Shad on Q

Shadrach Kabango, a.k.a. Shad, is the new host of CBC Radio’s Q, it was announced last night. He starts in mid-April—a few weeks after headlining Massey Hall for the first time.

It couldn’t go to a nicer guy. Shad is a real mensch, a positive force, an artist with insatiable curiosity, and an incredibly talented wordsmith who has made some of the finest hip-hop in Canadian history.

So there’s that.

But is he the right host for Q?

The CBC is no doubt basking in the great press that Shad’s appointment will get. That’s because a lot of people know and love Shad – and deservedly so. There is no way that any kind of splash would be made if someone inside the CBC, or even merely anyone with journalism or radio experience, was named the new host of Q.

This is a job only for artists, apparently. Cindy Witten, head of CBC Radio Talk, said in the press release announcing the hire: "We found there were different points of connection with the guests when the host was a creator or an artist themselves."

This has been evident ever since the early 2000s, the era that ushered in Jian Ghomeshi as a CBC personality. Ghomeshi was a musician of some renown before he moved into broadcasting (although, as it has been often pointed out, only the CBC would consider Moxy Fruvous hip and edgy). So was Sook-Yin Lee, the host of Definitely Not the Opera. Later on, so was Buck 65 (host of CBC Radio 2 Drive) and Molly Johnson (host of CBC Radio 2 Weekend Morning) and Julie Nesrallah (host of CBC Radio 2 Tempo). At least Sook-Yin Lee had hosted television and Buck 65 had done campus radio—most celebrities the CBC hires are green in a radio studio. Randy Bachman—don’t get me started (apparently Wikipedia passes for research and script-writing). The assumption is that anyone can be moulded into a CBC personality.

True, it did work for Ghomeshi. But it sure took time. He was on TV first. Then he guest hosted Sounds Like Canada and did limited-run series like 50 Tracks and Canada Reads. By the time he started at Q, he had plenty of broadcasting experience. And, as we now all know, he had an incredibly strong (and suffering) support team at Q propping him up. I found Q unlistenable for its first few years, before Ghomeshi started hitting his stride. Admittedly, as someone with plenty of interviewing and broadcast experience, I also tasted sour grapes: Come on, I thought, I know 20 people who could do a better job. But then Ghomeshi got better—much better. It’s why his fall from grace had such an impact. He was no longer a joke.

Shad does not have the experience Ghomeshi had at Q’s start. Shad’s week-long guest run as Q host was no better or worse than anyone else being tried on-air. His beginnings are going to be bumpy. The CBC hopes they can just announce his name and snap their fingers and everything is going to be hunky-dory. It will not. Goodwill is going to have to carry him a long way—and, again, to be clear, Shad has enough of it to make it possible.

But amidst the excitement and optimism, it has to be said: journalists need not apply for these kinds of positions. It’s the same reason ex-athletes are hired to be sportscasters. Anyone can do it, right? Don’t even bother going to school for training. Get famous—or even semi-famous—first.

Let’s hope we don’t lose Shad the artist. Go see him at Massey Hall on March 27 and celebrate.

Messages on the People's Radio

"Ladies and gentlemen! We're going to have a good show today! We're going to have a big party ... The batteries on my show are falling off. We forgot to do balloons! Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to have a party today! But it's not going to be super good. It's going to be a little bit good, because we're just going to have a little bit of cake."

And so began the final broadcast of Brave New Waves' last Friday night, with the sounds of Patti Schmidt's toddler nephew. Ten months after she recorded this concept show about radio, it was a fitting farewell to the program that had consumed her life for the past 17 years, and had captivated the rest of us since 1984. Friday's farewell was the show that it should have been: hosted by Patti Schmidt, opening with a proper acknowledgment of the end, and four hours of music that was both irreverent and deadly serious, high and low culture, avant-garde and amateur, with a concert in the middle from a new Canadian politically active punk band. The bookend bits were gold, featuring Patti's toddler nephew talking about a party that's going to be a little bit good, a little bit sad.

The fact that this episode was originally recorded and broadcast last May, without any acknowledgement of its significance at the time, still hurts a bit. For a show that always thrived on the new, it's slightly absurd that the last show was a repeat. But considering the excruciating state of limbo this show has existed in recently, the final show managed to sound dignified and proud. No nostalgia, no tears, just a final statement of purpose.

David Wisdom's final show on Sunday night was also lovely, though the show I heard him do a couple of weeks ago seemed to be more self-consciously about The End. (It included Sarah Harmer's "The Ring," about gratitude and the gift of song, which ranks among her most exquisite lyrics.) Along with "Tumbling Tumbleweeds," some Satie, and Sinatra singing "Let's Face the Music" (“A song I think of in uncertain times,” he said), Wisdom reprised a set from the final Night Lines broadcast that juxtaposed the Rheostatics' "Northern Wish" and The Band's "Whispering Pines" (which he talks about here). Hearing that while driving down the DVP into Toronto with a glorious sunset beyond the skyline was a radio moment I'll not soon forget, especially with the first of the final Rheostatics shows scheduled for seven short days later.

I'm slightly sad to say that I didn't hear the final Radio Sonic/ Radio Escapade/ Radio3-on-Radio2 show Saturday night, except for the last track just before midnight immediately after Grant Lawrence signed off. It was "The Singer" by Stompin' Tom Connors, which argues that "a land without song cannot stand very long," and still rings true as a rallying cry for the state of Canadian music. I first heard the song when it underscores an on-stage assassination in the Bruce McDonald film Roadkill; I later used these lyrics to close the book Have Not Been the Same, and I like to play it as an alternate national anthem every time I'm the organ player at a game in the Exclaim! Hockey League. Hats off to Mr. Lawrence, a huge Stompin' Tom fan, for making that his final selection on the democratic medium of old-fashioned terrestrial radio—the people's radio.

Why wasn't I listening to the whole show on Saturday night? Personally, it's been a rough winter all around, and this month in particular I'm tired of goodbyes. So instead, I spent it in the good company (and good cuisine) of other radio geeks, where we talked about everything but radio: equally cheery subjects like vanishing farmland, municipal politics, Katrina aftermath, and the cranes of Dubai.

But therein lies the problem that the Saturday night program—whatever they chose to call it—always suffered from. The audience for this program—broadly speaking, young people interested in new music—are not at home on Saturday night in so-called "prime time." I only ever listened to the show for the first two hours before I went out, if in fact I happened to be home alone for dinner. Or if I was too burnt out from Friday night and stayed home Saturday altogether—and furthermore if I eschewed television for a book, writing, or personal projects. That's a lot of ifs.

It's true that Brave New Waves had an equally problematic time slot, but there's something to be said for the late night radio listener, who is no doubt there for a reason and is a captive audience member. I would argue that very few people—Canadians, particularly—actively engage with their radios on Saturday nights, despite Mr. Lawrence's frequent pleas to turn the TV hockey game sound down, and your radio up.

