102.1 FM TheEdge

Do we really need to hear Nirvana every hour? Or Pearl Jam?
It’s like the programming director just can’t get enough of the early 90s. Unfortunately, the rest of us can. The fact that they call themselves «Toronto’s NEW rock» is a joke.

PART 2
What I hate the most about the Edge is the frequency in which they play the same music over and over on any given day. Some days it hasn’t even hit 5pm and I’m hearing the same song for the forth or even fifth time. Artists whom I can’t stand to hear anymore are Billy Talent, Metric, MGMT, and Kings of Leon just to name a few. Don’t get me wrong I love KofL, but mainly their first couple albums, and any chance of me appreciating their latest album was crushed when the Edge saturated their station with «Use Somebody» & «Sex on Fire» non-​stop for the past 6 months. Everyone also claims to be die hard KofL fans and haven’t even heard the gem of an album «Aha Shake Heartbreak».classic.
I don’t mind Billy Talent, Silversun Pickups, The Arkells or The Stills but do you really have to drop their tracks 4−5x during a regular work day? I use to love Metric’s «Give me Sympathy». I used to love Silversun’s «Panic Switch».
On a similar note, I hear «21 Guns» by Green Day at least 3−4x a day at work and I hate that song and the whole new album. I just wish they would take it back to days even remotely reminiscent of Dookie, but they never have since and that’s a whole other Unilocal.
I hate that Bookie plays «Jump Around» every day sometime after 2pm. I used to love it.
I hate that The Edge plays Beastie’s «Sabotage» every fkin day, I still love it but not as much.
I hate that the only Radiohead tracks they play are «Karma Police», «High and Dry», and the dreadful «Creep». What about the rest of OK? Kid A? Amnesiac? Hail to the Thief? In Rainbows? Radiohead is golden beyond recognition and I feel it’s somewhat of a travesty only playing the 3 or 4 songs that they do.
I hate the fact that Dean Blundell, Jason, Todd and other hosts bashed the sh! t out of Michael Jackson so much after he passed. They made so many derogatory and unthinkable statements I could never repeat, ridiculed his life and his achievements and that really left a bad taste in my mouth, but again a whole other Unilocal.
Although it seems as though there’s a lot I hate about the Edge and their selection of music there’s mad ish I do like. At the end of the day with all the hurtin’ music they drop, they do get through some seriously good music as well. I sincerely love the fact that they play a substantial amount of bands like: STP, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, RHCP, Smashing Pumpkins, Matt Good, Hip, NIN, and The Clash to name a few.
I love double shot weekends where they play 2 songs back to back by the same artist.
I love the fact that they support lots of Canadian acts, ie. Dallas Green, Sloan, Sam Roberts and K-​OS, that’s crucial. On the same not they drop way too much OLP.
I love the fact that they drop multiple songs in one day from new, highly anticipated albums.
I love the fact that they’ll play full live concerts over some weekends.
I love randomly hearing tracks like Finger 11 «Above», Oasis «What’s the Story Morning Glory», Dallas Green «The Grace», Clash «Rock the Casbah», Nirvana «Aneurysm», Silverchair — Abuse me etc.

Sooo…I guess that’s my Edge rant, I guess. Kudos to Edge for dropping ill tunes 25% of the time, it’s still enough to get me to listen.
Martin Streek R.I.P.

Some winter evenings, after I shake my cane at the children making snowmen and return to my bedsitter for a soothing cup of weak tea, I wonder if I’m growing old.
Surely not. I still listen to new music. I don’t believe a golden age passed some time around 2003. I don’t inform youngsters, in a shaking voice, of the good old days of Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, and Presidents of the United States of America. In fact, a lot of what I listened to as a teenager seems pretty dull to me now.
Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I’ve moved on and 102.1 hasn’t. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that, though bands may not have been ‘better’, the mix on 102.1 may have been: more bands, weirder bands, more variety. Maybe I should go put on my feather booties and take a nap. Wake me for my soaps.
N.B. Alan Cross is, indeed, the man. However, every last fascinating show is available for streaming online, so why should I bother with the Edge?

This radio station used to be always on in the pluggy household. Back then it was wee-​pluggy (but thats a whole diff story). It used to epitomize cool and the music was actually NEW and RELEVANT and used to FUCKING DEFINE a time. Now its boring and blah and ugh and plain olé dumb. And that guy on in the mornings — Dean whatshisname? OMG — how brutally desperate to be an «entertainer» are you? Pathetic… idiotic and just SO NOT FUNNY. Seriously — the «jokes» that you think are funny, may have been 15 years ago. You try way to hard bro. and make me listen to my iPod without fail. Fuckers.

