Gaslight at QM

[Jack Bennest]

Trivia for those in the know

What year
What is the significance of the pix
Who are the people on the album
Where is the location
Does anyone have a jpg of this album of a higher quality

Answers later

[J Kendrick]

What year
What is the significance...

Wasn't "Gaslight" the name of QM's evening programme during the sixties?

[Jack Bennest]

Waiting for Jon to bite. He might not.

[Neumann Sennheiser]

The exterior of the Lamplighter Pub at the Dominion Hotel in Gastown, I think.
(also the title of a pretty good movie that won a 1945 best actress oscar for Ingrid Bergmann)

[Jack Bennest]

For many years following the sale of the Q empire Jack Stark, our founding CEO, used to spend summers at his cottage in Naramata and we always got together socially at least once a year. On one of those occasions he gifted me with a copy of "Gaslight" - the first of the QM promotional custom LPs released in 1965.

The cover photograph - shot at the entrance of Hi's Encore on Howe Street - is of the memorably sveldt Dale Brown and myself behaving like typical idealized QM people, i.e. smoking in a public place, wearing designer garments and throwing around discretionary cash. Soon afterwards Dale moved to Los Angeles, became a wildly successful fashion model, appeared as a Slay Girl in Dean Martin's Matt Helm movies and married a well-to-do lawyer. I stayed in Vancouver voicing Holt Renfrew commercials.


Best, Bill Phillips

[jon]

Sorry to get on to this so late. It has been a long day, beginning with a fairly severe thunderstorm and power failure just before 6 a.m. this morning.

If I ever knew, I had forgotten that Gaslight was the first QM album. As a kid when they came out, I assumed it was Candlelight and Wine, as it was the first one that my father bought. When I spent a year at QM (1971-72), they had a nice collection of historical stuff, including those albums and the QM mini-magazines of the same period. They had Winnipeg (CJQM) versions of the magazines, but I never saw the Winnipeg version of the LPs that radiofan has since come up with.

Gaslight aired from 11pm-1am 7 days a week on both AM and FM until August 31, 1971. After that, as a way to avoid escalating costs associated with the CRTC's requirement for a lot less simulcasting in major markets, Gaslight only ran from 11pm-midnight, with Art Enns coming in an hour early to do his all night show. The Hong Kong Kitchen and the other couple of regular sponsors of the midnight-1am hour stayed on.

If I recall correctly, Terry Bell voice tracked Gaslight, in both the one and two hour versions.

Until August 31, 1971, 6pm-9am was simulcast on CHQM AM and FM, along with all Newscasts. Beginning September 1, only midnight-6am was simulcast. Even the Newscasts were done separately; FM Newscasts were carted by the Newsman just before the top of the hour, and aired on the hour. They were never more than 15 minutes old, and never repeated, though there was at least one top of the hour each day when no Newscast was aired on FM.

To avoid the costs of producing separate versions of programs heard on both CHQM AM & FM, including Gaslight, the previous day's program on CHQM-AM was aired on CHQM-FM. With one exception: George Sillery did a live version of Candlelight and Wine on CHQM-AM for the month of September 1971, beginning with a short Newscast at 6pm, rather than the half hour News package aired on AM. Other than the all night show, which was still simulcast, no live CHQM-AM programming was aired on FM; a separate version was voice-tracked or aired live on FM.

Perhaps the biggest transition was Brad Keene's morning show. Previously simulcast, it was replaced on FM by Terry Bell who voice tracked each show, but began with the most boring job in Radio: doing a full set of minute by minute time checks from 6am-9am, with 20Hz Stop Tone between each. It was up to the board operator, usually Dave Horne, to calculate which time check he needed and cue it up on one of the Ampex tape drives; it was done in the FM control room, not off the automation machine, as the music was on vinyl and not always in the three song sets found on 10.5" tape.