It is with a heavy heart that CIUT bids farewell to Binny Colvin, our Live Music Coordinator for the past three years. Binny who is a native of Australia, will be returning home to Sydney. Binny’s departure is a great loss for CIUT and she will be greatly missed by the station.

CIUT’s web lady Rose Palmieri caught up with Binny to talk about her beginnings at CIUT.

How did you first become involved with CIUT?

It was three years ago when I first came to CIUT. I got involved by volunteering during a membership drive, which seems to be a rite of passage for most new volunteers at the station.  I spent hours stuffing envelops upstairs in the old house at 91 St. George.

I decided to get involved because I love community radio. I found out about CIUT when I first moved to Toronto from Australia and just wanted to get involved in anyway possible.

What made you stick around for the next three years?

I stumbled upon meeting Ken Stowar, now the Station Manager who was Program Director at the time, and we hit it off. After I had volunteered the first time I really wanted to volunteer more; I wanted to become really involved at CIUT—there was great programming going on and great people at the old house and I needed to be involved in music, otherwise I would have felt like there was a big void; as if I wasn’t being who I am.

I first started off by helping out around the station and later Ken would say to me that there would be an opportunity possibly coming down the pipeline at some point. He told me I should just hang in there—it was a totally cryptic message. So, I did wait, and a little while after I was offered the position of Live Music Coordinator at CIUT.

Tell us about your role as the Live Music Coordinator at CIUT.

Amazing job! I didn’t even know that could be a job; it was like stumbling upon the dream job. It pasted together all of my skills from the different things I’ve done in the music industry and put it into one job.

My background had been working for a major record company, an independent record company, and a distributor. I worked in a record store for years and I did live music events as well. The job at CIUT entailed booking and sourcing bands every day of the week to do live performances out on the front lawn of 91 St. George.

We also recorded these performances and used the live recordings on air and occasionally for the weekly morning show at the time called Take 5. We had some amazing bands come through the station.

What were some of the highlights?

One of my favourite experiences with live artists was having Alice Russell from England. Great, amazing voice! She’s a soul artist. She’s not really that known in Canada, I don’t think, but I knew her from the time I was living in London (UK).

Alice Russell

Alice and her band came straight from the airport to CIUT to do a live recording. It was an awesome performance. They were so cool that they ended up staying at the station for a while and they were totally late for their sound check for their gig that night at The Supermarket (in Kensington Market).

So, Ken said “Don’t worry, I’ll drive you” to the band and me and we all piled into the CIUT van. This van doesn’t work anymore and it’s disappeared for all the right reasons. I watched Ken drive and speed away and I think he hit something on the way out while racing the band to their gig.

Lots of Aussie artists have come through the station and for me it was really nice to have that Australian connection since I don’t have many Australian friends here in Toronto. It was great to have artists like Xavier Rudd, The John Butler Trio, and The Cat Empire.

Xavier Rudd

Xavier Rudd’s first performance at CIUT was pretty special, he was performing with a couple of South African artists and it was really amazing. And for me, just being able to bring in artists that aren’t being heard was one of the highlights of my job. Finding really random artists that I thought needed exposure and giving them a platform to do it; you don’t get that anywhere else. It was great to be involved with that.

Another artist, khaira Arby from Maui came to the station with members of the Balkan Beat Box and Antibalas Orchestra; she was absolutely amazing! She was a big African woman and she came in with drums and horns and the whole works.

khaira Arby

Soul Jazz Orchestra was another great band that came in and it was quite challenging and hilarious for Jon because there were 10 people in the band. It’s always fun, especially since artists never give you their tech requirements until the moment they arrive; so poor Jon, Jonathan Hawkes, our tech guy, having to be the professional that he is, having to work with whatever the artists came with. It’s extremely hard to get tech requirements out of artists especially when they’re on tour and there’s 10 of them in a band.

What has it been like to work at CIUT?

Working at CIUT is like no other environment I’ve ever worked in—community radio usually has the same sort of vibe but CIUT is very different. It’s got so many quirky characters and there’s such a great energy with CIUT, especially where it sits in Toronto where it’s one of the only radio stations that strives to bring different programming to the airwaves. CIUT is the only radio station that does what it’s doing right now. So working here has been so much fun; lots of friendships have been made. It’s pretty sad for me to go; I’ll feel a great loss when I don’t work for CIUT anymore.

I’ve never had a job where you just want to get out of bed everyday. I do a lot of the morning programming; I’m here really early in the morning; nobody is here (laughs). But I just want to be here, there’s never been a moment I haven’t looked forward to a day of work, really, and that says a lot about CIUT and the people and the characters that walk through the door.

