Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Remembering Harry Forbes with Retrontario: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1542

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

In this 1542nd episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike is joined by Retrontario's Ed Conroy as they remember Harry Forbes, Synth library pioneer and commposer of TVO's Magic Shadows and Bits and Bytes theme songs. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, The Advantaged Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada, The Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball Team and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail]

Edd Connelly's Ed Conroy, you're the first person inducted into the FOTM Hall of Fame, and I've learned so much from you over the years, but I'll never forget your visit when we discussed the Magic Shadows theme and how Harry Forbes was more influenced by the Beach Boys' field flows than the Beatles across the universe. That was a mind blow to me, a revelation. And I was so sorry to hear from you this past weekend that Harry Forbes has passed away. And we were chatting about this and you said he soundtracked our golden age and I'm honored that you carved out some time for me today to talk about Harry and some

of his compositions. Oh bless you sir Michael. You know we've talked about this a lot in the past there's so many wonderful characters in Toronto media and And unfortunately, other than your program, there's not a lot of people talking about these legacies. So, you know, it's an unfortunate moment to be talking about somebody that's passed away. But. If we don't do it, nobody else is going to, unfortunately. So, yeah, I found out on. I guess it was yesterday, Saturday morning.

I got an email from a Risa who was the, uh, sort of producer sort of fixer for magic shadows who's still with us and just an absolutely incredible lady. She was L we hosts sort of Girl Friday, if you will. And she let me know. And I was really, you know, it was a lot of emotion because I had interviewed Harry in the past, but I had hoped to interview him many more times. I had a lot of burning questions still. And it was just another piece of history falling into the great abyss. Especially when it comes to these programs and these TV Ontario history that we're fascinated by. There's just not many people left standing. So you were my first. I learned the news, of course, on your Instagram page. People should follow Retro Ontario on Instagram.

So I learned it there. And then I remembered our chat about the Magic Shadows theme song, which we'll discuss more in a moment. Do you have any idea how old Harry was when he passed? I don't. I mean, I would imagine, you know, by the, the medium age of those people, he probably was in his late seventies or early eighties. I mean, a remarkable body of work that is left behind.

You know, we'll get into the big ones, but I think what I've, since, since we spoke, I guess it was a couple of years ago about the, the Beach Boys, you know, you'll slow inspiration. Yeah You know, I've learned a little bit more about him in that he just was one of these very prolific musicians Who did a ton of library music and every once in a while something will come up and it's It's always Harry Forbes did the soundtrack for this and it's all this kind of

John Carpenter ask synth very 70s very very eerie spooky synthesizers And I know you you know, you're a gang of music aficionados That dudes host and all that they know about all these guys, right? I mean, that was a big important piece of what became synth pop, right, in the late 70s. Ed, if we'll jump in, since you mentioned toast, Rob Pruse sent me a note today, because we were discussing the passing of Harry Forbes in the not-so-secret FOTM WhatsApp group. Let me know if you want in there, buddy.

You're an FOTM Hall of Famer. But Rob Proust just pointed out he loved the theme for Magic Shadows, which I want to get into with you. He loved it so much, he wrote, and he actually learned to play it. And at his solo shows, he had solo shows, I saw one in Oakville actually, he would play the Magic Shadows song, so he's keeping it alive. Amazing. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this so many times. That piece of music obviously is what he's going to be remembered for by the most amount of people who would have heard that.

And it was a golden age. And that whole thing, the music, the animation, the presence of Elie, the scheduling, you know, the fact it came on kind of right after the kids shows we've talked about that. All of those things added together make it a very important piece, I think, of sort of Ontario pop culture. 1974 to 1989, if you were there, you came in, you came across that that's going to be with you for your, for your life for better, for worse. And it was funny. You mentioned Instagram, you know, I, I, of course, uh, when I heard about his passing, I put that clip up and

I mean, the, just the absolute avalanche of responses from people. The same thing, right? Wow. You know, that thing just blew my mind as a kid and I found it equally fascinating and terrifying. And I watched it with my dad or I watched it with my grandma. And it all positive and all just, you know, Um, and it all positive and all just, you know, it reminds us of that, of that time when life was very simple and there was only 20 channels, you know? Um, and yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, there's lots of great theme songs for TV shows that one just, it almost is ethereal, like it goes to a place that is hard to describe, you know?

