Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Steve Kane: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1525

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

In this 1525th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Steve Kane about being the first, and possibly last punk rock president about his years in the music business and recent retirement as President of Warner Music Canada. 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]

Welcome to episode 1525 of Toronto Miked. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. A fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville.

The Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team. The best baseball in the city outside the dome. Join me August 4th at Christie Pitts. I'm recording live at 2 p.m. Right after I throw out the first pitch. That's no joke Mr. Kane that's happening. Christie Pitts August 4th. Recyclemyelectronics.ca committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. And Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921.

Today, making his Toronto Mike debut is the last punk rock president, Steve Kane. Welcome Steve. Thanks very much Mike, thanks for the invite. Does Strombo get the credit for that, the last punk rock president? Actually, I'll correct it slightly and I believe it was Steve McLean. Okay, who called me the first punk rock president of a major label. And Strombo has also echoed that which

so he's calling both first, not the last or both. And you know, chances are I'm the last as well from from what I can see going around. But yeah, I think it was originally Steve McLean, and that was based on both where I came from and my ethos of how you market and treat music and take an artist first approach. And mostly be involved. Giving a shit? Say that. Give it a shit. Say that again. Giving a shit like,

yes, giving a shit was very important in my career for the, uh, the 35 years that I've worked at labels. Okay, Steve, what kind of mood are you in? I just want to know, are we in a mood? You're going to be sharing stories, telling it like it is, uh, ready to deliver the real talk. Why don't we do a little of both? Okay. I've got some, I've got some stories, I've got some opinions and I've got some opinions, and I'm usually pretty free with both of them. And I don't want you leaving here driving off,

having said, oh I held back here, I didn't tell the story I wanted to tell there. Listen, if I don't give you a decent segue, you just blast in there man. I don't care, we'll pivot. I want all the stories, but are you ready to crack open our fresh Great Lakes beer right on the microphone? Absolutely. All right, get it right in front Okay, Steve Cain cracked open a Canuck pale ale and I've got my sunny side session IPA There you go Steve's cheers to you cheers, that's a nice pale ale I like the the Iggy pop t-shirt the stooges Yep. Yeah, that's amazing Iggy Pop t-shirt. The Stooges, yep. Yeah, that's amazing.

Shout out to Iggy Pop. Still with us, Define All the Odds, still looks pretty good, I'd say, for a guy who, I don't know if he looked like he was gonna make it out of his 20s, but he's still here. It is absolutely a miracle that he's still amongst the walking. And again, somebody I had the privilege of working with

at when I was at Virgin Records in probably his third incarnation. And the thing that always, the few times I did spend some time with him and his manager, there is a definite difference between Jim Osterberg and Iggy Pop. It is a persona that he turns on when it's time. And it was always interesting to watch that flips, that switch flip. Is that sort of like Alice Cooper, right? You got Vincent Fernier, let's golf, maybe a little conservative, who knows? And then you got Alice Cooper, the showman when he's on stage. I think very much the same kind of deal.

Okay. I'll take Alice if that's okay. Yeah, Alice, you know, that's the name of the band. You just took the name of the band. That's right. Yeah. Well, that was one of the fun things about working in record shops when I was, when I first got to Toronto is people looking for Alice Cooper under C. Right. Right. And, you know, and then then one of my favorite stories from that period, so I'm working on Youngstreet Records on Wheels, late 70s, early 80s, and I remember one particular customer. We're standing behind the counter, it's a Friday night, so we always had a couple of beers stashed behind the counter. And then we see this kid just wandering up and down the aisle

with befuddled look on his face. And finally approaches the counter and says, this record store sucks. You don't have any zeppelin. We realized that he'd been standing in front of the Z's the whole time. Oh my goodness, oh my goodness. And one of my lovely coworkers just looked at him and said,

do you have a fucking plate in your head? The high point of customer service at independent record shops. Okay, so you said when you first came to Toronto, so where the hell did you come from, Steve Kane? Well, I was, as my father used to remind me, I was made in Scotland, assembled in Canada. So I was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and we came here when I was six years old. So grew up in Oshawa, which I think is why one of the reasons I have a fascination with Detroit and Detroit bands. You know, when I grew up the sign, the GM plant and

then motor city. I gotcha. Yeah. And actually we spent our first six months in Canada in Windsor. So the very first place I ever visited in America was Detroit, December of 1967, which would have been six months after the Detroit uprisings. Right. Okay. Gordon Lightfoot, you wrote a song about that. Black Day in July. Absolutely. Love that song, by the way. I want to shout out Troy Burch real quick. He was here earlier today. He's with Great Lakes Brewery. We recorded his podcast and Troy Burch who's from Orillia. That's why when you said, well, I guess I said Gordon Lightfoot, but I remembered, oh yeah, they're from Orillia and

he hooked me up with Cypress Hill tickets for tomorrow night at the Toronto Festival of Beer. So I'm looking forward to Cypress Hill. I said to my wife, do you want to come to Cypress Hill? She said, what's that? So I had, you know, she had a little catching up to do here, but we're drinking our Great Lakes. So like I said, you got the Canuck Pale Ale. You're going to bring some fresh craft beer home with you as well, Steve. So that's from a Great Lakes Brewery.

Well, that sounds like a perfect, a perfect parting gift as I sit on the front porch and watch the world go by. That's a John Lennon song, right? We're going to just talk, drop a lot of names on the show. Okay. And also, uh, do you enjoy Italian food? That's an important question. Absolutely. Okay. Would you like a frozen lasagna from Palma pasta? That works out so well. My wife just left this morning for two weeks out on Vancouver Island, uh, looking after a friend of ours place and I chose not to go this year. So a frozen lasagna is going to be devoured pretty pretty quickly. No that's going to come

in handy there and there's going to be a lot of leftovers. I think you'd be good for three days I think with the lasagna I'm going to give you. So you got your lasagna from Palma Pasta. I have a note from Anthony from Palma Pasta, we're getting all this out of the way early. He says National Lasagna Day is the 29th of July. So we're speaking now on Thursday, July 25th, but on Monday, July 29th, National Lasagna Day, there's gonna be a blowout sale at Palma Pasta. They have four locations in Mississauga and Oakville.

We've held many an event at Palma's Kitchen. Everybody go to palmapasta.com, find out where it is, and get your butt to Palma Pasta for the national lasagna day blowout sale. Okay Steve, you're going to love the lasagna I'm sending you home with and you're going to be like when is that blowout sale Mike? And I'm like it's Monday July 29th. You got it? Monday July 29th I'll get the oven preheated so that I can enjoy my lasagna on national lasagna day. My palma's lasagna. By the way, that's also my daughter's 20th birthday, Monday. So my daughter,

I will be excited to know her birthday falls on National Lasagna Day. Better than the cake. So record shops. Okay. So you come to, you make your way to Toronto. What brought you to Toronto? I'm curious what your origin story is. So yeah, like I said, I grew up in Oshawa. Record stores were probably the, well, one particular record store, Star Records in Oshawa, was the gathering spot, the safety place for the emerging punk rock scene and those who may not be in the mood to listen to the latest Genesis or Yes record. It was a real safe space.

And it was also the place that through the owner of that shop started a club called The Star Club and brought in the first wave of Toronto punk bands, a few international bands as well. So it became a real gathering spot. And it's where I first got the idea that you could be involved in promoting, marketing, spreading the word on music that you thought should be heard. So after spending some time

between high school and going off to university in Peterborough, I had one of the only other two adult jobs I've ever had in my life, which was an auto worker. So frame of reference, I've had three adult in quote jobs. I was an auto worker. I was a peace activist and I've sold records. And that was the path. But can you give me a little insight into what do you mean by peace activist? Are you like a wavy gravy on the boat? What does that mean, peace activist? After I did my undergrad at Trent University, I had asked my dad to get me back into the auto factory at Chrysler, which was not the deal. The deal

was one and done but I told him I needed to raise some money. So he got me back in for about eight months saved every penny and then one day we're sitting at the dinner table and one of my folks said so where are you applying? Applying for what? For postgrad., I'm not. You said you needed to raise some money. Yeah, I'm going to go travel for a year. So that's what I did. Got back, realized I couldn't break my word.

I couldn't ask my dad to get me back in the plant. I had to raise some money. I was working two or three jobs in Toronto. The idea eventually was to go to law school, specialized in social justice law. Okay. And one of those jobs was one of these old government schemes, right? So I was getting paid about a hundred bucks a week,

learning how to copy at it. At of all things, a trade paper for psychotherapists. Okay. Okay. Well that might explain for psychotherapists. Okay. Okay. Well, that might explain a lot, Steve. Yes. But what happened during that phase, the woman who ran the magazine was exactly 10 years older than me.

And this was in the height of the Reagan era, the sort of second wave Cold War. And we started to talk about, well, how is this affecting her? What does it mean for my life? And then we settled on, well, what about kids 10 years younger than me? Because I would have been in my early 20s. So we started a program where we gave kids an audience to speak to power, to speak to their parents, to speak to their teachers, to talk to them about how nuclear proliferation, Cold War status was affecting their growing up and shaping their view of the future. So peace doesn't pain nearly as well as the military industrial complex, I came to learn. It might be a shock to some.

So I had a friend working at records on wheels and she said, you know, I can get you some hours there. You interested? Absolutely. Got to figure out how to pay my rent and hopefully save some money. So that Mike is when I started to meet a bunch of people in the business and I would apply for every job that came up after a while thinking, well, I'll do that for a couple years.

