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cfny testimonials
selected stories from fans and employees
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Have some memories you want to have included here? Send
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Newest testimonials appear at the top of the page. Testimonials from station
employees appear with a yellow
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I started listening to CFNY back in the late 70's when you could barely hear it in your car radio in Mississauga. I think you were broadcasting from some house in Brampton at the time before you moved to Toronto.
I recal hearing U@, The Cars, Devo and a multitude of music never heard on any other station. I was hooked from the start and listened for a decade.
My favourite Dj's were the Live Earl Jive and Beverly Hills and I would listen every evening to thier antics. I loved the stories of Duran Duran and the many other stars they talked about.
In the eighties I was twenty something and it was hip to listen to the "Spirit if Radio" I also remember when you went satellite your slogan was "One of the Two Great Radio Stations in the World" I never quite understood that statement but I beleive you were referring to Radio Luxemburg (the other sat station) Anyway you definitely started a trend and the hardest Hits albums...I own them all!
CFNY brought a lot of music to people like myself six months to a year before any other station thought of playing it and also made unknown acts mainstream. You guys were innovators and forward thinking.
I am saddened however that todays music does not have the punch or the social commentary of the 80's music. It all sounds generic and pumped out, kind of like sitting at the movie theatre before the show starts and they play unknown acts. I don't blsme CFNY but I do blame the new bands who are few and far between these days with interesting music.I think it was because new wave was synth or techno inspired and had a good beat like tears for Fears or Simple Minds which was good dance music and complex. Todays bands sadly aren't experimenting like bands did in the 80's.
Maybe I'm getting old??? I still love the sounds of the eighties and have fond memories of listening to CFNY as it was a big part of my life growing up.
Tom D - February, 2012 |
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I started listening to CFNY in '82. I was in high school and all my friends thought I was weird to listen to anything other than what was being broadcast on CHUM or stations like that. Hell, most of them didn't even listen to radio, but I had a new stereo system and all I wanted to do was hear good music. I would just sit and listen with my fingers poised over the 'record' button on my tape deck to catch a great tune to play for my friends. When dinner was called, I would just hit the record button and let it go for 45 minutes and then listen to it later because I knew that there would be something that I had never heard before and would like, because I liked everything that was played by those insane DJ's, who were equally as alternative and entertaining as the music. Eventually, my friends came around to understand how 'cool' I was for knowing all this great music early on and they became fans too. Some of that music is hard to find today but I continue to search for it. Thanks for this site to bring back some of the memories, and resources! There never will be anything quite like CFNY - The Spirit Of Radio, ever again, but it represents one of the best times of my life.
Rob L - January, 2012 |
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I remember the early days of CFNY when David Marsden would play jazz, classical, rock, pop, experimental - it was an amazing soundtrack. One of the songs he played with some regularity was Claude Debussy's Arabesque No. 1 - the coolest version I ever heard. If anyone knows whose version he was playing back then, I would love to find it. Email me at wvandal@rogers.com if you know the answer.
Warren V - January, 2012 |
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I remember listening to CFNY in the late seventies and early eighties. It was the thing to do. It was the cool radio station of that time. I remember hearing certain bands for the first time on CFNY including a lot of local Ontario based bands. Most of which never made it. I bought an album by a band called "Drastic Measures" because of hearing it on CFNY. A few years ago I sold it in a yard sale. I remember signing a petition to save the station in a Hamilton independent record store. That would have been in 1980; I'm pretty sure. One night in the very early 80's I was listening to the station late at night while reading the paper. After awhile the station went dead but I left the radio on. After awhile longer it came back on. The female disc jockey explained that she had gone out to her car for some records and locked herself out of the station. This was in the days long before mobile phones so she had a hard time getting help to get back in considering it was very late at night. I remember driving past the station in Brampton and thinking it was all very deceptive that the station promoted itself as a Toronto radio station when in fact it was in suburbia of all places.
Anyway I was a CFNY fan and I had a small hand in saving it by signing the petition.