I was a bit worried by some of the comments posted here following by Brave New Waves essay, the Brent Bambury interview and the David Wisdom interview, because I don't want to be pegged as a naysayer or a guy who pines for the same CBC Radio that he grew up with. The reason I posted or wrote all those things was to pay respect to the great tradition that these shows built at the CBC. In the case of BNW, I was worried that in the wake of all the new changes, that the fate of the show was going to be swept under the rug like a dirty little secret—which it had been for at least the last six months.

I don't think change at the CBC is bad, and I have no desire to sit around and talk about glory days. I like a lot of what they are doing with Radio 2, and I think their approach to mixing genre is going to work. De-classical-fying the network is also long overdue (27 years), but I'm glad they're not chucking that continuum entirely. I also think it's wise to have a more clear delineation between talkie Radio One and the music of Radio Two; the latter has always been the poor cousin that seemed like an afterthought to the main network.

Some of the hand-wringing around these changes has been a tad ridiculous. Rumour has it the McGill Students Union held a moment of silence for Radio 3, as if the Saturday night show was the only component of the ongoing operation. This only proves that much like the mourning of the Radio 3 webzine, most people actually have no idea what Radio 3 is and what it encompasses. And granted, it has never fit into a soundbite at any point in the past eight years. But at least it no longer elicits puzzled stares.

It pains me greatly to think that there's no room for Radio 3's rock'n'roll on the new Radio 2. Because Radio 3 was and is primarily about rock'n'roll--which for these purposes will also mean hip-hop and electronic music. Much of the new CBC Radio 2 is—rightly so—aimed at an adult audience, and by that I don't mean a geriatric one. People between 30 and 50 who aren't interested in classic rock, hit radio or 80s retro really have few other places to turn, and the new CBC Radio 2 sets out to address this. This demographic's tolerance for young, raw rock'n'roll is admittedly limited.

But, goes the eternal question, what of the youth? The assumption here is that they're all on the internet anyway, which, after a series of bumps and hurdles (that we won't get into here), Radio 3 has proven itself good at. And it's an assumption worth making: the Radio 3 podcast is exponentially more popular than the Saturday night program ever was, in any of its incarnations. The concept of podcasting in general represents a triumph of time-shifting radio, doing for radio what the VCR did for TV watching 25 years ago. So when you take a show that had such a terrible time slot and repackage it into a readily accessible hour-long format, it's little wonder that it took off.

(We also won't talk about the lack of will to consider Brave New Waves as a podcast-able program until after they formally announced its cancellation. I’m convinced that had that show become a podcast that it would have been a worldwide hit, finally convincing all naysayers that the show did indeed have currency beyond a handful of vocally loyal geeks in urban Canada, that it did fill a void not only in Canada but around the world.)

I realize that I'm a 35-year old fogie, but I do think something is lost by removing Radio 3 from terrestrial radio—as opposed to the economically elite model of satellite radio, which is another kettle of fish worthy of another essay.

Radio is a democratic medium by nature: the airwaves are free, belonging to everyone. Radios are ubiquitous and affordable; you can even build one yourself with little effort. (Or, as childhood myth had it, your orthodontist could install one for you.) It requires no effort or forethought to turn it on and experience it live, as Radio 3 thankfully was in recent years; the Saturday night show was the best it had ever been lately, largely due to its off-the-cuff nature. But there's no spontaneity in listening to a podcast, and if you're a youngster searching for something new, the chances of stumbling across a podcast accidentally are nil.

The web-based approach to radio offers infinite exciting possibilities. But at the end of the day it still requires more work (and more technology) on the part of the listener, both returning ones and potential new ones. Ideally, these two mediums can work in tandem. Sadly, it was decided that was not the case for Radio 3.

Though it kills me to admit it, Brave New Waves had to die. There were plenty of managerial misunderstandings about what the show was. For a show that produced 20 hours of radio a week, it was seriously understaffed. There was a lack of will on all sides to make it go forward. Without a serious examination of adapting it to new platforms and expanding the staff, the show was headed to obsolescence. Everyone, on both sides, was tired. The show had become an albatross.

That's not to say it didn't still have plenty of unparalleled purpose to offer the current Canadian musical landscape. I still think the show was valuable right up to this point last year. (And I say this in complete vanity, because that's when I left, in March 2006. I wasn't replaced, and the show was slowly dismantled between then and June. Please don't infer I'm cocky enough to infer that it had anything to do with my departure; I merely saw what was coming and jumped ship first. Well, second, actually.)

Last night I listened to the inaugural episode of the show that's billed as filling some of the gap left by BNW's departure, The Signal. Some of it was great, and it fills a long-ignored gap in CBC programming. Some of it had me literally screaming in frustration. There will be those who will think the show is the ideal way to illustrate that you can present challenging cross-genre material, without all those perversely petulant noisemakers stirring up shit. There will be those who will think it's a castrated, compromised version of BNW that's terrified of speaking above its audience. But many of the musical choices were genuinely inspired, I heard plenty of new music I didn't know about, and overall it would have made for an ideal show to lead into BNW's old time slot at midnight, a gateway drug to when the screaming and squawking could begin. But I've already said too much. You can't judge a show on its first episode.

I don’t fear for the future of CBC Radio Two. There are plenty of changes afoot. I hope the talented people there who have contributed so much to its strengths in recent years are recognized for their talents (what is Jowi Taylor doing exactly?). I hope the new programming manages to tap into the immense talent pool we have in this country, and the fact that our cultural industries are stronger than ever, even while other national threads are eroding. I hope the corporation doesn’t second-guess itself to death, which is what public institutions excel at (and with no shortage of peanut gallery posers like myself, can you blame them?). There’s so much work to be done. Let’s hope they get it right.

Nephew: "The show is over now. We're going to have a different show about, uh, er, um, about, um, uh, about lamps."
Patti: (laughter) "What are you going to say about lamps?" (laughter)

David Wisdom 2000

I've made much of the impending end of Brave New Waves this week, but there's another CBC icon going down for the count this week.

David Wisdom hosted the weekend overnight show Night Lines, BNW's sister program, between 1987 and 1997; he was then bounced to an awkward prime time slot hosting Radio Sonic, where he was audibly uncomfortable until management begrudgingly switched him back to late nights and moved Grant Lawrence to prime time Saturday night--a slot Mr. Lawrence is also surrendering this weekend.

In the meantime, Wisdom has been hosting a 90-minute disc show called Pearls of Wisdom, which is little more than an old-timey record geek show. Which is all it has to be. The first time I heard it, years ago, I was put off by its conservative nature: lots of old-timey jazz, swing and folk music, mixed in with some current Canadiana, primarily aimed at the nursing home crowd. Now that I'm deep into my middle age, I've grown to appreciate it in recent months, as a Sunday night wind-down while cooking dinner. Wisdom remains an unpretentious, amiable and congenial host with an encyclopaedic knowledge and a massive record collection: which, regardless of genre, is exactly the kind of radio I love the most.

