Look Out Mic, Smokey and Martha Can Rock All Out Too

This past Friday I saw some senior citizens gyrating and grooving on stage with remarkable agility, grace, and despite their age – high energy.

No, it wasn't a Rolling Stones concert, it was the first day of the annual Toronto International Jazz Festival, and the performances were by one of the original founders of Motown, Smokey Robinson, and the Queen of Motown, Martha Reeves and her sisters, together known as Martha and the Vandellas.

Martha and the Vandellas opened the show, with some stories of days gone past, timeless songs from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, and as mentioned in the opening of this piece – high energy.

High energy is surprisingly enjoyable – Martha Reeves turns 72 next month – yet she moved around stage as if she were still in her youth when she began her singing career in 1967.

She acknowledged her age, joking after singing her International smash “Heatwave” that now she’s thinking of renaming it “Heat Flash,” and she admitted during one of her numerous yet enjoyable stories about Mowtown and her singing career, that she was taking a breather.

As any great performer always does, Martha and the Vandellas left the audience wanting more. Everyone was standing and singing throughout her act, and kept standing and singing long after she had left the stage.

Smokey Robinson also in his seventies had amazing energy at an age when most are slowing down. He too told long wonderful stories about the early days of Motown, even joking about how fellow singing legend Stevie Wonder offered to drive him home from a Motown Christmas party, so they could work on a new song together.

“I can’t stand his driving,” he joked of the blind Stevie Wonder. “Steve – I call him Steve, drives way too fast – too fast!”

Both Smokey Robinson and Martha Reeves and her sisters proved something else about age, and the music industry.

They can still belt out those tunes.

Much of both musicians work is based on natural vocals, holding high notes and singing in harmony with the music.

Most of the current crop of famous singers rely on computer generated auto tune, or simply rhyming spoken – not singing – talk to the music.

Sadly, as our world becomes ever more digital, and real talent is replaced with cuteness and sex appeal, we won’t see the likes of artists like the legendary Motown singers again.

And that speaks volumes to those old enough to know what real music is means to the future of the art, and probably explains why the music industry is now just starting to recover from a major financial slump with disappointing sales over the past decade.

Most blame the ease of downloading music online freely, instead of paying for it.

And that’s part of the problem.

The real problem with the music industry is they prefer the quick sell. Find some kid that is cute, or can sell “sex” – write them something they barely rap or talk too, to cover their lack of singing ability, and promote the hell out of them.

After they’ve made millions on their one, two or three hits, drop ‘em and move onto the next wonder kid, until that talentless hack also dries up as a money maker.

We’re very lucky to still have Smokey Robinson, Martha Reeves and her Vandella sisters, Mic and the boys from the Rolling Stones, and seniors able to strut their stuff on stage with amazing vigour and energy, because today’s music isn’t music. 

Why Canada's Largest City Fails to Move Forward -- Blame the Media AND the Mayor

Toronto's public transit boss announced a plan to improve the constantly growing gridlock in Canada's largest city today.

Immediately, the idea has been shelved, without even a fraction of a millisecond of a thought -- thanks to the biased Toronto media, and the equally anti-transit top politician, the city's mayor.

The idea, is to close one of the city's major roads to cars during the morning and afternoon rush-hour, so street cars, busses and pedestrians have right of way.

The idea isn't a new one to big cities -- London, England closed all downtown streets to vehicles except transit and emergency vehicles years ago. Drivers can still drive on these streets, but they have to pay for the privilege.

New York City, Washington, Boston, and Chicago are also considering similar bans on vehicles in their downtowns, because traffic has literally stopped those cities cold.

You'd think a story about transit would include transit riders, as well as drivers, politicians in favour of the idea, and of course those opposed. That's something sadly lacking in today's modern 24-hour news cycle -- balanced journalism.

Toronto's media hates public transit. For as long as Toronto has had soil to walk on, the media has always made anyone taking transit feel like a second-class citizen, poo-pooing anything which increases and improves the service, always pointing out the negative impacts to drivers, instead of focusing on the benefits to drivers -- yes The Toronto Star -- there are benefits to taking cars off our roads other than some "hippie goal to stop global warming."