John Clark - December, 2011 |
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My favorite CFNY moment? '79 or '80, Graham Parker and the Rumour (still one of the top 3 shows I've EVER seen, the Squeezing Out Sparks tour, even with recurring power problems that evening) at the El Mo, corner table stage left, I could see the sweat on Brinsley's brow. Presented and simulcast by CHUM - but all through the performance, the crowd was chanting 'CFNY, CFNY, CFNY' It was a beautiful night all around, lol.
Aside to Bonnie Bender: I was just recently informed (which is how I found this site, Googling Bruce Heyding) that Heyding died of a heart attack around 10 years ago.
Terry Gorman - December, 2011 |
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The mid- and late 80s are the period that I will always think of as vintage CFNY. I really liked Pete and Geetz, and could not believe what they were playing in the mornings, compared to the bilge on the other stations. In the mid-80s, I was living and listening in St. Catharines, and from 1986 on, I was in Toronto, back at university. In my opinion, this was the era when CFNY was blowing the doors off. So honest, so open, so damn... real!
My favorite song of this era? An obscure song that you would never, ever hear anywhere else... "She's a Runaway", by the BoDeans. Why? Because, back then, I needed to be a runaway, too.
Thanks always for CFNY... a precious memory that I'll have all my life.
Brian Collinson - October, 2011 |
Wow!
My friend in Hong Kong (he went to university in upstate New York in the early 80's and he thought we were the coolest station on the planet) turned me on to this site. (I've been working in Hong Kong TV since 1995)
I was a news reader at CFNY starting in 1981. Then the News Director at the time, Rick Charles, decided I'd be a better reporter. I took that as a kick in the face, but it turned out for the best. I left CFNY in 1986 to join CFRB, the "news voice". When I signed up I wanted to go back to using my real name, Alan Buchnea, but they said "No" we're hiring Alan Ericson, one of the best reporters in Toronto, well known as CFNY's main news reporter". So in 1989 I won the National Radio Award (radio version of a Juno) for Best Reporter/Investigative Journalist for private radio. Thank you Rick Charles/CFNY for turning me into a reporter at a station where many people thought news doesn't matter. It did! Too bad I had to go somewhere else to get the award.
My five years at CFNY were the best years of my professional career.
The baseball team, the NY Wankees, was awsome! Thanks Marg Fardella, for organising that.
Right now, I'm working in Hong Kong. After stints at CNBC and CNN, a local TV station, TVB offered me my own show, to be Executive Producer and host. Called Money Magazine. I did that for 10 years. Oh, and I won an Amnesty International Human Rights Award for a show I did in 2001.
Now I'm in charge of the Financial News at TVB. And still anchoring at the whizzened old age of 58.
Sorry for the long missive. Please let anyone interested that I can be contacted at this email, abuchnea {at} netvigator.com.
Great site,
Alan Buc.. er... Ericson
Alan Ericson - August, 2011 |
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Wow, the 80's was the best for up & coming groups & CFNY knew how to play them. The girlfriend & I, used to sneak off to Ottawa voyageur bus stop, end up at the Bond street hotel, listen to CFNY while getting ready to dance at a alternative club on right around the corner from the hotel.
Trying to remember what that club was called, anyhow we finally ended up moving together to Toronto, they were the days!!!. Found this site, while listening to Echo & Bunnymen, their playing may 16th,2011, wish I was still in Toronto.
Michael C - May, 2011 |
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I lived in western NY from 1989 to 2003 - I could pick up the station quite well over the lake. It was fabulous, so much better than anything we had on the US side. I was relatively young and single and I'd drive to T.O. for the music and bands and events, crash in a cheap motel on the west side somewhere, then tear down the QEW at 90 miles an hour at 6 in the morning to get to work on time. Those were the days.
I called in on the Humble and Fred show once, when the Jays were in the World Series and the idiots from the US honor guard carried the Canadian flag upside down during the opening national anthems. Got on the air and confirmed that if the Canadians did that to the U.S., we'd surely launch a nuclear strike against them....