Pearls of Wisdom also calls it quits this weekend (not by choice, I'm betting), which seemed like reason enough to resurrect this 2000 interview I conducted with Wisdom for the book Have Not Been the Same. In it he talks not only about Night Lines, but its predecessors, about Canadian music in the late 80s, and about his (and my) favourite Canadian band of all time, the Rheostatics--who, in this month of bloodletting, also call it quits at the end of the month.

Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON??!!! March 2007: it's the CanCon apocalpyse, let me tell you. Next thing you know, both NoMeansNo and the Tragically Hip will announce their break-ups before the 31st.

Quick side note: anyone wondering what Patti Schmidt has been doing lately should go to the Ninja Tune website and download their podcast promoting the new Amon Tobin album. It's sort of in the style of a BNW profile, only without announcing track titles (grrrr). It's lovely to hear her voice and writing style alive again, and outside the weight of the BNW drama winding up this week. Hopefully she'll do more for them; frankly, I was hoping for an interview with Tobin, considering that she and he are close friends and video game junkies. She also helped him get busy with the bees on his new album.

I have no idea what Wisdom's next move is. But knowing what I know about CBC politics and his own reputation as a cantankerous curmudgeon off-mic, I'd be surprised if he's still on the air. It's a sad time for the veteran warhorses.

---

David Wisdom
August 30 2000
locale: phone interview from his office in Vancouver

How long have you been in Vancouver? I know you were born in England.
I’ve lived in Vancouver for most of my life. I moved here when I was a small boy. I went back and lived in England between 1969 and 1971, when I was still in university, and then went back at various times. I got my Canadian citizenship in 1992, partly inspired by the Rheostatics music, and that’s the truth.

Were you doing campus radio?
No, I’ve never done campus radio and I’ve never taken training in radio. I was working at CBC as a producer on the Vicki Gabereau show and doing stories for her. I had a huge record collection. I collected 45s mainly, in the early days in the 60s and 70s, but then I got heavily into it around the time of punk rock, between ‘77 and ‘80. I went and got a whole lot of records. When they wanted someone to do Night Lines, I was hired because I had the software more than the skills.

Rumour has it you do have the biggest record collection in Vancouver.
I once had. Last year I sold the bulk of my punk/new wave singles to Zulu Records, which in part financed a trip to Europe this year with my family.

When did you start at the CBC?
The day Elvis died in 1977; it was August of ‘77. I was working in the record library, they didn’t want to put stuff like the Sex Pistols in. I remember at one point them saying, ‘What’s the point in putting this Devo record in when nobody will be listening to it in two years’ time?’ Terry David Mulligan had the youth show on the CBC at that time, Gold Rush, I think it was called, and he refused to play the Buzzcocks as examples of good music in the ‘70s, and I went up against him on that one. I think the CBC saw things were changing.

Brave New Waves and Night Lines were my introduction to so-called “pop” music on the CBC; what came before them?
They’ve always tried to be a little bit ahead. They had this show called the Great Canadian Gold Rush hosted by Terry David Mulligan, and for the time it was playing whatever there was, like Lighthouse and such. Then they tried to get considerably hipper, and they got a guy named J.D. Shane and a show called Neon, which was considerably more...

Progressive?
Well, if you want to use that word. They were more interested in new stuff, and I was allowed to go on his show and do items on various things -- mostly English music, which was my all-consuming interest for many years.

Did you perform with or were you just on the recording for UJ3RK5 (I pronounced it 'you jerks')
It was pronounced 'you-jerk,' actually -- the 5 was silent. I was a full-time member, I was singing and wrote some of the songs. When they went to make the record, I was leaving the band, and therefore didn’t play keyboards on the record or sing lead. I was still a member, but I was getting out of the band.

Was that a fairly active band?
It was more active than we wanted it to be. Everybody had real jobs, and there were some famous artists in the band: Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham, and Ian Wallace, who were getting to be quite famous at the time. The music, we were inspired by the tenor of the time, just the fact that people were making music and doing it themselves. We played when we were asked to play, but it was really a secondary thing. Then we got signed by Polydor Records, who wanted us to tour. As soon as they put these kind of considerations before us, we basically fell apart, because we didn’t want to make it a full time deal at all. It was just for fun.

Was that unusual at the time, to be offered a deal for such a laid-back band?
It was pretty unusual. There weren’t that many bands in Vancouver who were being wooed by major labels at all.

The Payola$ and who else, really?
Yeah. To some degree the Pointed Sticks. Not really much else happening. We were quite surprised.

You took over the show in 1987. Do you recall the reaction around the CBC when those shows started in ‘84?
Both started fundamentally at the same time. Augusta LaPaix was the first Brave New Waves host and Ron Robinson was the host of Night Lines for the first one or two seasons, then it was Ralph Benmurgui. There was -- and still is -- resistance to the fact that there is such a thing as what they consider pop music on the CBC. There are still producers here who think it’s killing the CBC and don’t understand why it’s on. Brave New Waves and to a lesser degree Night Lines was considered just way, way out there. Brave New Waves got away with it earlier because they had a certain academic cachet to them. They played what was considered art music, electro-acoustic stuff. It had a more serious tone to it. With Night Lines, I wasn’t sure what to do at the beginning. I knew I had to play a lot of Canadian music, and I didn’t know a whole lot about Canadian music, so I went out and started listening to anything Canadian I could find. I tried for the first two or three seasons to please everyone, and then I figured to hell with them -- I’m just going to play the music I really like.

How long do you think it took you before you settled into that role?
I was sort of nervous at the beginning. I had a couple of guys who were campus radio guys telling me what I should be playing. I was being pushed into areas that I wasn’t at all comfortable with. It took me a year and a half to settle in and really feel that the show was my own, and really feel that people did appreciate what I was playing, and that there was an audience for the kind of ideas I had: non-elitist, and a wide-ranging variety of music.

Were you aware of the impact the show had before you took over? Was it widely listened-to in Vancouver?
I think so. Whenever you take over a show that has a following, there are always going to be people who are going to complain that it’s not the same, and those were the first things I heard. Obviously. Ralph Benmurgui was -- and is -- slicker than I could ever be on the radio. But I wasn’t too worried about that. I knew what I was talking about, I knew about the music, and I worried more about my presentation rather than my lack of knowledge; I had no concern about that.

Was it live back then?
Yes it was. We did it live for years and years. I’d be here until two in the morning. One night it was from 10PM to 5AM, and we did it three hours ahead of time so it would go live to the maritimes. I was sitting there for seven hours for years, doing shows straight through on the weekend.

