Reid’s first novel now available at McNally Robinson

With gratitude and love I dedicate this book to my parents, Helen and Bruce Dickie, whose gifts I used every day of my life, and to Linda, who lit my way.

Available now at McNally Robinson

http://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/9781772800173/reid-dickie/play-the-jukebox

Moments away from puberty, young Jim Crawford begins to discover how his newly effervescent maleness gives fresh meaning and expression to manhood in his family, friendships, community and beyond. Set in a small Canadian prairie town just as the tumultuous social and cultural changes of the 1960s begin, Play the Jukebox is a character-driven story entwining bright wholesome and dark pathological expressions of masculinity. As his own unique gifts reveal themselves, Jim learns the heights and depths to which men will go to defend family and future and how shared experience creates diverse forms of camaraderie between men and women.

Jim’s life revolves around pop music and records. The 45 – the little record with the big hole – is king; radio disc jockeys, record players and jukeboxes spin the seven-inch discs constantly. He discovers intimate links between hit songs and his own development as he travels from town to town changing the records in jukeboxes with Percy Peel, a mystery media mogul who leaves lasting impressions on Jim. As they did for millions of 1960s youth, The Beatles play a defining role as one of Jim’s change agents.

McNally Robinson: If you are coming into one of our stores, we suggest that you confirm that the book you want is in stock by emailing the location nearest you: Grant Park, Saskatoon, or by phoning the location nearest you.

Found

My friend Candis’s store on Corydon. Check it out!

Koz and The Beatles

 

Reid Dickie

Still in the hit parade mode, CKRC was CKY’s rival for the young at heart market in Winnipeg as their weekly chart states. CKRC used the image of the singing beaver in boater hat and striped jacket a la barbershoppers, for several years.

This chart for the week of September 3, 1965 features a picture of CKRC Good Guy Boyd Kozak and the four winners of the contest to see The Beatles in Toronto August 17, 1965. Although I didn’t know Boyd, actually Borys, when we were both DJs, in recent years we’ve become coffee buddies. He did a wonderful voiceover for A Town With Water from my series The Lonesomes. You can still hear his golden tones on the air. Boyd does morning news at QX104 and Fab 94.

I sent Boyd the picture from the chart. He commented, “Thanks Reid..wonderful memories, those three days. This was my second trip, having done same, a year before for the Beatles first trip to Canada.”

Here’s the rest of that week’s chart along with the DJs of the day. Click to enlarge

The Last CKY Hit Parade

Reid Dickie

Every week for at least five and a half years, CKY Radio, Canada’s Friendly Giant, published a hit parade that listed the Top 50 pop songs and Top 20 western songs in Winnipeg. The 50,000 watt station devoted a few hours a day to, what was then called, western music, country music’s uncle. The CKY hit parade was a colourful single fold sheet distributed free at record stores in Winnipeg and round the province to a degree.

The weekly chart was distilled using a formula that combined local record sales and listener requests and resulting in the hit parade. Post-1963 issues featured pictures of the disc jockeys.

The last CKY Hit Parade was published on February 27, 1966. The Beatles are #1.

I’m not sure when CKY started publishing a hit parade. The earliest one I have is for the week of September 9, 1961.

Listen to CKY go off the air forever on January 21, 2004.

If you liked this stuff, check out some of my other nostalgic Winnipeg memories like Eaton’s Beatle Bar, Inside the Mind of a 15 Year Old Beatlemaniac, CKY wants a town named after it, my radio career, the Beatles come to Winnipeg, even some fake nostalgia.

I have pages about Winnipeg’s grand old schools, some heritage houses, churches and Manitoba heritage from around the province.

Inside the Mind of a 15-Year-Old Beatlemaniac

Reid Dickie

That would be me (1964 school picture above).

To establish my credibility as a Beatlemaniac I offer as evidence this envelop from 1965.

In the summer of 1964, to appeal to the newly-defined generation who were becoming eager, horny teenagers, CBC-TV ran a summer music series called Let’s Go. Produced in Vancouver, the show featured a variety of good local musicians. In the fall it was added to the schedule as a daily after-school show called Music Hop. The novelty was the half-hour show came from a different city every day: Monday from Vancouver, Tuesday Winnipeg, Wednesday Toronto, Thursday Montreal and Friday Halifax. A house band and other local musicians performed hits of the day along with some original material. The Guess Who were the Winnipeg house band here, the host was Chad Allen (above).

In the fall of 1964 Let’s Go from Vancouver (the west coast show kept the original series name) ran a Flip Your Wig contest. Beatlemania was still growing daily so the audience was asked to draw a Beatles wig on a famous person, add a caption and send it in. Being a little overachiever, I thought why stop at just one picture, why not make a book!  Thus was born, perhaps rendered would be better, My Sick Beatle Book. In this case, please use the Mad Magazine definition of sick.

I clipped 20 pictures from the newspaper, added crude Beatles wigs with a thick black felt marker, pasted them in a twenty page booklet I made, thought up witty (for a 15-year-old) captions for each picture and submitted it.

I bound the book with a glue that still holds it firmly together 50 years later easily surviving the scanning process. I jotted the captions in pen dispatching with Elvis immediately and giving the centre spread to the Dave Clark Five since they were The Beatles main “rivals” at the time. The rest are assorted politicians, sports figures and so on. This is from the time when the politically-correct nanny state was newly under construction. My captions and picture choice reflect the era.

Since The Beatles and their fans were the brunt of continuous jokes from adults, my book had a bit of a revenge aspect. Beatlizing these old people was very satisfying for me, doubly so when, despite the crudeness of the book, the judges saw my intent and were amused.

Imagine my delight when Red Robinson (right) announced I’d won the contest and would receive a complete Beatles library. Happy prairie boy! A few days later I received the package via Air Mail. There were, in fact, five albums, not four as the transfer slip says: Beatlemania: With the Beatles, Twist & Shout, Long Tall Sally, Hard Day’s Night and Something New along with ten Beatles 45s.

