NW wrote:

I guess CFNY or CIND can retaliate by not playing The Violent Femmes' "Blister In The Sun" for the next 2 weeks.  And Q107 can stop playing Steve Miller.

It would be hard to argue against Steve Miller's legit midwest cred, however his fame and notoriety is clearly associated with San Francisco.

Violent Femmes and Gordon Gano are as Milwaukee as Laverne and Shirley, and, well...the subject of one of their hit songs, Jeffrey Dahmer.

There is this guy Jeff who calls in so often to Newstalk 1010 that they decided to put him on a panel and he is on the Jerry Agar show this morning in the first hour. They did not identify his profession or anything, simply said that he calls so much that he earned a spot.

No Johnny and Conrad today. Alex Pierson is sitting in.

barilko05 wrote:

zed wrote:

Gordon Lightfoot is a humble man and after a 90 minute concert when I had the chance to speak with him for a minute I said, I was hoping to hear Black Day in July. His response, a classic "can't do them all".  

I seem to recall an interview some years ago where he was asked about playing the song live, and doesn't anymore  because he doesn't want to bring politics into a show where people are supposed to be enjoying music and having a good time.  Or it may have been because it was a specific song for a specific time and he doesn't want to relive that particular era anymore.  Perhaps he has changed his mind.  Anyone recall him playing it live recently?

Well good for Gord, who has clearly more than earned the right to pick and choose, and I for one will always be standing at the door to any show of his "with a dollar in my hand".

But in all the years and number of times I have paid to park my bum in a seat for a few hours of his mastery and majesty, I have also never had the pleasure of hearing him bust this tune out, which nonetheless remains one of my favourites and I think one of his cleverest lyrics. And it is a shame because I actually think this song does the opposite of bringing politics into something where it does not belong, it humanises and even depoliticises the events it describes. It is an excellent example of how to to tell a story without making it about you.

Holzhauer is the real deal, and he has turned Jeopardy on its head with an almost unbeatable combination of skill (i.e. knowledge), celerity, and strategy. He is a professional gambler from Vegas and what is more amazing than how well he is doing, is why it took 35 or whatever years for someone to adopt his indisputably superior approach.

I don't think you can even say that Black Day in July really has much in the way of political undertones or overtones, at least not the majority of the lyric which really just tells the story pretty straight up without taking sides really.

In the final verse he makes a case/plea sort of like a why can't we all just get along à la Rodney King, and a mild stab at hanging the blame on wealth inequality, neither of which he ties to the 12th Street riot really and neither of which come anywhere close to the many, far more overtly political songs floating across the airwaves in the late sixties.

I suppose it is hard to compare how it reads now to how it was viewed then however. Although that contemporary CBC radio interview posted above helps.

g121 wrote:

i heard that Christine Elliot interview this morning.  my opinion of her dropped significantly with the BS she was spewing (& suspect John was feeling the same).  She was trying to play up a $15M seniors health program .. $15M for the hundreds of thousands of seniors in Toronto.  any help is good but don't dramatically overstate the impact.  and Tory has confirmed, yet again, Ford & company are doing stuff impacting the city with zero consultation with the city.  Ford continues to give Toronto the "middle finger".
 

I am not sure why you are trying to turn this into a debate about the politics as that is clearly off topic for this forum. I was only referring to his demeanour. He conducted the interview like a smug know-it-all and like I said even let out one or two dejected sighs and frustrated little grunty interjections. This is not how people fresh from learning mindfulness and clearing their life of negativity conduct conversations with anyone about anything, regardless of whether such people are radio hosts and when their interlocutor is talking what they clearly believe to be shite. A mindful approach would maintain a steady blood pressure and resemble much more letting the person spew their shite and calmly lay it out there on the table for his audience to smell.

The fact that you managed to turn a discussion about demeanor into a rant of your own about the public health etc. on here suggests to me that perhaps your opinion is preventing you from looking at his demeanor objectively.

He has demonstrated some of the same apoplexy during some of the round tables even when he was with a friendly panel where they all pretty much agreed. You could almost hear him rolling his eyes as he smugly condescended on the opinions of people not in the conversation. This is not how someone fresh from a rejuvenating break taking up meditation and mindfulness reacts to ideas they do not like or support. This is how someone who needs such a tune up r

g121 wrote:

Remember when John was just the fluff entertainment guy .. 

John has grown leaps & bounds and, in my view, now sits at the top of Toronto radio hosts.

A true professional.

Have you listened to the new John Moore since he came back?

I actually think he has gotten a lot worse. He keeps ranting from his high horse about how much he hates Twitter - he sounds like that guy you know who does not watch TV or does not lock his door or does not eat meat and cannot stop sanctimoniously telling you about it.