It looks like it's fun. Apparently, you don't have to be any kind of rocket scientist. So why not give it a shot for a few years? And eventually, the head of IRS Records Canada, a fellow named Paul Oreskin, offered me a gig. And he offered me that gig because of something I've expressed before and something I still believe. Marketing music is tribal. And for a label like IRS that had, you know, R.E.M., Let's Active, Concrete Blonde,

that sort of post-punk college rock. Yeah. I knew where those people lived. I knew what they read. I knew where they hung out because I was one of them. So I was able to take that and turn it into marketing plans. So your gateway to the to the selling music essentially was IRS. And it's funny, I listened to this podcast

called the Cobain 50 and they're just going through all the albums because Cobain in his notebook, he jotted down his 50 favorite albums of all time or something like that. And there's an REM album on that. So I just went through this podcast on REM and there's a lot of discussion about them on IRS records. So you're post-REM when you show up at IRS, right?

Yeah, they had just left the label. Just left the label here. I am gonna play something that I think was released on your watch there. I'm very curious about that. But you mentioned, you know, your love of like Toronto punk and the punk scene, and I'm gonna shout out two episodes. And then I'm gonna ask you maybe to name check

some of your favorite punk acts out of this city. But I am going to name check a episode of progressive... what did we call this thing? Progressive past of modern melodies is what we were calling this series. And it was me, myself, Cam Gordon, Brother Bill, who was on CFNY for years, you know Brother Bill? I know Bill very well. Okay, Neil Morris and Ralph Alfonso. Another dear old friend. And we did, basically we talked about the origins of punk in Canada. So I want to let people know there's that deep dive with that crew. That's episode 953. And one more episode I want to shout out is celebrating its birthday. Uh, no, that's not true. Okay, Toronto punk with Al Nolan.

Oh, another good friend. Brian McAuliffe. Yep. And Sean Cherry. So they came over and we talked about the Toronto punk scene and that was great. McCullough of course is with Youth Youth Youth and Sean Cherry wrote a book called Tomorrow Is Too Late about Toronto's punk scene. So would you want to name check some of the punk acts that came out of, maybe out of Canada that you loved? Oh man, I was a huge Diodes fan going back to Ralph Alfonso. It was actually one of the first bands that Mike brought down to the Star Club, so they played Oshawa very early. You know, DOA was always a staple, you know, on the hardcore side, SNFU, but one of my all-time favorites from the early 80s period of Toronto

music who go unsung, I think they're they seem to be left out of the story, it was a band called Raven Mojos who were this weird combination of punk energy but like a Rolling Stones vibe, the frontman Blair Martin, I can't remember his last name, but Blair, he was an absolute whirling dervish, just one of the most powerful frontmen I've ever seen in my life, and the guitar player Kurt, again whose last name escapes me, Blair Richard Martin, Blair Richard Martin, there you go, and the guitar player Kurt was, he ended up in Atlanta Miles's Sheffer. I think Sheffer, Kurt Sheffer. Yeah. Okay. And those guys were they were unbelievable and packed such power but never really got off the ground.

And then of course there's you know there's Teenage Head, there's you know given my political bent and social justice bent I was a huge LaTrange fan and remain friends to this day with both Andrew Cash, who I have to remember to call Andy and not Andy, and Mr. Angus as well. Charlie Angus was just here, I want to say three weeks ago. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he, yeah. and again, I have to remember to call him Charlie and not Chuck. And I'll tell you a funny story about running into the two of them. Yeah, I was up on Parliament Hill, we were doing some copyright legislation lobbying. So you

go to each party's caucus room, where they, they gather before a session or during breaks. So I'm all suited out, dressed like an adult, and I walk into the NDP caucus room and the first two people I see are Andrew and Charlie. And the three of us just looked at each other up and down, how the fuck does this happen? You know these three snotty-nose punks wandering the halls of power and nobody throwing us out. Well listen that you might get the the Order of Canada before. Do you have the Order of Canada yet? I do not. Okay well I feel like that's the next step. There's a long line in front of me I believe. Well it might not be as long as you think here. Okay, so you mentioned IRS. That's where we start you off.

And I just pulled something here. We're going to hear what you have to say about this. Well, there it is. Probably one of the more familiar sounds that came out of a generation of music. The final chord from Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, an album that is probably one of the most important pieces of musicology that came out of an entire generation of music. I cannot think to this day of any album. Well I have, I actually I can think of several albums that I put in that class,

certainly the best of Nat Cole would be one of them, and a couple of Lou Reed albums here and there. But Sergeant Pepper in so many ways, and the Eagles, of course, the album that had about four hits on it, I can't remember, one of these nights I think it was called, a great album too. But that chord has resonated in the hearts and minds of an entire generation for two or three generations and we'll go on to live way, way past all of us. I'm not sure exactly what it is. I know it's a piano chord. I'm not familiar with the key or what particular kind of piano or how many octaves or how many hands they're using on the chord.

We all know that we heard that chord that summer so many times. Listen to the whole thing. It must go on for a minute or so. I've never timed it. I just listen to it and it conjures up all kinds of feelings and images, images of a generation, flowers, flower power, putting a flower in the butt of a gun. You know the images. We've all lived through them and it conjures up so many feelings in our hearts and our minds. The final chord of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band from The Beatles. Music.

Do you recognize that voice? Oh, gosh. I'm really testing you here, Steve. I almost feel bad. Should I bail you out? Yeah, bail me out on this one. That's Rick Moranis. Oh my goodness. Okay. Did you know Rick Moranis had an album released on IRS Records?

I did. The man... What was it called again? The man, the music, and me? Something like that, but that's a cut. Like, I found it on on YouTube and I ripped that one just because I thought it was funny to hear Rick talking there. And that's like, I don't think it got promoted. I don't know what the deal was. It just seems like this strange outlier Rick Moran is having an album released on IRS right now. Yeah. It was, you know, again, that came out of the IRS Canada office. Obviously we're

all- So maybe you had something to do with it. No, you were just there at the same time. And that came out of the IRS Canada office. Yeah. Obviously we're all. I assume maybe you had something to do with it. No, you were just there at the same time. The way I believe it came about is our offices were at 99 Sudbury Street and there was a production company there, a film and television production company. And Rick's manager or an old agent or something had offices there and mentioned it in conversation in the sort of the the coffee shop within the complex that Rick had had this idea for a comedy record and my boss Paul

Oreskin just went we'll put it out. We hadn't heard it. We had no idea what he was going to do. He was a very famous guy. And I will say this, Rick released a comedy record without the funny bits. It's not a very funny record. No, I mean just look at that. Like it's kind of super, I can't tell. It's meta. It's like it's funny, but I don't know if it's intentionally funny. Do you know what I mean? It's almost like maybe he's playing 3d chess while we're all playing checkers here or something. But you, as you know, Rick Moranis was on Toronto radio waves before SCTV. He was Rick Allen on chum FM. Yeah. Yep. And Ingrid Schumacher came over and talked about training him on the board.

And he, he still has such a fascination with the broadcast media. When you look at what he did with those, what was the character, Todd's video show, he's always been very intrigued by the power of media. I'm probably a little harsh on the record, I haven't listened to it in years, but he did reappear in my life at Warner. We also released a record of song parodies and original material written by by Rick on a record. And I think I still have his phone number in my. Okay, let's get that guy in charge of my here's here's this. This is how small this world is that we live in, Steve. And we're going to like I said, we're going to drop a bunch

of names and I'll jog your memory as we go through your career getting you to Warner I have a clip I pulled a recent Toronto mic'd episode where your name was dropped But I'll tell you right now your name is dropped pretty frequently like I'll hear references to Steve Cain on this program So I'm glad you are here. But just today I heard from Ian Thomas just today to tell me somebody sent him a link to the recording of his episode of Toronto Miked with his brother Dave. So I had Dave and Ian on together via Zoom. And then I put out the podcast and I promoted the podcast,

but I did record the video. I'm recording this video right now. And I throw it on my YouTube, but for whatever reason, maybe this is the same way IRS treated that Rick Moranis album we just heard from. I never promote the video. Like I just throw it on my YouTube, but for whatever reason, maybe this is the same way IRS treated that Rick Moranis album we just heard from. I never promote the video. Like I just throw it on the YouTube channel and I don't ever like do a thing. There it is.

If I need it, I can grab it, if whatever. But somebody discovered it and sent it to Ian and he only just today discovered that there was a recording of the video of him and his brother on Toronto Mic. And he started promoting it on Facebook and blah blah blah. But it's funny because Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis of course are Bob and Doug Mackenzie and for all intents and purposes Rick Moranis seems to be retired. Were you Steve Cain at the SCTV reunion that was recorded by Martin Scorsese. I absolutely was at the down at the Winter Garden Elgin. I always get them confused. Oh no the one I went to was

actually at the second city when they were still on Blue Jay Way and it was a fundraiser. Oh for Ian Sun. For Ian Sun. Okay so that that is that's a big one but then Martin Scorsese put everybody like in a room, uh, Martin Winter Elgin Theater there on Yonge Street. And they recorded a bunch of great footage for a documentary that Martin Scorsese was going to put out. And this is several years ago now, and there's no sign of the documentary nor any indication that Martin Scorsese is actually going to work on this documentary. So I believe this footage, Joe Flaherty is in this, he's no longer with us. This footage is just rotting away on a shelf somewhere.

You weren't at that one. No, I was, I was at the very intimate second city one, which was absolutely brilliant. I mean, you had, you had Martin Short doing Jiminy Glick. You had Getty joined Bob and Doug for a rendition of Take Off. Love it. Eugene and Catherine O'Hara did the Bobby Bittman stuff, which just had... Any cameras rolling at that one? Not that I recall. Not that I recall.

So they had the cameras rolling at the wrong one. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, it's funny that you mentioned Ian. Because I met him for the wrong one. Yeah, yeah. But you know, it's funny that you mentioned Ian. Because I met him for the first time, I think we were at the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and he was sitting beside Murray McLaughlin. So I went over to say hello to Denise and Murray, and was introduced to Ian.