In 1964 Capitol Records played catch-up with the British releases which began in early 1963. The North American permutations of Beatles albums haphazardly chopped up the track lists, added a B-side or two resulting in “new” Beatles product. Six albums, including The Beatles Story, were released here in 1964.

With slight embarrassment for my 15-year-old self, I offer, in its entirety, My Sick Beatle Book followed by the letter and the transfer slip from CBC. Some pictures are at odd angles. I’m still not much of a book designer.

Thank you and good night.

“The Chokin’ Kind” Times Five – Unintentionally Topical?

 Reid Dickie

Harlan Howard once defined country music as “three chords and the truth.”

Howard (left) was one of Nashville’s most prolific and preeminent songwriters spanning the late 1950s to the late 1990s. He wrote dozens of hit songs, fifteen of which charted in 1961 alone. Among his best known songs are I Fall to Pieces, Heartaches by the Number, Busted, Pick Me Up on Your Way Down, Streets of Baltimore, Tiger by the Tail and one of the greatest crossover songs ever, The Chokin’ Kind.

Two verses, a thoughtful change up, another verse and a reiterating coda tell the story of the singer’s realization that the partner wants more than love, they want utter control of the singer’s life, frighteningly so. The partner will go to any lengths to achieve this but the singer is gone. In the final verse the singer advises the partner to change for their own sake and that of future relationships. The coda reaffirms the fear and the untenable nature of the relationship.

The line that opens the second verse, “You can kill a man with a bottle of poison or a knife…” is often misheard as being “..a Bible or poison or a knife.”

Several of Howard’s songs crossed over into other genres but it was The Chokin’ Kind that scored biggest. I picked it to feature not just because it’s a fantastic song but it’s been covered in very distinct fashion by these five artists. I inserted audio players so you can hear the full versions of each. You’ll find the players under the album covers.

Originally a hit for Waylon Jennings, The Chokin’ Kind reached #8 in the U.S. and #4 in Canada on the country music charts in 1967. The song appeared on his 1968 album Hangin’ On which reached #9 on the U. S. country chart.

Joe Simon recorded a gorgeous soulful version of The Chokin’ Kind that became the song’s best known version and biggest chart success. It stayed at #1 on the U.S. R & B charts for three weeks in the spring of 1969, selling over a million copies. On the U.S. Pop charts it reached #13 and #17 in Canada. Though he had two other #1 songs, this would be Joe’s biggest hit.

Allen Toussaint, New Orleans singer, producer and songwriter (Working in a Coal Mine, Southern Nights, Mother-In-Law, Ride Your Pony) added his delta spice to the song on his 1971 album Toussaint.

Extraordinary master of a 1953 Fender Telecaster (nicknamed Nancy), Roy Buchanan brought his hypnotic style to the song. At the outset it’s almost an arena rock epic but Roy switches into a funky mode retaining the song’s subtleties. Roy included it on his 1986 album Dancing on the Edge. That’s not Nancy in the picture.

She sounds black and southern but she is blond and British. Joss Stone wails her marvelous rendition of The Chokin’ Kind on her 2003 release The Soul Sessions. The album was a huge hit in Britain, selling over a million copies and going platinum, a feat it also achieved in the U.S. and Canada.

Seekaywye, Manitoba: CKY’s Phantom Radio Town

Reid Dickie

    In early 1964, Winnipeg’s 580 CKY ran a promotion to have a Manitoba town officially change its name to Seekaywye, Manitoba. Thereafter the station would promote the tourist aspects of its namesake. Two towns seriously vied for the title, each held local votes about the name change.

    Binscarth, in western Manitoba out on Hwy 16 just south of Russell, was one of the towns. La Riviere on Hwy #3 in southern Manitoba was the other. To demonstrate their sincerity local businesses were encouraged to change their names to incorporate something about the radio station. Binscarth spawned two related businesses: 580 Plumbing and Heating and the 580 Hotel (left).

    However, it was not to be. The June 6, 1964 issue of Billboard magazine reported the residents of Binscarth had narrowly voted down changing their name but only by 10 votes. When offered the same deal by CKY, La Riviere residents also voted down the renaming.

    My hometown is just down the road from Binscarth. I delivered fuel to a service station there in my youth, for years afterward seeing the billboard for the 580 Hotel by the side of the highway.

    Here’s two CKY Fab 50 Surveys from the time when Beatlemania had taken hold of North America.

Read about my radio career here.

Mr. Ed Opening and Theme Song The Good Old Days Part 21

Click the pic of course

Bowling Babes The Good Old Days Part 11

Click the pic to find out what nobody knows

Of Pomegranates and Southern Wild

Reid Dickie

Recent movies on my monitor include these two unique visual adventures. Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

Once there was a Hush Puppy and she lived with her daddy in The Bathtub. Seen through the eyes of a nine-year-old girl, this mesmerizing meditation on the meaning of home and family took me someplace I’d never been before. I’ve watched it three times and each time it draws me into its breaking and broken world – a small land mass off the Louisiana shore known as The Bathtub that’s being drowned by the rising ocean.

The lead actors, nine-year-old Quvenzhane Willis as Hush Puppy and Dwight Henry as Wink, her dying alcoholic father, give seamless convincing performances. Due to her astonishing performance, in 2012 Willis became the youngest actor ever nominated for a best actress Oscar. Films rarely glimpse into a child’s world, watching her gather knowledge and mythology, as intensely and sensitively as Beasts of the Southern Wild. Plus it has aurocks! Don’t miss this one.

Watch it free at http://putlocker.is/watch-beasts-of-the-southern-wild-online-free-putlocker.html

The Color of Pomegranates (1968)

Filmed in the Soviet Union in 1967/ 68, director Sergei Parajanov tells the life story of 16th century Armenian poet Sayat Nova in a series of surreal tableaux. I was immediately drawn into the  dream-like quality and unpredictability of the unorthodox images. There is no camera movement and no dialogue. Nova’s poetry accompanies the images along with wild sounds and music. Bizarre scenes arise and fade, the realm of dreams rules and sometimes the bright glowing edges of dreamless sleep break through the darkness.