And as for his new perspective and meditation app and whatever - how does that explain him smugly sighing and gasping in frustration while interviewing Christine Elliot about the Toronto Health cuts. He sounded like someone who was frustrated and burnt out frankly like someone who could use a leave of absence, not someone who just returned from one with a whole new lease on life.

John's politics are not my cup of tea but I was able to tolerate the pre-breakdown John Moore because he really was somewhat level-headed about it. So far John 2.0 is a huge dud and if anything was tweaked it was in the wrong direction toward deranged and ranting rather than more stable. He is clearly not doing the meditation right and needs a new guru or a new mantra or both.

Chrisphen wrote:

I had 1010 on for a bit today on the drive home and couldn't help but notice that the top-of-the-hour news was injected with a beyond generous amount of editorialising. There was the Doug Ford feltching (expected since he is a former station asset), but I was most surprised by their take on the Sidewalk Labs - CCLU lawsuit - it was being framed as a fun new money-making innovation being menaced by spoilsport lawyers. Does Bell have money in Sidewalk Labs?

Was the top of that hour 6:00 pm? I have noticed lately that when Dave McKee does the 6:00 o'clock news, it is drawn out several minutes longer than usual and he engages with the hosts of the Rush (who were fill-ins last week). He does not hold back and his rants are well over the top and IMHO often of dubious intellectual value - calling people idiots, etc. It is the kind of commentary which reveals more about the immaturity of the commentator than anything about the subjects.

Chrisphen wrote:

milton wrote:

It is precisely the bad ideas which need to be exposed to sunlight and scrutiny.

Her (and her pals') 'ideas' have been well scrutinised 75 years ago. The findings were definitive and made at the cost of many millions of lives. You may have known a participant or two. Spare me the high-minded horsepuckey.

Exactly. And they did not go away. And nor will they ever. Outlawing them not only make thought a crime but it creates a false sense of security for those who would rightly be disturbed by them.

milton wrote:

Charlie wrote:

Male or female matters not.  Intelligence, intuition and reason matter most, and not saying 'Y'know' every 5 seconds helps, too.  That narrows down the competition.

Agreed. That unfortunately rules out several voices currently on the waves.

If you are only talking the timbre of their sound and not the timber of their ideas, I nominate these ladies and gentlemen:

Peter Gzowski
Joe Côté
Mark Daly (OK he was TV but still, that voice)
Mark Elliott
Avril Benoît
Mary Hines
Nora Young
John Moore
Steve Anthony

I guess it is just too whimsical but I really wish I could put Lou Schizas and Cam Stewart on this list because I could listen to either one of them all day long talking about absolutely any subject under the sun. They both had such fabulous voices and inimitable, nonchalant, deadpan, hilarious delivery. The five minutes at the end of Oakley on a Friday with the two of them was the best five minutes of radio in any given week.

 

shit, how could I forget Peter Shurman. One of the greatest throats to grace our waves as long as I can remember.

It is tempting to compile a worst list as well, but that would be mean-spirited. And the honourees could be lurking on this board. But the list would be a long one.

Mr magoogain wrote:

RadioActive wrote:

My mother is 96 now and suffers from dementia. I served for a while as her primary caregiver and I can tell you despite all my years in broadcasting, I've never known stress and suffering quite like that.

I don't know what John Moore is going through but I can tell you it's not easy. So whatever the truth is here, I'd cut him some slack.

 
Agreed

It cannot be easy and yes he deserves not only some slack but sympathy. John does not invite the audience into his family the way his predecessor Bill Carroll did, but he has been frank about his struggles with his father and the latter's situation, and John's struggles therewith are something he has drawn his listeners attention to many times, particularly recently.

Best wishes John

I listened to the last hour or so this morning and Dave Trafford did not AFAIK mention anything about who would be in the chair on Monday. John Moore has been gone two weeks less a day now, unannounced. Odd.

RadioActive wrote:

The only real difference is that, in a world where simultaneous substitution normally rules, Canadian cable and satellite viewers will actually have a choice about which channel to watch. (It's never been an issue for those with over-the-air antennas.)

In fact in the HDTV age, it remains an issue in Toronto as it can be difficult to pick up the Buffalo signals reliably, particularly NBC (WGRZ-2) and ABC (WKBW-7) whose transmitters are located south of downtown Buffalo, putting them 80+ miles distant, close to the practical limit of range for viewers in Toronto.

Fortunately the Super Bowl is on CBS this year, which recently relocated the WIVB-4 transmission to a facility on Grand Island, many miles closer to viewers across the north shore of Lake Ontario.
 

Aytononline wrote:

I don't see how this will kill the CFL. There are no Canadian Teams and as noted in the last paragraph. The first XFL only lasted one season. So I don't have very much hope that the new XFL will last very long.

I think his point was not that it will suck up the CFL's audience, but that it will sap the CFL's talent pool, i.e. second-tier and/or a little-too-small but talented American players who turn to the CFL when they do not make the cut in the NFL.