Radio Daze: Fond Memories of an Aggravating Angel

Photo by John Marsonet.

“To deal with the history of cultures means to abandon oneself to potential chaos and yet to retain a deep belief in the basic ordination and meaning of things. It is a very serious task. One requiring a great lightness of spirit.” – Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi

I definitely miss being on a weekly radio program. From about 1988 until the end of the 20th century, I was the visual art critic for CJRT-FM in Toronto, a wonderful community-based station with an eclectic mix of programming and hosts covering every aspect of popular culture, from classical music, folk and jazz, to BBC-imported Goon Shows and compelling ideas-based documentaries. The program on which I appeared every Wednesday to review an exhibition, interview an artist, curator or museum official, discuss an architectural design site and occasionally assess art books of mainstream interest, was appropriately called On the Arts, and that’s exactly what it was, with a day each week exclusively devoted to music, films, theatre, art, design, books and art politics.  It just now seems so perfectly 20th-century, in fact, that kind of diversity of interests, since independent public radio (and television for that matter) has become such a rare thing to behold or behear. (Critics At Large has been sharing excerpts of the program as podcasts.)

One of the other joys of my radio days was the fact that it was through this medium that I was able to cross paths with a delightful friend of over thirty years, the late, great Kevin Courrier, who passed away (or went to spirit, as he would have called it) in mid-October of this year. The path to Kevin, however, first led me to encounter the irascible, sardonic, sarcastic, infuriating and brilliant Tom Fulton, Kevin’s co-host at CJRT-FM and his mentor of many years: the man who Kevin said helped him “find his voice.” Kevin in turn helped me find my own voice, guiding me through the odd vagaries and quirks of the radio broadcast medium of expression.

Podcast: Interview with Michael Cherkas & Larry Hancock (1986)

From 1981 to 1989, I was assistant producer and co-host of the radio show On the Arts, at CJRT-FM (today Jazz 91.1) in Toronto. With the late Tom Fulton, who was the show's prime host and producer, we did a half-hour interview program where we talked to artists from all fields. Given the recent American election of Donald Trump, which had all the bizarre intrigue of a Cold War thriller – except that it was a far cry from fiction – it seemed appropriate to resurrect an interview I did with authors Michael Cherkas and Larry Hancock. They wrote a series of graphic novels, The Silent Invasion (1986-88), that depicted an America sinking under the weight of paranoia in the Cold War fifties. Ace reporter Matt Sinkage meanwhile tries to solve a conspiracy involving flying saucers and alien abductions which today wouldn't seem too far-fetched.

– Kevin Courrier

Here is the full interview with Michael Cherkas and Larry Hancock as it aired on CJRT-FM in 1986.

This Freberg You Will Not Change: Stan Freberg (1926-2015)

(Photo Courtesy of Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

Stan Freberg, who died last month at the age of 88, was the first American show business figure I ever saw referred to as a “satirist,” by people who clearly meant to convey that his stuff was on a sharper, smarter level than the comedy of mere funnymen. When someone like Bob Hope did a sketch about Bonanza or Batman on one of his TV specials, the subject of the sketch didn’t really matter, and there was nothing that could be called a point of view: the dumb topical jokes about politicians and other celebrities could go just as well with any backdrop, and the targets of the spoofs were probably chosen on the basis of which funny costumes Hope and his guest stars preferred to wear.

Freberg’s musical parodies and takeoffs on TV and radio shows had precision: he would zero in on something about a performer that struck him as especially inane and go to town on it. And they had bite: unlike the comedians who want to make it clear that it’s all in good fun when they crack wise about one of their esteemed colleagues, Freberg, like some of the later performers who made their names on Saturday Night Live and other post-rock generation revues, was out to draw blood. He had the smart-adolescent’s deeply personal resentment of inanity and mediocrity, as if Johnny Ray  had made a million dollars singing like that just to piss him off. All in good fun, his ass; Freberg was out for revenge.