Can-Con 45 Of The Day - March 6

[radiofan]

Today's Can-Con 45 is from 1981 ... Rough Trade and "All Touch" ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpraodUSyjA

[paterson]

I attended the Juno's in 1982 and Rough Trade performed this song live. Great evening, one that will stay with me forever. SCTV was at it's peak, Bob and Doug McKenzie presented the award for most promising male vocalist (Eddie Schwartz), Neil Young was awarded the hall of fame award, Loverboy walked away with six awards. Anne Murray was still boycotting the Juno's back in '82. She felt the awards were too rowdy and unprofessional.

I believe this was the final year that the Junos had a dinner right before the show. A lot of drinking that night during the awards and the folks at the Harbour Castle were quite generous with the bottles of wine to every table. I had my cassette machine with me and was able to interview pretty much all of the winners, everyone was very approachable. I was a little nervous interviewing Neil Young but he was fine, quite accommodating. The Rovers had a bar in downtown Toronto and one of the guys in the band came to our table and invited all of us to an after awards party at their pub.

Back in '82 I was afternoon drive at CFOS in Owen Sound, and a good friend and sales rep. from the station and I were able to convince the management to spring for a couple of tickets to the Junos. My sales buddy had a friend who worked at chum and we had a tour of the station. The afternoon announcer at 1050 chum was Bob McGee. He put me on the air for about a minute and we discussed who was going to win group of the year. I know I thought it would be Rush, turned out to be Loverboy.
Kind of a thrill to meet some of my radio idols at chum. They were still in their new wave. new music phase on air and sounded fantastic. Always thought it was interesting that chum was just playing part of the top 30 in this era, they really were committed to new wave, songs that many other am stations wouldn't touch.

CBC broadcast the show to over 2.1 million viewers that year. They are handling the broadcast this year for the first time in over 10 years from London. I know people like to slag the Juno's but I have always given them credit in that they usually have a couple of newer artists perform during the broadcast, and even back in '82 all the performances were live. Back in those days both the Grammy Awards and the American Music Awards were often still lip synched.