I was reminded of Fellini, especially Satyricon (which came out the year after Color of Pomegranates) and Roma; and Jodorowsky, both El Topo and The Holy Mountain (both post-Color). The startling image of the man with the peacock beak in his mouth (above) is but one of dozens of quizzical and enthralling images in The Color of Pomegranates.

Much of the visual content is based on traditional Armenian folklore, design and clothing and stylized to make it feel alien yet comfortable. Horses, books and antlers are prominent motifs. Its 73-minute length makes it just long enough to stay focused on both the style and the story. The actors of all ages are convincing, the subtitles sparse but adequate and the soundtrack wonderfully diverse and curious.

Take a short vacation and watch it free at https://archive.org/details/ColorOfPomegranates-SayatNova1968

The Color of Pomegranates is on archive.org which has hundreds of other feature length films spanning the silent era through to the 21st century, along with shorts and trailers, all available to watch free. Classic films in most genres are just a click away. https://archive.org/details/feature_films

Read Reid Radio

Reid Dickie

When I was twelve years old I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be a disc jockey on the radio. That was my dream job, I told my parents.

As a kid growing up in a small prairie town three hours away from any big city, my best escape was listening to the radio. Transistor radios came out in the late 1950s. I got my first one for my birthday in 1961. It was a six transistor York, made in Japan for the New York Transistor Company on Fifth Avenue, NYC. My York had a gold metal front with perforated metal speaker, black and cream coloured hard plastic case hiding its guts and a heavy 9-volt battery. (Factoid: 9-volt batteries were invented to power transistor radios.) It was encased in a “genuine leather” case with YORK embossed in gold on the front.

As you can see (above, right) I still have the radio. It no longer turns on or off. It’s gone to radio limbo.

That little York became my constant companion filling my life with an ever-changing but comfortable soundtrack of pop music given extra depth and excitement by the on-air antics of the personable guys who spun the discs. That’s who I wanted to be.

Disc jockeys like Daryl B(urlingham), Jimmy Darin, Mark Parr, Peter Jackson PJ the DJ, Chuck Dann, Porky Charbonneau, Dennis Dino Corrie at CKY, Canada’s Friendly Giant originating in a little room on Winnipeg’s Main Street, came pounding across the prairie riding 50,000 clear watts. Here’s their chart from the week I turned 16. Click to enlarge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CKRC, Winnipeg’s other less powerful pop station whose signal strength varied out in my little town, still managed to leave an indelible impression with DJs like Boyd Kozak, Jim Paulson, Don Slade, Bob Washington, Doc Steen, Ron Legge. Here is their chart from the week I turned 12 and got my York radio. Click to enlarge.              

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Near dusk when radio stations changed their signal patterns, WLS, 50,000 clear watts from Chicago came booming in. DJs like John Records Landecker, Dick Biondi, Larry Lujack, Chuck Knapp had incomparable pipes (voices) and songs never sounded better than on WLS. The massive wattage carrying the signal buoyed even the most banal pop ditty to powerful new heights. And WLS made great songs sound even greater. I was never sure how that mystical condition was achieved but I knew I wanted to be part of it, to ride those invisible waves crashing onto transistor beaches and young hearts across the continent. It was a big dream for a little kid.

All the hits, all the time! John Records Landecker’s motto was, “Records is my middle name.” That’s how I felt about records and pop music in general starting in 1960. This feeling increased by quantum leaps in 1964 when The Beatles et al were released to North America. I encouraged the local radio/TV repair shop in the little town to carry CKY’s weekly hit parade charts and I amassed a fine collection that I referred to often for this post. I loved poring over the charts, tracing the arcs of my favourite songs, what song debuted the highest, all the permutations and changes I could wring out of fifty pop songs.

How does the announcement by a 12-year-old that he wants to devote his existence to playing records on the radio go over with his parents? Some amusement at first but I was adamant about this which led to bewilderment then concern. Mom definitely wanted a doctor son to cure all her ills and Dad wanted a hockey player. I had to disappoint them both. They eventually understood. By the time I was sixteen and steadfast in my future career choice, my parents started to come around and say things like, “If you are going to be a radio announcer, we’ll send you to school to be a damn good one.” The universe was unfolding as it should.

Disc jockey was generalized and upgraded into radio announcer by my parents and in the 1960s the best place to learn how to be a good one in Canada was at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in downtown Toronto. The course was called Radio and Television Arts (RTA): three years of hands-on technical training on top quality, modern equipment mixed with psychology, sociology, writing, speech training and even a class in foreign pronunciations. First year was mostly radio, second and third all TV. I’m not photogenic so radio was my only interest in taking RTA. The program sounded interesting to both my parents and I so we started working toward it.

The day came in late August 1968 when I stepped off the train at Union Station in downtown Toronto on my way to Ryerson. The culture shock of moving from a town of 700 people to a city of two million (then) excited and stimulated me. Any fears I had struggled beneath a heavy covering of optimism and hope. It was the Sixties when anything was still possible. Everyone felt that.

Ryerson (now a university) is located one block off Yonge Street’s section called The Strip, at least it was in the late 1960s. Strip clubs, bars, XXX movie theatres, organ grinders with monkeys, chestnut roasters, buskers, Hari Krishnas, hippies and hipsters, the denizens brought throngs downtown every night.

