What was CKOC playing then?

paterson1 wrote:

CHML may have veered with less rock for their oldies and played a little more MOR gold. Judging by the sound of the jingles, they don't really have a strong rock and roll sound to them.  Don't recall ML ever playing anything heavy like Led Zepplin or Deep Purple, like CKOC might have played.  

That was quite true. I worked at CHML during that period and they definitely didn't rock like CKOC did with their oldies format. Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple (unless you want to count Nino Tempo and April Stevens) were definitely not part of the playlist.

It's interesting too, even certain artists that were played on 'ML at the time had certain hits that weren't allowable, because they were considered too hard at the time, sometimes even their biggest and most recognizable hits. For example, "American Woman" by The Guess Who was a no-go, but we played plenty of other stuff like "Undun", "Sour Suite" and "No Time". The Rolling Stones only had two songs that showed up in regular rotation: "Ruby Tuesday" and "As Tears Go By". "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" didn't make the cut (although it probably came up plenty of times on John Hardy's "Mouldy Goldy and Hardy" show). Even "Angie" didn't pass the acid test. Even though it's a soft song, I suspect it's because Mick's voice is kind of edgy-sounding compared to "Tears" and "Ruby Tuesday". The oldies portion of the format started sometime around mid-1990 (I think it was over the Victoria Day or Canada Day weekend, I can't recall which). Danny Kingsbury was the program director at time, Bill Kelly was the music director. I remember the format actually did rock at first, because I was a young 'un in the production department doing clean up, which partially consisted of putting music and commercials on carts. (Remember those?) Some of the stuff I carted up at the time included Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl" and "Southern Man" (which both disappeared pretty quick) and Steppenwolf's "Sookie Sookie" (which also disappeared pretty quick. Danny had listed "The Pusher" as one of the songs to be carted up. The only reason it didn't make the grade was because we didn't have a long enough cart to put it on!) I recall Bill saying that Danny listened all weekend and decided that the format "needed some work", and thus, the aforementioned tunes got purged pretty quick! 

And yes, the oldies weren't 24/7. News, talk and sports made up a good bulk of the format too, making it what most people would refer to as a "Full-service" station. Bob Bratina's "Brat Pack" was fairly music-intensive (when he felt like it!) and so was Bill Kelly's afternoon drive show. I started doing overnights in 1991 as did Ron Funnell, and CHML had its first standalone overnight show (in a long time,at least) that wasn't simulcast with CKDS, which was on its way to morphing into Classic Rock Y95.

Regrettably, I don't have any airchecks from that time, because, as most of you know, it was common practice to record over your airchecks and keep the most recent ones for posterity (or job hunting). If somebody's got any of me, I'd love to hear them. I'd like to hear if I'm as good (or as brutal) as I remember!  


PJ 

CHML was never a Top 40 station, but in the late 50's they did have a "Top 40" show on weekdays from 4 -6PM and again from 7-8PM as well as Saturday mornings. They also had a Top 40 chart, although I never saw it published, which, as I recall, was compiled from weekly sales information provided by eight Hamilton  record stores.