I used to adore this radio station — I refuse to call it by name as the station I grew up with and loved was called CFNY 102.1 (its call letters), not «The Edge». Ew.
Anyway, in the late 80s/​early 90s CFNY used to play amazing music. Joy Division, The Cure, Happy Mondays, Sisters Of Mercy, EMF, Nirvana, Exploited, etc. Basically tons of British music and lots of hard rock but with variety. None of the pansy lameoid 30-​something wank crap they play now (wow, bitter??). As Melissa J said, it caters to 35 year old angsty white dudes who may or may not still live at home. It’s kind of been a sad degeneration.
I remember taping hours and hours of CFNY segments — they used to have an annual show called «The Top 1002 Songs Of All Time» that I documented in a notebook and recorded on cassette. I still have those cassettes. The Smiths, Joy Division, New Order and The Clash were all on there. And they released an album every year compiling the year’s best music — kind of like a Big Shiny Tunes, but good. I miss those days.
Nowadays you’d be hard pressed to go 30 minutes without hearing the same song at least twice (one of those songs will be by Airborne Toxic Event, Mute Math, Metric — who I love, don’t yell! — Sam Roberts or Billy Talent).
[Oh, lo and behold, I just went to their website and looked, and they played four of those bands in the past 30 minutes. NO JOKE. Go look.]
By far the two most loathsome and despicable things about The Edge are:
1. Dean Blundell — just a horrific show. Incredibly sexist, NOT funny and rude. His column/​advertorial in Eye Weekly makes me insane. I want to gouge out my eyes whenever I brush past it.
2. Inside Edge interns. They’re everywhere. And annoying.
The one thing that saves this station is Alan Cross. «The Ongoing History Of New Music» is required listening, but I can easily acquire the podcast without having to turn on the radio station, thankfully.

Every Torontonian with a bit of edge has a bit of history with the Edge. If you’ve ever liked bands that play punk, rock, or that radio-​friendly alternative stuff, you’ve stopped by their station at least once to see a band play live.
The studio is street-​level, and open to everyone. I remember being so afraid to open the door when I was younger, but it’s really welcoming. They have all sorts of memorabilia to look at even when there’s not rock stars in the studio itself.
As for the station itself… well they definitely target 35-​year-​old men who love Nickelback. That said, they do take on a lot of new, struggling bands, and they have a bunch of opportunities to get your music played — from the punk show to the indie hour and everything in between. Personally I can’t be bothered to listen to the station (a person can only take so much pseudo-​pop-​punk) but a lot of people like it, and a lot of the DJs are fun to listen to.
Except the morning show. If you love toilet humour and prank calls, then you’ll laugh your ass off. If not… well, I’d change the station.

The store front radio station is boss. It’s right on bustling Yonge Street which is nothing new, there’s another one right across the street at the Hard Rock café, BUT the Edge is so much more interactive and up on their stuff.
All the DJs and personalities are actually into the stuff they pimp on the radio, it’s inviting to pop by, and they often have artists that they play on the radio do live spots in the studio. Sometimes it’s so huge, that the traffic gets stopped on Yonge. And that is boss!

I’ve been listening to the Edge for years since I was planning my first trip to Canada in the late 90s and listened to their live stream online. They have some very eclectic programming. Partially because of the fact the station has to comply to the CRTC’s policies which must include Canadian music. And if you haven’t heard Canadian rock lately… it’s definitely not Jonas Brothers’ crap. Personalities are pretty cool too and they’re street front studio by Eaton Centre is generally open to the masses. And how can you complain when they have free condoms? Well, they do and free concerts and other good stuff. That’s why I still listen to the station online when I can. Sure, Sirius has Iceberg Radio, which is all Canadian, but it’s mostly mush. This is anything but. Definitely Edg-​y.

Are you a bootlegger?
No I don’t mean from the prohibition period when alcohol was banned, and the art of making brewski’s had to move underground, away from prying eyes (and thus the evolution of something like Henry Weinhardt’s root beer for that pseudo foamy bubble drink, not talking about «bubble tea» (aka tapioca milk tea) either).
«Bootleggers’ is actually an aweful word, but for those not quite in the know, it can mean those who enjoy live recordings of music so much to the point where they must collect it to enhance their music collection and appreciate the performances that take on dimensions of further enjoyment beyond dry and stale studio albums once they go beyond rotation on ipods and cd players. This is why good talented musicians can go beyond re-​creating the album listening experience, and maybe no two live performances of the same song are identical (unless we’re talking synthesized and pre-​programmed and sequenced muzak).
And Edge102 is one of the best radio stations in my live music collecting history, in that not only do they have to accumen to treat their listening base right, but they go to great lengths to promote the big name acts in town, even helping the artists to create buzz about the latest releases. My favorite part is of course when they have the artists in the studio doing interviews and also live sessions (sometimes acoustic), or they flat out broadcast a show that is happening in town, live when it is happening without commercial interruptions or annoying DJ interruptions and jingles (Spanish and French radio are ridiculous for doing that during live broadcasts!)
Here are some of Edge 102’s glorious moments of live music broadcast history (also big thanks to director Alan Cross for making this happen)
The Cure Curiosa 2004 Toronto at the Molson Amiphitheater — the entire gig was broadcast live, the only FM broadcast of the tour.
Coldplay Molson Amphitheater 2003 — Canadian fans got a bonus encore of Lips Like Sugar (Echo & The Bunnymen Cover)
Gem and Noël of Oasis did an intimate promo acoustic gig 2 years ago at some club in Toronto (promoting greatest hits disc and played a ton of b-​sides and rare songs).
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (aka the Jesus and Mary Chain cover band) did a killer but short acoustic set to promote their debut album, and I’m sure they came back again for the last few albums.
And the cooooooooooooolest broadcast of all?
I flew up to Toronto August 03 to see Radiohead at the Molson. 3 days before the gig, one hour after getting out of the airport, the whole city all the way down to New York suffered a massive power outtage. The band had to rescheduled the gig to October, and had played Montréal the night before (unaffected). Edge102 and Radiohead worked out a deal to broadcast a good chunk of an hour of the Montréal broadcast for Edge 102 and Radiohead fans as a consolation price.
In the lyrics of Radiohead’s Creep, «you’re so fucking special!»
Thanks Edge102 for showing these artists and more so much love.