The first year I stayed in Ryerson’s residence across the street from the school. Sam the Record Man and A & A Records were right around the corner on Yonge Street. Ronnie Hawkins’ club The Hawk’s Nest where I saw the Kinks and Parliament/Funkadelic (not on the same bill) was two blocks down. The Rock Pile, a Masonic Temple converted into a Rock & Roll Shrine where I saw Led Zeppelin two days after their first album came out, was a ten minute walk away. On the way you could stop at the Riverboat Coffeehouse in Yorkville and see John Lee Hooker or James Taylor. At the Ryerson folk club The Onion you could watch Bruce Cockburn begin his glorious arc or Leon Redbone perform to a tomato. At Massey Hall I saw The Fugs and Laura Nyro (not on the same bill). I had moved from lonesome howling prairie wind song to the 24-hour thrum and throb of Canada’s pop cultural heart.

My first year was intense and exactly what I needed and wanted to learn about radio, not just as an announcer but as a producer with awareness of potential future career growth. I wasn’t as ambitious as many of the others though I succeeded the first year. That summer I worked at Clear Lake and went back to Ryerson in the fall of 1969 much less enthused.

Culturally Toronto still overwhelmed with the new and the shiny but TV was the main focus that year and, at the time, I hated TV. As a result I developed a kind of accidee, a good old word meaning torpor or sloth, which combined with a yearning to be away from the cold city and back on the prairie. It made for a rough year.

My saving grace came in the form of a radio station. As much as the DJs on CKY, CKRC and WLS had inspired me and the teachers at Ryerson had taught me, CHUM-FM, Toronto’s underground radio station, completed my radio education. CHUM-FM was my post-grad work.

Underground radio was free-form radio, usually on FM, no format, few ads, the announcers played what they wanted usually in long music sequences, lots of brand new music mixed with familiar tunes, unpredictable crazy fun to the highest degree. CHUM-FM was Canada’s premier underground station.

I remember listening to Dave Marsden doing a laidback but amusing persona completely opposite that of his previous role, Dave Mickie on CBC-TV’s noisy Razzle Dazzle. The graveyard shift on CHUM-FM was filled by David Pritchard (left) whose delivery, style and choice of music had an enormous effect on me and the radio would later create. Pritchard had a dark and dry delivery that was full of surprises and always made you wonder if he was putting you on. Frank Zappa described his show as “an utter freak out.”

That year I lived alone in an apartment paid for by a classmate as a cover so he could live with his girlfriend elsewhere. The apartment, across the street from Allen Gardens, had at least two inorganic occupants as well. David Pritchard and I became adept at scaring away the night spooks. I saw many sunrises and few classrooms that year.

The summer of 1970 I worked in the little town until I got my first radio job. Dad had a drinking buddy who had a drinking buddy who had a buddy who ran CFAR, the radio station in the mining town of Flin Flon, Manitoba. Connections!

I started at CFAR in October 1970. On my first day station manager Jay Leddy had me run the controls for him early Sunday morning for an hour then stood up and said, “You’re on your own, kid.” No net! It was delightfully terrifying. The first song I played on the radio, real radio with people listening, was Sunday Morning Coming Down by Johnny Cash. By the end of shift I had settled in, almost comfortable, getting chatty. Ryerson was right! I’d been taught well.

At a little 1,000-watt station like CFAR, whose staff was maybe six people, I got to do everything: play records, prepare and read news and sportscasts, interview people on-air, read the daily stock market closings, answer the phone, write and read ad copy, type logs, sell ads, sweep the floor and even train announcers newer than me. Gary Roberts from Winnipeg was one such guy.

We both cut our teeth at CFAR, became good friends and shared lots of small town fun. Admirably ambitious, Gary, real name Reg Johns, went on to program radio stations in the U.S. and now runs Mass2One Media in Carlsbad, CA. We chatted about a year ago.

I spent ten months at CFAR. In July 1971 I got my second radio gig at CKX-AM in Brandon, an hour from my hometown. Mom was thrilled! She could finally listen to me. Frank Bird, whom I had listened to since childhood, hired me to do the CKX all night show 1:00 to 7:00 a.m. six nights a week. The only music restriction was I had to play country music from 5:00 to 7:00, otherwise I could play whatever I wanted. The music library at CKX was adequate to my needs and the record companies were generous with new releases. I had my own underground radio show for four hours a night. The freedom was delicious! It was heaven!

I was required to rip and read a three-minute newscast at the top of every hour. My time at CKX coincided with Watergate and Richard Nixon’s destiny. As a consequence I honed a passable Nixon impression often using it for the whole newscast. This is a shot of me (below) at 6:00 a.m. in the CKX studio about 1972. Although not a major market, Brandon was a step up in my career. CKX had an FM station that was on auto-program during the day and simulcast AM all night. CKX-FM leaked into Winnipeg somehow, maybe cable TV. I recall several Winnipeg people calling me to say they’d listened to me on CKX.

I did the CKX all-night show for twenty-three months having no ambition to do a day shift. I was happy with my freedom and whatever audience was generated all night. I was getting tired of Brandon though, overly familiar Brandon, the city of my birth was getting real stale at 23.

In July of 1973 I scored my major market job. Duff Roman hired me to do an evening underground radio show from 7:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. on CFRW-FM. During the day, FM simulcast CFRW-AM until I took over for the evening. Again free form, no format, run wild. So I did.

When I started at CFRW-FM the office and studios were in the Confederation Building on the curve on Main Street. They were cramped and chaotic. A few months later CKY moved their studios to Polo Park. CFRW bought the former CKY studios, which were located in the London Block, a three-storey building at 432 Main Street N. next to the McIntyre Building. All are gone now.

Turns out after the move, the studio where I did my show was the same one the CKY DJs I admired so much on my York radio had used (left about 1965). It was a shivery and wonderful completion of a life circle for me.

CFRW-FM was also the best radio I ever created. I was on-air six nights a week (right) and Ziggy filled in on my night off. I don’t know what became of Ziggy.

The precedent for underground radio in Winnipeg had been set a few years before my arrival by Now Flower on CKY-FM. On-air from 1968 into 1971, Now Flower was created and manned by Jan Thorsteinson and Harold Gershuny who called himself Gersh. It broke the ground for me by creating an audience and a taste for free-form radio that lingered then disappeared briefly to be reincarnated on CFRW-FM.

