CBC podcasts, Grits and Danny Michel

Well, here comes the big CBC podcasting coming-out party, several months after we were all hunkered together at a downtown Casey's with unformed dreams inflating our heads as the guy with the biggest dreams, Tod Maffin, was poking away at his Sidekick.

For those who don't feel like going over there right now, it kinda goes like this: you have a new best-of-the-week podcast from a favourite show per day all week, then there are various not-all-radio-content (uh, I think...) shows with various release frequencies (CBC Radio 3 is in that group, along with a version of Sounds Like Canada), then you have weekly shows covering each region.

I've tested a couple of these. My favourite CBC show, Definitely Not the Opera (updated Sundays), had lots of original host content from the always fabulous Sook-Yin Lee, but mainly featured an interview FROM FEBRUARY with Ricky Gervais. That may have been a pilot episode, since the whole schmeer just started. I'm hoping from here on in, the content will be from the previous day's show. However, the As It Happens podcast, to be updated each Friday, did have content from the past week, including a fine interview with former Toronto mayor John Sewell about the late great Jane Jacobs (more about her next podcast episode). So far, then, a well-intentioned but mixed bag. Dig in there and see what you can come up with. Oh, and Tod or whoever: why not link the show photos on the podcast page to the show's main site so new listeners can find out more? And btw, congratulations on making it this far, Tod. It's a major achievement.

Another update: Michael Ignatieff has been joined in the Liberal leadership race by a couple other guys who could qualify for his category of smart-guys-you-wish-would-run-for-office-but-then-what. Ken Dryden is known for two things: being a legendary hockey goalie and being a verbose egghead. (obviously I can relate to the verbose part) Posing probably a more serious challenge may be Gerard Kennedy, who has a couple provincial government years under his belt, but who I know best as being the guy who ran the Daily Bread Food Bank for a while. If Scott Feschuk writes his speeches, I'm afraid my heart may head for a fall. :-) So anyway, now there may be too many aspiring philosopher kings in this fight. Let's see which one gains his senses first.

And now for Danny Michel. Sigh. I've been an unsettlingly big fan of this guy for several years. I have made THREE attempts to do a podcast episode about him, and aborted all of them. Why? If I could explain here, I would've finished one of those podcasts by now. But this much I can do. Or maybe I can't, but I'll do it anyway.

Danny's FINALLY releasing his next album next month, stocked mainly with songs I've been hearing him play live for about two frickin' years. He and his people (he has a couple of them at least) have started the promotion thing going for it with a welcome redesign of his site, including a "sampler" of many of the album's tracks. So if I don't have the balls to ask him if I can play one of his songs in full someday, you can hopefully enjoy this skip tra-la through this upcoming opus Valhalla. Pay particular attention to one clip near the end for something called "Midnight Train", which is such a single, I can barely contain myself. Then go to his site's free mp3 page and download everything, then go to his space at Maplemusic and buy all the damn albums. Thank you.

Now here's the sampler for download.

(Note: I realised the podcast subscribers would have no idea what this thing is when it pops into their feed, so I added a little intro reading the last two paragraphs of this post. To avoid the redundancy, you can fast forward about 3 minutes in to get to the juicy music. Thanks!)