Yeah. It hits me right in the nostalgia bone. So sort of where that we've talked about this in the past, but that Dr. Who opening would like, it could fear in my, like I'm still, I can't touch Dr. Who to this day, man. Seriously, I'm scarred, but the magic shadows, I don't think I tuned in and watched L.E. OST. Like I would just see the opening and see this older dude

and I would hear that song and that animation It was kind of trippy, but I was mesmerized by it like and when I hear the opening chords I'm right back like watching TV. Oh, I feel like I watched more TV. Oh than anything when I was a young man yeah, I mean the TV Ontario factor is so huge for us because We know it was a trusted source. It was a so-called electronic babysitter, right? It was tied to curriculum. So we watched it in class.

It taught us how to read, how to do math, how to speak French. And then we came home and we watched it at home because our moms and dads were like, yeah, you just leave it on TVO They're not gonna see violent death or You know gross commercial Exploitation right so we saw a lot of TVO

We all did and and yes there was that moment every day when it went from the children's You know block into the adult block. And it was a hard transition, man. There was no mixing, soft mixing there. It was hard. My memory is polka dot door in Doctor Who. That's a pivot, man. Well, I mean, it was different every day of the week.

And yeah, Magic Shadows was Monday to Friday. So that was a constant. I think Doctor Who was Thursday and Saturday. But yeah, I mean, Magic Shadows for me was always something that it was like a grown-up show. But that animation, it grabbed you and it freaked you out. And you know, you didn't know who those people were. Now we look at it, oh, it's the Marx brothers and you know, Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart. You can see all the golden age Hollywood stuff in there. But as kids, we didn't know what that was.

And I certainly didn't know about Feel Flows or across the universe. No, without a doubt. Now is it true that that song by Harry Forbes that we're going to play we heard the Commodore so what version did we hear off the top? So that was that you know, there's all kinds of interesting bits of the magic shadows ethos the Commodore 64 piece Was in one of them. I believe the very first sort of demos that you could buy had a couple of tracks on it,

like pre-programmed. And that was one of them. So I think too, you had a lot of musicians that knew that piece of music, but they didn't know what it was. Like if you weren't in a border town in America or in Ontario, you didn't know what Magic Shadows was. But that's a mind blow. You mean, so you would buy a Commodore 64 and that would be preloaded? Yes. Yeah. I did not know that.

Yeah. I mean, it's, I believe the full, I don't know if all of them had it or it was some of them, but there is a full video on YouTube that has, it was like an hour of stuff. And it also had another scary theme wasn't Harry Forbes, um, of a program called the stationary arc, which was on TV, Ontario. It was a British show. Um, and it had some sort of pop hits and it had other bits and pieces. But what was really funny is in the early, early days of the internet, like, you know, in the late eighties, early nineties, the internet like You know in the late 80s early 90s There's like use net or I think that's what it was called like the early BBS boards

There's still people trying to figure out what those songs were on that demo and It's so hilarious because you always see like, you know the three minutes a four minute question mark And it was took years and years or something to go, Oh yeah, that was Harry Forbes. That was magic shadows theme. Yeah, because you had to be from Ontario or a border town, like you said to know that. Now you said a minute ago, you just had bits and pieces when you were talking, but that was a great opportunity, Ed, for you to say bits and bites.

Oh, you're muted. You're gone. Am I back? Oh, you're back. Okay. So did you hear me hilariously tell you when you said bits and pieces? You could have said bits and bytes. Bits and bytes. I'm blowing the lead here, Mike. Yeah, bits and bytes. Well, you know, I'm going to keep you on track. That was a bad joke. I just came to me, but let me, let me just finish with magic shadows for a minute. So the Harry Forbes composition that we're going to play in a moment, is that the original

theme song for magic shadows? Or as I just learned from you today, there was another theme before that. No, that was Saturday night at the moon. Oh, so the other Elway Yost show. Yeah. So, yeah, let me just cue it up, because not everybody's as in the weeds as we are about all this

stuff. Oh, we are right. He is the guy that actually came up with the name TV Ontario. Before then, it was known as the Ontario Education Communications Authority, the OECA, which

was a pretty lame name for a television station in Toronto in the 70s. And they did a sort of internal, uh, people that were working there, everybody throw their name in a hat and we'll pick one out and Elwi said, Hey, TV Ontario. And they went with that. Everybody remembers him. Classic guy, a wonderful documentary exists, by the way, about him. Came out a few years ago. It's on the TVO YouTube channel.

