Because I’m friends with Ritchie Yorke, knew John Brower when he and Kenny 
Walker programmed this city’s music scene, and was fortunate enough to have attended the Toronto Rock ‘n’ Roll Revival, I tuned in to U of T’s CIUT-FM on Sunday to listen to the four-hour retrospective on the incredible musical event that put Gene Vincent, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Doors, Chicago Transit Authority, Screaming Lord Sutch and the Plastic Ono Band on stage on one day in one place.
I am vague on details but remember it was a fantastic day of music and doubly so as I was fortunate enough to be able to stroll unrestricted with a backstage pass, back in the day when a backstage pass actually allowed one to mingle with the acts and the media were treated with respect.
The CIUT broadcast was rough hewn, mixing in-studio interviews with interviews conducted over the phone, in-concert performance tapes taken from the actual event with several in-studio performances by Canadian acts that were either on stage that day on Sept. 13, 1969 or peripherally involved through connections to Brower or Walker. The broadcast was anything but high-gloss, seamless or of syndication quality – but none-the-less for me it proved to be compelling radio.
I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that it would be refreshing to hear a morning drive announcer sounding like the morning after the night before, like Kristofferson singing “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” I’d like to hear just once some crusty voice not sounding chipper, dispensing with the fake laughter, the inane banter and syndicated schlock-copy used to fill the seconds between the commercial spots, news and road reports. I’d like to hear someone just tell it like it is and cut the gloss. To some extent Andy Barrie fills the hole in Toronto, but generally speaking morning drives are padded with zoos and teams that just come off sounding false and out of sync with how most of us feel in the early hour scramble from the bathroom to the breakfast table to the office.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s no shortage of talent and intelligence sitting in studios across this city, across this country–but the restrictive formats, insensitive owners scared witless of deviating from the norm, whatever that norm is supposed to be, ensures the talent remains largely confined to old-style gags, and forced to emote a facade of up-beat enthusiasm. What invariably comes across is a sense that these teams are forced to replace self-assuredness and their own unique personalities with false bravado, innuendo and sarcasm.
The CIUT broadcast was anything but any of the above, and it brought home to me the fact that event radio is long overdue for a comeback. This is the stuff that Dave Marsden, Warren Cosford, Doug Thompson, Alan Lysaght and others did so well. If my comments rub the wrong way in Radioland, believe me the generalizations are just that. I have enormous respect for many of the voices that have had the good fortune to remain on the job, but I’m also a listener who remembers when radio was more about content and listener satisfaction than skewing to a demo and back-slapping the almighty dollar. It was a profession that attracted inquiring minds, comedic talent, music aficionados and round pegs that failed to fit in to square holes.
That’s my view. Take it or leave it. And congratualitons to the CIUT team for four hours of listening pleasure, wonky as it was a lot of the time.
David Farrell
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