CJNU 107.9 FM

Nostalgia Broadcasting Cooperative
Non-ProfitCommunity Service Radio

Greg Gardner

Announcer
Host 'Music from the North Shore'

I have been surrounded by music, records, and radio in one way or another my whole life. However, unlike my father, Cliff (CKX, CKRC, CJOB) and my brother, Ford (CKY, 92 CITI), I felt I would rather pursue learning to play and perform music than to play music on the radio...until now.

Although I am still playing and performing with many different projects, I seem to have a bit of the ol' "radio bug" after all. Actually, my first foray into radio was in the 1950s, when I was just six years old, on 'The Blue Boy Show' at CKRC, as the Blue Boy, with my dad. A few years later, my younger brother, Ford, came on board as Pint-Size.

With the countless ways music bombards us - in stores and malls...television idol shows... commercials...YouTube...cars next to you thumping away...I still like the idea of creating (or listening to) music shows over the radio. Rather than it being thrust upon you, you search it out, according to your tastes...there is a kind of friendly intimacy with a particular personality you can trust to present music you already like or would probably enjoy getting introduced to.

A lot of the folks I am meeting up with at CJNU seem like old friends. Indeed, they were friends of my dad, and I would see them at the various radio stations, media events, and gatherings at the house. It's great to know they still have the urge to do radio like it was once upon a time - and better still, to hear some of those voices of yesteryear in the here and now, familiar companions that can transport you to a 'simpler time', shall we say, playing the great soundtracks of those times.

I remember in the sixties, as I was swept away by Gene Vincent and The Ventures, then The Beatles and The Stones, and my dad would shrug his shoulders in the same way I probably did at Nat King Cole and Nelson Riddle. Years later, he was back on the air again, and to my surprise, playing - among other things: The Doors, John Lennon and The Guess Who! And he actually liked it! At the same time, I was digging out his Duke Ellington, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Julie London records, and our mutual appreciation of an even wider variety of music occurred.

I feel fortunate in not only meeting up again with the gang at CJNU, but also that they have enough room in their broadcast schedule to include a few hours a week of a varied genre of nostalgia.