Anyways, their big sort of platform show was Saturday Night at the Movies. And they would do a double header on Saturday nights. They would show classic Hollywood golden age movies and then L. We would discuss them. He would have guests in the studio and it was, you know, an absolutely amazing, amazing program because he didn't discriminate. He would have, uh, freests on, he would have people, teachers, you know, it wasn't all just movie nerds or things like that. It was, it was a cross section of Toronto people. And so when they were buying

these packages of movies from the studios, the way that it worked back then was you went to MGM or you went to Warner Brothers. And of course you want the big ones. You want Pazza Blanca, you want, you know, Gone Gone with the wind you want Wizard of Oz, but the way the studios worked was they would sell you Those but you also had to take a bunch of crap right a bunch of B movies, right? So they were like well some of these B movies like they're so bad We can't show these on Saturday night like that'll that'll kill the vibe So they devised this other program which became known as magic shadows where they showed the B movies But they split them up into smaller pieces

So they would only show half an hour of the movie and they'd still have LB host Talking about it and having guests and such but they would strip it throughout the week So you'd get you know Howard Hawks the thing, you know a horror movie from the 50s and it would be Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday You know split into four pieces and then always on Fridays they showed the old cereals like Flash Gordon and the old science fiction serial shows, which always had a cliffhanger. Like there was never any resolution to them because he loved that kind of stuff as well.

And obviously Saturday Night at the Movies was the big prestigious one. Magic Shadows was a bit more scrappy. And I think the opening that we're gushing about here, you know, the music obviously, but that animation is insane. And it was done by a guy named Herbert Klin. And he was an animator from Los Angeles who had worked on George of the Jungle. You must remember. Of course, George of the Jungle. You must remember. Of course. George, George, George of the Jungle. Right. Friend to you and me. And another cat that worked on George of the Jungle is this equally fascinating guy whose name was Ken Sobel. And Ken Sobel was best mates with Elwi

and he worked at TV Ontario. They did all this stuff together. And basically Ken Sobel called in a favor to Herbert Klin. He said, look man, I don't remember what he owed him, but he owed him money or something. He said, well, forget all that. If you create this little animated piece for this thing we're doing up here in Toronto, Herbert Klin knocked that thing off, literally in like a weekend.

Herber Klin knocked that thing off literally in like a weekend. Wow. Um, and then her, uh, Harry Forbes came in, laid down the track, you know, all of the people I've interviewed about it, they all say the same thing. They didn't think about it. It just, you know, like it came together. It was just done. Okay. They, it wasn't even like a big deal.

I wasn't anybody thinking, well, we've really, we've outdone ourselves here. We've created a really cool piece. It was just, okay, we got an opening now. Now let's focus on the program. And it really wasn't until many, many years, I think after magic shadows ended that people started to ask, wow, what, what was that? Like, where did that go? And very famously, Elio's retired in 1999. And his son, the story, his son Graham wrote the screenplay for the movie Speed,

became a huge Hollywood guy, is a huge Hollywood guy right now. But the last movie that Elio showed on Saturday Night at the Movies was Speed and he had his son on. So it was a lovely sort of family wrap up of this whole career at TVO. But what was really funny was most of the letters that got sent were congratulating Elio were people saying, can you please please show the magic shadows?

Uh cartoon because by that point it had been off the air for over 10 years And so he went oh sure, you know, and they they threw it on there Um, and then you know fast forward when I started putting stuff on youtube, I guess 2005 2006, you know the magicadows was one of the first pieces I put up there instantly blew up. You and I always talk about it. So I mean, it's in some ways it's never really gone away, right? It's been there since the beginning.

But yeah, the that program I mentioned, Ken Sobel, He also wrote other TVO programs like Dear Aunt Agnes, Telefrancé, Read Along. And I think part of what attracts me to all this stuff is that TVO was kind of like a studio, like a classic Hollywood studio, just cranking out grownup entertainment, children's entertainment, preschool entertainment. And then these people were writing for all of those things.