FM radio was relatively unknown in the 1960s, having been used mainly for classical music. Underground radio helped change that. This Advance ad (left) indicates how popular and cool Now Flower was. The late 1960s ad for a Lloyd’s FM/AM radio mentions Now Flower on 92.1 CKY-FM along the bottom of the ad. I spoke with Jan Thorsteinson recently to do some fact-checking of dates for this post. He’s happily retired in rural Manitoba. I’m not sure of Gersh’s whereabouts.

With the benefit of The Long View, I see Now Flower as the opening bracket and my show on CFRW-FM as the closing bracket since it was the last underground radio on a commercial station in Winnipeg. Between us lies the full extent and duration of alternative radio in Winnipeg. Thereafter, university radio stations began filling the gap.   Click to enlarge            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As these two diverse lists of albums I played in 1974 and 1975 indicate (above, right), music on underground radio needed to be unabashedly varied because the element of surprise (never knowing what you’re going to hear next) had to be maintained – the less predictable the better.

The first two Bruce Springsteen albums came out in 1973 and I played tracks from both of them every night in Brandon and Winnipeg. CFRW-FM had a very active and demanding audience so I played lots of requests.

Manitoba had a rash of UFO sightings in the 1970s. During self-proclaimed Alien Week, I did a bit where every night at a certain time I would announce the co-ordinates of our transmitting tower and invite any amenable aliens to contact us using our transmitter. Two minutes of silence, dead air, followed. The aliens never took me up on my offer but apparently there were more than a few earthlings glued to the silence.

In the 1970s it was illegal to advertise alcohol before ten o’clock at night (imagine that!). CFRW-FM had a heavy contract with Club Beer which meant I had to play three or four beer commercials an hour. Though humorous and nutty, the ads wore thin fast.

In 1975 CHUM from Toronto purchased CFRW AM & FM and the death knell for underground radio began to sound. CHUM changed the call letters to CHIQ which became Q94-FM and adopted a nauseating ice-water format of banality and conformity.

The irony is that CHUM, whose FM flagship station taught me so much about free-form radio, were the ones to put the kibosh on alternative radio in Winnipeg.

Since I could think and talk at the same time, CHUM kept me on to do a 90-minute afternoon talk show on Q94 called Forum. I interviewed people on the phone and live in the studio, like the 12-year-old evangelist preacher and Mr. Manitoba, adding in interviews from my Toronto counterpart. There was still something unpredictable and free-form about a talk show plus I got to ask weird questions. I enjoyed that greatly. Extra bonus: I loved pissing off the “music director” by playing Tom Waits instead of Elton John during my musical interlude.

Looking back it seems as if the main reason I worked at CFRW was to meet, fall in love with and spend my life with Linda. She was the boss’s Girl Friday, traffic reporter, occasional copywriter and all-around beauty. Though mostly an evening creature at the station, I did appear occasionally during the day after making sure she’d be there. I quit CFRW in early 1977, Linda and I moved in together and we lived a bohemian lifestyle, making art, meeting new people, having fun. Much of that era is documented on the DTC ART page.

My next and final radio gig was at CJUM-FM where I was hired by Brent Mooney as music director for the struggling University of Manitoba station which had come on the air in September 1975 and closed in June 1980. New wave was just underway when I started there in 1978 and we ran with it. With niche tastes serviced while enlightening others, CJUM-FM had even more diversity than underground radio. We played plenty of Winnipeg bands as you can see by the music lists from 1979 (below).   Click to enlarge          

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though the 1980s and 90s were dry radio-wise, CJUM-FM returned in 1998. The following year CKUW, at the University of Winnipeg, debuted on air. Both continue to provide high quality accessible radio.

My childhood dream came true. I was a disc jockey for ten years. Then I had the epiphanal moment: when one dream is realized, another begins…

1960s Texaco Jingle

Reid Dickie

I shot this perfectly restored Texaco sign in front of a business on the outskirts of Dauphin, MB with the threatening sky beyond. This sign has a nostalgic meaning for me. My dad was a Texaco consignee (he sold and delivered gas to farms and service stations) for 10 years in Shoal Lake, MB. I grew up there and worked with him, even delivering fuel myself when I got my license. Dad wore a Texaco uniform and cap that featured the big red star with the green T emblazoned on the white circular background. The slogan of the day was, “Texaco. You can trust your car to the man who wears the star.” This is a re-post because I finally found the 1960s Texaco jingle that uses the above slogan. Click the pic to view the 20-second tune.

Lucky, Very Lucky

Reid Dickie

“We never know how we will affect people by just being who we are.” – Chris Scholl

Looking back over my six decades as Reid Dickie, I see patterns that define who I am. The older I get and the more honest I am with myself, the more evident my patterns become. Recurring events and themes that were confusing and unhappy at the time now make sense in the long view. By seeking out our patterns, we make ourselves wise, wise about ourselves and others, wise about the world. The trade-off in this life is wisdom for youth. As our bodies age and start to limit us, we are given the opportunity to become wise, to blossom mentally, possibly spiritually. Wisdom is not guaranteed though. It takes work. 

A major pattern of my life has been luck. Starting when I was a little boy I can recall my father often saying to me that I had a lucky horseshoe up my bum. When your father tells you something like that, you tend to take it literally which I did until Mom explained what he meant.  Dad was trying to tell me what a lucky boy I was. In the long view, he was right, as ever! Dad’s wisdom flowed smoothly and naturally through him. He inspired me more and more intensely the older and wiser he got. Every day I aspire to become like him. I have my work cut out for me.

Whether I was born lucky or grew into it, the horseshoe became a lifelong symbol and reminder of my good fortune. It certainly contributed to the notion that we create our own luck. Here’s an example of creating my own luck.