Tell us about your show The Minx Sessions, and how you’re planning to continue the show once you leave.

The start of The Minx Sessions happened about two years ago, originally in the 10 to 11pm time slot (Thursdays) after Jason Palma’s Higher Ground radio show. It was awesome to re-meet Jason who I met years ago when I first came to Canada. Well, the second time I lived in Canada I was 18 years old and I lived in a house full of DJs: Eric Downer, Stephen Reilly, Michael Marcus, Brian Falling—they were also known as “the mettle boys” and they were all promoting at that time in the city. They were very big in the early dance scene that was happening here in Toronto. So I felt really privileged to be around and to be so involved and to have all these guys that I was living with expose me to all this music.

So after coming back to the Canada, I felt privileged to be offered a show. In Australia I was playing a lot of electronic music and I was using that term really loosely, covering everything from Detroit House, underground, a lot of artists out of London, Germany, and France.

It’s really hard to describe The Minx Sessions because it’s really all over the place. There’s good and bad music and genres are tied around: afro, jazz, soul, pop, trip-hop; whatever you want to call it. The vive of the show is dance and it features great music because there’s so much great music out there. There’s really no platform for the dance scene, which has changed so much in Toronto; it’s definitely not what it used to be. Having a platform like CIUT to play this music, I really do feel privileged.

Ken wants me to continue the show. I’m moving to Australia and in the move comes a lot of vinyl and music. Upon settling in Sydney, I’ll get my home studio back up and running and I’ll do a weekly show, which I imagine will be two hours and I’ll be pre-recording it live in Australia and sending it over every week.

Any last words?

People need to keep supporting CIUT. You can really take it for granted that we’re on the airwaves and that you can turn the dial to 89.5FM and we’re there. I think people need to start or continue to place a big importance to supporting CIUT because there really aren’t other platforms. If you love music you’ll keep supporting CIUT.

I just want to thank everyone at CIUT for giving me the opportunity to be apart of the journey that’s been the last three years. It’s been a hell of a ride and I’ll catch you on the flip! Time for me to peace out!

Check out our online only live recording of Donne Robert’s performance from our anniversary party here.

Tell us a bit about your show. How long has it been broadcast on CIUT?

Equalizing-X-Distort is a hardcore punk show, broadcasting on CIUT every Sunday night for the last 14 years (since 1997). Simon Harvey and myself (Stephen Perry) started the show. The original idea was to do a hardcore punk show that tracked developments within the various international punk scenes and traced back the impact these sounds have had on the local scene.

Stephen Perry on the boards at CIUT

D’Arcy Rix Hayes has programmed on the show for close to five years now. D’Arcy did a studio 3 session with his now defunct band Bored Stiff and shortly after that session, he wanted to get involved in the show. D’Arcy continues to play in bands, puts on shows, and has his ear to the ground on the local scene.

D’Arcy Rix Hayes

Our latest addition and third wheel is Rob Ferraz who used to do a radio show on Virgin FM. Rob also wrote for Exclaim! magazine and grew up in the punk scene. Originally he contacted us because he was working on a book on the Toronto hardcore scene. The book is to be a follow up to Treat me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk In Toronto and Beyond (1977-81) by Liz Worth. When Rob became involved in the show, we started doing feature pieces that looked at bands from this era. Sort of like radio documentaries but focused on one punk band at a time.

Greg Dick originally started this idea on the show by doing interviews with such punk legends as The Viletones, The Ugly, Teenage Head, The Mods, and Don Pyle. So the groundwork was there to expand it into the generations that followed. Punk’s bastard children if you will.

We also need to recognize Ed Pyves who was responsible for building our blog and giving us an on-line profile. Ed comes in at all hours to record interviews, playing an important role behind the scenes of the show. And Jonathon Hawkes who has recorded all the studio 3 sessions since we have moved to our new location. Together we make up the punk show at CIUT.

Do you have any great stories about the early Punk scene in Toronto that you’d like to share with us?

Everyone involved in the punk scene regardless of the era has great stories to tell. From a story telling standpoint that is what makes this genre of music a goldmine for radio. I have always believed radio to be a story telling medium, and we do spend a significant chunk of time getting long lost and contemporary bands from the punk scene in at CIUT to tell these stories.

We view our show as a record on punk. Like the New York Times considers themselves an official record. The difference is we understand that we don’t know it all. So we start from a position of ignorance and we are situated in a place (Toronto) and time to better tell stories from a punk perspective.