And it wasn't like they were qualified in the sense that they had a degree in childhood education or any, they just were just good writers. They knew, okay, this will make a good story. Magic shadows also had a producer whose name was Jim Hanley. I don't know if you, if you've heard of that guy before, he was very close with Magic shadows also had a producer whose name was Jim Hanley. I don't know if you've heard of that guy before. He was very close with Moses Neimer. They co-created a program called the originals on city TV.

He sort of was one of the inner circle with Moses and there was all this weird Moses TVO crossover stuff with Marshall McLuhan in the seventies. So, you know, Mike, I think you're like me. It's the nexus of characters that is interesting to us. And Toronto is at heart a small town and all these things crossed over. And I love it. You know, I'm here for that. Now I'm here to play the magic Shadows theme song. You ready Ed? Let's do it, places never ever seen before.

They'll take you to the sky. Right upon a silver screen where pictures seem to flow like magic, magic, shadows. Okay, I have a question. So Harry Forbes composes that and he's singing on that? No. Okay. So that's a funny story because when I interviewed him, this was about 10 years ago, of course that was one of my first questions. Is that you? He said no, no, no, that

wasn't me. I said who was that? He said I feel so bad but I don't remember the guy's name. But what he remembered was he was a hippie from the Yorkville scene and he was in the studio doing something else and Harry wrote the lyrics and just said can you just do this for me and the guy did it and got paid 20 bucks or you know something ridiculous and went away and that was sad. So approximately what year are we talking about? This is 1974. So let's make this a challenge. A lot of people listening right now.

So if you know whose voice that is, Ed and I need to know. So don't even pass go, okay? Mike at torontomike.com. Let me know if you recognize that voice and you know who that was. Okay, so that's a challenge out there. Now, I know you touched on this on a previous episode, but this is the tribute to Harry Forbes here. So I always heard Beatles influence in that song, as many people do, but you pointed out that you had a conversation with Harry in which he talked about Feel Flows by the Beach Boys. And now when I hear the theme song, I totally hear Feel Flows. Like it's completely switched in my head now.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I don't know about you. I mean, I love Beach Boys, but Feel Flows is a bit of a deep cut Beach Boys I think it's it's not sort of one of the first well, it's a later Beach Boys, right? Like it's a 70s Beach Boys surfs up I think is It's the album that has a very disturbing cover of like a guy Here's a fun fact when Jim when Jim Van Horn who prior to his TSN career was a 1050 chum rock jock Jim Van Horn kicked out the jams here on Toronto Mic many years ago.

Feel Flows was one of his 10 favorite songs of all time. Good taste in music. I mean, it's also, I think it's on the soundtrack of Vanilla Sky, which is a great Cameron Crowe, very well curated soundtrack. Yeah, it's got that sort of You know Kind of spooky kind of eerie

very emotional very bodied sound and I mean, you know Since hearing much more of his work Many more pieces you see like these guys that were working with synthesizers and electronics in the seventies, they were, it was so expressive, right? And so many people kind of write off that music

and say, well, it's not the same. But I think that early, like that seventies synthesizer stuff is absolutely beautiful. You know, when I spoke to him, I mean, yeah, man, he was such a nice guy and just a wonderful guy. He had all the time in the world to talk to me about this. And it wasn't like I was phoning, you know, from the Toronto Star to do a story about his career.

I was just a nerd. I would love to know more about your work. And then I think I told you this, he sent me a CD with these songs on them. Amazing. And we did briefly talk about what if we released Magic Shadows as a 45 RPM, right? With the A side being the vocals and there's an instrumental on the B side. And at that time he was just starting to get a lot of requests from European record labels. European record labels. So this is like 2013, 2014, who were, you know, putting out these compilations of library music from the seventies. And I guess they were having their brains blown because they kept coming across his stuff on science documentaries and such. And

they said, well, this needs to be re-released and it should be on a compilation. So he had experience at that time and he was loving it because he said, oh, these are these things that I did and I never thought anybody would ever care about them. And, you know, there's people in Germany and, you know, people in London and they're, they're emailing me saying we want to release this on a record in in 2014 like it was it was insane to him But what ended up kind of kibosh in any talk of a Magic Shadows record was again these dodgy TV Ontario contracts because technically they own it even though if you went to them they would say oh we don't know we don't have any paperwork so it you know nothing, ever came of it.