I am one of those incredibly lucky people who knew from a young age what I wanted to do with my life, what I wanted to “be.” When I was eleven I decided I would become a radio announcer, more specifically a disc jockey. I remember earnestly discussing this with my parents when I was about 12. Although, as parents do, they both had higher aspirations for their only child: Mom wanted a doctor and Dad wanted…huh? Dad wanted me to be myself. Whoever that was or would be, that’s what Dad wanted me to “be.” Thanks Dad. Though Mom persisted good-naturedly with the doctor thing, we all decided that if I wanted to be a disc jockey, I’d be a damn good one and go to school to learn how it was done well. And I did.

After two years studying Radio and television Arts at Ryerson in Toronto, I got my first radio job in Flin Flon at CFAR where I was DJ, news reader, commercial writer and general joeboy. I loved it! I had made the right choice. Nine months later, in 1971, I got on at CKX in Brandon where I did the all-night show for 23 months. Five nights a week, starting at 1 a.m., I played whatever music I wanted for four hours then two hours of country music from 5 to 7 a.m. and I was done. I loved it! In the summer of 1973 I got a job in a major market – Winnipeg on CFRW-FM. At the time CFRW-FM simulcast the AM station for 18 hours a day and let me free range in their FM band for the other six. Again I could play or do whatever I wanted…and did. I loved it!

Hairy and happy, this is a picture of me in the CFRW-FM studio about 1974. There are more pics of me from my radio days in the Gallery.

For a short time after I got there, CFRW-FM studios were in the Confederation Building on the bend on Winnipeg’s Main Street. The station moved across the street to the old CKY radio studios near Main and McDermot. (The building is gone now.) The FM studio happened to be the very same studio where the CKY DJs who inspired me to work in radio did their shows in the early 1960s. I had come full circle. I had been devoured by the medium and spit out nightly on air, free to do and be whoever I wanted in a major market! It was the fruition of my dream from when I was eleven, a little bit of heaven, a luxury that few DJs thereafter ever got to experience. I created my radio fantasy for nearly two years before CHUM from Toronto bought both stations, turning FM into heavily-formatted CHIQ-FM.

CHUM buying CFRW-FM was another irony of my radio career. When I attended Ryerson in Toronto, I listened to CHUM-FM which was a terrific free-form radio station, a creative leader. CHUM-FM inspired the style of radio I would do in my early career but, in Winnipeg, CHUM was eliminating free-form radio in favour of tight formats.

Since its inception in the 1930s, FM radio had largely been a commercial mystery to broadcasters. Its stereo capacity attracted classical music but it wasn’t until the 1960s that FM’s commercial potential began to be exploited. First it was free-form radio, alternative, hippie stations that played lots of new music, had no format and played no hits. This was the first hint that FM held enormous possibilities to make money. By the mid-1970s FM had come under the thumb of the “format geniuses” and the end of free-form loomed. I was among the last DJs on a commercial station to create radio without formats or any kind of restrictions, other than playing the Club Beer commercials after 10 p.m. College and university radio stations would provide the next opportunity for people to create free-form radio. I was very lucky.

CFRW-FM added to my luck because it was there I met Linda. She worked in various capacities at the station, one of which was to give me a wake-up call about 1:00 every the afternoon. Linda lived in my neighbourhood so we started to hang out together, fell madly in love and spent the next thirty-three years together. Again, lucky, lucky!

Since getting online ten years ago, I have been contacted out of the blue by three former radio listeners who remember my work at CFRW-FM. All three claimed that my words and music left an indelible impression on their lives, whether it was their taste in music, their outlook on life or as an example of personal freedom. Recently one former listener contacted me and I hope he won’t mind if I quote his first email: I just wanted to let you know that you had a most profound affect on my life. I listened to your radio show on CFRW FM nearly every night. I`m talking about the show you did from 8pm -2am. Your words and music have stayed with me in my life. Right now I can barely type these words as memories keep flooding back. I am glad I was able to finally tell these things to you. Thank you so much. And remember “the harder you pull, the tighter it gets”.

I was surprised, humbled and overwhelmed by this email. I am enormously grateful to this man for sharing with me. Talk about a day-maker! As my friend Chris pointed out in this post’s opening quote, we never know the positive change we make in the world by simply being ourselves, by following our bliss. But every once in a while…

Lucky, very lucky!!

Mid-Century Winnipeg – Rickshaw Restaurant

Reid Dickie

The Rickshaw Restaurant served up Chinese and Canadian food at 875 Portage Avenue in Winnipeg in the 1960s and 70s.

Happy Deathday Cole Porter

“My art belongs to Dada,” songwriter Cole Porter once said. His art leaves a legacy of whimsical, brilliant, sometimes cheeky songs whose interpreters have spanned decades and will continue to do so into the future. Cole never collaborated. He always wrote his own lyrics and music. When asked, “Who wrote ‘Some Enchanted Evening’?” he replied “Rodgers and Hammerstein, if you can imagine it taking two men to write one song.” Asked where he looked for inspiration, Porter quipped, “My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a director.” Cole Porter died this day in 1964 at age 73 leaving the world hundreds of marvelous songs. I picked three, all sung by Frank Sinatra who was a major interpreter of Porter’s material. First, hear a young Sinatra swing Night and Day. One of Cole Porter’s best rhymes, and there are hundreds of great ones, can be found in I Get A Kick Out of You: he rhymes spree with ennui. Hear Sinatra sing it. The pinnacle: Cole Porter’s I’ve Got You Under My Skin live by Sinatra with Count Basie’s Orchestra backing him up. The break is wild (Frank just sits down and lets the band go nuts), Frank’s inflection and phrasing is genius and the whole event SWINGS!! Watch this one!

UPDATE: all the links are now dead. Sorry.

What’s with deathday?

