Bon's Mots

The re­cent spate of celebrity deaths have taken some amaz­ing and tal­ented peo­ple away from us.

Ed McMahon, side­kick and Publisher’s Clearing House spokesman, was part of my parent’s Tonight Show, which I shunned be­cause my 14-year-old, punk-ass self, completely con­sumed with the sar­donic hu­mour of SCTV and Saturday Night Live, thought it was passé. (It was only when I bought a DVD box set of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson for my dad and watched it with him that I later rec­og­nized Carson’s ge­nius as a fun­ny­man. But that’s an­other story.) 

Farrah Fawcett, pin up queen and tele­vi­sion star, was the girl you wished you were — for the gen­er­a­tion of women be­fore me. When my friends and I role-played Charlie’s Angels, I al­ways fought to be Kelly Garrett. For me, Jaclyn Smith was the girl I wished I was. I think it was the brunette thing.

As for Michael Jackson, well, as far as I’m con­cerned, he died af­ter Thriller.

But the re­cent sui­cide of Martin Streek has af­fected me more deeply.

The power of ra­dio has di­min­ished for me in re­cent years, but in my teens, twen­ties and early thir­ties, my world was con­sumed by CFNY. The sta­tion saw me through un­re­quited crushes and all-night study ses­sions. It in­tro­duced me to bands that I never heard be­fore and opened up within me a deep in­ter­est in mu­sic that has grown ex­po­nen­tially. Before iTunes and in­ter­net ra­dio, CFNY was it. And then Martin Streek came along and it got even better.

If I wasn’t at the Phoenix danc­ing my ass off un­der­neath the booth where Streek per­formed his magic, you would find me at home, ly­ing on my bed, head­phones on, lis­ten­ing to Streek’s voice as he was broad­cast­ing “LIVE TO AIR”. I haven’t lis­tened to the sta­tion much since it re-branded it­self as “The Edge”, so I was un­aware that Streek had been fired in May, which is an­other ex­am­ple of how far the sta­tion has strayed from be­ing “the spirit of radio”. Whether his dis­missal had any­thing to do with his death, we may never know.

The im­por­tant thing for me is this: Martin Streek in­tro­duced me to a lot of great mu­sic and, for that, he will al­ways have my deep­est appreciation.

To show yours, join the Facebook group set up to ho­n­our his memory.