When did that change?
It changed when real severe cuts were starting to come in, and I was not able to have a technician on the weekends. Then I had to take whatever time I could get in the studio, whenever technicians were available. So we started pre-taping on Thursday and Friday afternoons.

You mention that your knowledge of Cdn music was limited when you took the reins. Who were your favourites beforehand?
I was very Vancouver-centric. We always had an idea that Vancouver music was cooler than Toronto music. Toronto music had a certain kind of feeling that we thought was much more show biz, like Carole Pope. In the beginning of the early days of punk, when there were people like the Poles and the Viletones, we thought, ‘Oh, Toronto people have it wrong. We have DOA, Los Popularos, and a much better music scene going on in Vancouver. So I basically knew very little about music outside of Vancouver until I took over that show and made myself listen to everything I could.

Do you think the show became different when it moved to Vancouver, other than the obvious change in the hosts’ style?
Absolutely it changed. I was much more than an indie kind of guy than Ralph and Ross Porter, who was producing it. I’ve always liked a more rough and independent music rather than anything slick. I shy away from bands when they get too popular. I remember them playing a much slicker sound, and then I got into Og Records’ series of It Came From Canada. I can’t tell you how important that series was. Because on those compilations were early cuts from the likes of Ray Condo and Cowboy Junkies, to the weird bands like the Supreme Bagg Team and Chris Houston’s band. I became aware of a much wider range of music, and started to realize that there was a really interesting kind of music that was different -- everything was different from each other, but there was a similar sensibility to it. There was actually something of a Canadian sound, which had a sense of humour to it. Since the late ‘70s, it’s had a really good sense of humour. I’m thinking of people like the Dik Van Dykes, who were not a big favourite band of mine, but they were loose and didn’t take themselves too seriously. I’ve always enjoyed that kind of music.

Gerard and Tony [of Deja Voodoo and Og] have told me that they also sought out people with some kind of sense of tradition. Not necessarily Ray Condo tradition -- although that was certainly part of it, but just people who had roots in something. They always hated hardcore music for example. The early Asexuals didn’t show up on those compilations. Those comps also gave the illusion of a network of people across the country.
It wove around the record store people, too. Record stores are always really important in music scenes, and there were two here in Vancouver: Track Records and Quintessence, which later became Zulu. The guys who worked there were musicians and turned me on to a whole lot of stuff. I remember going into Track Records, and the guy behind the counter said, “Hey, we just got onto this Og compilation.” He was in the Zamboni Drivers, and this was just a guy down the street. I thought, ‘this is great, the guy down the street just got on this fabulous It Came From Canada, volume whatever.’

You mention the regionalism before and people turning their noses at other cities, and I was wondering about the effect of those comps out west.
It was an absolute real thing. There’s always this contempt, which is made a lot of in the media, about Vancouver dismissing Toronto. It is real, it’s certainly a real thing, although less so than it was years ago. We always thought we had a much better music scene than Toronto did. I certainly don’t agree with that anymore. It isn’t the case now. It may have had some measure of truth to it a while ago, but it hasn’t been that way for years.

I’m trying to picture you immersing yourself in Canadian music trying to fill your playlist in 1987. Who else did you discover that excited you?
I’m trying to remember too, because it was 13 years ago. When I started thinking about what I was going to talk to you about, I was trying to remember those early bands and that time. I was being pushed into this direction of industrial and really hardcore goth bands that I really never liked, like Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly. The young guys I had from campus radio were saying that this was all the rage, that this was the absolute thing right now, bands from the United States such as Ministry were really big time. But I could never warm up to that. What really opened my eyes to the regions across Canada was when I opened the phone lines up and took calls. I would ask the listeners to not just request something, but they had to answer a skill-testing question as well: recite a poem they just made up, tell a joke or answer a tough question or something. It was amusing, but I’d also learn a whole lot about what was going on in different cities by what they’d request. Then I’d go out and try to find it. For the most part, I’d think, well, this is pretty good, and then I’d fill out my playlists to that kind of stuff.

How many calls would you get a week?
It was so big that I had to shut it down after a few years because I just couldn’t keep up with it. I would put in a 90 minute tape, because this was done before any digital equipment, and it was just an answering machine with a cassette running around. I’d have to come down in the middle of the night to turn the tape over. It was always filled.

Or broken, I recall.
Yeah, it broke a lot. And sometimes it “broke” just because I couldn’t face listening to hours of phone calls! But it was great, and it was part of what made the show really interesting. Over the years there was a revolving cast of really interesting callers. Some one-time only, but more often some semi-regulars that people recognized.

They also often had testimonials. If people were phoning for the first time, they’d say things like, “I can’t tell you how many times this show saved my life.”
(Sighs). Whenever I’m somewhere where people talk to me and say, “Oh, I really like you on the radio,” they never talk to me about RadioSonic. They always go back to Night Lines. And I appreciate that. I think it was a real show and it had a real personality. I think when you’re broadcasting in the middle of the night, you get people who really do listen and really do care about music, other than casual listeners who might just have it on in the car. I think the time of the night is really important for that. I do think we played the best music available and found new stuff that other radio stations would never, never broadcast. I wish I could be more specific about the bands, but it’s somewhat of a blur. I keep trying to think ahead.

When did you first hear Rheostatics? Did someone send you Greatest Hits in the mail?
Somebody told me about a song about a hockey player. I went to a record store and said, ‘What’s this song about Wendel Clark?’ I think it was Track Records. I found Greatest Hits on LP, it had just come out. I thought every song was really, really good. I liked the sound right away. There was something funny about it, but at the core it was something serious. It wasn’t trivial. It sounded like people who really cared about what they were doing. It also sounded really Canadian to me. It sounded like the music came from where it came from, rather than aping any English or American sound. And despite the fact that the guys were pretty young, there was something a little older about them. They weren’t posers at all, there was nothing of that in them. I read that through the music before I ever talked to them. I dunno, I guess I got to know them over time and did little items on them whenever I could. I got to know Dave [Bidini] quite well.

They always did very well in Vancouver.
They have always had rabid fans here. The few gigs I’ve been to here, I was surprised by the variety of ages: young people as well as people in their 30s or early 40s who know all the words. I’d be guessing if I tried to figure out why they especially connected with audiences out here, I just don’t know. But it’s true, they certainly do have believers rather than just fans or people who really love them. The last time I saw them was an in-store at a Chapters bookstore, and everyone was just thrilled. The four of them sat on stools and played guitars, and it was like Crosby Stills Nash & Young. Only good!

Did you follow them through the breakup?
I did. I was kept abreast of what was going on. When I talk to Dave about this, the lowest time for the Rheostatics was when they were the most popular, when they were whisked off to the West Indies to make that album. And I think that’s their weakest, and I think they lost track of things a bit around that time. I’ve not been disappointed by anything since, though. I think Melville is one of the great Canadian albums. I put it up there with music by The Band and Neil Young, their very best work. That period of their output was great, with Whale Music. When I was being sworn in as a Canadian citizen, “Northern Wish” was the song running through my head. It still moves me deeply, that record.

