the editing.
And we put it together once a week.
And it's kind of a fun stuff because, you know, he's the really geeky guy.
He's the real gadget guy.
I'm the music guy who likes to geek out on a lot of gadgety stuff.
So it kind of works well.
I mean,
the dynamic works well and, and where we're hoping to take the show on the road somehow and make it a
little bit bigger than it is.
So we're at 41 episodes now.
You're catching up to me.
Yeah.
Catching up.
And we do it every Monday and it posts,
we posted it Wednesday at midnight.
So why do you wait? Out of curiosity.
It takes time to perform.
Oh, to edit.
It's heavily edited.
You're right.
Heavily edited.
Yeah, I've decided not to do that.
Yeah.
I don't have time.
Michael's from TV, so he decides that he wants the music and the transitions and the special effects and all that sort of stuff.
No, fair enough.
That takes time, of course.
I totally forgot.
Blow your brains out, dude.
You want to do that?
You go right ahead go nuts tell me about these there's a songs a venture in canada that
you have a role in yes songs is a streaming music service in fact it's probably the most popular
streaming music service in canada i know that about 2.7 million canadians use it every month
and songs that recognizes that canada is a big market for them so they have opened an office
in canada um it's uh the office is in the mars building at university and college recognizes that Canada is a big market for them. So they have opened an office in Canada.
The office is in the Mars building at a university and college.
And it's a small operation,
but they have me as their head of Canadian curation,
which means I'm the one that overlooks,
oversees all the playlist creation from Canadian curators.
So there's going to be a definite canadian flavor to what songs uh uh offers um for for canadian users it's it's not there yet we're still working on the paperwork and some of
the i may have a call this morning this morning or yesterday morning yesterday morning uh about
you know logistics and and and paperwork and all that sort of stuff but it's coming along and by the time we get to uh next
week you'll start seeing some um hoser like playlists up there cool and you get to hire
people is that uh well i get to enlist people to help as as curators i have uh i'm full right now
but i have a number of people who will be assigned topics. And if you see how songs,
songs,
curates music for you.
And if you go to the site or on the mobile app,
you,
you go to the main screen,
you'll have six data points.
And it's like,
you know,
what are you doing?
What time of day is it?
What mood are you in?
And what do you,
what do you need?
I quite like it by the way i use it it
works really well because it doesn't if you aren't forced to make any choices you weren't forced to
work it's just like here's what i'm thinking here's how i'm feeling here's what i'm doing
right just serve me the tunes serve me the tunes that goes go with this beautiful you know some of
the playlists are really really mainstream with well-known songs which is what a lot of people want right others like for example when i'm when i'm writing i like uh um the quiet beatless music
um that i don't know that much about but i've discovered a lot of electronica like maybe
electronica uh and i ended up buying this stuff cool uh during the uh polar vortex we had recently
you managed to get your way to L.A.
Yes.
And I heard a little bit.
You were on Humble and Fred this morning.
By the way, who set that up, you or them?
They called me.
I think they followed me.
I think they knew you were coming here today, and they tried to beat me on this L.A.
I think they tried to scoop me on the – All right.
But that's all right.
They're buddies.
I'll let them try to scoop me.
Okay.
Tell me a bit about why you were in L.A.
Okay.
A couple of years ago, Courtney Love was in the midst of a giant legal investigation over what she alleged to be missing money and misappropriated money from the Kurt Cobain estate.
She had gone through a number of lawyers and had reached to the point where she was working with a woman named Rhonda Holmes from a firm called Holmes and Gordon in San Diego.
They were working together, and then something went wrong with that relationship.
I'm not really sure what it was.
It doesn't matter.
It did go south.
And Courtney sent out a tweet saying that Rhonda had been bought off.
Now, she sent it out, immediately deleted it, but it was captured.
Of course.
So, and then later, she, I did an interview with her
backstage at the Sound Academy,
and that's when she continued to talk about
what was going on, and she mentioned a female lawyer
that had been gotten to.
So I published this on the exploremusic.com website
without mentioning the lawyer's
name uh the lawyers did find it and they wanted me so many years later to testify on as to what
was said in that in that interview because i didn't record it my i had a iphone recorder and
it didn't work uh and uh so i went they asked me if you know, go down there, and would you like to testify?
Well, okay, and the reason I went is because this was something I wrote,
and I didn't want anybody misinterpreting what I wrote,
and if you had questions about what I wrote,
I wanted to explain it and get it on the record.
So I went.
And it was cold here.
Yes.
Smart man.
Yes.
Now I'm going to do some rapid-fire questions until you tap your head to let me know you've got to go.
Okay.
Okay.
What is the greatest song ever recorded?
Won't Get Fooled Again by The Who.
Wow.
The perfect rock song.
