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From Toronto Star, November 14, 2003: Radio DJs difficult to identify in a crowd WILLIAM BURRILL First the breaking news: CFNY The Edge is hosting the 2003 Casby Awards (Canadian Artists Selected by You) on Wed., Nov. 26 at Koolhaus. There will be five awards and eight live performances, including Iggy Pop and punk-lite gods Sum 41. There will also be a special appearance by Mayor-elect David Miller, who, after all, had the good taste to use a Springsteen tune as his campaign song (Casby details at https://www.edge.ca). Speaking of CFNY, I hauled my ass out to "The Spirit Reunion 2003" at the Guvernment on Wednesday night, the first reunion of all the old-time CFNY jocks. The only problem was, although I knew I was surrounded by the likes of David Marsden, Dons Berns, Ivar Hamilton, All-Nite Andrew, and many more legendary disc-jockeys, I only knew what these guys sounded like, and had no clue what they looked like. Oddly enough, after a night of wishing I could put a face to a name, I checked my office e-mail and came across a message from a faithful reader named Phil Waldie, whose complaint was completely the opposite. He wrote a rant about how he would prefer it if radio personalities were heard and not seen. "I expect a column on Humble & Fred will be forthcoming," Waldie writes. "Their act is the closest thing we have to humorous and entertaining radio. Then what do they do? Plaster the town with posters of themselves. Enough to make anyone puke. Please explain to the boys that their looks are not an asset." Well, I used to work with Humble on a TV show about a foul-mouthed, cigar-chomping sock puppet named Ed (I'm not making this up) and I think Howard is quite a handsome young fellow, even if he did always bum my smokes. And Fred ain't chopped liver either, in a pleasant, down-to-earth way. But I tremble when I write about Freddie. You see, a few years back, when Humble & Fred first moved from their gig at CFNY The Edge 102.5 FM over to the AM dial in the fledgling days of MOJO 640 AM, I wrote a column about how, in my opinion, the dynamic H&F duo did not seem fit the early MOJO mould of jocks dumbing it down for "da guys." Well, the next day I turned on the Humble & Fred Show and there on air was Fred's mother going off on a 15-minute rant about how "I don't like this William Squirrel guy." But now that H&F have moved back to the FM dial as the morning men for The Mix 99.9, I think they have found their niche. All is forgiven, Mrs. Freddie's Mom. |
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