But. That's too bad. But, you know, you're talking about how accommodating Harry was 10 years ago or so when you talked to him. And that sounds amazing. He was a great guy. I'm sorry I never had him on Toronto Mic. This is yet another time I realized when it's too late that I missed out and I should have had a conversation with Harry on Toronto Mic.

That's my bad. But you did have a chat with him. But even ten years ago you said some nice words off the top about how few places are left that, you know, give a shit about something like this. And you said nice words about what I'm trying to do here on Toronto Mike, but man you're the godfather man. I point to Retro Ontario and I talk about your archiving and you keeping these stories alive. And even right now when I was thinking who's the subject matter expert for Harry Forbes one name jumped in my head man and that's you so even ten years ago I think the Toronto Star and Sun and Globe like they were

just they weren't covering this kind of stuff the way they had in the past so even ten years ago I bet you Harry was happy to be talking to somebody who cared. Yeah, no, I mean, thank you very much, Michael. That's lovely to hear and the mutual fan clubs are meeting here. I mean, what you do is what you do is remarkable. And I just look at all those people that you've had on and think, you know, in 10 years from now or 20 years from now, you know, sad to say a lot of those people won't be around and what is, what is there? And now there's these long form interviews with them that you

conducted and, and, you know, I'm working on a book right now and I'm going through and finding old interviews from, you know, 20, 30, 40 years ago with, cause a lot of these people are gone and it's just eternal gratitude that somebody did that because, you know, I, I, um, I think it's a Japanese, a Japanese expression. I, I, I won't even try to say it, but it's the idea that when somebody dies, it's the equivalent of a library burning to the ground. Right. And so not saying that an interview is going to get everything out of that library, but you're going to at least get, you know, some of the, some of the big

pieces. And so it's, it's amazing what you do, Michael. Well, thank you so much for what you do. But again, like you said, we're just blowing each other's kisses right now. But can you tell me a little bit about one question I have is so was Harry Forbes like a freelance composer who did work for TVO or was he a TVO staffer? Um, okay. So as I understand it, the way that it worked is TVO had what you would call in house musicians. So they were like session musicians. So yes, he technically did work for TV Ontario. I don't think he showed up at Young and St. Clair and had an office, you know, was there at nine o'clock

to five o'clock punching the car. Was Harry Ford's Polka-Roo true or false? But I think, you know, they would have a science show about, I don't know, something or something about shapes. And they'd say, oh, we need a 40 second bit of synth noodling. And so they would send, you know, I guess, our phone because there's no emails. They would send some kind of message and say, Harry Forbes, we need this. And he would provide that. But he was also freelance in that he was

contributing music to a very big music library at the time, which was called the Perry, P-A-R-R-Y music library. And then that stuff would get sold internationally. So what I find fascinating is there's all these music nerds that are full time basically investigating these music libraries now and figuring out who composed what piece, because these weren't like records that had, you you know covers and information like who wrote this track and who produced this track they had no information on them they would literally say like action or speed chase or you

know man crossing street like absolutely the most minimal of information, but it would just be bangers, like absolute bangers of music. And so Harry Forbes became, as I said, really well known in Europe recently because these people were tracking down Perry music library records and re-releasing certain things. And you know, as well, there would have been documentaries made around the world that would have used his music, but he never was credited. Right. And even on Magic Shadows, there was no Harry Forbes credit at the end, right? It took a long time even for me to figure out that who did that piece of music Well, thank you. Does he think when you describe these libraries and then you know

Producers licensing pieces of music from this library for their documentary or production or whatever I always think one of the most frequently asked questions I'd get would be Where do I find the primetime sports theme song? Okay, which I think I have loaded up. Let me see if this is it. No, that's actually not it. Let me try this one. Oh, I do have it. Okay, so this song, which was used for years as a theme of prime time sports on the fan five ninety

bomb a cowan. You might have heard of him. It's just like a piece in like one of those library... It's just a piece. I don't know who composed it or anything, but that's the kind of stuff Harry Forbes would be contributing to these libraries. That's absolutely correct. And it is funny because you say that the Crime Time Sports, you know, I think we talked about this years ago. First Choice Super Channel used a lot of library music for years and years and years. And you know, certain people would think that's the song from that channel. Then other people, no, no, that's the song from like the football highlights, you know, on my Cincinnati Channel 10.

