Becoming a CBC guy

I had never really listened to the CBC radio until recently. I knew of it, sure, and I wasn’t opposed to nodding along whenever anyone talked about how much they enjoyed it — it always seemed like something that would be good. But my car’s radio just never found its way over to that side of the dial. Instead, it remained almost always firmly rooted on the stations of my youth, with alt-rock, classic-rock and stupid crazy morning zoo type programming all the damn time.

Recently, though, I’ve been driving a lot more than I used to. I commute from Toronto into Burlington three or four times a week, and while the morning zoo/alt-rock/classic-rock combination carried me through the first few weeks of the drive, I soon learned that there’s only so many times I can hear “Crazy Train”, “Bleed it Out” and Todd Shapiro do his stupid effeminate joke voice before I just completely lose the will to live and strongly consider driving my car off the highway and into a median.

So I became a CBC guy.

It happened pretty naturally. First, I just wanted something that would give me traffic reports more regularly. Then, I start tuning in for the news, as a way to help me pass the time. Soon after, I started listening to the segments in between the traffic and the news. Before I knew it, I wasn’t even bothering changing the station back to music at all. I was enthralled. I was fascinated. I was intrigued, piqued and engrossed. I was enchanted by CBC Radio One.

Now it’s hard to stop. It’s amazing how quickly you start dropping your listening to habits into casual conversation. It was only days after I made the switch than I started using the phrase “On the CBC today they were saying…” and then launching into some completely irrelevant factoid about organic farming in Switzerland or the fusion of the bongo with electronica. Suddenly I’m well-aware of all the esoteric and high-minded events happening all over the Greater Toronto Area, from the ManifesTO hip-hop festival to the Historical Wine Auction to the opening gala of the Adriennne Clarkson-translated French farce Dying to be Sick. In the past week alone I’ve made bumper-to-bumper traffic seem entirely pleasant due to incredibly entertaining Matt Galloway-interviews with Jason Priestley, Buck 65, Bret “The Hitman” Hart and a very pissed off John Tory.

It’s awesome. It’s compelling. It’s turning me into a major-league tool. And I’m on record as saying that it’s all Matt Galloway’s fault. It just so happens that his “Here and Now” show is on at the same time as my afternoon commute. It just so happens that he has this way of talking that makes everything sound so damn amazing. Sure, he may not have the “cool factor” of Jian Ghomeshi, but Jian is totally lacking Galloway’s down-home charm. For me, my love for the CBC starts — but by no means does it end — with Galloway. He was my gateway drug.

The very fact that I can compare the various virtues of CBC hosts is kind of disturbing in and of itself. As much as I’m loving my new listening regime, I can’t help but feel that this is a start of something very dark and sinister. If I’m this far in after only two months, how long before I give up on private radio and commercial music altogether? How long before I’m attending five theatre openings a week, sipping chai tea and discussing this year’s pinot noir? What if I completely lose the ability to make jokes that don’t somehow relate back to Glenn Gould? It could totally happen. (There are a lot of jokes to make about Glenn Gould.)

For the first time in a long while, I fear for my own future. If not for the knowledge that Matt Galloway will be talking about this year’s Massey Lecture on his show tomorrow, I’m not sure how I’d even go on.