And it was kind of a magical moment for me, because like I told you, I came here when I was six, seven years old, and for for the first however many years we were here you could count on KTEL's twenty-two fantastic hits or super monster hits on Christmas and your birthday. That was my introduction to a lot of Canadian music. That's the first time I ever heard Ian Thomas. That's the first time I heard Farmer's Song or... Rock... I wanted to say Rock this town, but that's Stray Cat. That's a little later. And not Canadian. But it was, yeah, so it was really... I already knew Murray, but to be

able to tell them both that story is like, I... you to me mean Canadian music in so many ways because you were on 22 fantastic hits. Love it so much. Now the song I'm trying to come up with was the first Hard Rock Town. Hard Rock Town, the first song ever played on Q107. Correctamundo here. Okay, I love it man. These fun facts keep them coming and they're all FOTM's. Denise is an FOTM, Denise Donlin, Marie McLaughlin and Ian Thomas. You're now an FOTM Steve Kane. It's a great to have you in the club. I want to give you the history of the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team that's going home with you. You'll love that

book and I don't know whereabouts you reside but anywhere close to Christie Pitts. I live across the street from Trinity Bellwood Park. Okay so it's a it's a hop on the bike and I'm in Christie Pitts in like you know eight. Okay man, you want to see me throw the first pitch? I'm telling you, get your butt to Christie Pits for about 2 p.m. that's on Sunday, August 4th, that's coming up. I'm throwing out the first pitch and I'm recording live from just beyond the left field fence. You got to make the trip. Oh, I'll try and make it up for sure. I like how you're not committing fully, like I'm gonna try to make it. That's like I'm gonna maybe be there, but no, I don try and make it up for sure. I like how you're not committing fully. Like I'm going to try to make it. That's like, I'm going to maybe be there, but no, uh, don't want to say you don't

want to commit because then I'll be disappointed when I don't see it. What I do know is I'll be probably out riding on the bike. So then I'll try by, Hey, you know what? Since you're Steve Kane, I now it's not Great Lakes beer, which is my favorite beer, but left field makes a Toronto Maple Leafs beer that I could get you a can of that logger if you drop by and say hi. That's my that's my promise to you. See membership has its has its privileges here. Okay, so where are we at? We got you at IRS Records. What's next in your career? So IRS Records

It was an interesting period when I joined we were distributed by MCA and then if you remember in the again mid 80s EMI went on a buying spree and they brought Chrysalis, Virgin and IRS records all within a few months of each other so we were a bit curious as to what was going to happen to us there were only four of us in the office so I got to do a little of everything. My primary focus was marketing, but I did... When the publicist was out of town, I did publicity. When our boss, who also did radio promo, was out of town, I did radio promo. Who was the biggest artist at IRS that you would have worked with at that point?

Probably Fine Young Cannibals. Oh yeah. And then a close second, particularly in Canada, would have been Concrete Blonde. Okay, yeah. To the extent that people often thought they were a Canadian band because Joey was just such a monster hit. Right. But what happened was, so they bought these three companies, all of whom, Chrysalis didn't have a separate office, but Virgin had a standalone office, and God bless them, the late great Dean Cameron, the longtime president of EMI, thought okay they share kind of some cultural DNA. They all come from the independent world, you know, complementary rosters in a

lot of ways. Let's throw them all together. So all of a sudden Virgin, Chrysalis and IRS were a label group located at Rundle House at Jarvis and gosh I can't remember the cross, Gloucester in this beautiful old mansion. And so that was my next break. I was there for about six or seven months and the then president and VP, Doug Chappelle, who's also passed and one of the most brilliant record marketing people I've ever met and somebody who taught me a hell of a lot, a woman named Laura Bartlett, came to me and said, hey, we like what you're doing with IRS. We like your approach to marketing.

Want to take over marketing for Virgin? Sure, why not? So that allowed me now, I was no longer working with just cult, left of center type bands. All of a sudden I had Janet Jackson in my portfolio. They signed the Rolling Stones. It was a hell of a step up from, you know, Catterwall and, you know, the offsprings of Camper Van Beethoven. Not Cracker, the other one, although I did get to work with Cracker. So that was, you know, that was the next step and really taking the reins for that and getting into the big leagues a bit. So happily doing that and then the aforementioned Laura Bartlett came to me one day and said,

A&M wants to rebuild their marketing department. They're looking for a director of marketing. I think you should go for it. Oh, you're my boss here at Virgin. Why are you doing this? Right. Did I did I fuck something up? But her response was it's an opportunity that I can't give you. You know, I'm not going anywhere for a while. Doug's not going anywhere for a while. You've got talent, you should go. So I've set up an interview for you. You know, that's a great boss. Like that's above and beyond. That's caring for Steve

Kane. And it's a lesson that I like to think I carried on because my advice to all my staff, no matter how key they were to me, no matter how important they were to the fabric of whatever company I was, my advice was always take the phone call. And if I can match it, if they make an offer and I can match it and I can make it work for you, I'll keep you. But if it's an opportunity, you go, you do that, you learn and I'll get you back at some point.

Which happened a couple of times. You know, it's how you build, point, which happened a couple of times. It's how you build, it's part of building an industry in a country like Canada, because we look, we always talk about the embarrassment of riches that we have as far as Canadian musical talent goes, or literary talent. We also have an incredible bench of executive talent. We also have an incredible bench of executive talent. And you can see that when Canadian record execs go down to the States, they always seem to do very well. Because they've grown up in an environment where they're touching everything. They know what the promo

guy does. They know what the marketing guy does. they know what the A&R guy does. Where in America, you go in to the promo department and you spend your career as a promo guy. You go into marketing, you spend your career as the marketing person. So we're a great training ground for that as well. So that was, again, and that took me to A&M records. Okay, before we get too further removed from, you mentioned Cracker, okay, so Andrew Ward of course chimes in on the live stream, Hello Andrew Ward, to say Kerosene Hat was a killer disc by Cracker. Are you there when Kerosene Hat is released? Yes. Okay, so I wanted to see, so I saw Cracker, I was at a Pearl Jam

show at Molson Park in 98, and on the small stage, Cracker was like headlining the small stage before Pearl Jam on the big stage. And I had that album, Kerosene had, loved it very much, Euro Trash Girls. The hidden track. Yes, but it was like 69, I'm trying to remember now, as I remember that this is the first, like a lot of albums did hidden tracks, but where they had like a track at 69 and then like they had this, so who decides, hey, let's have fun with the track numbers on this disc. Where does it, that's just the band or? That would have been Johnny and David along with, I think Dawn Smith produced that record. So that would have been them just having a good time.

Because I think they'd been doing Euro Trash live, but sort of thought it was kind of goofy and never really committed it to a record and then yeah for whatever reason decided to. Well Lo was the big song in the album but you got to stick around for Euro Trash Girl track number 69 and just Andrew jogged my memory on kerosene. Oh quickly, sorry go ahead. Oh it was funny because with Cracker again a story that has always stuck with me and become part of my vernacular as well the first time the guys were coming up to

Do a Toronto show and I think they were coming up to do like an HMV convention or something like that or it could have been the Party in the alley sponsored sponsored by NY at the time. But it's the first time they'd been coming up to 401 and they passed through Guelph and the band immediately decided that Guelph was a verb. I drank so much I had to Guelph all night. It was... Some say it is. Now can you ask him, this is Andrew again because now that you talked about cracker, can you ask him if he saw them when they opened for Counting Crows when they were about to explode? Yes, that was at Lee's Palace and Counting Crows bailed. Okay, Bucky bailed. Okay, they I'm sorry, I'm blanking on the singer's

name of Counting Crows, but he Adam Duritz. Adam became very became ill and had to blow out the show. We talked to the folks at Leeds, we talked to Cracker and said, you want to go ahead ahead so they in fact they just went ahead and did the show and obviously there were a lot of people disappointed that the count and crows weren't there because like you say they were just about to explode and cracker went on and just played the show of their life they just they knew that they were the underdogs they knew most of the people weren't there to see them and they just absolutely killed

it. Amazing. Now I'm still in touch with David on occasion. Amazing. The A&M records is where you're at now, right? So you, but you end up back at Virgin records. Is that right? Yeah.

So I put in a few years at, uh, at A&M, thoroughly enjoyed it, made some lifelong friends like, well, people I already knew before I got there, people like Alan Reed who's now president of the Junos, my dear dear friend Dave Porter who was such a great A&R guy, but then one day I got a call from, oh no, sorry, what happened was Doug Chappelle, who had been the president of Virgin, was offered the gig running the other half of the Polygram gig, or the Polygram group. So he came in to run Mercury, I think Island, a few other labels. The aforementioned Laura Bartlett became president of Virgin, so she called me and said, come

back as my VP of marketing. So to the other story, yeah, she got me back. So I go there and again, Laura and I and the team there, Doug Caldwell, Carol McDonald, all these great record people came out of that building. And we built an amazing team and EMI to their credit, they just left us alone to do our thing. And so we really gelled and really started to find our rhythm and do some great things including signing Laurie Yates, signing Pluto, signing Leahy, a lot of that was down to Jeff

Kulovic who eventually became the owner of True North Records. Laurie Yates, signing Pluto, signing Leahy. A lot of that was down to Jeff Kulevich, who eventually became the owner of True North Records. So yeah, a lot of great people came out of that building. You mentioned, yeah. And so, so I go on holidays, and the only person I gave an emergency contact number to was Laura. So I'm sitting having a drink with my granddad in London, in England, and phone rings and it's for me. My grandfather hands me the phone, it's Laura, and she said, okay, you're going to get a

call right after this from Dean Cameron because I'm leaving and I'm going to be the head of marketing at HMV and you're gonna get a call from Dean say yes so all of a sudden now I'm now the general manager and VP of Virgin Music which gave me my my first experience in actually running a label okay Virgin Records and being able to now develop my own A&R vision, begin to shape a company culture that was reflective of my values and how I thought things should work. And a lot of it was, you know, quite frankly modeled on how Dean ran EMI. Artist first, artist first, Canadian artists ahead of that.

