by Glen Livingstone » Sun Mar 23, 2008 9:16 am
What a way to start the weekend; waking up to learn that yet another radio legend has left us - It ain't right I tell ya.
I only had the pleasure of meeting Gord Robson once, in Lethbridge, Alberta in 1999.
Radiofan and I drove up there to look at a record library that CFRV was trying to rid itself of.
The records - which were mouldering away in an old garage a couple of blocks away from the station - were trashed. But the trip wasn't a complete waste of time.
I got to meet Gord.
After graciously giving up a part of his day to take us on a tour of the station, he invited Radiofan and I to join him for lunch at a nearby restaurant later when he got off work.
We bummed around town a couple of hours and then headed over to meet Gord.
When Gord turned up, he was carrying a manilia envelope stuffed full of old CHED, CJCA and CKXL Top 40 charts - which he obviously treasured - and as each dusty chart came out of the envelope, the stories began to flow.
They were tales about a time and a place that doesn't exist anymore, but Gord had a way of telling them that clicked on an invisible projector inside your head that played out like a movie.
You could picture in your mind all of it; the radio stations, the personalities, the music and the jingles, with Gord, sitting across the table from us narrating the action; the crazy hell bent for leather crazy kaleidoscope that was Top 40 radio, sixties style.
But Gord wasn't reading from a script. Each and every word came from the heart - he was a communicator after all, a painter of words.
There aren't many like him around anymore, and sadly, they always seem to leave the party way too early.
Last edited by
Glen Livingstone on Sun Mar 23, 2008 9:23 am, edited 1 time in total.