Campus community radio has always had a mandate of developing the local scene by playing music, promoting news and events, and interviewing local bands. The CBC shies away from punk and in the 30 years of punk’s existence, has opted towards ridiculing or misrepresenting the scene. Forget about the private sector.

There is no money to be made from punk and so it’s a write off for this sector. And yet the scene is active and very talented. Many bands have achieved recognition outside of Toronto, like Fucked Up and Career Suicide.

We try to tell the stories of those who make up that petri-dish of a scene; from The Diodes telling us about how they threw bricks through the art gallery windows in New York City at a moment when they decided they were a punk band, to contemporary stories about the underground generator parties that happened in the ravine by the Riverdale petting zoo. We are fascinated and ready to tell punk’s history to as many people as we can with this big microphone that CIUT affords us.

Toronto is a hotbed of talent, whatever the scene, and there are not enough story telling mediums to do a good job of that. We fall down trying to keep up with active culture. It is this attempt to keep up that drives us. We have recorded over a hundred bands live in Studio 3 and there are a lot of stories to tell about each of them.

What are some highlights over the years?

Any time I get to talk with Cleave Anderson I learn loads more about this city’s past and present. That man is a wealth of knowledge and probably the busiest man in punk. Getting to record Running for Cover from Buffalo was a highlight given how good that band was.

This incredible band from North Carolina called Double Negative performed on the show. Meeting the drummer, Brain Walsby, was one of those “meeting an idol” moments.

An unexpected golden moment was watching many generations of punks in the room head banging to Let’s Dance’s cover of Sweet’s “Fox on the Run.”

Getting to see Chronic Submission in our studio was a highlight as well. The Statues from Sudbury were incredible. And I could go on about many adventures which would include Inepsy (R.I.P.), Knucklehead, The Rebel Spell, The Fallout, Mad Cowboys, and countless others.

What’s the punk scene like today?

The punk scene is super active and intelligent and stretched thin and protective. There has been an attempt to bring together various sub genres of punk and to experiment with these genres.

Teenage X Live in Studio

So you are seeing people borrow from areas of the scene that have traditionally worked together in the past. These fusions are creating some exciting new sounds in the world of punk.

Take The Brutal Nights, for instance. The band took the grade school humour of the Angry Samoans and applied it to the garage hardcore hybrid that has been brewing over the last 15 years–punk gold!

Or the kids from School Jerks who got fed up with doing shows at clubs and keeping to that DIY spirit, they bought a generator and hold these punk rock bush parties in the city’s ravines. That didn’t happen back in the day.

Do you go to a lot of Punk events in Toronto? Where are the best places to check out punk music in the city?

We compile show listings for the city and the surrounding areas and although there aren’t shows every night, there are lots of shows that take place on the same night. Especially in Toronto, the scene is very vibrant and way more active than I have seen in other cities. There are many clubs that service punk but the best places are not always the clubs. Like the shows that happen in the ravines–they’re long events but so much effort goes into making it happen that you feel apart of something special. And seeing punk in the outdoors is amazing.

Slander Live in Studio

Siesta Nouveaux is a good place to see shows, it’s a bit of a sweatbox, but because it’s not a club, it gets highpoints. I love seeing shows at Parts and Labour and Parkdale is still a rough neighbourhood and is perfectly suited for punk.

Those are the places I recommend but these are just clubs and the real focus is catching a band you want to see. I will see a band anywhere. I’m not fussy about the club, though it’s better if they’re all ages so that everyone can see the show.

Name your top 5 must-see-live punk bands.

A few months ago I would have said Brutal Knights but they broke up. Career Suicide are amazing when they play, but they don’t play that often because their drummer lives in Nova Scotia. I love Urban Blight–anytime they play it’s worth going to see. I love Total Trash too. I saw this incredible band called Kremlin open up for Sons of Ishmael and they just floored me.

School Damage Live in Studio

You put together your own magazine/newsletter. How can those interested get their hands on it?

They have to donate to CIUT and once they’ve become a Friend of 89.5, we put them on our mailing list and mail out zines. A few go in some local shops but if you want to make sure you get one, do donate to CIUT. We try and get out 4 to 6 a year which comprise mostly of an interview done on EXD with some reviews and other things.

…Thanks Stephen!

Equalizing X Distort airs Sunday nights on CIUT from 10-12am.

Best of luck to Ryerson!

Pick up a copy of Now or check out the poll results online here.