So it was, again, a fantastic learning opportunity, including having to learn how to read a P&L and all that shit. So, yeah, it was- You're on your way, man. Yeah, and it was fantastic. Again, we were rolling. We, we had tons of fun. Um, and it was also again, a period of consolidation. So you had all this consolidation going on in the, the industry and uh, all the rumors floating around that EMI and Warner were going to merge. And it got to the point,

Mike, where it was like a siege mentality for EMI. Like nobody wanted to really do anything to step out. Morale wasn't great. And then one night I get a phone call from the guy who had just become chairman of the Polygram group, a mad Irishman named John Reed, who figures very large in my story and my life, says, I want you to come back to Polygram. Okay. Senior vice president, I want you to take on Mercury, Island, Def Jam, and a good chunk of the Canadian roster. And I'm like, all that sounds really cool to me.

And I get to get out of here where I'm starting to feel like claustrophobic or what. I said, the one thing that's kind of odd in there is you wanna give me Def Jam. I'm a hip hop fan, particularly that early period, I knew enough about it from working in retail. I said, I'm really not sure I'm the guy for that. He said, I want to remind you of something that you said at dinner one night.

We're talking about how Canadian record companies take the really easy way out when it comes to hip-hop and not sort of selling in comparison to the US. You know, the old rule was we would sell about 10% of what America sold, 10% population. You were lucky if you were hitting 3-4% on the hip hop market in Canada. And I guess at dinner what I had said was, well that's because, you know, people, again, make this lame excuse that we don't have an urban population, there's not enough black folk to build momentum. Personally, I think that's bullshit. What you do is you market hip-hop the same way

we used to market punk rock. And that's, you've got a bunch of disaffected kids who have latched onto a subculture, they're making it their own, their parents don't like it. So that's the audience you're going for. You're going for the skateboard kids, you're going for the kid who is buying a hardcore punk record at the same time he's buying Public Enemy or DMX. Lo and behold, it did work. But I was lucky enough to have a fantastic team around me who were willing to take those risks and say, yeah, we're going to change things up. You had Ivor Hamilton on many times. Ivor was very instrumental in changing the attitude within the company as to how to approach hip hop. we both adored working with LL Cool J seeing Jay-Z in the early days it

was it was really quite incredible and again not just relying on the old well we'll just we'll get in the tailwind of whatever's happening in America let's actually try and make something happen. Love it so much. Now earlier you just dropped the name Alan Reed. So really quick aside here, because we'll do a few tangents as we keep return to the ongoing history of Steve Kane here. But I, before I was a podcaster,

I had a blog and I was in the room to live blog, a morning show on easy rock. You remember? Yeah, I do. Okay. Shadow to the tragically hip in my music at work, was in the room to live blog a morning show on easy rock. You remember he didn't rock a shadow to the tragically hip in my music at work because that was their slogan. I believe from easy rock at the time four person room so four people on this morning show and it was live blogging at all and that was the four people were humble Howard Glassman, Colleen Rush home who has retired suddenly. She was at a chorus station and I think

a lot of course people are retiring, but we'll come back to that actually because I know of yours. I want to get back to on chorus and what's happening with radio at course, but who are not yeah Rick Hodge. So we got Rick Hodge was the third person and Kim Stockwood was a fourth person in this morning show. So Kim Stockwood, Alan Reed and full circle there. So, okay. Now go ahead. Still dear friends. Okay, great. I bumped into her at like a, what's it called when you not the hall of fame, but the walk, the, the raw, the rock of fame. Yeah. I saw her at that event last year and we'll see if I get an, I had it

somehow. I got a media pass somehow and we'll see if I get it. I had it somehow I got a media pass somehow and we'll see if I get one again this year and see if I can return to check that out at Massey Hall. It was a great event. Okay so you've got so many labels we got obviously we'll get you to Warner at some point here but we're walking our way through it so you're now president of Polygram Records in Canada. Senior vice president. Senior vice president. Okay I'm promoting you okay here now you're now a President. That's what time does. You get bigger fish each time you tell the story here. And you talk about Ireland, Def Jam, Canada. So what were some of your favorite artists that you

were working with at this period in your professional life? Oh boy, going back to those days, it was people like the like Sarah Harmer, you know, that was by the way, I believe if Sarah Harmer is not in the schedule, I have a commitment from like her PR person that she'll do it in the fall or something. So Sarah Harmer, I believe, will be making her Toronto Mike debut soon. Absolutely adored working with gosh, I mean, there were so many during that period coming through both internationally and domestically that's really hard to focus on any

domestic artists I mean I love you know I love rooting for the homegrown homegrown artists and again I'm putting you on the spot here but you know the early days of Matthew Good were absolutely incredible to watch how you know Matthew grew as a songwriter and a bandleader. You know he was great to work with. He was on that bill with a cracker at Molson Park in 98. He was on that. I'm pretty sure I was at that gig as well. Was that Hayden was there who I saw you Hayden's kid played my kid in soccer last night actually at High Park. So there you go, Small World's right, but Hayden was on that bill. All systems go that which was a I believe that was the guy from

shit. It'll come to me in a minute here, but yeah, I'm trying to think of who is on that small stage, but Matt Good was definitely there. Yeah, and it also working at not that period also got me connected to working country music because Mercury had a very strong Nashville division. So whether you consider pure country or not, working with Shania Twain was an interesting, having an interesting seat at the table to watch a social phenomena explode. But my actual favourite part of working with, working that Shania record, the Come On Over

record was, it was the period where she was managed by John Landau, who's Bruce Springsteen's long time producer and manager and partner. Being able to talk to John on a fairly regular basis was just a trip because half the conversation was about something else. He would check in and see where everything was with Shania, but I got to ask him about what was it like to produce the second MC5 record? Hey, can we talk about your days as a rock journalist here? And John's a very erudite, very clever man. And if you recall, Shania kicked off her first world tour in Sudbury, of all places.

And John came up for the show. John and Barbara Carr was his right hand. So they came up for the show. John and Barbara Carr was his right hand. So they came up to the show. We go to the Sudbury Arena, see the show, and then all retire back to the... I think we went to a tavern first and then back to the hotel where John finally had finished whatever he had to do after the show. Sits down and you know we all order, you have a draft, draft, draft, draft, gets to John and he says, could I get a Cosmopolitan?

And the waitress looked at him and said, if it comes on draft, honey, sure. I'll have a draft. But it was, for me, it was often, as much as I loved working with artists directly, I also took great pleasure in working with their managers and learning that part of the business and understanding how those team works. So you had people like John Landau, you had people, Bill, gosh, I'm again blanking on

his last name, who was Melissa Etheridge's manager. He was a real treat to work with because he was always open to ideas. He was willing to have a dialogue and you know Melissa she was great to work with because it was Just a territory that treated her so well You know the cranberries. I was at cranberries, it was really funny because they went from being so standoffish, so suspicious and as Dolores told me later, you know, we were like 19 year old kids from a small town in Ireland and all of a sudden we've got everybody

wants to be our best friend. Everybody's telling us what they can do for us. And so we were mistrustful. And it took years to sort of break through to gain their trust. And the Cranberries in particular, remember the storm where we're still ridiculed because the mayor called in the army? Of course. So we were supposed to have a playback of Cranberry's album that night. We obviously had to cancel it. The band was already in town. We obviously had to cancel it. It was just too dangerous to ask

people to, you know, risk your life to come and listen to a fucking record. No, I don't think so. But we ended up saying, look, we can make it to your hotel. There's a lovely Italian restaurant across the street. Why don't we all just go have dinner? And that was the night all these barriers were broken down and we all became fast pals. Dolores's first child and my daughter were born around the same time, so we bonded over that, kept in touch over the years. But it was those kind of little magic moments where you, whether it's, you know, with David Lowry or Dolores or, um, you know, Rob Thomas from matchbook 20. I cannot say enough about that guy. He's just a good, solid dude.

I thought you could tell me he's smooth. I might've got there. I was going to hit the rim shot here. Remind me, what was Dolores O'Riordan's connection to Ontario? Did she marry an Ontarian? Yeah, her first husband was a fellow named Don Burton, who's from around these parts. They met while Cranberries were on tour with Duran Duran. Don was Duran Duran's road manager, they ended up buying a cottage up by, I'm gonna say Buckhorn, it was up by Buckhorn,

and I used to bump into them once in a while at the Foodland, because my folks didn't live far from there. Okay, that's what a small world it is. It's a small world after all, you can use that line. Okay, so obviously I don't want to miss any steps on our way to Warner Music Canada. So is this your last stop before joining Warner Music Canada? So... I'm ready. I'm buckled up now. So I take the job at Polygram because I think, again, get away from all this madness, all this merger talk. Go to Polygram. Nice, safe. It'll be great. because I think again get away from all this madness all this merger talk go to

polygram nice safe it'll be great right there about eight months my wife and I who at that time was head of publicity for MCA records later to become universal. Shepard to Leonard Skinner working for MCA. We're at the airport we're about to get on a plane to go and have a little holiday in Turks and Caicos My phone rings my flip phone rings and it's my boss John Reed the Irish fella Have you heard it have you read the news today yet? No, I haven't. What's going on? Well, we've been bought. We've been what? Polygram. We've been bought. By who? Put the wife on.

That call was followed about 10 minutes later by Randy Lennox calling my wife to give her the same news and their conversation ended in the same way. Put Steve on. So, yeah, so I survived that. My wife and I both survived that. We both came out of that merger with jobs. But she, we quickly became pregnant. We were driving home one day and she said, yeah, I've decided I'm not going back. Just, we've waited long enough to do this. I just wanna be a mom. And I said, you know, that's probably not a bad idea. I don't know that it's healthy for us to work together and raise a family.

