"Wanna come to CFRB with me? It might be good for shits and giggles". That was Humble Howard's offer yesterday afternoon. As luck would have it, my Monday night was open and I was in the mood for shits and giggles. We agreed to meet outside 2 St. Clair Ave West at 7:45pm.
We burned an hour having coffee at the joint across the street before we entered the domain of Standard Broadcasting. This was his office before he was canned, so there was that extra element of awkwardness. We were met in the lobby by Richard the producer of the Jim Richards show and I was introduced as the embedded journalist. I love that title.
I got a tour of the on-air section and met Freeway Frank who was on the air at 99.9 MIX FM and a genuine nice guy. He's commented on this site before and even knew Toronto Mike. He was working in the studio where the Humble & Fred show was broadcast from, which made it even more eery. There was also EZ Rock 97.3, but we didn't go into their studio, and then there was 1010 CFRB.
My mother tells stories of my grandmother working at Laura Secords at St. Clair and Yonge and CFRB personalities like Gordon Sinclair and Betty Kennedy dropping by all the time, but I digress. CFRB has been a big time radio station in this market for a long time, whether we kids like it or not. It was very cool meeting the producer and board op and watching them to their thing while Humble was on the air. Dean, the board op, even answered my many questions about this crazy new medium called radio.
I took pictures, and you can see the photoset here. Jim Richards, who I sincerely think is a very funny man, was laid back cool, although we didn't get a chance to chat long. He was sorta busy workin'. The interview itself seemed to go well and Humble managed to drop a promo for this very site, which was cool. I'll share the interview here later.
At the end of the day, I enjoyed a lot of shits and giggles, and that was the point, wasn't it?