Happy Deathday Janis Joplin

Where have you gone, Janis? Morrison and Hendrix have nether careers but you seem to have fallen through the cracks in the rock and roll sidewalk. You were part of the heavy triumvirate of 1960s American  music and, like your two brothers, you had to die at age 27.Tell us some thoughts, dear Janis: “I’d rather have ten years of super-hypermost than live to be  seventy by sitting in some goddamn chair watching TV.” and “Onstage, I make love to 25,000 people – then I go home alone.” and “I’m one of those regular weird people.” and “Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. You can fill your life up with ideas and still go home lonely. All you really have that really matters are feelings. That’s what music is to me.” and “Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable.” and “Texas is OK if you want to settle down and do your own thing quietly, but it’s not for outrageous people, and I was always outrageous.” Janis died this day in 1970. One final word from her: “It’s hard to be free but when it works, it’s worth it!” Watch Janis sing “Ball & Chain” at Woodstock. What’s with deathday?

The Doll House by Heather Benning

Reid Dickie

The house is gone. Find out why here.

A chilling monument to the decline of the prairie farm stands next to Manitoba Highway #2 just a few miles east of the Saskatchewan border. The 2007 art project by Saskatchewan artist Heather Benning is called The Doll House. Heather took an old abandoned farmhouse, removed the rear wall completely, furnished the place with stuff from the late 1960s when it was last inhabited and covered the open wall with plexiglas – instant doll house! The name is only one of the many ironies the project evokes. The loneliness of prairie pioneer women who could go months without seeing another woman struck me. The location would have been bleak if not desolate although Highway #2 was once a trail. The house is about a hundred years old now and Heather says it will remain an art project until it falls down. Here’s my video report on The Doll House.

Happy Birthday Marshall McLuhan

Henry Gibson, poet from Laugh-In, wrote eloquently and succinctly about one of Canada’s greatest thinkers. His poem goes: “Marshall McLuhan, what are you doin’?” which summed up most of the world’s reaction to McLuhan’s thoughts. Here are a few random ideas from McLuhan, born one hundred years ago today: “The printing press, the computer, and television are not simply machines which convey information. They are metaphors through which we conceptualize reality in one way or another. They will classify the world for us, sequence it, frame it, enlarge it, reduce it, argue a case for what it is like. Through these media metaphors, we do not see the world as it is. We see it as our coding systems are. Such is the power of the form of information.” “A commercial society whose members are essentially ascetic and indifferent in social ritual has to be provided with blueprints and specifications for evoking the right tone for every occasion.”  “The modern Little Red Riding Hood, reared on singing commercials, has no objection to being eaten by the wolf. Advertising is an environmental striptease for a world of abundance.” “Diaper backward spells repaid. Think about it.” “The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist.” “Affluence creates poverty.” “Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.” “Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America – not on the battlefields of Vietnam.” “All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.” “An administrator in a bureaucratic world is a man who can feel big by merging his non-entity in an abstraction. A real person in touch with real things inspires terror in him.” Marshall McLuhan was a future attractor,  a genius whose mind extended far beyond his time and, as a philosophical oracle, was only able to speak the truth. After his death, McLuhan’s influence waned, more accurately it was submerged from the public mind and usurped by corporations who twisted his truth to manipulate the masses for profit. We are immersed in an invisible environment which continuously exploits every aspect of our humanity. McLuhan was the first to point this out.

Marshall McLuhan was born in Edmonton but moved to Winnipeg when he was four years old. The McLuhan family lived at this house, 507 Gertrude Avenue in Winnipeg. McLuhan attended Gladstone School, Earl Grey School, Kelvin Technical School and the University of Manitoba. Not dead/Dead since December 31, 1980. One final thought from the man who truly knew what the human mind is for, “Art is anything you can get away with.”

     

Toronto Rock & Roll Revival -September 13, 1969

Reid Dickie

A few days after my return to Toronto for my second year of Radio and Television Arts at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now University), the Toronto Rock & Roll Revival occurred in Varsity Stadium at the University of Toronto. The open air stadium held about 20,000, the music started at noon, it was a warm sunny day and the line-up commingled an eclectic range of music. In order of appearance the revival offered Flapping, Whisky Howl, Cat Mother & the All-Night Newsboys, Chicago Transit Authority, Screaming Lord Sutch, Tony Joe White, Doug Kershaw, Alice Cooper, Junior Walker & the All-Stars, Bo Diddley, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, John Lennon & the Plastic Ono Band and the Doors.

Tickets hadn’t sold very well until the day of the festival when it was announced that John Lennon would be appearing with a pick-up band. The stadium filled up quickly and updates came every half an hour about the plane carrying Lennon and band. Chicago and Alice Cooper were just starting their careers and all I remember about Alice was something to do with live chickens. I never cared much for Chicago’s music but the rest of the line-up brought musical depth to the day.  The four old boys – Gene, Jerry Lee, Little Richard and Chuck – were full-out rocking with Little Richard stripping down to a pair of wild shorts while assaulting the piano.

One whole section of the bleachers was reserved for bikers because they served an important duty that day. Both Lennon and his band and the Doors were formally escorted into downtown Toronto from the airport by a phalanx of bikers thus earning them their own section in the stands.

Lennon’s pick-up band for the gig was top-notch with Eric Clapton on guitar, Klaus Voorman (who designed the Revolver cover) on bass, Alan White (who’d sat in for ailing Ringo during the Beatles’ Australian tour) on drums with Lennon and Ono on vocals. The resulting set became the album Live Peace in Toronto 1969, not Lennon’s best music but certainly some of his rawest.

This picture by Emil was taken at the festival. The white thing on stage next to Lennon is idiot Ono screeching in a bag, making John look as ridiculous as possible, which was her task from the beginning. D. A. Pennebaker shot a film of the event called Sweet Toronto.

When I started at Ryerson I did concert reviews for the alternative weekly newspaper The Eyeopener. I was usually joined by Emil who was taking photography at Ryerson. Emil and I had never met anyone quite like each other before and we hit it off right away. We were opposites who attracted. He’d never met a hippie country boy with a rural prairie upbringing and I’d never met a sophisticated Greek photographer who came from an enormously wealthy family and always wore crisp white shirts, black slacks, smoked Gitanes and had a cowlick curl that fell over his forehead. Though not one of his best shots, Emil’s grainy picture of John Lennon matches the music of the day.

