Author: Red Robinson
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Red Around Town: December 13
It was a pleasure to appear on the radiothon for the CKNW Orphan’s Fund broadcast live from the Fairmont Vancouver Hotel. Bill Good was the host when I appeared with CTV’s Tamara Taggart. A most worthwhile cause that saw over $1,200,000 raised. Parts of the Pledge Day were shown on Shaw Cable… I had a…
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Red Around Town: November 22
A busy week comes to a close: the Global TV crew and I made our way to GM Place to interview New Kids On The Block and Natasha Bedingfield, who was the opening act for NKOTB. Natasha is the U.K.’s biggest female pop star. Her song Unwritten was the most played on American mainstream radio…
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600 Memories
Click to hear me in 1955 at CJOR The former CJOR at 600 on the AM dial is going dark and the station is flipping to FM. It is fascinating that it is happening 54 years to the day I began my career there. I had been hanging around CJOR in 1953 with Al Jordan…
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Red Around Town: November 8
Singer Yma Sumac, the Peruvian Songbird with the 5 octave range, has passed away at 86. The only Peruvian in Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, she was born Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chavarri del Castillo. “Yma Sumac” means “how pretty” in her native Quechua language. Her original albums are collectors items… Also gone at the age of…
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Reditorial: CRTC rules, radio suffers
Puget Sound Radio reports CISL is extending its programming to include music and features lost when 600AM became redundant. It is a smart move. You have to understand that this great 50 plus audience has been totally ignored with the exception of CISL and 600AM. I applaud General Manager Brad Phillips on this strategic move.…
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Red Around Town: October 28
I just returned from two marvelous weeks in Palm Springs where the temperatures were in the high 90s. Carole and I were visited by good friends from California — Darwin Lamm and his lovely wife Mimi. We all took to the hot springs downtown, which are the original springs discovered by the Native Americans centuries…
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Red Around Town: October 14
The latest BBM Radio survey is out for the past summer. QMFM is down considerably from an 8.3 share to a 7.0. The Beat goes on and on with a great increase from 7.0 to 9.8. CKNW stayed almost even, going from a 11.4 to 10.8 . JR Country has slipped slightly going from a…
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Tribute to a balladeer king
Roy Orbison dropped dead of a heart attack in the last, wintry month of 1988. It was a damn shame. In 52 years of life, Roy Kelton Orbison had transformed himself from a shy, nearsighted kid from Wink, Texas, to a towering founding father of rock and roll, a peerless balladeer of sweeping symphonic odes…
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Northwest Rock Legend Pat O’Day Comes Back Home
He’s been called the “Voice of the Hydros” and the “Founding Father” of Northwest’s ’60s rock renaissance. But before he was a disc jockey, a pioneering concert promoter, a hydroplane-race announcer and now a drug-and-alcohol treatment center owner — before Pat O’Day was any of those things, he was a Tacoma teenager named Paul Berg…
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Red Around Town: October 4
Some notable passings: Actor Paul Newman has died from cancer at the age of 83. One of his quotes: “It’s absolutely amazing that I survived all the booze and smoking and the cars and the career…” Newman is survived by his wife Joanne Woodward and five children. He was an amazing actor and his movies…