The fact that Toronto's media is biassed isn't really that bad. Journalists are human beings, and part of being human is to form a personal opinion and take sides.

That's natural, normal, and believe it or not -- OKAY.

What is NOT okay is unbalanced and unfair reporting which intentionally leaves out part of the story, so that all you get is the journalists personal bias, instead of all the sides.

Which is why a story about transit in Toronto makes anyone that dares to not brave the horrors of a two-hour traffic jam, pay over $20 bucks in parking, and then spend another two-hours in traffic going back, just to attend a Blue Jay's game downtown, is considered crazy.

Really.

I know.

Crazy!

And it's partly why Canada's largest city fails to move forward. As people read the horrors of taking transit, according to the unfair and unbalanced Toronto media, they decide it's better to drive.

Every year, a thousand new cars are added to Toronto's traffic-slowed streets. Yet there hasn't been new major highway or freeway into and out of the city, built to accommodate these new vehicles in over 50 years.

There just isn't any more land to build another way into and out of Canada's largest city. Unless the city and the province decide to uproot voters and knock down their homes to put a new route in place.

And we know that just ain't in the cards. Upset the hand that elects you into office?

Yeah, right -- you'd have a better chance at winning that lottery you forgot to enter last week.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has long been opposed to moving his city forward too.

Within days of being elected, he axed plans put in place by his predecessor to improve transit across the city, and he cut a tax which was supposed to be used to fund transit, and he's always complained about streetcars interfering with his daily drive into work.

Funny, Toronto politicians get free transit passes so they don't have to drive, and can lead by example and take "the better way," as the city's transit has been called.

Although nicknamed "the better way," transit in Toronto has always been stigmatized so much so, it really is thought of as "the student and poverty-stricken way," to travel.

God forbid you are caught on a public transit vehicle in Toronto. What will others think of you?

"Did you lose your job?"

"Do you have a place to stay?"

"Here, take this $5 and buy yourself a coffee."

In any other major urban center, taking public transit is acceptable and normal.

Not in Toronto, thanks to the media and it's mayor. And that's really sad, because there just isn't any more land to build their way out of traffic chaos, so the only real solution to the constantly growing traffic congestion is to improve public transit and to encourage people to use it.

Unfortunately, neither will ever happen in a city where the media continues to propagate negative stigmas about taking transit, and the city's mayor and politicians continue to waffle about the issue, knowing full well there are no other solutions to the traffic crunch.

The First Lady B*tch Slap -- Or Should Have Been

America's First Lady Michelle Obama confronted a heckler during a private political party fundraiser the other night.

Good for her.

Though if she wasn't such a lady, she'd have slapped that heckler down.

While her hubby -- US President Barack Obama -- usually tries to calm hecklers down, usually retorting back with a quick quip after security finally removes the threat to the most powerful man on the planet -- Michelle Obama actually threatened to hand the microphone over to the heckler as she made for the door.

She wasn't really going anywhere -- she's the star of the show. But the tactic paid off, as the audience quickly turned against the heckler, because they feared their show stopper really was going to stop the show.

And who wants to listen to the rantings of a lone crazy person that somehow managed to sneak into a private function where the wife of the most powerful man on the planet was speaking?

HEY -- Secret Service -- how'd that happen?

Seriously, the First Lady showed some intelligence using some classic psychology.

By threatening to leave and hand over the mic to the unknown person yelling at the back of the room, she quickly garnered empathy, and support.

So even if she really did leave the room, the heckler wouldn't have much of an audience, because that person was persona non grata.

Clever move Mrs. O.

 

How the Toronto Media is Trying to Overthrow the Mayor

When I was a journalist years ago, the gold standard was to have at least two verified sources for every story. And we were told to double that number of verified sources for anything which was highly contentious.

Those are VERIFIED sources -- real people, which say the same thing, at different times and places, so to validate the authenticity of the content of a story.

We'd never run with a story until we got those verified sources. No sources, no story. Period.

Doesn't matter how juicy the piece, that was just part of the art of putting together quality news stories for major daily newspapers, television and radio stations.

As wealthy as the folks that owned the press were, they didn't want the hassles of a defamation suit, and the bad press that goes alone with having a media outlet defending a story they couldn’t prove.

