Rant & Dawdle A Collection of Writing, Photography & Music

On The Radio
Some Other Stuff CKLN – Summer 1986

Easter 2015, spending time with one-year old grandson Oliver, sitting in my lap he became fascinated by a cassette box. It was at this point I realised that he had no idea what it was, just a toy to be pulled apart. Deconstructed. Another device from my past heading for oblivion. Soon to be resurrected by the ultra-hip – rappers and such.

In my workshop there’s a cassette filing system with hundreds of tapes, among them recordings long out-of-print, personal messages from friends and much of the live music performed by bands I’ve been associated with. Searching through these boxes has produced a few gems, one such item being a radio broadcast from the summer of 1986 from CKLN-FM Radio in Toronto, an important courier of interesting music rarely heard on Toronto radio. 88.1 on the far left of the radio band. A station where I broadcast, starting in 1983, a show titled Some Other Stuff for 90 minutes once a week. It was followed by an all-nighter called “Live Dead Orgy”. The DJ played entire live concerts of the Grateful Dead or Jerry Garcia. CKLN-FM was taken off the air by the CRTC in April 2011, depriving the creative artists of Toronto a much needed voice. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CKLN-FM]

The “studio” was in the bowels of Ryerson Polytechnic Institute and attracted a variety of interesting dee-jays, all with a personal message to impart. There were also numerous adventures that occurred with friends, many being musicians, some who joined me, others phoning in.

One of the recollected stories is about the weather, the state of which would arrive on a ticker-tape to be announced into the program. The studio was in a windowless basement, and often friends, regular listeners who were aware of the situation, would phone in to point out that the weather was not at all what I had been instructed to broadcast, suggesting, with droll humour, that I should look out of one of the non-existent windows. One of them gave me a brightly coloured picture, cut from a glossy magazine, of a window looking out onto a sunlit wheat field – somewhere in the prairies – to be attached with sticky tape to the dirty green-coloured wall of the broadcasting booth.

Program:
1. Signature [Up A Love Song For Captain Robot] New Art Music Ensemble
2 & 3 – Shuffle Demons [Streetniks?]
4 – Bill Frisell & Tim Berne [theoretically]
5 – Ornette with Pat Metheny [Song X]
6 – Ray Anderson, Mark Helias, Gerry Hemmingway [OAHSPE]
7 – Spencer Barefield, Tani Tabbal, Anthony Holland – [Live at Nickelsdorf Konfrontationen]
8. Anthony Braxton – Robert Schumann String Quartet [Same Title]

End Notes:?
The tape runs out seconds before the ending so the dulcet tones of my sign-off are not heard. Pity!!
Residents of Hornby Island will know that I have continued to use the signature “Some Other Stuff” on Hornby Island Radio • CHFR-FM 96.5

Click on the picture then click again to see image full-size.
Comments are welcome: classicimprov@yahoo.ca
Please pass this post along to your friends.
To Subscribe to my website please go to the left of the heading on this page and enter your E-mail address, then click the Sign Up Button. An e-mail is then sent to your the E-mail address instructing you as to the next step. To prove you are not a robot being one of the checks!