Over Easy:All Night DJ
My first real job, aside from delivering the Toronto Telegram, was as an all-night DJ at CKPT in Peterborough, home to 5000 watts of hit radio in the Kawarthas. I was hired by Program Director Ken Cassavoy, who took his first in a series of risks on me, a 19 year old kid, fresh from helping found Trent University Radio. I was in my third year at Trent and my first as a broadcaster, learning skills that I would draw on over a decade later hosting an all-night video show called City Limits.
The extent of my responsibilities was to play the hits from midnight till 6:00, run promos and read the news summary at the top of every hour. The latter involved a technique known as ‘rip and read’, where I’d tear the latest news items fresh from the teletype feed in the newsroom, and race back into the control room where “The Boxer” was hopefully still spinning. Once I realized that I could read the news summary without having looked at it beforehand, that became my M.O. Of course, every once in a while the teletype machine would jam, obliterating the content of a news item. This resulted in moments where I’d be reading a story, saying “Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau came out swinging in the House of Commons as he unleashed a scathing attack on…ashglnhui uhh ovyh yhxsasou”, at which point I would pause meaningfully and utter a very conclusive sounding “last night”, hoping that my confident delivery would fake out all seven of my listeners at the all-night carpet cleaning plant.
The sports scores provided an opportunity to add meaningless variety to the results. The Cubs mauled the Reds 5-4 while the Dodgers doubled the count on the cellar dwelling Phils, 8-4. The Twins were humiliated as the Tigers roared to a 4-3 victory while the Pinstripers nudged the Beantowners 6-5. You get the idea.
I was the only person in the station, which was located in the Empress Hotel.
When one of the turntables broke down, the station engineer Albert Dyck, who changed his name to the radio friendly Dick Alberts, would show up and wedge himself into the space between me, live on air, and the turntables on my left. The photo gives you an idea of the limited real estate involved. Dick was a lovely guy, but he smoked relentlessly, and had a vicious case of fridge repairman ass crack as he leaned over to do his repairs, which were of course scheduled for my shift because, hey, who’s listening at 2:30 a.m. anyway? Dick also had this weird habit of standing his cigarette butts on end with the ash resting on the filter, and they would accumulate over the duration of the work, forming a kind of Butthenge around the turntable. While this was going on the real tricky part for me was doing my show with one turntable. After the repairs were completed Dick would hang around and tell me radio stories, which I loved.
My friends used to visit me and bring food, for which I was extremely grateful. However, hijinks were often included. Once, during my recitation of the 21st summary, two of my friends stood on the table in the library which I could see through the control room window, and danced naked throughout the newscast. I did not break up! A professional at work.
On another occasion, someone thought it would be hilarious to light the newscast on fire… while I was reading it. Puerile? Yes. Did I break up? No.
My friend Joey Edwards who hosted the show before mine used to hang out with me and during the album portion of the show between 3 and 5 AM we would record songs and comedy bits for his show on a pair of ancient upright Ampex recorders in glorious 12 track mono. This is where I made my first demos and learned about multi-tracking. We also liked to live dangerously and would drive from the Empress Hotel to the Country Style donut shop at the end of George Street, counting on getting our orders in and getting back to the station before side one of The Rascals “Freedom Suite” finished. It only failed once but it was a heart stopping moment when, as we were driving and contemplating a raised maple vs a walnut crueller, we heard a skip on the record that was playing on the car radio. The hyperventilation had already begun when the record magically fell back into the groove and continued. I think we took a couple of nights off from the Country Style and their irresistible cinnamon twists.
Once, inevitably, I fell asleep during the album portion and woke up drooling with my head on the console, to the sounds of the needle swishing around on the inner grooves of “Chicago Transit Authority” and the persistent ringing of the studio phone. A disgruntled voice demanded to know if I had fallen asleep. I assured him that this was most certainly not the case and thanked him for his call while I flipped the album over.
Despite all of the above, my boss at CKPT, Ken Cassavoy, and I remained friends. In thinking back on those times, I imagine he wasn’t always asleep during my late night follies. Ken went on to teach broadcast at Centennial College in Toronto and during the Much years I used to speak to his class. I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize for my immaturity in those DJ days and to thank him for having hired me… bcdhaogabnjk… last night.