When I got relocated, I listened on the web when I could - so sad all this greatness is gone. It was truly the best.
Albert Strausser - January, 2011 |
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I was waxing nostalgiac over the Holidays and Googled "CFNY" and Lo!, I came upon this web page. Although there are no recent postings, I am compelled to contribute a little.
I was living in Toronto and driving tow trucks in the late '70's and early '80's. CFNY was always on my truck radio.
CFNY was SUCH a breath of fresh air. From Pete & Geets, to James Scott, Ivor Hamilton and all the other personalities whose names escape me, CFNY was the greatest station of all time.
I particularly remember that wet and snowy day in December of 1980 when John Lennon was murdered. I was devastated like everyone else. I remember being welled up with tears the whole day over it. But CFNY was there and we bonded as staff and listeners with reflections and tributes. It helped so very much.
You guys were the best and my god it would be so nice to revive a CFNY 2.0.
J Farrow - January, 2011 |
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Hi all
Johnny Spadina recalling the fine old daze at 'NY. Dave Pritchard, Bruce Heyding, Eckley, Terry, Andre, Al Spring. Yes, radio was lovely back then
After the Allen's gave me the boot, Marsden moved in and did a nice job. I, meanwhile, went to Q107. Gary Slaight really understood R&R and those days at Q were very very terrific.
Ahhhhhhh
Johnny Spadina - December, 2010 |
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...best station that defined my youth into my late teens and early adulthood...'89-91 was my zenith into the world of alternative music as it was called...I mean if it wasn't for Dani Elwel and The Alternative Bedtime Hour playing Tangerine Dream with her intoxicating voice would I ever graduated University I wonder? Thank you Chris Sheppard and Deadly Headly Jones "Live at the Lizard Lounge" for burning my portable radio batteries under my bed sheet covers to 6 AM on Saturday Night..Bookie, Josie Dye, etc- c'mon where else could you listen to Ministry, Bare Naked Ladies, Jane's Addiction, Cure, Violent Femmes all in a half hour drive from school?....Catherine Wheel "Black Metallic" - the one song that define CFNY and freezes me no matter where I am when I hear the intro.thank you for the dear memories and as one poster stated years back, for educating me to how music and life should live in balance.
A.D. - December, 2010 |
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I started listening to the station after disco died and CHIC turned into CFNY. Fortunately I lived in Bramalea, close enough to the station in Brampton so I had no trouble picking it up even when the transmitter was only a few thousand watts. I remember seeing posters going up in my high-school (Bramalea Secondary School) in 1979 announcing that the station was upping the power to 100,000 watts so something good must have been happening.
The end of the 70's seemed to be a turning point in music when Punk and New Wave broke through and CFNY played it all. It was definitely different than what all other stations were playing.
In those days "cool" meant going with the flow... everyone wore jeans,tee-shirts and Adidas and listened to popular rock. I was a bit of an oddball among my friends for listening to "strange music" and having a weird haircut. (Quite a contrast to today where "different" is in and the weirder the music, the cooler you are.) I'm guilty of converting some of my friends and family over to the new sounds of CFNY.
I'm still a huge fan of all the music from back then (Urban Verbs, Cowboys International, and local acts like The Gov't, The Diodes, Nash the Slash etc..). I loved listening to Marsden in the night time and whacked out Earl and Beverly... what a pair ! I also enjoyed Liz Janik's more mellow stuff and Daddy Cool's blues & jazz on Sunday afternoons. The diversity was so unique.
I'm glad to have experienced the early days of CFNY and be entertained by the lineup of characters (hosts). CFNY is still unique in the Toronto market and I enjoy some of the new tunes that they play but "it ain't what it used to be". I doubt we will encounter anything like that again.
Hugh Duff - November, 2010 |
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Back in the early-mid '70s I left Humber College to work at CHIC in Brampton...I started out as call screener for the day time talk folk,Larry Soloway,Rosie the Clown, {Vicky Gabereau} and Johnny Spadina..Then At night I monitored the Greek & Italian shows...Then did a Saturday show on 'NY up the street..At the time I called myself Dave Kelso..Such great memories for me...too bad I was histary by the time Dave Marsden came on board..I remember him as Dave Mickey at CHUM radio back in the day...