So that's probably a good idea. And she looks at me and said, yeah, I was thinking that. Plus, at work, you're kind of an asshole. Ah! Ha ha ha ha ha. It's probably healthier for the marriage that you not work together. Yeah, yeah.

So it was, so I was, you know, I was very fortunate to live, you know, to live to fight another day. And most of my team was kept intact. We had to say goodbye to some people, but you know, again, we were had to say goodbye to some people, but again, we were able to keep our core team together, which was Ivor, a guy named Steve Cranwell,

a woman named Samantha Johnson, all the, again, fantastic team building. Tony Zambor, also known as Slam, that a lot of people know. And again, I still had responsibility for A&R along with Alan and his team, where we could offer any artist coming in, they could take a look at one side of the company, look at the other side of the company, and, okay, I think I'm suited here. And sometimes it would be both divisions of the company would want the artist, so it would become a beauty show. It would become a beauty show.

It would become a beauty pageant. And we lost very rarely. So I was very proud of that. So I lose track of how many years that was. But again, I'm sitting at my desk one day and I get a call. And it's once again, my friend, John Reed. Right? This guy does play a major role in your professional life Steve. And so he and another fellow who

was A&M who's the head of international marketing for an A&M called Jay Durgan they both ended up at Warner. So I get a call and the first call came from John and said, you're going to get a call from a headhunter. Here's his name. Take the fucking call. And that began the fairly quick negotiation to leave, leave Universal and go to, go to Polygram or to go to Warner, which is where I spent the next 20 years. Okay, so we're gonna get you to Warner here. Now we've dropped Ivor Hamilton's

name a few times. Do you, Steve Cain, appear in the CFNY documentary? I do not. How come? I feel like, because there must have been a number of CFNY bands that you could have spoke to. Oh sure, there's you know, like a lot of people my age and you know I grew up with that station. I had to hang a wire out of the window of my bedroom in Oshawa so I could pick up the signal. I'm surprised you could get it because who was on somebody was on the show very recently who lived in Brampton and this is before the the antenna went on the CN Tower, but before that simply still trouble getting it was Ed Souza. So Ed Souza, who does rock concerts and promotes a lot of eighty bands at a

bowling alley and sometimes the Al Macombo and elsewhere, but he was talking about he loved CF and why, but he had trouble in Brampton getting this stage. Oh no, I had like to say I I had Ariel hanging out the window and moving things around. Who were your favorite CFM Y talent jocks? Oh, without a doubt, David. Okay, David Marston. And I used to be a regular caller into the show. These are the fun facts I'm looking for here.

Okay, so I don't, I don't fetishize about the station as, as like a lot of people do. Well, captain Phil Evans made a point recently, which is that like, he doesn't, he says, it's almost like we've all gone back because I was listening to 680 CFTR during this era that we're talking about right now, which I've been very upfront about. I wasn't cool enough to be listening to the CF and why back in like 1985, for example, I was too busy. Come on. The river's air force was going on there, but we've, we have gone back and sort of retroactively decided that this was the coolest station. People could play what they want. Marsden is a bit of a god and I love Marsden. He's been over here and he'll be back actually. He had to cancel his last appearance due to some health concerns, but he'll be back.

But it is interesting how we've decided to treat CFNY now a little differently than it was at the time. There was a the time. There was a golden age, you know, when David and that first wave of jocks were on the air, being able to play whatever the hell they wanted, or at least that's the way it seemed to us. Now, you know, I say I don't fetishize the station as much as some but a group of friends and I Probably towards the end of high school all piled in a car and made a pilgrimage Out to the house right the yellow house Yeah, it was almost like that scene in American Graffiti where Ron Howard goes and discovers Wolfman Jack

Yeah And so we're standing pounding on the door of the studio and whoever David's engineer was, their producer, came down and we're all standing there going, we've come to meet Mars Bar. And he's like, well, he's in the middle of a show, as you know, because you're listening to the goddamn radio. But David very kindly came down and shook all our hands and said hello and all that sort of thing and for some reason Mike I'm not particularly proud of admitting this but for some reason I was going through a period where I wore I was wearing a

World War one aviators hat you know the leather one like Snoopy. Right the red Baron. It's just absolutely ridiculous but David signed it for me and from then on whenever I phoned in with a request or whatever he would refer to me as Steve the Hat. Yes. And still does when I bump into him on occasion because I reminded him of the story a few years ago. Amazing. Okay but you're not in the CFNY documentary for some reason. No, no but I'm really looking forward to it. I know Alan and Ivor and crew have put an awful lot of work into it. Yeah, and shuttered the Scott

Turner, who I know is a big, big part of that with Alan and Iver. Okay. And I look forward to seeing it as well. But here. Okay, so where do we have you here? Now we have you at Warner. So I've got some Warner Music Canada questions and a little bit of audio from some great FOTM who were on recently. Two final pieces of advice. One is I can imagine, Steve, you've got a drawer full of old cables or old, old technology gadgets and stuff that you haven't touched in forever. Don't throw that in the garbage because the chemicals end up in our landfill. Go to recycle my electronics dot C a put in your postal code and they'll tell you

where you can drop it off to be properly recycled. True. You got it. That's important. Also, much love and shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. They sent over a measuring tape for you there. That's for you, Steve. You can measure what you wish.

And I'll just let people know that Brad Jones from Ridley Funeral Home has a fantastic podcast called Life's Undertaking. So available wherever you get this podcast, Toronto Mikes, you can find Life's Undertaking with Brad Jones. We record once every couple of weeks right here in the basement. I get the co-host and I urge people to check it out. It's very good. So there you go. Now we got Jay Warner here. So checking my notes here. Maybe I'll play a clip now just so that I don't forget to play it later. But this, I pulled this clip just because I was putting together a, like an episode about Hayden's take because the new music

search 1993 was a contest that lowest of the low were told they were going to win. I believe according to Ron Hawkins, bookie told him, this is a done deal, you guys won. It turns out Head won, Head with two H's. And Noah Mintz and Brendan Canning of course, who went on to form broken social scene, but with Kevin Drew etc. But by the way, Head was signed to IRS. See, what happened with head because happy was the song that won so that so they won with happy a song. I quite I dug. This is about Hayden's take, which we'll get back to, but I don't feel like personally like head got a fair shake. What say you from the inside?

I'm fortunate enough to be able to say that I left the IRS Virgin organization just before head came out so I take no responsibility. Okay Steve, that's why you're here. It was a fantastic record. Yes, I know. And Noah Mintz now the Mastering Master and he's very busy doing that. He was high school friends of Hayden Desser who went by the name Paul, his real first name and Paul Desser and him were in a band together.

And when Hayden wanted to submit a song for the new music search 1993, he didn't want to sing it. He was nervous. He didn't think he had a good voice. He was wrong on that last count, but he had his buddy Noah Minst, do the vocals. And that was taken. Basically, I had to revisit a Lois Lowe episode to get an extraction of Ron Hawkins talking about the shoe in that wasn wasn't like they were gonna win a hundred thousand dollars for this contest from CFNY and then of course headwinds it so you're the when they get that hundred thousand dollars they give it to you guys what's going on how does that work well it's actually you know so perfect for for a band like that at that

period because you can walk in basically to any record company, make your record, use that $100,000. And it happens out in BC as well. There were a couple of contests like that. Calgary, I don't know if they were all $100,000. Gordon was made with money that Bernick Ladies won in the same contest. So you walk away without a recouped account.

Like you never have to pay it back. Like it's like a, cause it's just a bank loan at the end of the day, right? By the way, the game's rigged. You're on the inside here. We're getting back to my clip I pulled of lowest of the low on Toronto Mike. But to me, whenever I hear these small Canadian alt rock bands

from the nineties that I fucking love, they come in and they talk about, oh yeah, they made this video and they had this dinner with the executives and it all comes out to the back end like it's just a big bank loan. And then at the end of the day, they end up with no money. It doesn't feel fair to the artists. So no band goes into a contract without a lawyer. No band should go into a deal not understanding what you just said. This is basically upfront money and it's our job to try and get it to a point where you recoup and you start to get paid out royalties. It's really fucking

hard. The simplest way to put it is record companies are investors and they're not very good investors because the old cliché is one out of ten fail. Now, you can assign blame to that, you can say, well, it didn't promote, the band just didn't click, but the simple fact is everybody goes in with their eyes open, I hope. One of my pitches when I was courting artists and trying to sign artists, at some point during the conversation, I said these words, and I can hand to heart, I can look at myself in the mirror because I know it to be true, Never forget we're spending your money. So if you want a limo, go for it. Now recouped and unrecooped, for folks who are not in the business, recoupment has

become a dirty word. It's all laid out what's recoupable and what's not. And again, I've got a clean conscience. They know for the most part what they're getting into. Does that mean there aren't unscrupulous pricks who have taken advantage of bands? Absolutely. From the label side, from the manager side, lawyers, agents, you know. Sorry, I can't help with that. Isn't that funny that I don't know what you said to trigger that, but we'll ignore that. That's my Apple Macbook talking to us for the first time in 1525 hours. There you go.

I've got the magic. So what the other thing, you know, I would say to artists is look, you've got, um, we're spending your money. But the second thing I used to say to them, much to the chagrin to some managers and lawyers, uh, this is something I learned from Lior Cohen, another, you know, one of the founders of death jam and legendary record guy now is head of YouTube. Um, Lior once said, one of the things that you have to remind an artist when you're talking to them, remind them you're the one who can tell them the truth.

