Corby's Orbit Blog Receives Its One Millionth Hit - Obscurity Now Endangered

Intro by Heather Kitching. editor, Roots Music Canada:

In addition to writing for Roots Music Canada, Paul Corby hosts Corby’s Orbit on Radio Regent in Toronto and maintains a 16 year-old blog dedicated to the show.  This month, he is celebrating 25 years on air, and the one millionth hit on his blog today, and he wrote this lovely piece in celebration.

 

I am but a small-shot DJ, clinging to the precarious meniscus of Canadian radio. I have maintained a dedicated blog and a weekly music broadcast for sixteen years. I have been doing the job for even longer.

Twenty-five years ago this month, before anyone had ever driven a car into a crowd or an airplane into a skyscraper, I got up at 5 a.m. on a morning smelling of coffee, ozone and newsprint, and lugged a crate of L.P.s, and a bag of CDs slung over my shoulder, downtown to Yonge and Dundas on the very early, and eerily empty subway to go to air with my first show on CKLN.FM. I was the fill-in host for Bill Grove, the dark mega-far-out jazz cogno / renegade, who had recently been dismissed for one of his flammably candid on-air comments. I had gone down to complain about his firing to the station manager, Tim May, and he responded, astoundingly, by saying “You want a shot at the show?”

                                        photo by Leonard Poole

So at 7 a.m., I put on the headphones, slid up the faders, said good morning, and played Oscar Peterson’s rich solo version of “Django”, dedicating the day’s programming to its composer, the MJQ’s John Lewis, who had just recently slipped the surly bonds for real. Then I spun King Curtis’ boiling take on “The Swinging Shepherd Blues” (original title – “Blues a la Canadiana”), and on to Ornette, Kerouac, Charles Lloyd…”Thanks for keeping it real,” said a guy on the phone, and hung up. At eleven, my airwave idol, New Electronic Soul DJ, Denise Benson, came in to do her show and gave me some complimentary encouragement. As I left, DJ Tony Barnes advised me that I needed a course at “NO-‘UM’ school.”

Including those mentioned above, my thanks for generous advice and opportunities also go out to the late Ron Gaskin, Wally Dawson, Greg Lawson, Steve Balla, Victor Bains Marshall, Julie Hill, Ron Anicich, Ian Danzig, Stevie Connor, Denna Morgan, Daniel, Jackie, Stuart, Adonis, Amil, Tyrone, Pat, Erdine, my Orbital videographers Otis, Jake and Dimitri, and let me raise shouts to my three shining DJ exemplars, CKLN’s (now CIUT’s) David Kingston, the late Reiner Schwarz at CFNY, and the legendary Tom Shannon at CKLW. Special appreciation must be accorded to those legions of adventurous promoters and publicists who understand and empathize with talent, who have brought me music and personalities to feature on the Orbit. And most of all - thank you to all of my persistent Orbital listeners.

These fans and colleagues have nurtured in me a love for Canadian musicians that I had already begun to cultivate during 20 years of prolonged road-burn as a touring guitar player. I have learned to listen deep and to help to break artists out of their struggle with critical obfuscation and media blind-spots, and give them their interview time, a platform to play out their visions, the odd gig, and the chance to say, “Oh, we’re doing well on campus and community radio,” or “There’s a DJ in Toronto playing our record.” Thank you for beautifying my show with your music.

My programming allegiance has always been to the unique querulous voices maintaining their cool in the torrents of Toronto’s mass communication vortex. I have lost friends and alienated people by criticizing the mediocrity of many of our accepted CBC/Juno darlings, and especially their well-paid supporting cast. Consequently, many brave outlying iconoclasts have given me significant love as I have proceeded to wade my way through the dank and stormy programming bogs, while exposing my sometimes scabrous comments about the Canadian media model, which I prefer to think of as “being funny.” There are many of its many members who continue to fight the good fight (see above). My sincere appreciation goes out to them all, most especially to Heather Kitching, my editor and bestie at Roots Music Canada.

Last fall at a budget meeting, our station, Radio Regent, was almost extinguished overnight by a panel of accountants. Only a last-minute staff shuffle changed the vote and kept our station on the air.

 I gratefully maintain a tenuous place in your ear-waves for now. I hope to bring many more emerging and enduring voices across your event horizons as long as the need for exploratory radio survives. Until that time the Orbit remains up, and up, but definitely not, yet, away.