I recall you playing that song next to “Whispering Pines” on the last Night Lines show.
I think I’ve done those two songs together more than once. It works really well.

I’m wondering about other bands from that period that affected you perhaps not that deeply, but closely.
I like rock’n’roll. I was quite turned on by that band, what’s their name, they made three albums -- my God! Sons of Freedom. I thought they were really great. I think there are some good strong bands who have lasted a long time. 54.40 have a lot of merit and have their own sound. I like the Doughboys -- even though they were called imitative. I thought there was quite a spate of good melodic, hard rockin’ Canadian music for quite a long time. I’m not sure that’s still the case. That might have peaked when the Halifax scene was still going. I thought there were tons of really good bands. I had no problem trying to find stuff to play.

There was a lot of indie product after 1990, for a lot of reasons.
Nowadays I see five times more records than I’ve ever seen in my life, because I’m sitting in an office with people who are working on these web sites [the nascent CBC Radio 3]. They’re soliciting every single CD that anyone has ever even thought of making. A lot of them, they shouldn’t be here at all. A lot of them are demos, they’re hardly work at all. I would need to step back; there’s so much music that I can’t put my finger on anything in particular to make me think hey, this is a really good period for music right now. It’s hard to see.

Were there certain bands that you felt Night Lines helped to break?
I know there were. We started doing our sessions about half way through, in ‘91. Some bands we really did give a leg up to. I’m thinking of a band like Cub. They became popular through touring and the novelty aspect of three women, but I think we played them a lot and recorded sessions with them when they were just getting their chops together. I don’t know if that had anything to do with them getting popular, but I think it did. We helped a lot of bands. I don’t know how many of them are around still or even involved in music, but I was really happy when we started doing sessions. Brave New Waves was doing sessions, and I really wanted to do that.

What about Jr. Gone Wild?
Actually, Calgary really began to happen in the ‘90s as well. There were great bands coming out of Calgary for a while. Like the Primrods, those garage-y types. I’m thinking of the Von Zippers now, but they’re quite recent. Chixdiggit, Huevos Rancheros, and even a bit before that, I thought there was something really good about the Calgary music scene. It was really small, but everyone was really into helping each other, and I thought it was pretty vibrant and fun for a good long time. Edmonton used to be a music city, especially in the ‘70s it was quite a stop for blues and such, but I know less about Edmonton than Calgary these days. But Jr. Gone Wild were certainly a band that had Vancouver connections: Ford Pier and so forth. I knew a bit more about them.

What can you tell me about Herald Nix?
He’s a guy who’s considered -- in a way, sort of like Art Bergmann -- to be a talent, a real natural songwriter with -- in a similar vein to Art Bergmann -- personal problems that have prevented him from ever getting it together. But Herald Nix plays semi-regularly in Vancouver, and he has a very hardcore following of fans who think that this is a guy who really can write great songs. But that might be as far as it goes. The recordings have been dubious and few. He’s on a few local compilations, but there’s been very little. He’s one of those guys that plays locally, but rarely records successfully, if at all.

What was the impact of labels like Zulu and Mint? They were synonymous with Vancouver.
Zulu, which was Quintessence before, was very important. The recent three reissues that Zulu put out of Young Canadians, Pointed Sticks and the Modernettes, those were important. I think Zulu blew it by signing bands who refused to tour or couldn’t get it together to tour. They put out some pretty keen stuff, but couldn’t follow it up. Mint is a label run by true believers who do it for the love of it. It has that Nardwuar the Human Serviette aspect of it, a real indie...

That’s an adjective now, is it? The Nardwuar aspect?
Yes, like a funny middle finger to the rest of the world. They’ll never make any dough. Neko Case was a big deal for them, but she’s gone now. She got too popular. Zulu is still a centre of intense musical activity. They have instore performances. I don’t think they’re going to put out any more CDs for a while. I don’t think you can underestimate the importance of record stores and labels.

Did you follow the Slow saga at all?
I wish I could say I was at their performance at Expo 86 when they dropped trou, but I just heard about it the next day. But they were and still are legendary. The guys that are in Copyright, are still in a way local heroes. They captured something of the times, and they were great.

What about NoMeansNo? They always seemed to be outsiders.
They are outsiders.

Maybe that’s the reason for their longevity.
That absolutely may be the case. Because they don’t play very often. They play once every two years at the Commodore Ballroom, and they’ll fill it up. But the rest of the time they’re in Slovenia or Finland. If I can be delicate, those guys are difficult guys. The Wright Brothers, Tom Holliston, and Andy Kerr before. I get on well with them, but they are basically offended by everything they see in the world, and it’s hard to get along and function with that sense. But at the same time, that’s what spurs them into doing what they do. They’re pissed off. They’re older, curmudgeon-ly, pissed off guys. They don’t trust anyone, and I do think that’s part of their longevity. They don’t trust anyone to do anything for them. They got tied up with Jello Biafra’s label, and they had problems with that and Jello didn’t prove to be the saint that he seems to be. Just another guy who gets drunk and wants money sometimes. So they keep being disappointed. As the Hanson Brothers they were asked to sing at an all-star hockey game in Vancouver a couple of years ago, and they could have hung around and done the banquet thing with Wayne Gretsky, but they were totally offended by everything and left right away. I thought, you guys! You just gotta relax. But they do not, and I guess that’s their strength.

What about people who only appeared on your show, like the Maurice Pooby’s of the nation? How many were there?
The two big ones were Maurice Pooby and a woman from Winnipeg, Eve Rice, whose band is called Vav Jungle, a bizarre little outfit. She’s very out there and I think she creates pretty nifty music. She got into putting music on tape after I invited people to write theme music for the show. She wrote a terrific one, opening theme, and I just loved it and encouraged her. So she made tapes for me and eventually distributed them on her own label. She’d do stuff like team up with a 50-year old go-go dancer, just bizarre. I don’t think she’d be in music if it wasn’t for Night Lines. As for Pooby, I played some of his stuff for Dr. Demento, and I said, would you be interested if he sent you some of his stuff? He said, ‘Oh yeah, I’d play it all the time!’ I contacted Pooby and he said, ‘Ah, I don’t care.’ Interesting guy. He still sends me cassettes, far fewer now. Some pretty brilliant stuff.

The first time I heard Ween I thought it was him. When did he start sending you stuff?
It was very early. I’d say about ‘89 was when he started making music. He’s the genuine article. He lives by himself on a very secluded island off the coast, and he’s a doper.