You're the only one that's not on their payroll. Their managers on their payroll, their agents on their payroll, their lawyers on their payroll. You're not on their payroll. You can afford to tell them the truth because they can't fire you. So some people want to hear the truth, some people don't. Right. So Steve, so I'm just a fan, just a guy, okay, listening to this music, but I'm listening to let's say Rusty's Fluke, okay, and I'm listening to it over and over again. I love Rusty's Fluke, okay, I love it the same way I loved, I don't know, you name it, a Dookie by

Green Day or whatever, okay. I'm all into Fluke. And then I see Ken from Fluke, okay? I love it the same way I loved, I don't know, you name it, a Dookie by Green Day or whatever, okay? I'm all into Fluke. And then I see Ken from Fluke flipping burgers in my neighborhood. He's flipping burgers at a little restaurant. No shame in that, except that I don't think Billy Joe Armstrong after Dookie was flipping burgers. So I don't know the difference between the two.

One is Canadian and one isn't. That turns out to be the difference. But well, I'm one sold millions and millions worldwide and the other is dookie. Yeah. And by the way, I'm a huge fan of fluke as well. I was in no frills the other day and there was a woman walking around in the fluke, the album cover that's just, she's just, and I did a double take and I was like oh my god in the wild there is another I had to go up and talk to her she's her name is Dawn and she's from Imico and I said can I take a photo and send it to the guys like Scott McCullough and Ken McNeil anyway and I did I shared it with them on Facebook but anyway shout out to Rusty's fluke one of the most underrated

albums ever I think Ken and I bonded over our mutual love of Joan Jett. Shout out to Joan Jett. OK, so I'm going now. Let me play the clip because I feel like I set it up and then I never got to it because that's how I roll. But this is the clip of Lois de Lalo talking about Steve King. What happened with Warner? I think last time you guys came over, you were talking about how you had sold out like after how many decades of Lois de low being you know the indie the indie darling you

guys were selling out. Actually you know what's interesting about that because this is how the record industry seems to work is that we were on Warner. I think the only reason we were on Warner was because Steve Cain was the president as I've referenced before George Stroumboulopoulos calls him the last punk rock president. I think he at some point thought, well he came to us and said, you gotta make this box set,

there should be a lowest to low box set, to which we all said, are we dead, Steve? It seems like such a, I don't know, such a sophisticated thing to do. So we were all shocked by the idea of that, and then got really into it. And then I think maybe he thought, clearly Steve didn't sit down and go I need a yacht I better sign most of the low to Warner music. I think what he did was like they're a cool band

They're a legacy band. They have certain value system that that Would be cool to have on Warner and it was a good fit with him And so there so there we were and then Steve retired and was replaced by a younger person, a young, younger, I was going to say a younger woman, a young person who was a woman. And we kind of all thought, I think we all thought quietly to ourselves, probably the middle-aged white rock and roll band

is on the list at least, right? It's always dangerous when your champion moves on like the Steve was the most low champion. Okay, so I think that's very cool though that you you know reached out because you respected lowest of the low and you respected them as musicians. Yeah I was a huge fan from the early days and I remember the feeding frenzy around them after Shakespeare came out or before Shakespeare came out and you know and Ron and I've had this conversation I think I talked about it in the

documentary where the the band's view was there was nobody in the A&R community in Canada who were interested I I reassure them, and I say this, there were. We just weren't the top dogs at the time. So people like Dave Porter, I mean, even my boss at Virgin, Doug Chappelle, who was the generation before me, completely got the band. I think they were being managed by Skinny then, who was also a good pal of his.

But how they came to Warner and I loved what the band did with their Their press release that was basically they're you know, they're they're notice of render, right? But the real story is actually Jeff Rogers was managing them at the time and he said you know, I think you should go talk to Steve. And Ron said something like, well, how much does he know anything about our band? Jeff's response was he knows more about your band than you do. And so the whole idea was, you know, a lot of the other than Shakespeare, a lot of the records weren't available on vinyl. I think Pheromone had just started to do it, to re-release them.

So we saw that as an opportunity to serve the legacy, reintroduce some of those great songs, and then follow it up by what I think is one of their strongest and best later day records, Agitpop. And you know, we had enough people in the company who had grown up with the music, who knew them, or some of the young kids in the company who just were listening to it with fresh ears. And yeah, after my departure, I can't really speak to that, what the decision was. They chose not to continue. The irony is that one of the last distribution deals I did for a label was Curve Music run by my longtime friend Brian

Heatherman. His distribution deal survived and he signed low, stowed the low. So Ron got to phone them and do the we're back. Yes. And that's exactly where that clip goes before I cut it off. And that's, that's fantastic. Lois Lowe, as they profess in that documentary and shout out to FOTM Simon Head, who, uh, who made subversives and he's a good egg. But whenever there'd be some kind of a showcase for labels like a lowest and low would SAP self-sabotage, right? They'd wear t-shirts and stuff that say corporate rock sucks.

So it's like like this was the punk ethos, which is so they were they would basically shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to selling out. See, it's funny because maybe it's just a contrarian in me. If I saw a band do that, that would actually encourage me like I want them. President, I want them. It's you know, it's like when it's like it's like when we signed Billy Talent. Well, I'm going to Billy Town next. It's funny because Billy Talent, of course, is a character in hardcore logo, correct, right, except they had two L's Billy Talent in hardcore logo is two L's and

I want to talk Billy Talent. Just a quick note on the whole lowest of the low thing. So Shakespeare, my butt, which is next to Fluke is the greatest, greatest album of all time. Love it so much. And I close every episode of Toronto Mike with a song from that album. So we're going to hear Rosie and Gray soon. But Ron hated the follow up that Don Smith produced. Like I know Don Smith, yeah, and I know Don Smith. Hallucinogenia.

Yeah. And I know Don Smith, tragically hit for example, a lot of great success with Don Smith, but they fucking hated that album. So there's a whole, that episode, that whole story gets told in gory detail, not only on Toronto Mic, but in that subversive documentary that was told.

It's similar to the experience that Blue Rodeo had with, gosh, Pete, subversive documentary that yeah it's it's similar to the experience that that Blue Rodeo had with gosh Pete he produced all those early all those early Dwight Yoakam records and that was the last time that the rodeo used an outside producer it was such a miserable experience. So what is your relationship so Bob Roper, uh, fairly recently made his not just Toronto Mike debut, but his podcast debut. And this did spark a whole bunch of episodes because, uh,

who came out of that bright and rock came out of that episode, uh, Donna helper from Cleveland. She's the woman who put working man by rush on the radio in Cleveland and a honeymoon suite didn't come out of that but shortly thereafter Honeymoon Suite dropped by and all these bands. So what is your relationship with Bob Roper? Bob is just somebody I've known it seems like forever. And I used to go and do guest lectures for him or with him. We never called him guest lectures. I hate guest lectures. We would have a conversation. So he's just somebody from the business that has always been omnipresent.

And when I got, and it's funny because when I got to Warner, the night before I started at Warner, I turned to my wife and said, uh, holy shit, I get to work the next blue rodeo record and whatever comes after it. Cause I was a huge fan. I first saw them at the Cabana Room on Spadina on the recommendation of the the late great Handsome Ned who said... Jim Cuddy speaks very highly of Handsome Ned. And so he was, you know, Ned was the reason I went to see them in the first place and then you know became a huge fan and then got to work with them for the 20 years that I was at Warner. The pledge I made to Jim and Greg when I walked in the door, because they'd already been there, what, 15 years or something.

And I said, you know, I'll never let you become part of the furniture. You've got my word on that because that's what happens when bands are with a label for that long. They can become part of the furniture and taken for granted and I think we lived up to that and one of the things I'm I love about I redid the Blue Rodeo deal at least two maybe three times I redid Jim's solo deal two maybe three times Greg solo deal. I Have never met their lawyer Wow, okay the way that we would do it is Jim and I would meet at Alan's pub We'd have a light lunch one pint of Guinness and we'd come with our notes. Here's what I'm looking for

Here's what I can give chat, finish her, you know, pleasantries. We'd go away. Next week later we'd get back together. Here's where we are, you know, and then, you know, it'd be Jim and their manager, Susan. And shortly after that, it would be a full on lunch where we'd sign the deal. And I'm for some reason inordinately proud of that. Yeah, sure.

That we were able to do business with, um, on a very human level. And to this day, you know, I'm almost three years out and still considers the guys really good friends. They threw a wonderful retirement dinner celebration at their studio for my wife and I at the woodshed. Yeah, I've been there. Yeah, it's a great spot. There's there's's magic in those them. They're walls. That's very cool. Very cool. And shout out to Mike Boguski who went to my high school. Lovely fellow and Allen's okay. So shout out. We mentioned half of them already. Ian Thomas and Marie McLaughlin, but Cindy Church and Mark Jordan. That's lunch at Allen's of course. So it'll it's all coming together here now. Okay. so Billy Talent, please give me the Billy Talent story.

