CHOO Radio Recollections

An on line scrapbook of images & text for former staff and listeners alike

=================================================================

CHOO RADIO FREAKS OUT - PART 2 - 1971

Part of CHOO History B. C. - Before Country

In Which Then Teen DJ Steve Fruitman Goes Wild on CHOO

The Jeremiah Quigley & Burd Show

The year was 1971. The Beatle boom had run its course and FM radio was waking up to the cooler shades of blue. The Hit Parade was being transformed into a much more narrow band of gold, eliminating the sonorous variety that had influenced a generation of young listeners. No longer were you allowed to hear C&W hits alongside folk, soul and novelty numbers like I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman, whistled by Whistling Jack Smith. A generic plague was infiltrating hit parade radio to the extent that it made it all sound very much the same. The FM band was the only place still free. Well, almost!

In those days most car radios only had an AM band and I was getting kind of sick of 1050 CHUM. So I started listening to country music over Toronto's only Country and Western station, 1310 CFGM (1). In fact, ex-CHUM announcers Bob MacAdory and Dave Johnson were DJing Country for CFGM.

A friend of mine turned me on to CHOO 1390, a radio station in neighbouring Ajax, Ontario. CHOO was as local as they come, totally unpretentious and sort of redneck! Well actually it was really redneck! A station that mixed country music with religious fundamentalist programming.

To me, CHOO was even better than its big city rival, CFGM! The big show of the day was the Double-O Ranch with station caretaker, Uncle Benny. His theme song was a tune called Big Steel Guitar, by big steel guitar player, Paul Evans. The daily religious feature was the Little Marcy Show (2) imported from the States. Their commercials were small budget productions for places like Luke's Garage or Art's Cleaners in Whitby. Their rates were cheap enough for a used car lot over in Pickering to air an ad. Money was always tight, equipment was old, so when they managed to get a contract with Shoppers' World shopping Centre in Oshawa, or to pump the station into the Eaton's Abstract Shop boutique on Saturday afternoons, the condition was that they play cool music, stuff that would appeal to cool young teens with bill bulging wallets. Auto industry kids.

* * *

My last gig as Burd was as a radio personality. Together with Perry Goldberg, a.k.a. Jeremiah Quigley, we did the "Jeremiah Quigley and Burd Show" for an hour on Saturday afternoons as part of the station's "Interphase" community outreach.

This program lasted only a few short months. We were always in trouble with the Saturday afternoon Program Director. But during our tenure we experimented with sound, mixing textured forms of music together like chemicals to see what kind of reaction we could get. Pink Floyd and Johnny Cash mixed with The Kinks, Love Sculpture and Gustav Holst.

"What the hell are you guys playing?" screeched the young trainee program director on a weekly basis. "You can play what you want as long as you don't play Stompin' Tom. This station plays nothing but country all week long; Saturdays is for rock n roll".

I would argue that Stompin' Tom wasn't exactly country. He was Canada's Woody Guthrie. And he was CanCon.

"That's fine, but we don't want Stompin' Tom on Saturdays. And cut that classical s**t too while you're at it. And you're supposed to read the weather report." These reports spewed from the teletype machine across the hall from the studio. Next show: I asked Jeremiah: "What's the weather look like today?" Jeremiah got up and opened the big, studio door and yelled: "It ain't snowin' yet" he decreed. This was still early October.

* * *

We got this show because I insisted on listening to nothing but country music over the car radio.

"Burd, how can you listen to this...?" My pals would try switching stations while I drove but I had rigged all the buttons to stay on CFGM or CHdoubleO.

It was hard to get CHOO's signal in most parts of the city. One day as Perry and I were going downtown to shop at Sam's we heard a plea for young, inexperienced radio announcers who would like to do a one hour rock n roll slot on Saturday afternoons. No money but lots of experience. Before I could say a word Perry demanded that I pull over at the nearest phone booth. When he returned he announced with a great big grin that we had a radio show.

* * *

"Make it cool" said the young program director. We were sitting in his office like little dogs. He was explaining how things operated at CHOO, orienting us into radio-land, helping us get over first show jitters.

I met Perry at Thornlea Collegiate where he was running an in-house radio station called Radio Thornlea. It broadcast from a little room beside the school stage over the P/A system. Perry was in charge and gave me my own show. Perry had the gift of the gab and could be very persuasive when he wanted to be. He got us free tickets to concerts in Toronto and Buffalo, New York: King Crimson, Steve Miller Band, The Moody Blues. "Hi, I'm Perry Goldberg from Radio Thornlea in Toronto and we'd like to send a couple of reporters out to cover your show." He covers the mouthpiece of the phone and looks up at me: "We're in!"

I was nervous. There were saw logs floating in my gut. This wasn't high school radio; this was going to be heard, for real, over the air-waves. I chose the music and we would share the on mic duties. I concentrated on the music and Perry brought the humour to the show. We played a vast array of music, improvising upon several themes. After the show we had a little scrum with the PD.

"I like your humour. I like it a lot. Hey, if you guys want to tell a few jokes, that's fine, no problem, but you have to be careful what you say over the air. If you insist on telling jokes take them out of this official joke book here. There's a bunch of great jokes in here. Get this one: Did you hear about the guy who robbed the fish store? He got away with a couple of fins."

* * *

The only proof that Perry and I had that we had ever been a part of CHOO is a photo of us clowning around in the on-air booth [actually the news booth] and a solitary, low fidelity cassette tape of an early show. In the black & white photo I am wearing a T-Shirt with the Strawberry Fields Festival4 logo, making a moon-monkey face. (SEE PHOTO ABOVE)

CONTINUED... ON NEXT PAGE...