Because they were all using the same records to Cyber amazing and then people like you give a shit enough to connect dots and find out who the heck is composing this stuff So there's no truth to the rumor. I'm starting right now that Harry Forbes composed the primetime sports theme song Well, I don't know. I mean maybe he did like I think that's the other crazy thing Is that even the musicians didn't keep track of it, right? I mean, it's like if you watch documentaries about the wrecking crew or There's an amazing new documentary actually coming coming out very shortly about some of the Toronto reggae releases and it was these session guys that just you know, they'd go out and they'd have You know a pub lunch and have a couple of drinks and then go in and do a bunch of stuff.

And then the next day they were doing something different. They weren't. It's not like today where everyone has their own brand and they're linked in and they're keeping track of all the stuff they're working on, you know. So shout out to Jay Douglas, a great FOTM who's been over many times. I believe he'll be in that documentary that you're describing right there. I recently had a guest on Toronto Mike and it was as I finished the episode, I said, Oh, I hope Ed Conroy listens to this.

So let me just put this bug in your ear to listen to Clive A Smith on Toronto Mike. Nelvana Clive Smith. Yeah. Nelvana is Clive Smith. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I saw him at FedExpo yesterday.

It's so yeah, of course. He's got the graphic novel, which is which is great. Although he gives me a graphic novel and that's amazing. But I was just chatting with my eight year old and I'm like, oh, that you might like this.

It's about a female heroine and I hadn't quite gone through it. And then my wife decided to leaf through it before Morgan reads this thing. And there's like screwing and stuff. And she's like, you can't give this to Morgan. And there's like screwing and stuff. And she's like, you can't give this to Morgan. And I'm like, that's why you're here to preview all this nonsense. OK, but why am I bringing up Nelvana?

Not just because I want you to listen to the episode, because when I think of Nelvana, I think of the Care Bears movie, which saves the company after rock and rule and all that. And when I think of Care Bears, there's so many great people I think of, not just Mellie Fresh, but I think of Luba Goy. Okay. So and then I think long winded way of talking about bits and bytes. Yeah, bits and bytes. Okay. I mean, obviously after Magic Shadows, this is the piece of music that that Harry Forbes is going to be best remembered by and even he Acknowledge it's it's a cheeky one, right? It's basically Kraftwerk's neon lights

It's not much different from that But you know again, what was the what was the ask here? This was the first program About computers about computing. It was a foreign topic really nobody knew Where this was going this whole idea of home computing, you know, they got Billy Van Alright, they got Right count frighten sign himself to be the host playing this kind of every man that's trying to, you know, figure

out how to load his computer. And Lubigoy is the sort of omniscient voice, I guess, God that's walking him through this process. And there's all kinds of cool animation and I know another just trippy show so ahead of its time. Of course They asked Harry Forbes to do the intro and he basically did a cover version of Kraftwerk But it's beautiful. It's a really cool piece and I would say when I did those posts on social media yesterday There was just as many people Commenting about that then there was about magic shadows again, I think because curriculum, older kids would have seen that show in high school and not all necessarily in Ontario.

Like TVO had a really good mail order distribution system where any school in North America could order VHS tapes of their programs. So there, you know, there's kids in Texas, right? That would have seen Bits and Bites. So yeah, it's a big one. It's a banger. Cue it up. Let it roll. To round it out, we were talking about these European compilations. I have one here. This one just came out last month. It's called Tomorrow's Fashion's Library Electronica, 1972 to 1987. Wow. And this was compiled or curated by a guy named Bob Stanley, who is really one of the coolest people in the world. He was in a band,

a Brit pop band called Saint Etienne. I don't know if you've ever heard of them. They had a couple of hits. They did a cover of Neil Young's, only love can break your heart. But now he's kind of like, you know, this elder music aficionado puts together compilations. So this one has, of course it has, you know, it has Harry Forbes, it has Alan Hawkshaw, it has a lot of the big names, but this one ripped my head off mate, because I had an old tape that I had found of Saturday Night at the Movies that didn't have the opening that I knew, right? The opening that we all just, you