So Billy Talent was the first artist I was involved in signing at Warner and say I was involved because there's something I think has to be said. I hear it all the time in my business, particularly if you get to the to be said, I hear it all the time in my business, particularly if you get to be in my seat, get to be in my role. Such and such signed X. So my name gets attached to, oh yeah, Steve Kane signed Billy Talent. I didn't. Not alone. I may have did the physical, but every successful signing I've ever been involved in has been a team, and has been a team effort. And when you look at Billy Talent and how they came

to Warner Music, the captain of that team was an incredibly talented woman named Jennifer Hurst. When she was first interviewing for an A&R gig at Warner, she was asked, you know, what band would you sign if you had the power to tomorrow? Billie Tallent. Her second interview, Billie Tallent. I get there. One of my first interactions with Jen was her handing me a cassette. It said, please listen to this. And they'll fill you in on the story. So the story was we had in conjunction with EMI publishing paid for a bunch of demos or had agreed to pay for a bunch of

demos. And then with the change in the regimes, people were afraid to move forward with it. They didn't know what to do with it. I took it, listened to it in my car, got to the office, said to Jen, when can I see them? So they set up a show, went and saw them, and then we began the courting process because I fell in love with them. And on this demo cassette is Try Honesty, right? Yes, yeah, yeah. It was a lot of the

first album was on there and you know I can still remember the look on the face of my you know long-term partner in in crime Steve Cody who was the head of radio promotion. How am I gonna get this on the radio? I said, well that's your problem. I love it. You know and people are saying, oh you know other people in the company say it's a bit derivative isn't it? I mean does that guy think he's Iggy Pop or Johnny Rotten or who does he? Yes you're right there are qualities of it that are derivative, but what ain't? Everything comes from somewhere. So it became a real passion project for myself,

for Jen, for Steve Blair, who was the head of A&R at the time, Steve Cote. Because it was a change. All the Steves. Yeah, all the Steves. There was a change yeah all the Steve there was a change Steve Waxman there was a right that would be a Steve Waxman there there was a change there was a change in culture coming to the company and Billy Talent as far as I was concerned was this is where we're going to plant our flag because you know Warner was

sometimes not people's first choice to sign with. They signed some amazing acts but for some reason they fell a little out of favor and so we want to sort of change that and say you know we are going to take risks and we are going to do things a little differently. We're going to respect our heritage acts like Blue Rodeo, like Great Big Sea, like Linda LeMay out of Quebec who, you know, Anglo-Canadians know nothing about, but the woman's a megastar. We're going to respect them, but we are also going to build a new roster.

And Billy Talent was the start of that, followed very quickly by Buck65, who was also walked into the building by Genhurst. So it become it really is a team effort. And you know, they've, they've got it, they've got to get a vibe of the company. If it's just one person, you know, to Ron Hawkins point, like, oh, our champions out, I guess we're done. Right. You know, and Billy Talent had many challenge Many champions and you know, it's again. What's the old cliche? You know, there's one person you blame for a failure success I or you know, maybe it's the other way around but you know, it has to be firmly stated

anybody who claims that they just they're the only person who They just, they're the only person who was responsible for a successful act coming to a label is usually bullshit. Well, when Huxley Workman made his Toronto mic debut and he's sitting right where you're sitting right now, and he talked about when his single Anger as Beauty hit radio, like say CFY, let's say 102.1 The Edge. At the same time, he heard Try Honesty and he knew he was fucked because, literally, he knew he was fucked because Try Honesty just blew everything away and it just sounded, it's just, I remember when Try Honesty was a hot new single on 102.1

The Edge and I'm a big Billy Talent fan, I've seen them live. I dig Billy Talent, and yeah, it just, that album sold, right? Like this is music that was commercially successful. It was commercially successful. It was critically successful. The deal was a little convoluted because it started off as a joint venture with Atlantic Records in America,

who took one single to radio and it was a 50-50 split worldwide. We kept the Canadian revenue, they kept the American revenue, and we split the rest of the world. Well, Atlantic kind of lost interest after the first single. They dropped the ball. And so all of a sudden it was, well, we're sending the band to Europe. Um, here's your end of the tour support. Here's our end of tour support. Uh, we don't want to pay tour support. And I'm like, well, we've got our German company and our British company who are both doing a really great job with this band. Like we got to send them there. Right.

So Atlantic backed out of most of their tour support commitment. We sent them and thank God we did. And the German company just championed this band like I've never seen. They treated this band like they were a domestic act. And so to this day, just even, you know, what a month and a half ago, a month and a half ago, the guys played Rock'em Ring again, which is a festival that it's about a hundred thousand, hundred and twenty thousand people. And if they, they've headlined it a couple of times, they've been second, second to last a number of times, but they were able to build an international career based on

that one territory and then it slowly started to expand to other territories and they're selling more tickets and more records over there than they ever have. Which is also a lesson that I learned from that Billy Talented experience was there are other places in this world than America. Right. So Canadian bands don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to go to Germany. Don't be afraid to go to England. Don't be afraid. Dango Jones is listening right now. He said he's on a flight right now. Perfect example. You can have a career without America. And Ron Sexsmith too. You're a big Ron

Sexsmith fan. Yeah. Because he seems to be more appreciated overseas. Yeah, certainly in the last few years his audience in Ireland, the UK, a few southern European countries have really sustained him and given him that breath of fresh air that he needs. countries have really sustained them and given them that breath of fresh air they need and you know Ron is um, Ron he has a particular view on how the Canadian industry has treated them and I can't say I can't say that I completely disagree with them you know we did manage to get a couple of hits away with him but again he was a really important signing because

I'd put him in the same category as Blue Rodeo in many ways, that when you're sitting with a new young artist and you are able to start to list off your roster, yeah, you'll be on the same label as Billy Talent. You'll be on the same label as Blue Rodeo, you'll be on the same label as Ron Sexmas. Now if you're a young singer-songwriter, you're going to sit up and go, I'm going to be on the same label as Ron Sexmas, one of my songwriting heroes. He was very important that way. And we treated him as a not as a... we treated them as a commercial artist, not something that you know had to be handled with kid gloves. And you know Ron to his great credit was willing to okay I'll try that. And sometimes that's all it takes because you know you get to a point where some artists like no I don't want to do that well I can only help you so much but Ron was always okay let's

let's give it a try I did feel bad for Ron recently when they had the Gordon Lightfoot tribute at Massey Hall and I don't think I know of a bigger Gordon Lightfoot fan than Ron Sexsmith and I don't think he got an invitation to perform. No he didn't which we all know that sucks very much a you know a mistake an oversight but you know that's why pencils have erasers I felt like there was plenty of time to rectify that and nobody did so so that's disappointing okay and let's not bury the lead on the the Billy talent would you say Billy talent is the biggest artist that you were there from for the whole process from the inception? Yeah, absolutely. They were the biggest band that I had ever had a hand in signing and

the biggest international commercial success I ever enjoyed. Unless we forget because this conversation which I have enjoyed. Unless we forget, because this conversation, which I thoroughly enjoyed, it started with Strombo, because I was misquoting him or miscrediting him, and you being the last punk rock president. It was Ron Hawkins' fault, because in his clip he quotes Strombo as saying the last punk rock president. But Ben Kowalowicz was the producer for Strombo on 102.1 The Edge. So they had a little inside, you know, they could slide on the inside and get some early airplay, but not that they needed help, of course, because the quality of the singles.

Well, and that was funny because the first show that we went to see, again, my head of radio promotion at the time, Steve Cote time Steve Cody look you know as they walked out and oh that's been from the edge right now yeah it's wild right who bit when that we had a party for Marty for Martin streak one of the one of the anniversaries of his passing I Pete foul actually I'm wearing Pete's shirt today so shout out to Pete Fowler great FOTM, but he helped organize with DJ Craig and some others this sort of a tribute to to Martin streak at the Opera House and that's where I met Ben and Ben did say he would come on Toronto Mike. So you know now that you're an

FOTM, your job will be over my remind him because you know I believe Jim Cuddy because you know, I believe Jim Cuddy only came on Toronto Mike because FOTM Steve Steve name all the Steve's again Steve Waxman, Steve Waxman, Steve Waxman put in a note and help me get the sit down with Jim Cuddy. So I'll be looking to you to do similar similar things. Yeah, I'd love to get Ben on Toronto Mike. They got a lot of good questions for him. All right, so we're in the home stretch here. I've thoroughly enjoyed this. Yeah, I'd love to get Ben on Toronto Mike. They got a lot of good questions from all right. So we're in the home stretch here. I've thoroughly enjoyed this. Congratulations Steve Kane on being inducted into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame in 2015. Do you get like a pin or what do you get?

Yeah, I think I got a plaque somewhere. Yeah, it was the order of Canada gets you pins, so I'm gonna pull some strings on that. But congratulations on that. So the way I want to close is just ask you about a couple of things. One is before because I want to close with asking you about chorus and what's going on there. They're gonna fire 300 more people from the radio side this summer and I want to ask about that because Kingston, for example, my good friend Bob Ouellette was let go as program director of the Kingston stations and it turns out there's no one left like they wiped out the Kingston personnel

and other cities of that size too, like Peterborough, et cetera. So we're gonna close of chorus, but I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on the role of much music and what's filling the void there? Because you talk about bands like Blue Rodeo and Billy Talent,

and I remember both bands, particularly Blue Rodeo, because they go way back to the eighties, but much music is where I would go to and I would see the video for Nothing to Lose for example by Billy Tallon. Much Music played a huge role in these bands but where are we now? There is no... now it's just I guess YouTube like that's is that the same thing? What's going on? Yeah it's you know the one thing about Much Music was you

know for a country this big with such a sparse population, few really dense populated spots, it was a way to get a story out really quickly. I used to envy my UK colleagues where a couple of spins on BBC One and you were off to the damn races. Right. Here it just, you're knocking down station by station by station. Much was very unique in that perspective, where heavy rotation on much music for a band, it took you to a new level really quickly. Just tell Mo Berg. Yeah, exactly.

Starting careers, I. You know, starting careers. I mean, that was, you know, bear naked ladies going into the, uh, uh, the little talk, speakers, corner, you know, all of these things that, that, that allowed. And now you've got, um, you know, just this crisis at radio where they've lost their way, in my opinion, and

part of it was centralized programming, making decisions for markets that you'd never, you stepped foot in, you know, twice a year. So you've got people from Toronto programming for Calgary. You've got people in Calgary programming for Toronto. You've got morning shows that are from a That are just being simulcast from from different cities. Yeah, it works for Howard Stern because you know, he doesn't have to deliver local news it's it's abysmal and There were so many of my friends in radio, they were in a bit of denial.