When did you notice a lot of the east coast stuff coming in?
It got to me gradually, being on the other end of the country. I was really surprised. I didn’t know how popular Sloan were until they were really popular. That surprised me entirely. When their CD was picked as the #1 Cdn album ever on Chart I thought, woah, I missed this! I knew them and thought they were fine, but I had no idea. I’ve come to really enjoy their music, but that snuck up on me. But it was more people telling me how great the Halifax scene was; I didn’t have that much evidence of it. There was a band called NFA, garage punk guys who have been making music for years. Whenever a band goes through New Brunswick, they would stay on these guys’ floor. They would send me stuff. But I think Julie Doiron is great, I really liked those singles she did as Broken Girl. I thought there was some real raw music coming out of there that I liked.

Was it primarily you programming the entire show?
It was me. After six months. I was listening to these college guys, and they would have had me playing Skinny Puppy and Ministry far too much. It was just me and the audience, obviously. I was turned on to stuff through their requests. But I didn’t want anyone else to do it at all.

So the mandate was entirely in your hands.
I sort of slipped through the cracks for ten years. They knew I was there; they knew I was getting good response. Bascially nobody said a word to me for ten years. They just let me do it. It was the best job I ever had, and I’d do it again. In fact, I might do it again. [Shortly after this conversation, Wisdom had another brief stint hosting in the Night Lines slot, on a show called Radio On.]

After having been ignored for years, how did the show come to an end?
That was a case of a woman who came in to take over the head of Radio Two programming, and thought she should make changes just for the sake of making changes. Since that time she’s long gone, and her legacy was instrumental in destroying a lot of what was good about CBC Radio.

How did Brave New Waves survive?
Because it can, when it chooses to, be seen in that camp of academic, serious music. A guy named Alec Frame, who’s fundamentally the head of Radio Two now, has always thought it was a good show. Sometimes all it takes is that one guy who’s going to stick around and be an administrator for years who likes you and will support you. I think that’s happened with them. They’ve been on so long that they have a devoted audience.

And one that’s changed.
I preferred the show during Brent’s day only because I thought it was funnier.

I was wondering about the last show. Where did you broadcast that from?
It was outside the CBC building here on the plaza. It was the night that Princess Diana died, so there were a lot of distracted people. I did it in front of an audience; there weren’t that many of them there, but Maurice Pooby was there, and people flew in from Detroit, the Maritimes and Toronto. It was very nice. I got champagne and people clapped at the end. It was fun.

Did you know the Diana news when you were broadcasting?
My wife told me about a third of the way through. I made the decision not to mention it and not to even refer to it, because I didn’t know the facts. I think I was right to do that, but I know a lot of people buggered off to watch CNN.

I remember Grant Lawrence on that show talking about his phone-ins over the years. Were there other band people who would do those?
He was a good one, because he took it kind of professionally. He did it from Japan. But we had this thing going where he was always a bit over the line. He was quite foul, actually, and I always had to yell at him to cover up his foulness, but we enjoyed doing that together and still do.

The Rheostatics session on the last show...
I loved that.

How long before was it recorded?
They were the first ones I wanted to do a session with. But basically, they were in Toronto, and it was and still is very hard to get technicians at the CBC to record bands there. It’s almost impossible. I’d always have to go to Toronto and record bands at the Horseshoe before I’d even get to hear them live. But the Rheos one couldn’t have been better. They had “The Pooby Song” and everything. It made me think that the whole thing had a purpose to it and had been worthwhile and was a part of something going on in Canadian music. That’s what the Rheostatics doing that session accomplished.

-end-

Long Waves Goodbye

The CBC Radio changes take effect soon, which means there's only a few weeks left of Brave New Waves, or what's left of it. If you can't stay up past 1am to hear the archived shows that ex-host/producer Patti Schmidt has been curating since September, then be sure to check out this page with links to streamed interviews from the archives, though mostly focused on the years 2001-2005.

There you'll find one element that absolutely does not have any place in the new CBC schedule: in-depth, up-to-an-hour-long interviews. No one else on the network does them regularly anymore, other than the incomparable Eleanor Wachtel, and it's something that Brave New Waves and Ms. Schmidt, never, ever got credit for in recent years--no doubt because they always started at 1am. But what better time to immerse yourself in a deep, fascinating conversation with the counter-culture? These chats were the antidote to everything else in mainstream media today, and not just for their content--they're a slap in the face to 30-second soundbites and a media world where a 15-minute conversation is an eternity. When it was part of my job to book these interviews and explain to publicists and/or artists what we needed to happen, it was often hard to convince people that yes, we really needed them for a full hour, and that the conversation would air relatively unedited.

Admittedly, some of them are too long. But many aren't long enough, like the one with Matmos, which remains one of my favourite interviews ever: both the subject and the interviewer are completely simpatico, able to communicate avant-garde ideas with offhand dry wit and a delicious sense of discovery.

Who knows how long the BNW website will be up after the show is kaput, so I'd highly advise you to schedule some quality web radio time in the next week and a half.

Here's a partial list of interviews on the site:
Aesop Rock
Ellen Allien
Anticon (Dose One and Sole, I think)
Jello Biafra (right before the FTAA summit in Quebec)
The Books (who sampled Schmidt on one of their albums)
Boom Bip
Coil
Rhys Chatham
Billy Childish
Deadbeat
Matthew Dear
Jim DeRogatis (talking about his Lester Bangs biography)
Jason Forrest/Donna Summer
Warren Ellis (Dirty Three)
El-P
Evolution Control Committee
The Ex
Frog Eyes
G7 Welcoming Committee
Diamanda Galas
Bruce Gilbert (of Wire)
Michael Gira
John S. Hall (King Missile—this one’s hilarious)
Hrvatski
Kid606
Kid Koala (circa his graphic novel)
Felix Kubin (very funny)
Mike Ladd (Infesticons, etc)
The Locust
Ian MacKaye (Dischord anniversary compilation)
Manitoba (very early)
Matmos (one of my favourite interviews ever)
Ben McOsker (Load Records)
Mountain Goats (he plays a few songs)
Mr. Lif
The Need
Alexis O’Hara
Old Time Relijun
Prince Paul
Pole
Polmo Polpo
Sage Francis (great one)
Solvent and Lowfish (Suction Records)
Chris Ware (graphic novelist)
Wolf Eyes (pre-Sub Pop)
Xiu Xiu

Brent Bambury, 1995

Following up on the death of Brave New Waves (an update and link to a recent Patti Schmidt interview can be found here), here is a transcript from a 1995 interview I conducted with Brent Bambury for Id Magazine, a southwestern Ontario alt-weekly (bi-weekly, actually) where I was an editor (and more) for six years. The occasion was the tenth anniversary of the program, an event I don't recall being celebrated anywhere else. The show itself looked back by replaying the passing-of-the-torch episode where founding host Augusta LaPaix ceded control to Bambury.