Aside from the legal and quality issues, there is a deeper more fundamental reason for having at least two sources backing up everything in a news story.

Power.

We see this in Toronto, Canada, where The Toronto Star is trying to oust Mayor Rob Ford from his publicly elected office.

No, they aren't calling for an election backed by qualified sources in a traditional old school quantifiable news story.

They are relying on shoddy unverified information from drug dealers that have long since vanished. 

They picked up a story from tabloid website Gawker.com that claimed to have seen an iPhone-shot video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine, and ran with the story before actually verifying it.

Neither trash-talking Gawker.com nor the just as foul-mouthed Toronto Star named anyone to validate their crazy claims. Instead, the nameless "sources" were bribing the media, offering up their poorly shot mobile phone video for over a million dollars.

They must be trustworthy sorts -- I mean, they aren't like drug dealers or anything.

Oh -- wait -- they were.

Once one of Canada's largest circulation daily newspapers, now one of the many print publications struggling to retain readers in the age of the Internet and digital media, The Toronto Star ran with the controversial story despite the quality of their unverified sources.

Print newspapers have been dying a slow painful death, and this story maybe just what the editors needed to inject new life into a dying business. The Toronto Star last month laid off a handful of staff across all divisions and departments due to declining revenues, as they “restructured.”

Naturally, the vulture-like media picked up the unverified story, and that left Toronto's controversial mayor in the hot seat once again.

Now, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has had major problems dealing with the media. I don't know where he finds his media advisors, or whether or not he's just too pig-headed stubborn to follow their instructions, but he's never handled good or bad press well.

He's rude, brutish, and very short tempered with the media.

His last press conference started with a public apology to the media, for calling them names. And he and his brother have not been silent in their distaste for the media.

And his tactics in dealing with the press have usually been to duck and avoid by hiding from the media, which one never does.

Remember, journalists are like vultures, they will hunt you down until the end of time.

The smart thing to do is to face the cameras, and answer the questions, deflect the questions, use political doublespeak, anything, just don't hide.

But hide is what Rob Ford did when the story about him allegedly smoking crack broke.

And ever since then, the Toronto media has been using his silence as a confession of guilt -- remember none of the original sources behind the story were verified -- and running stories about he and his family’s drug-filled past.

Another large Canadian newspaper, The Globe and Mail, ran another unsubstantiated story, claiming Mayor Rob Ford's brother, fellow city councillor Doug Ford, actually dealt drugs when he was a kid.

Again, the Globe and Mail, like the Toronto Star, didn't name any of their sources.

Again the business of running Canada's largest city was put on hold, while the battle between the local press and the local politicians continued.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is frowning down on Toronto, shaking their heads in disbelief, as this story played out internationally on all major global news services.

American late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel and political humorist John Stewart even poked fun of the whole thing on their internationally syndicated shows.

And again, all of this because of a long-standing feud between The Toronto Star and Rob Ford. The national Toronto-based newspaper has had it in for Rob Ford long before he became the city's top politician, just read their coverage of him while he was a councillor.

And again, all of this over a controversial story, with unverified sources.

Sources that have since the international media attention have long fled. You'd flee too if you were a known felon, and the press wanted to interview you.

Or maybe the whole thing was made up, a fiction, a bunch of lies.

We'll never know if the video was created by drug dealers just to make a buck, or even if the story was just created by Gawker.com, The Toronto Star, or someone else, just because they had nothing else better to do.

That's what happens when you use unverified sources. The truth may be out there, but we'll never know it for sure.

As Toronto council struggles to run the city despite the enormous negative attention from all of this, now rallies are being held to oust the mayor.

Just yesterday, the largest rally was held at City Hall, where a couple of hundred people showed up calling for Rob Ford's resignation.

Looks like the Toronto media is winning the battle, as they apparently want Toronto's mayor gone.

But the city, and the country as whole are losing, as we Canucks are becoming an international joke by all the negative media attention.

And the trust we've instilled in the media is also at a major loss, because if the media can go after one person without any justified quantified and verified sources, and destroy that person's public image, career and family reputation -- just imagine what they can do to you?

Or you.

Or anyone else they just don't like.

That's power.

And it's a very dangerous abuse of power at that.