And the biggest thing they were in denial about was you are about to lose your primary spot on the dashboard of every automobile in this country, in the world. What's your plan? What's your plan? What's your backup? You're just going to take the format, the old media format and transfer it online. I know very few radio stations that did anything exciting online, a missed opportunity, and it breaks my heart because it's, you know, again you're obviously somebody who really loves the medium and

I grew up with radio I grew up with was chum am you know I answered the phone I listen to chum you know I hung out my bedroom window to capture the the CFM y signal I don't know where it goes next and how do we create those water cooler moments that much music gave us, or I guess water fountain more in high school and middle school. To talk about what I just saw, it's really hard to replace that and you know as the Spotify and Apple algorithms change to serve me what I'm going to listen to you don't even have that that opportunity where everybody's listening to the same thing on those services I just don't know listen frankly one of the first thoughts I had on the day after my retirement party

at the horseshoe tavern was turning to my wife and saying, I no longer have to give a shit about what happens on Tik Tok today. Do you have any idea how liberating that is? What is going on over there? I've never created an account. It's a black hole to me, but I'm told I'm supposed to be there. I'm quite comfortable not being there. I don't know what I'm missing, but I will say, uh,

I don't think I ever cared more about music than when the eighties turned into the nineties. Like I think that's personally my peak, uh, early nineties, just bleeding out of the, out of the eighties and just two bands in particular. We talked quite a bit in this conversation about CF and why, which became edge one of 102.1 the edge. Apparently it's, I keep referring to it. two bands in particular. We talked quite a bit in this conversation about CF and why, but she became edge one, one or two point one, the edge. Apparently it's I keep referring to it. Robbie Jay keeps correcting me. I keep referring to it as edge one or two because for a brief period of

time, they must have branded themselves edge one or two and that's when it like imprinted in my brain. So that's I but but it's one or two point one, the edge. Okay, neither here nor there except two bands. I want to shout out bare naked ladies and lowest of the low, because these are two bands that were championed by local radio, like to, you know, being on lowest lower to Toronto bands, indie bands, by the way, both independent releases put out by page public. So there's a

fun little fact for you. I learned that in the documentary. Thank you, Simon head. But that can't that doesn't happen anymore because like you said earlier, you now have cookie cutter like syndications. Rosamoke will be in 20 markets in the morning live and local is only ever asked at a radio and that seems to be disappearing and it's a damn shame and I know, you know, video killed the radio star and the Internet's killing the radio star, but it is not the same. And I just, I just miss a day when we were all listening to the same thing and it was live

and local. That's all. That's my old man, you know, yelling at the cloud. Yeah. Abraham Simpson's down. So, okay. And chorus again, my heart goes out to a lot of the chorus people who are being impacted here because chorus that that's a large percentage of their media personnel that are getting pink slipped this summer and you look at what happened. How long ago was it now when when bell sold forty they sold anything they forty odd station yeah and just many am stations they wanted to sell but couldn't find a buyer for well and there's

I hate to sound conspiratorial, but do you have any sense that that sale happened because we got to get these stations on the market before chorus goes belly up? Good point, because it'll bring down the value. It'll bring down the value. So instead of getting, you know, cents on the dollar, yeah, they still didn't sell them for what they would have gone for 10 years ago, but that was definitely part of the part of the point. Get ahead of that. And, uh, and I don't know what the stock is selling for today. I don't know. 11 cents or something. Nine cents, something like that. Yeah.

But yeah, it's no laughing matter. Uh, they're, they're on the brink of bankruptcy and everything must go. I know we're wrapping up, but I will say this, and I share your sympathy for people being affected by really bad corporate decisions and a change in the culture that you know, a change in the culture that, um, has, has impacted how people consume media and consume music. But I go back and I think, you know, I think about the height of the, well, the introduction and the height of the Napster era.

And many of my friends in broadcast would look at us, you know, bar room conversations and say, you guys should have seen this coming. Like I can't believe you got caught. Like you had no reaction. So yeah, anybody who claims they saw that coming is full of shit. There's some kid in his dorm room, programming ones and zeros that created something that nobody saw coming. I will say this to broadcast executives, not the guys in the trenches and gals in the trenches. You had warning. You were

watching what was happening to the advertising market. You were watching the shift to online. You had an opportunity to reinvent yourself and rebrand yourself and you didn't. So when I hear people compare it to what happened to the record industry in the mid nineties, right apples and oranges, as far as I'm concerned for the people at the top of the pyramid. So you say apples and oranges, I'm going to bring lemons into the full because it does seem to me like terrestrial radio is just squeezing the last bit of juice out of these lemons like they're just going to squeeze the last bit of juice

until the lemons are dry and last. I realized I got Steve Kane in the basement here and we are winding down. I was about to play lowest at the low, but I want to just just because now I'm always curious about this stuff. And, you you know now that we had a beer and us we're ready to go here. But just a little further on the relationship between radio stations and record companies like how it worked and how it works now like so like is it really like simply you had a rep I don't know I'm thinking somebody at Warner would go to I don't know CFNY with the new album

like new CD in hand or whatever, and talk to them and say, hey, you need to add this. Like, is that how it went? Yeah, it was, you know, it's a relationship business. Relationship and stats and understanding each other's product. You know, we, some of the best promo guys I knew, they spent a lot of time listening to their stations. They understood their product. You know, we, some of the best promo guys I knew, they spent a lot of time listening to their stations. They understood their product. So if I ever had a promo rep who would walk into a radio station and say,

you have to add this because it's a company priority. It's like, I you're not good at your job. Right. You've got to go in. You've got to tell them why it fits their format, why it fits their listenership. Um, you know, what, what the band is, is, is all about, where they fit in culturally, um, give them the stats. Um, because, you know, sadly there are a lot of radio programmers who program with their eyes, not their ears. So they're just looking for chart numbers out of the UK or the U S or wherever. Um, so, you know, it was a little of both. the UK or the US or wherever.

So, you know, it was a little of both. There's some stuff that, you know, got added because it was it was doing well in the States for domestics. It was, you know, you had to work for that. You had to work for that. Now I know Ivers still bringing up because the last time Iver Hamilton was over, we discussed it, but Iver, because Danny Kingsbury was program director at CF and why in nineteen eighty nine he put humble and Fred together actually and Iver tried to get pixies added to the rotation and it never happened. So pixies was not added to the the burgeoning all rock format at one or two point one back in nineteen eighty

nine and Iver still shaking his head about it. Are there any like you can't believe that this particular artist was not added to this particular stations? Anything like that before I close this out with Rosie? Oh there's there's so many of them like one or two here. I do remember again it must it would probably have been the edge because they would have been the only station around that would have played them. But the fight to get My Chemical Romance on the air was unbelievable. And every lukewarm excuse that could be given was given as to why My Chemical Romance wouldn't get played on certain stations in this country.

It was ongoing and probably still is. I've done just about every role at a record company. My tenure as a radio promo guy was very, very short because I was shit at it and I would just end up in arguments. Why did you retire, Steve? Why did you retire? We've got a close of this. So what made you come to that decision? It's you know 20 20 years

at a company. The last two and a half years of running the company out of the small room at the back of my house, the rise of TikTok, the rise of algorithm, the idea that you're going to chase down a TikTok star and try and build a career. When I saw one of the things I loved, artist development, building careers rather than chasing hits, it just, yeah, it's probably a good time to go and, and to give the company, uh, which I was very, very proud of, to have stewarded for, for 20 years. Like, yeah, it's,

it's time to pass it along. Simple as that. Poor lowest of the low though. You were their champion and now you're out the door. They're still doing great. They finally sold out. They finally had a major label behind them and there you go. But Agitpop is a fantastic album. And I'm overdue for a coffee with Ron. He lives right around the corner from me. Yeah, I was going to say you can always meet at the only cafe because they do serve Great lakes at the only cafe. But although I know Ron's not drinking right now, so maybe that's maybe the coffee is the way to go. But thank you so much, Steve.

This was a great combo and a lot of great insights. I hope you're not going to be driving home and saying, Oh, I didn't tell this story. Like if that there is a story that you didn't tell that you need to tell, I can bring down Rosie and Gray and you could tell it right now. Or I'll come back again. Or you can come back again here. Okay, how presumptuous of you. I want all the steves on. I can fit three around this table. All the steve cody waxman cane. I'll get all the steves on absolutely. Steve Blair lives in Portugal now, so he'll be tough. We can zoom him in. I'll

add him by zoom here. Steve from Married of Children. Every Steve, my brother Steve, we just celebrated a birthday. Happy birthday, Steve. And that brings us to the end of our 1525th show, 1525. You can follow me all over the place at Toronto Mike. Go to Toronto Mike dot com for all your Toronto Mike needs. Is there anywhere that you're, I know it's not TikTok, but where the hell can we follow Steve Cain? Are you on what, Instagram? Whereabouts are you? Anywhere? I just spout off about music and shit on Facebook. I did read your chorus post on Facebook. So I'll tag you on Facebook when I drop this thing in like 10 minutes.

Much love to all who made this possible. Again, that's Great Lakes Brewery. Don't forget your beer, Steve. Palma Pasta. I have your lasagna in the freezer. Recyclemyelectronics.ca. The Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team. You've got your history book. I'll be there August 4th at Christie Pitts. And Ridley Funeral Home. Don't forget your measuring tape. See you all next week. I always do this. I never know who's up next because it's like I just book it and I said it and I forget it. Who is next on Toronto Mic'd? Do do do do. Oh yeah from City TV. Dominic Schiolio. I always screwed up the

pronunciation of this guy's name so I will fix that in post. I met him at an anniversary party for Electric Circus and you'll remember him from City TV in the Moses Empire. So I'll see you all then. I wonder who Maybe the one who doesn't realize There's a thousand shades of gray Cause I know that's true, yes I do I know it's true, yeah I know it's true, how much, yeah All them pickin' up trash and them puttin' down roads

And they're brokerin' stocks, the class struggle explodes And I'll play this guitar just the best that I can Maybe I'm not in the...