CKLW: The Big 8

I can’t even remember how many times I have tried to recount to people what it was like growing up in Windsor in the 60s and 70s. I admit to major nostalgia, and have set the novel I am perpetually revising there, in that period.
Part of my explanation always has to do with the music. How to describe to others what it was like, how I was positive our experience was different from elsewhere. Who else can name “What Does It Take” (Jr. Walker and the All Stars) and “Rainy Night In Georgia” (Brooke Benton) as their favourite songs from elementary school? I mean really.
Well folks, finally I have a full and complete answer. I just bought and watched RADIO REVOLUTION: The Rise and Fall of The Big 8. No wonder I was having trouble. It took writer/director Michael McNamara 72 minutes to do justice to Windsor in the era I grew up in. (To buy it, and I strongly recommend this – go here http://radiorevolutiondvd.com/ )
The documentary is a Gemini winner, fast-paced and full of amazing background on the radio station and the songs that we were glued to… We would have said 24/7 if the expression had existed.
At the same time, I was totally unprepared for the factual side of the film – the immense musical, cultural and news achievements of the station. OK it was important to us, but I just had no idea about the huge role that the station played in both Windsor and Detroit. Any viewers will recognize the huge names of Canadian media, who started out in the border city, at CKLW.
In our world of Grade 7 and 8, we were obsessed with music. Artists from Detroit and Memphis and elsewhere in Canada and the States, but really it was the Motown r’n’b tunes that were the soundtrack to our lives. Little did we know that CKLW was itself responsible for making these songs hits across most of the northeastern States. We just knew which ones we were in love with.
The mom of our friend Pam worked for a Detroit radio station which, having seen the movie, I believe must have been “Keener.” One day Pam showed up with tear-off pads of Keener’s Top 30 listings, and before long we were collecting the weekly Keener charts, the CKLW charts and charts put out by CHYR in Leamington.
We all listened to this music primarily on transistor radios. In the fashion of the day, many of the girls had long, straight hair. Our friend Geri’s sister, in Grade 8, could weave the earphone up through her hair and listen in class. I even remember that her favourite song was “Chain, Chain, Chain” (Aretha Franklin). And I still remember the first time I heard “These Eyes” (The Guess Who). On the radio, being driven to a city-wide mass band rehearsal one Saturday morning, jammed into the back seat of some parent’s car with four or five other girls. I learned in Radio Revolution that airtime on CKLW was a major reason the song became such a massive international hit.
Now, the reason I know Windsor music was different from elsewhere stems from our family camping trips. Four kids, Ford Falcon, tent trailer and cat. As the oldest, I went on three: Grade 9, around Ontario, Grade 10, west coast, Grade 11, east coast. Then mercifully I entered the work world and stayed home. On our travels, my sister and I were appalled. There was nothing to listen to from Windsor to Vancouver and back again. We discovered that three songs were in constant rotation in Canada: Close To You (The Carpenters), Snowbird (Anne Murray) and Sweet City Woman (The Stampeders). We actually stopped replacing the batteries in our radios during these trips.
Then we got to Calgary and our cousins were playing Carole King’s “Tapestry.” And the BeeGees. Honestly we had never heard of either one, but ended up liking them anyway. The cousins had never heard of any of the groups we liked.
In one final music memory, Alice Cooper played our high school gym about six months before “Eighteen” became a hit, via CKLW. The band wrecked the boys’ changing room. And we never went because the school grapevine said he was going to bite the head off a live chicken.

