Cameron Carpenter: Rock’n’Roll Rewind – A Chat With A Rat

This week we rewind to the spring of 1979.

I sat down at a seedy hotel on the west side of Jarvis just south of the infamous “Hooker Harvey’s” as various Boomtown Rats scurried about the room. Little did I know it at the time, but many of the principals involved with the band would one day play a big part in my career.

Cameron Carpenter: Rock’n’Roll Rewind – White Dopes On Punk

This week we are going to rewind back to April 12, 1978. My assignment that day was to interview Fee Waybill, frontman for the always outrageous Tubes, prior to their show at the late-great Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. It was the third trip to Toronto after shows in the horrible International Centre and the always magnificent Massey Hall. They had just released their fourth album “What Do You Want From Live”, a double-live album, recorded at the Hammersmith Odeon in London.

Cameron Carpenter: Rock and Roll Rewind – I’m a Dude, Dad!

Dateline Tuesday September 19, 1979. Ryerson Theatre, Toronto, Canada.

I was three months out of my teens. I can’t remember if I was working for Quality Records for the first time, or, if I had recently been fired, for the first time.  I may have just returned from a cross-Canada tour as the road manager for Edmonton-based band The Models. I do know from my faded press clippings that I was writing for The New Music Magazine and was listed, along with FYI’s David Farrell, as part of the “Toronto Bureau” for Music Express Magazine (interesting to note that famed political spin doctor – and punk rocker – Warren Kinsella – was at the Calgary Bureau, and long-time entertainment writer Graham Hicks shared the Edmonton Bureau with Chocolate Bunnies From Hell front-man P.J. Burton).