RadioActive wrote:

We all know about CFNY and how it helped spread the word about Canada’s Rush by playing the band’s music here. But there was an American station credited with introducing Geddy Lee & Co. into the U.S. And it’s hard to say how far they might have gone without that helping hand down south.
 
It started when an announcer named Donna Halper discovered the song “Working Man” at “The Buzzard,” WMMS, Cleveland in the 1970s.
 
“We were always looking for bathroom songs, meaning if you needed to answer the call of nature, the record wouldn’t run out. I get something from Canada and think ‘This is a perfect record for Cleveland.’ Back then, it was a factory town. The song ‘Working Man’, every single person felt like that. I put it on, the phone lines light up: ‘When’s the new Led Zeppelin album coming out?’ Nope, not a new Led Zeppelin album. [It’s a] Canadian band, Rush.”
 
The American radio station that helped launch Rush

Being a stickler for facts and in that sense the truth. I have to state that although the song Spirit of Radio was inspired by CFNY. Rush was not heavily played on the station. I have pointed this out before but the year that the song came out Rush was not even listed in the top 100 by CFNY. They were more likely to get airplay on CHUM FM and Q 107.


 

RadioActive wrote:

All I can say is that CFNY must have meant something to Rush, because they didn't record any songs about Q107 or CHUM-FM! But I appreciate seeing that list.

Yes the station meant something to Rush but that does not equate to the station giving them a lot of airplay or spreading the word about them. I believe that is just revisionism because of the name of the Rush song. 

There's tons of NY air checks online and one would be hard pressed to find Rush on them. You have to remember CFNY was the alternative to the mainstream. I'm almost certain that if we had access to the play logs of CHUM FM, Q 107 and CFNY from 1977 to 1981. Q 107 and CHUM FM would beat CFNY in terms of air play for Rush just as CFNY would beat the other two stations in playing Cockney Rebel, Sparks and Joy Division. Rush was mainstream by the late 70's. The Demics and Diodes were not.

 

Dale Patterson wrote:

I'd love to find just one aircheck of CKFH's The Whole Bag/Open Lid. show 

Alas Dale, this is all I could find, the only evidence it existed. Keith Elshaw, by the way, would later turn up on CFTR as "Steve Young."

I wasn't listening to CHUM-FM in 1973/74 and so I don't know if they, or Marsden specifically, might have been the first to play Rush locally ... it certainly wouldn't surprise me. But for what it's worth, the first that I heard Rush on the radio was when "In The Mood" from their first album got airplay on CKOC. It was released as a single in December 1974, so that means that they would have been playing it by early 1975.

Last edited by Lorne (February 22, 2026 3:53 pm)

Dale Patterson wrote:

I'd love to find just one aircheck of CKFH's The Whole Bag/Open Lid. show  

I had completely forgotten about a previous thread here about The Open Lid, complete with a great ad reproduced by one of our posters. It even led to comments from the late, great John Donabie, who worked there at the time and left us way too soon. 

You can revisit those posts here.

Here is more Keith Elshaw and the Open Lid. Terry Gleecoff succeeded Keith Elshaw and he later was a host of the two hour prog show that was on CJRT in the early 70's. Used to run 4 to 6 PM I think following Folk Music and Folkways. Wilder Penfield may have also hosted that.  Would be fantastic to hear an air check of that as well. As far as prog on GTA and area stations at the time. There was CHUM FM, The Open Lid, Brian Master had a Saturday show on CHSC FM and Trent Radio dabbled in it a bit.

Keith Elshaw was also at CFNY and later Q 107. My favorite memory of him at CFNY is him playing Jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton as Jazz had been eliminated on the regular playlist of CHUM FM by then. 

BTW Lorne since I was more of an FM fan by the time and I did not realize that Rush was played on CKOC that early.



 

bbqguy1962 wrote:

Outside of the Stones album that worst list is pretty spot on.

I think the mission with those lists was an anti mainstream success or mainstream vibe sentiment. I have the 1978 list as well and if I recall correctly The Cars, Stones and Genesis were listed in the best category that year and not the worst.