David V. Ervin - September, 2010 |
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I started listening in the summer of'79 and never looked back. Those days were magic. Where else could you hear Hawkwind's Silver Machine back to back with early Ultravox. I still remember the live broadcast of The Government from the long gone Spats.
The station's had so many great personalities. I still remember watching Mike Stafford on Jeopardy deliberately giving the wrong answer on Final Jeopardy. How the times have changed.
Thanks for the memories.
Joe Restek - August, 2010 |
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I started listening to CFNY quite by accident, Dave Marsden was on the air at the time and I was hooked. I started listening to the station almost all the time and my friends thought I was nuts, but I kept at it. At one time I was a constant caller to request songs especially on Liz Janik's show. The station got me through the the 70's and 80's. One question though does anyone remember the dj who was from Australia I loved his show and had met him a couple of times when he came into the bar I worked at.
Drew Cooper - July, 2010 |
"The Spirit". You were the best. I never experienced anything like it before or after. I didn't get much sleep back then listening every night with head phones on. I was intrigued when Rush dedicated a great song to the greatest radio station that had just begun. I made sure I always had you with me no matter where I was or where I was going. I'm now in my 50's and living in Shanghai. Still tune into David Marsden free from radio when I can.
Cheers to CFNY!
Jim G.
Jim Grummett - June, 2010 |
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I want to say THANK YOU for setting up this site!! I stumbled across it and was thrilled you put it together. I am actually crying while reading some of the testimonials people have left. I can relate totally. I only lived in Guelph for a short time in the early 80s but the impact of the playlists you offered changed the way I even now, think of music. CFNY had fantastic music and thank you very much for those special memories. They transported me back then and reading these comments now is transporting me again.
Elsie - May, 2010 |
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I lived in Guelph for almost a year Nov.81-June 82 and one of the highlights of that cold dismal winter was discovering CFNY. God that was an amazing station!! I loved the tunes - heard things I'd never heard before like Simple Minds, Boomtown Rats, Ultra Vox, Human League, etc. All that new wave stuff. It was refreshing after hearing MOR pop for so long on regular radio stations. I was in my mid 20's and it seemed groundbreaking at the time. Great memories, thanks CFNY!!!
Beth - May, 2010 |
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Wow! CFNY.. what a station! I was a volunteer reporter/anchor with Maclean Hunter/Rogers Cable 10 on Wolfedale in Mississauga from 1984 - 1986. We had this great gig for a breakfast radio broadcast from our parking lot featuring CFNY and the inimatable Peter Griffen and Geets Romo. What a thrill to chat with those two radio pros that I would listen to in the car every morning and be part of such a unique broadcast. Heck, I even made commemorative sweatshirts for the event. Also on hand were Deborah Boland, Colleen Walsh, Greg Rogers, Bruce Matheson and a great crew of techs and staff. Great memory!
Kirk Titmuss - April, 2010 |
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Best Radio station in the world! Listened to "The Spirit of Radio" from 84-87, no other station even came close to the programming; thanks for the memories. Cheers to CFNY!
Rick - February, 2010 |
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Hello,
Chris Pack here. I worked at CFNY for almost 10 years. (1990 - 1999). Martin Streek hired me to work on the Video Road Show until its demise. All the while I was fill-in producing the all-request shows. When the Road Show was over, Stuart Meyers teamed me up with Kim Hughes to Produce "Live in Toronto" which went on to become a hugely popular interview show filled with many "live" performances. These were the best times for me. I'll never forget interviewing the likes of Robert Smith, David Bowie, Radiohead and so many more to mention. I'll always remember how great it was to work there with all the wonderful staff. Good times! I left there and went on to work in TV for many years at The Weather Network and now I run my own renovation company...808reno.com Cheers! Thanks for the memories.
Chris Pack - December, 2009 |
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