Cool.
I'm glad you...
Sometimes...
I thought I may have a lot of dead air here while you're trying to think, you know, that's perfect. What are a few of your favorite bands? Nine Inch
Nails, Stone Roses, Peter Gabriel. What was your favorite meal at Calypso Gardens?
At 83 Kennedy Road South, it would have been the special Chinese fried rice,
which is $4.95, and you had it with the extra hot scotch bonnet sauce.
Where is terrestrial radio going? Is talk the future, or is there still room for music?
Terrestrial radio will eventually transition to IP delivery from AM and FM,
and it will become more interactive and more on demand.
So interactive, because most people listen to radio, I think, in the car.
So there will be a lot more traffic accidents in the future.
Not necessarily, because we're using our smartphones now to listen to entertainment,
and we're listening to stream music.
It's going to be all about the interface and what the National Transportation Safety Board
in the United States allows manufacturers to put in their dashboards.
In the March 2012 Maclean's article, Dave Farrow, the manager at Chorus, said,
it's not radio's job to break new music.
Disagree.
Disagree.
So it is radio's job to break new music?
I think radio has a responsibility to the community to bring it as much entertainment.
I think it is radio's job because we are using public airwaves to highlight new and interesting and enlightening material for the general public.
That includes new music.
Who was the biggest jerk you ever interviewed? The Beautiful South. Oh, I like the general public. That includes new music. Who was the biggest jerk you ever interviewed?
The Beautiful South.
Oh, I like the Beautiful South.
Yeah, they came off a plane.
There was all of them in the studio.
None of them came within five feet of the microphone.
And no matter what question I asked,
it was either met with a gesture or a grunt
or a yes or no.
A Little While is still on my playlist.
It's a is a fantastic band
fantastic band they're from scandinavia no they're from england but they were drunk after the plane
ride and they were missing uh an important football game and they were tired so uh it just
didn't work well i think we it was a live interview and lasted 90 seconds and conversely who was your
favorite interview anytime you get to talk to dav Bowie or Bono, it's fascinating.
I also really like talking to Courtney Love because it is an intellectual exercise unlike anything that you will ever have with anyone else.
She is, people will say that she's crazy.
I disagree.
I think she is dangerously genius.
Wow.
It's just that she has a hard time focusing.
I actually saw her at Edgefest, speaking of Edgefest, in the pouring rain. Yeah, and she brought all those people up on stage with her. Wow. It's just that she has a hard time focusing something. I actually saw her at a edge fest.
Speaking of edge fest in the point rain.
Yep.
And she brought all this people up on stage
with her.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I actually,
when I listen after this,
this trial last week,
I had an opportunity to hang with her quite a
bit.
And I have her phone number now and I have her
email address.
She'll take your call.
We text back and forth all the time. I spent some time. uh she said you come up to the room for for a chat so i was in her hotel room and
we sat and we talked very cordially for for over an hour did she flirt with you no no i'm i'm a
completely non-threatening dude and uh that's what i like about you yeah just non-threatening so it's
like great and somebody says to me you were up in Courtney Love's hotel room
and nothing happened.
Do you expect us to believe this?
I go, yeah.
It's all just gone.
It happened.
I got a hug on the way out.
That was it.
Big name artists will spend millions on an album.
You'll hear about Michael Jackson
would spend 30 million recording this album
and Guns N' Roses spent 13 million on this.
So the question is, where does that money go
when the big artists spend multi-million dollars
recording an album?
A lot of it's studio fees.
A lot of it is studio.
Because these studios can be very expensive.
The big ones, $1,000 a day or more.
Or $1,000 an hour.
Wow.
Do you know what I charge for this studio?
I don't know.
I was wondering what the rate should be.
I don't know.
I need to get some kind
of a rate card. What's next for Alan Cross? I don't know yet. I'm making it up as I go along.
I have a couple of other opportunities that are sort of sitting in front of me right now,
including this phone call. I got to make it a little bit and we'll see. I mean, one of the
things I, I never, I don't spend a lot of time looking back. I'm always looking forward.
Kind of like Steve Jobs never celebrated anything because that's the past.
Past is done.
Did it work?
Yeah.
Great.
Move on.
And I've got a lot of things that I'm looking forward to in terms of technology and broadcasting and other things going forward.
And we'll see.
We'll see.
And finally –
Here we go. I've got to go. I'm tapping my – Okay. We'll see. And finally, no,
here we go.
That's my,
I gotta go.
I'm tapping my,
okay,
that's it.
Thanks for,
thanks for doing this.
All right. No problem.
Appreciate it.
And that brings us to the end of our 66th show.
You can follow me on Twitter at Toronto,
Mike and Alan at Alan cross or Alan cross dot C.A.
See you all next week.
Bye.