Bambury would leave BNW within months of this interview. Patti Schmidt became the new host, and a few years after that she became its executive producer as well. Bambury moved to television to co-host Midday, a show that was cancelled in 2000--ironic, considering how BNW has flirted with death from the beginnning, and yet it outlasted the big gig that Bambury made the leap for. He spent a couple of years in the wilderness; I once saw him co-hosting a featherweight film review program on Rogers Cable. But he bounced back on CBC Radio, at one point hosting three radio programs, including the Ottawa drive show and a Saturday morning variety show called Go. The latter is now his main concern, and he's once again one of the most beloved radio hosts in the country with an entirely different demographic than the one he cultivated with BNW--though no doubt there are plenty of that show's old fans who are more in tune with Saturday mornings these days than they are the dead of weeknights.

After all these years, I still have never met Bambury, other than a fleeting, unidentified nod in the green room when my vinyl geek girlfriend was a guest on Go.

Much of this interview was later quoted in the 2001 book I co-authored, Have Not Been the Same, in the chapter detailing the importance of BNW, its weekend sister show Night Lines, campus radio and MuchMusic, and how they all facilitated a new climate for independent and creative Canadian music.

---

Brent Bambury

March 1995, Brave New Waves 10^th anniversary

Locale: phoner from the BNW office in Montreal

What what is like hearing the passing of the torch between you and Augusta LaPaix?

I remember that evening clearly. I felt awkward being here anyways, because that was really Augusta’s night and I knew that people adored Augusta. People don’t like change, and for a lot of people, I wasn’t Augusta and I don’t deny that. And of course I was a big fan too, and to pretend that I was going to take over her throne was a strange thing. The show was a lot goofier then. Remember, when we were live then, there was a sense not of structure, but of play. We were live for six hours a night, and it had a different feeling to it. The show has evolved, and so have I.

Did you really step up from the mail room?

I came in here with radio experience. My first job was at CBC in 1979, five years before this show went on the air. I was a sportscaster at a regional station. I knew how to cut tape, how to do field pieces, research and current affairs stuff. When this show was created, I happened to be working with one of the original producers before she moved on to this show; I heard about it and thought, o my god, that’s exactly what I want to do. At the time I was a university student, 23 years old. I didn’t know anyone at the network; I knew a lot of regional people. When the show was created, they brought me in a few months later to work part-time doing odd jobs, basically things like answering mail and setting up contest prizes. Eventually, on the first anniversary of the show, it was my job to put together clips from the first year. Shortly after that, they brought me in to guest host when Augusta was ill. That was the first time I was on the air in a host capacity. So in some ways, it was a bit of a cliché, but I did graduate from the mail room and I did have an ambitious streak in me when I showed up here. Because they knew that I loved the show and I loved the format, I liked the material a lot, it was my culture.

Is that why you’ve stayed for eight of the ten years?

I’ve been here for eight and a half years now, but it’s a difficult thing. There have been other opportunities presented to me that I’ve turned down to me on the CBC.

Variety shows on Friday night by any chance? [ex-Night Lines host Ralph Benmergui had recently flamed out with a much-maligned late night TV talk show on the CBC]

He-he, uh ,no. I think I know when my reach exceeds my grasp. Mostly radio opportunities, which I turned down. Partly because one of them involved moving to Vancouver, which is not so bad for some people, but if you live in Montreal it’s a difficult thing to do. If I lived in Toronto I might be more serious about it in a way. But I like living here and there’s not many jobs like this one. There isn’t another job that gives me this much freedom and that dovetails with the other interests in my life like this one does. I love radio, and I’ve done other radio programs, like I did Cross Country Checkup last month. I like doing research outside of my fields of interest, and I like being able to facilitate and allow the engagement that happens in radio with material that’s not necessarily the stuff that’s most interesting to me. In some ways it’s really easy for me to come in here and talk to comic book artists, novelists and filmmakers – because it’s stuff that I would talk about anyway. This isn’t far away from stuff I’d be interested in discussing with you or with someone I pick up in a bar or whatever. These are things that interest me and that go on in my life.

Are you surprised at the longevity of the program in the face of cutbacks?

I really am. It’s been a battle, too, it’s not been easy. Over the years we’ve had enemies – we continue to have enemies in high places. It’s not like the show is everybody’s cup of tea, especially at the managerial level. A lot of people just don’t understand what we’re doing. A lot of people have no idea that it’s not just a punk rock show. That’s fine. We still like to come on like a punk rock show in the first 40 minutes of the show. And by punk, I don’t mean strict, 1977 school, but music that sits outside the accepted commercial standards of even alternative music. Something that’s outside of whatever might be the mainstream. People think that we’re so defiantly in-your-face that there’s just no way they can connect with us, and in some ways that’s the image we like to keep in the first part of the program because I think it works and we don’t want to mess with it. But on the other hand, it makes us enemies. If people could get past that and listen to the whole show, they’d see the context. People have come to us from management and said, ‘Why don’t you just soften the first part?’ We go, ‘Yeah, well, we could, but why would we? It works!’ We don’t want to program for management. There have been a few times when the show could really have disappeared quite easily. There have been times when we’ve had fewer friends in high places than now.

What do you consider the mandate of the show? You mentioned on the anniversary special “explaining fringe culture to a comfortable mainstream audience.”

Yeah, but I don’t think our audience is mainstream. I think it’s out there, or at least adventurous. I think it’s more about making fringe culture more available, rather than explaining it. And what is fringe-y to people in a small town might be more familiar to those who live in urban areas. But for a lot of people who listen to us, we’re the only contact with things that go beyond whatever’s on the alternative hour on MuchMusic. A lot of places don’t have campus stations; a lot of places have bad campus stations. A lot of places have really good campus stations, though, and they give us a run for our money, and that’s fine. I learn a lot from listening to the local one here, CKUT.

Have you met campus radio folk who consider you competition?

Oh yeah. A lot of campus radio folk hate our guts, and I don’t blame them. I would if I was in their place, because we get paid to do what we do. We’re professionals and a lot of them are volunteers who work really hard at being volunteers. Sometimes they do shows that are better than ours. But I think we represent a standard for campus radio, and the best campus programs can exceed that standard, and other ones can reach for it. Basically, we’re paid to know what we know, and we had better be good at it. I think we are. I certainly don’t feel guilty when I take my cheque home!

How big is your research department?

There are two people who do music research for the show full-time. Every night they program four hours of music, and they program it, put it together, make sure it fits together with what we’re talking about, and they research it. All the information comes from them. I carry around some aspect of the information we talk about, because I have to put it into context and make it flow from night to night. And a lot of it is music that I listen to, but I’m not a statistician. I’m not the kind of person who can tell you how many albums Seam have. I try to make the information relevant.