All Hits, All The Time

Last weekend driving home from the airport I was happy happy happy for two reasons, first of all because I was back on the ground and driving in the middle lane of the 400, instead of in a plane 42127 feet high going 407 km an hour, and second of all I was listening to signals from the immense universe of Toronto-and-area commercial radio. I love commercial radio – unlike most of the rest of the civilized population, at least to hear them talk.
I found this station called the Giant. What exactly is wrong with all the greatest hits all the time? Most of the commercials aren’t that bad anyway, and if I got one I didn’t like, well, the next song was only a push of the seek button away. Hey, who said adults can’t be hyper and have a short attention span? Who do you think created the Much Music Generation?
Every time the CBC gets too precious, giddy or arcane ( read: boring people talking or unfunny humour) I just mutter with a shake of the head, “Our tax dollars at work.”
I have such great memories of AM radio while growing up. How did the hits become greatest hits? Because we listened to them day and night until the batteries in the transistor radio gave out. Then 15 years later in Toronto, the same thing. When my son was in middle school, there was AM640, which in those days had a great pop hits format and a dinner-hour countdown that we rarely missed. We heard Salt n Pepa talkin’ about sex, Corey Hart, Dream Warriors, Milli Vanilli, LL Cool J, and more (know what his initial stand for?).
But then, cruising north and by now on Highway 11, I started listening to Vinyl Tap. Randy Bachman, a genuine greatest hitmaker, had the most amazing show. It was called, “From Demo to Hit,” and looked at the history of several big songs and how they had evolved. There was Hound Dog, performed by two black blues singers before The King got to it. He also had a recording of The Beatles at a lunch break talking over Paul McCartney who was at the piano figuring out The Long and Winding Road. This brought tears to both Bachman and me. There was a story about the writing of These Eyes featuring Burton Cummings’ granny. And to top it all off, a version of These Eyes by my all time favourite Motown group, Junior Walker and The All Stars. I was forced to reconsider the use of my tax dollars to support public radio.
OK, I’ll give you your Shelagh Rogers and your Quarks, just give me my DNTO and Vinyl Tap…** Ladies Love Cool James

Fast Wizard

We are trying to do the impossible, prepare our mini pit-orchestra for a full musical presentation in six weeks. Our first rehearsal is this coming Wednesday evening for The Wizard of Oz. Thursday May 14 is opening night. For other shows we have started in January, taking a small break to practice for the Sprucedale Variety Night in February, and then going right back at it. The only saving grace may be that the score is short, and much easier than Rogers and Hammerstein’s music. My clarinet part is only 31 pages, compared to 70-80 in the past. And there is the usual repetition of themes and reprises, so not too, too much to learn.
The group consists of keyboard, two clarinets, a flute, trumpet, alto, guitar, bass, hopefully violin, and percussion.
Our conductor will be back from Australia on April 30. Yikes.
But technology has helped a lot. I didn’t want to impose on Greg’s family time Down Under but now I am glad I did. Within a few messages we were able to sort out a lot of conflict over instrumentation and personnel, get our parts, and plan our rehearsals. Now, Ruth is going to email for instructions on how to convert the trombone part to alto, something she’s done in the past and just needs a reminder about. Technology really has helped get us to this point, and we’re hopeful that we’ll be off to see you-know-who by early May.

Fine Line

We recently went to the local Hotel to hear Fine Line. It’s a great night out. Two kilometres from home, in a hamlet that has houses, a general store, post office, gas station and convenience store, and the venerable hotel. It looks like a large square house from the outside and the interior is small and home-like as well. The windows can unlatch and be raised in the summer, and have heavy dark wooden trim. There’s a dining room to the right of the centre front door, but you can’t get to it without walking in past the pool table and turning at the bar. The main room has four booths down the far wall and three rows of tables where you sit cafeteria style facing the front towards the band. The tiny stage occupies one corner and holds a drum kit safely back in its angle, several mic stands, and two guitarists out front, being careful not to pitch out onto the dance floor. Various amps and monitors are stacked on the floor, along the walls and edged in amongst the musicians. Two large windows take up most of the stage’s wall space. Above one is a narrow pixel-board on a short loop advertising the bands that will play on the upcoming Saturdays. Above the other they’ve mounted a deer skull with pronged horns on a plaque. The antlers cast a coloured dual shadow in the stage lights, crimson and turquoise against the white plaster. The remaining wall space onstage is taken up by a large red Budweiser poster, and spanning the corner walls above the drummer is a bright red size XL t-shirt with the slogan “We support our troops” in white across the chest. The stage floor is black and the two-foot high apron has been nicely finished in angled pine boards. Fine Line is led by Eddy on lead guitar and vocals, with Dave on drums and a new bass player who has replaced Gary. They play three lightning-fingered sets of rock, blues and country between 9:30 and 1:00. Often they open with a fast-past Folsom Prison Blues which shows Eddy’s virtuosity on the guitar, and nearly every show he plays Five Days In May because he knows it’s my favourite. Sometimes the audience consists of friends of the musicians, people who live nearby and have seen the poster advertising tonight’s band, and local snowmobilers. Other times it’s packed with drinkers and dancers from three generations and villages and townships far and wide. One summer night a cottagers’ association from Muskoka bused in a wild crowd wearing L.L. Bean and Dockers and celebrating someone’s 50th.