Lennon ended the set with Give Peace a Chance which the entire audience continued to sing for about 20 minutes after the band had left the stage. It was a beautiful eerie moment filled with possibility and promise. The Doors ended the day coming on stage about 2 a.m. and offered a violent and self-destructive show with Jim Morrison, then overweight with full beard, leaping into the air and coming down on his knees making great cracking sounds. This interview from around the time shows Morrison’s state and gives a bit of background on his interest in shamanism.

Reid’s Pop Song of the Month and Why

 Quick definition of pop song: any popular song from any era regardless of musical genre.

          This month we need to use the Wayback Machine to reach the Pop Song of Month. It’s Roger Miller’s biggest hit, King of the Road, which reached #4 on Billboard in early 1965. Watch how Roger swings it.

      Notions about bums and hoboes usually had a highly romantic aura to them in the first half of the 20th century, getting their first mass airing in 1929 with Harry McClintock’s tune, Hallelujah I’m a Bum. During the 1930s Depression, riding the rails was no longer just the purview of bums, becoming a relatively common experience, yet retaining a cultural mystique that fascinated people. One of comedian Red Skelton’s best known characters was Freddie the Freeloader, a loveable bum.

The King of the Road is a loveable bum – friendly, wise, lazy, a little larcenous, knows the ropes and the rails, has tasted the wine and reads the symbols. He always carries a piece of chalk to leave behind appropriate symbols for subsequent hobo visitors. Still, he’ll do a couple hours of “pushin’ broom” to get a roof over his head for the night.

I can identify with the experience because I “rode the rails” a time or two in my callow youth but for different reasons. My Dad was the Texaco fuel consignee in Shoal Lake in the late 1950s and 1960s. His office and fuel tanks sat right next to the tracks. The fuel came in by tanker cars, delivered more or less to the site where they could be pumped into the storage tanks. Using a huge heavy pinch bar, Dad and I manoeuvred the full tank cars into exact position, always with some short two by fours nearby in case the car gained its own momentum and had to be stopped.

Standing on the Texaco loading dock when a fast freight sped by, I could smell the hot cinders in the track bed mixed with the acrid aroma of diesel smoke and the swirling dust in the train’s wake, the howl of its whistle echoing in my ears as it disappeared in the distance.

Working with Dad next to the tracks gave me a familiarity and comfort with trains. From that sprang the idea of hitching a ride in an empty boxcar down the tracks to Strathclair ten miles away, hoping the train stopped, then jumping out and hitchhiking back to Shoal Lake. When I was around 12 or 13 I secretly did this a time or two on my own but found it much more satisfying with an accomplice. My cohort-in-danger shall remain nameless but suffice it to say when his parents discovered our escapade and shared it with mine, my train-hitching days ended abruptly and sternly.

I do not recommend this activity to anyone.

Nor do I recommend the following wine and present this as a public service. I have been filling a sidebar on my blog with descriptions of various bum wines lately and here offer the next in the series: Thunderbird 17.5% alcohol by vol.
Look for the pigeon feces and you’ll find this old bird.  As soon as you taste this swill, it will be obvious that its makers cut every corner possible in its production to make it cheap.  Self-proclaimed as “The American Classic,” Thunderbird is vinted and bottled by E. & J. Gallo Winery, in Modesto, CA.  Disguised like Night Train, the label says that it is made by “Thunderbird, Ltd.”  Anyways, if your taste buds are shot, and you need to get trashed with a quickness, then “T-bird” is the drink for you.  Or, if you like to smell your hand after pumping gas, look no further than Thunderbird.  As you drink on, the bird soars higher while you sink lower.  The undisputed leader of the five in foulness of flavor, we highly discourage drinking this ghastly mixture of unknown chemicals unless you really are a bum.  A convenience store clerk in Show Low, AZ once told me that only the oldest of stumbling Indian drunks from the reservation buy Thunderbird.  Available in 750 mL and a devastating 50 oz jug.
            The history of Thunderbird is as interesting as the drunken effects one experiences from the wine.  When Prohibition ended, Ernest Gallo and his brothers Julio and Joe wanted to corner the young wine market.  Earnest wanted the company to become “the Campbell Soup Company of the wine industry” so he started selling Thunderbird in the ghettos around the country.  Their radio ads featured a song that sang, “What’s the word? / Thunderbird / How’s it sold? / Good and cold / What’s the jive? / Bird’s alive / What’s the price? / Thirty twice.”  It is said that Ernest once drove through a tough, inner city neighborhood and pulled over when he saw a bum.  When Gallo rolled down his window and called out, “What’s the word?” the immediate answer from the bum was, “Thunderbird.”
           WARNING:  This light yellow liquid turns your lips and mouth black!  A mysterious chemical reaction similar to disappearing-reappearing ink makes you look like you’ve been chewing on hearty clumps of charcoal. http://www.bumwine.com

Hoboes invented a code, a language to use among themselves to indicate the status of various places, people and events. Many carried chalk to leave the symbols when needed. Watch my six-minute video on the meaning of hobo code symbols.

          The homeless are the new hoboes. Once they were quiet middle-class people. Now, forsaken, they are in your face on the street. The innocence and fearless swing of Roger’s fine ditty echoes back to a different time, transporting us into a tiny room that smells of cigar smoke, sweat and mold. A dirty sink has one tap that drips onto a rich brown stain that looks like chocolate. Pigeons coo and walk among their own feces on the windowsill. The clang of the midnight train, chuffing and screeing, draws the King’s ear as he smokes in the dark, propped up on the thin pillow on the saggy mattress, a fifth of a fifth of T’bird by his side. He listens and listens and dreams of anywhere but here.