How do you stay on your toes interviewing a diverse range of guests?
That I find easy. I love talking to people. For me it’s a real pleasure to read a book or see a movie and think, wow, that was great, let’s get the person on the show. Usually it’s not a problem. But one of the problems is talking about music, because music is difficult to talk about. A lot of kids, especially in young bands, don’t understand what an interview is for. They’re faced with me, I’m faced with them, and we kind of look at each other. A lot of time I want to take them aside and say, ‘Look, now this is not about you being really bright or anything, this is about getting people to remember your name and buy your record, so be as outrageous and funny as possible! But if you give us attitude, no one is going to notice.’ It’s part of our mandate to expose new music and Canadian music, and we’re somewhat stuck with that. It’s my least favourite thing to do if people don’t want to talk. But on the other hand, when they’re engaging and fun, it’s great to see these kids having a great time with their life and doing what they most want to do.

Do you often find yourself faced with someone who has nothing to say?

You want to know who was a classic bad interview?

Andrew Eldridge? [of the Sisters of Mercy, a legendary grump and one of my favourite awkward BNW moments from high school]
I liked Andrew, actually! I had a good time with him. He was surly as hell, but I could see that for him it was some kind of intellectual game, so I just gave it back to him. No, for me it was Yo La Tengo. I think they don’t want to give up anything about what they’re doing, like it will all unravel if they talk about it too much. If you get Thurston Moore, who’s also a really bad and jerky interview, if you know real technical stuff about music, then you can engage him on that level, but it’s so boring to listen to! It’s like a Guitar magazine interview: what kind of strings do you use, what were you tuned to. It’s like talking to a mechanic about how they souped up their Camaro, I mean, who gives a shit?

Has the mandate of the show changed with alternative culture’s assimilation into the mainstream? Has it become tougher to program the show?

No, because what happened with the assimilation of alternative culture, I find, is two things. One thing is that the compact disc created a mini-rebellion. It didn’t kill vinyl, it brought it back. Small independent units started producing their own vinyl 7” singles and making them available and putting stuff on them that’s just so outrageous that there’s just no way it could be assimilated into corporate alternative culture. The second thing is that it encouraged people to do things themselves. Nirvana is a punk band, basically, and what they did is make people believe that they could do it themselves. There’s a do-it-yourself ethic in music making, not just in music merchandising, but in music making. People are making things that are far more in-your-face and do-it-yourself now than it was five or six years ago, when I think music was a lot less interesting. That’s another thing about being here for eight and a half years, is that there are definitely good periods and bad periods for music. I think we’re in a really good time right now and there’s a lot of great indie stuff happening, stuff that’s really out there and challenging.

How do react to the loyalty of a lot of BNW listeners? Is it a bit unnerving at times?

It’s really flattering. Radio is a great medium for fans. They don’t know what you look like.

What do people tell you after they see you on Midday?

Oh, I know. They say, ‘I can’t believe you look so NORMAL!’ But I’ve been recognized by my voice, which is strange, people say, ‘Oh my god, are you Brent Bambury?’ That happened to me in New York of all places. But the fact that people like the show, because it’s on at such an odd hour, we strive to be eclectic to the point of being absurd. It does mean that the people who listen to it are a really special breed. When people tell me that they’re a really big fan and I find out they’re talking about radio and not television, I always feel so much kinder towards them, so much better about it.

What about the effect of people’s subconscious as they fall asleep to the radio?

Ohhhh, no, not really. It’s not something I think about. People say, ‘Oh man, my dreams are really strange coz I fell asleep with the headphones on.’

What kind of negative lettters do you get?

I think the CBC mandate requires that you respond to these letters. We got into hot water a lot and we’re still in hot water, over a couple of things that we broadcast recently. In some ways I think we’re not doing our job if we don’t do that. We have to put things out there and then we have to be prepared to defend them. I think if we’re not defining the extremes, then we’d be getting no letters, but the fact that we are means that we get them all the time. Right now we’re doing an interview with Todd Phillips, who made a documentary about the life of G.G. Allin. We’re not on safe ground right now, and I don’t know what the consequences will be.

Why couldn’t this program happen in America and why didn’t it?

It did for a bit. We were on National Public Radio in Philadelphia, on WXPN. It was delayed in starting there, because they needed some insurance attached to the agreement. They needed to spend money to buy insurance in the event that they might be sued, because the FCC guidelines in the U.S. are much stricter than the CRTC guidelines. It’s a very litigious society, and people have been successfully sued over odd things that have been broadcast. And WXPN, being a public station, needed to work out some kind of insurance deal with the lawyers here. We had a very complicated legal agreement that they put into place before they could take us. They took us for a year and a half, and then the station opted out of National Public Radio, who supplied the lawyers for the legal agreement in the first place, and they became an independent public station, like a college station, and they could no longer afford the legal advice. That’s why we were dropped. We got a lot of letters from Philadelphia listeners who were really disappointed.

Did you find the whole episode strange, or is it easy to be smug?
We got a lot of publicity about it. It was great having that audience in Philly. We got a lot of black fans out of it too, which was interesting, because at that time there was a lot of great hip-hop happening; this was ‘89-’90, which was the peak of a lot of great hip-hop, and we were playing it. It was a good experiment for us. Somebody told me that the NPR station in Washington was playing excerpts from our program. So it’s still out there and and still having an effect in the U.S. and I’m sure they think it’s a very strange show.

What have been some of the better or worse moments in the last ten years?

That’s a tough one. (polls the office). I did an interview with Arto Lindsay which has to be one of the worst ones we ever did. He was not forthcoming and it was awkward. We did a panel at McGill on the theme of diaries. People brought in their diaries, and talked about why they keep them and they read from them. It was electrifying, actually, that was interesting. It was nice because we went out into the public, and people really wanted to see us. The same was true in Winnipeg, where we did a panel on cyberspace. Those were both this past fall. There was a really positive reaction to it. It validates what we do, it makes me think that people want to hear this because they’ll come and see it live. David Wisdom was talking about a show he did out of Windsor one weekend, from a bar, and he said, ‘People came to see me! It must have been the embarrassingly boring thing in the world to see live!’ And in many ways it is, but people just wanted to see Dave. I have to imagine our audience every night. Some nights it’s easy, and sometimes it’s not.

Who have you always wanted to interview?
Elvis Costello, because I think he’d be difficult. I think he’s a brilliant guy and would be a wonderful interview. For years I wanted to interview David Byrne, but then I lost interest in him.

Who was your first big one that you had trouble drooling through?
I don’t know. Maybe Laurie Anderson. I’ve done Sonic Youth twice, and neither of them was a picnic. I don’t tend to think about people as, ‘O my god, this person is a huge star.’ One of my fill-in hosts talked to Anthony Hopkins right after Silence of the Lambs; that would have been fun.

Do you feel the audience has grown over the years?
I have no idea. I’m still amazed that we’ve been on the air for ten years and so many people have never heard of us. We’re still pretty obscure. We’re still a best-kept secret. And that’s okay, I’m not in this for glory.

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