know, knew as Saturday Night at the Movies. It was this like gnarly synthesizer piece sounded like, you know, it just sounded very modern, like it almost sounded like Daft Punk or something. But this tape was from, I want to say, 1977, and it was falling apart as I transferred it. So it was really ropey and the sound was coming in and out. And I asked Risa and I asked everybody, what was that original Saturday night at the movie song and nobody knew. Oh, I don't know. It was on one of the library records that was at TVO. And so when this thing was coming out, I listened and oh my God, it was on there

like this original Saturday night at the movie song song so I sent that one over to you I don't know if you have the ability yeah let me play it right now it's called Sam Spence Leaving So I'm gonna be the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm the one to show you that I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do this, but I'm going to try. I'm going to try. I'm going to try. I'm going to try. I'm going to try. I'm going to try. I'm going to try.

I'm going to try. I'm going to try. I'm going to try. I'm going to try. I'm going to try. See, Ed, you go on these hunts for these missing treasures, and more often than not, you eventually find what you're looking for. Well, this one was a big one for me because a dear friend of mine who's no longer with us, he, when I first found this said, oh man, that's J Dilla. And I was like, that is not, J Dilla was not doing TVO soundtracks in the 70s.

And I was also quite chuffed because when Bob Stanley released this record, I tweeted at him with a clip from Saturday night at the movies using it. And I said, wasn't sure if you knew, but this was used in Ontario. And then he retweeted it and was like, I love it when, you know, like he's like us, right? He loves to find the, the, where these things ended up. So yeah, I mean, it's, it's not like we're not fixing the world's problems, but we're making it a little more fun, right? And you're keeping the memory of Harry Forbes alive. Get him. Sorry, he's gone. Like, I mean, I never got a chance to chat with him like you did, but always kind of you like knowing these guys are out there and then at some point

maybe you can connect and learn more but Sad to hear he passed away Yeah, I mean Like you said it's imperative When you get the chance to speak to these people because yeah, who knows man Who knows when how long they're gonna be here for? Well, on that note, guess who I booked? In fact, later in September,

we'll be in this basement chatting me up. You'll never guess, I'm gonna have to tell you, but the 101 year old mother of Peter Gross, Marilyn Gross. Oh wow, wow, that's amazing. I mean, yeah, you need time to process that one. So Marilyn Gross, who's apparently as sharp as a tack. So at least one of us will be sharp. We'll be down here, 101 years young.

And heck, I was thinking we could talk about the Great Depression. Like we can talk about things and we can talk about having Peter Gross as a son. Like there's so much on so much meat on the bones there. And that's going to be happening here in September. You got to do it before it's too late. Yeah, I know and I'm sure I've told you over the years I really wanted to sit down with Mark Daly and I kept putting it off and putting it off and then it was too late and I vowed then to really never let that happen again. So yeah, I mean, look, I think my comment earlier

about the state of sort of reporting on the passing of important people in Ontario media, I know our friend Mark Weisblat, he's equally disenchanted with this, that there used to be reporters like Sid Adelman and a lot of local people that would just keep track of this. It's not anybody's fault. The world has changed.

But it is kind of, it's shocking to me that a guy of this magnitude, right? Who, if you forget everything else, just that Magic Shadows theme song on its own merit was a huge part of our shared existence and our experience with television. So yeah, I'm so glad, Mike, that you reached out and that we were able to do this. And hopefully we've dropped some nuggets of information. There's some further studies in there.

If people want to know more, they want to check out some more of these cool library releases. And yeah, man, let's just keep keep doing what we do. Last question on your way out. Will there be another volume of Christmas crackers this coming December 2024? of Christmas crackers this coming December 2024? You know, wow, it's, I don't see why not. But what's so crazy is when you said that, I don't know about you, but I've had a really difficult time keeping track of time lately.

I keep forgetting what month it is and all this stuff. And I can't believe that we're looking down the barrel of Labor Day. So when you say Christmas in my mind, like, Oh, that's so far away, but it's, it's not really. And you know, we missed a year, you know, we missed a year. I know. Well, I know we missed, we've missed a few years because I think one of them with COVID or something, it's, it's not an annual, but it's a good time. So yes, let's, let's make sure that we do Christmas crackers this year. So I'm going to be back. So So So So Thank you.