Rock Radio Scrapbook

AIRCHECK OF THE WEEK
For week of October 15, 2006
Weekly issue #398

Talent: LIVE EARL JIVE
Station: CHOM-FM Montréal (15th anniversary special)
Date: October 19, 1986
Time: 12:57



Pour la description en français, cliquez ici

On the evening of October 28, 1969, Montréal’s ‘Beautiful Music’ CKGM 97.7 underwent a complete metamorphosis as it got off the ‘elevators’ for good and became 97.7 CKGM-FM, ‘Tribal Rock’. There was no mistaking the new format for Frédéric Chopin, James Last or especially the Top 40 genre of the city’s AM big sister station, 980 CKGM. Almost overnight and led by the company’s maverick owner Geoff Stirling, CKGM-FM became rock album-oriented, spaced-out and irreverent with an ‘anything-goes’ hippie attitude fueled by such on-air luminaries as Doug Pringle, Angus MacKay, Tim Forsythe, David Marsden and the Live Earl Jive, to name but a few.

It wasn’t until October of 1971 that the CKGM-FM moniker was finally dropped in favour of the new call letters, CHOM-FM and the slogan ‘L’Esprit de Montréal’, with a few years of controversial bilingual radio still ahead on the horizon. With the later addition of French-speaking FM deejays such as Robert "Bobby" Boulanger, Benoît Dufresne, Denis Grondin, Claude Rajotte, Bob Beauchamp and Marc Carpentier (the latter the former ''Scott'' Carpentier of 980 CKGM-AM La ''Connection'' Française fame) in the mid-seventies, the ‘bilingual commune’ at 1355 Greene Avenue in Westmount Qc. was well on its merry way.

Enjoy Live Earl Jive (with a cameo appearance from colleague ‘Too Tall’) on CHOM, ‘L’Esprit de Montréal’, as Earl returned for CHOM’s 15th Anniversary Special on October 19, 1986 here.

(The Brian Wolofsky Collection)

Aircheck editing & description: Marc Denis

For more Montréal bilingual radio memories, visit the Mais Oui Files here on Rock Radio Scrapbook and Marc Denis’ 980 CKGM Super 70s Tribute Page

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