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KING of CANADIAN RADIO
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McLean does radio the way
it was meant to be done
of TheColumnists.com
When my fellow countrymen ask me what's the best thing about living right next door to Canada, I always have a ready answer: Stuart McLean's "Vinyl Cafe."
I excuse people if they think that's some kind of trendy new restaurant, maybe with notebook computers hooked up at every table, and "new wave" mood music playing in the background. I expect them to think Stuart McLean is the guy who runs the joint, which they probably figure has a Scottish decor with tartans everywhere. You see, the only Americans who really know who I'm talking about are those who live close enough to the border to pick up the Canadian Broadcasting Co. (CBC) radio stations, where you can hear Canada's greatest living radio entertainer.
Stuart McLean has been working for the CBC most of his adult life, first as a writer, then as the host of the remarkable "Vinyl Cafe," an irresistible one-hour variety program that ranges back and forth across Canada, visiting towns big and small in all the provinces from Nova Scotia to British Columbia.
If you were raised on American radio, Stuart McLean is like the conductor of a tour bus that takes you back to your warm and nostalgic past. He may remind you of the time you spent with Don McNeill and his "Breakfast Club" or Arthur Godfrey and Friends or maybe even Tom Brenneman and his "Breakfast in Hollywood." Except McLean is far more talented than McNeill or Brenneman and nowhere near as egocentric and self-centered as the "old redhead" Godfrey.
The very fact that McLean hits the road 26 weeks a year and records live shows for radio broadcast automatically sets him apart from most of what American radio has become today. With the exception of a few of our National Public Radio shows and the homespun Garrison Keillor broadcasts from rural America, there is nothing like McLean's "Vinyl Cafe" on American radio.
McLean has become a Canadian superstar practicing a form of radio that's virtually extinct in America. What's more, his own personal specialty is comic story-telling. He's what used to be known as a monologist before late-night talk hosts screwed up the term by co-opting it for their form of stand-up comedy.
McLean's stories aren't about publicity freaks like Paris Hilton, Donald Trump or Michael Jackson. They're about regular people, most especially a small assortment of characters McLean has fashioned out of himself and those around him. And those stories are outrageously, exhilaratingly funny.
I can guarantee you that part of it because the first time I ever heard Stuart McLean tell a story, I nearly wet my pants laughing and had to drive onto the highway shoulder and park the car for fear I'd laugh so hard I'd lose control and rear-end some hard-driving trucker from Vancouver. As it happens, "The Vinyl Cafe" usually comes on our favorite Canadian station, CBC2, while I'm driving the Interstate between my home in Blaine, Washington, and nearby Bellingham, where we do most of our banking and shopping. Since that first experience with McLean, I've always made sure I'm catheterized and reasonably close to a comfortable rest stop before turning on the radio.
I think I've probably laughed hardest at McLean's annual Christmas stories. There's the famous one where his character "Dave" volunteers to take care of cooking the turkey while wife "Morley" and daughter "Stephanie" are working at the Christmas Food Bank. Dave volunteered before he realized buying the turkey was also his duty. He finally finds a rather beat-up frozen bird at the Canadian equivalent of a 7-11 store, but knows he can't get it thawed and cooked in time. That's when he comes up with the brilliant idea to check into a big hotel downtown, pretend he's on a special diet and must bring his own food, then pray that the hotel will take his frozen turkey and cook it for him in one of their big convection ovens in time for him to check out and get it home for Christmas dinner.
As fans of "The Vinyl Cafe" have come to expect, Dave runs into a few unforseen calamities while executing his plan.
And I love the one where Dave and Morley's son, Sam, brings the class science project home with him--a live ferret. Before his parents can tell him to get rid of the thing, the ferret has escaped and found a secret hiding place in the family home, where it remains for some months, happily quite close to the large supply of holiday fruitcakes Dave has been soaking in liquor for distribution as Christmas gifts. Yes, we do hear from the ferret again--and it's a memorable event, believe me.
In addition to his brilliantly funny stories, which McLean writes himself, then reads over the air with great panache, his "Vinyl Cafe" also features lots of live music, sometimes from some of Canada's most popular artists and other times from wonderful local acts turned up throughout this diverse, culturally rich sister country of ours.
For the past four years, I've been listening to Stuart McLean on CBC2 and reading the printed versions of his stories, published in books easily found in most bookstores in Vancouver. Victoria and the nearby community of White Rock, just across the border from my town. I've always believed Americans would love his program and his humor, but until recently Stuart McLean wasn't making much effort to take his act beyond the borders of his own land.
But now he's making the first of what I'm confident will be many wildly-successful forays into America. Earlier this month he came to Village Books, the superb independent bookstore we have in Bellingham, to promote the first American publication of a Stuart McLean book: "Home From the Vinyl Cafe: A Year of Stories" (Simon & Schuster, $22). It was his first appearance there and let's just say they weren't prepared for the turnout. By 7:30 p.m., when he began to read a few sections and answer questions, the crowd had overflowed the room and spilled out into the plaza beyond. When he finally started signing books, they had to move it outside to handle the long line of fans.
"Well, this is wonderful," McLean said, looking out over the large crowd. "Thank you for coming. Last night in Spokane I read to 12 people and I think two of them were nodding off."
McLean is a tall, boyishly-handsome fellow with light-colored hair that's beginning to show a few signs of grey. He's fit and trim and has an infectious grin that seems to suggest he's as entertained by the people who come to see him as they are by him. He read "The Jockstrap," a story from the book in which Morley has to buy one of those contraptions for her son Sam, who's playing sports and finally has reached the age at which wearing a jockstrap is a social essential. The audience howls as the hilarity mounts. McLean wears a wicked smile because he knows where all the punchlines are.
One adoring lady asks him if he will just say the name of the day that comes between Tuesday and Thursday. He seems a little bewildered.
"You want me to say 'Wed-nes-day'?" he asks, speaking the word in his own rather special Canadian way. "I feel like I've just done something very naughty."
Ever since I started listening to McLean's stories, I've felt his Dave, Morley, Sam and Stephanie--and all their friends--were born to be characters in a TV sitcom. Sorry, you can't spend a quarter century as a TV critic without thinking of stuff like that. So, I asked McLean if he's had offers to turn them into an American sitcom.
"Yes, I have," he said. "There have been lots of offers."
He's turned them down because he somehow suspected it wouldn't go right and maybe his beloved characters would be damaged in the process. But then along came a deal to do it with some very high-powered American TV people, including some of the creators of NBC's "Frasier," one of the most widely-respected and successful TV comedies of all time. McLean agreed to give it a try, a 12-minute demo pilot was done and it looked as if it would be an American series, perhaps next year, until it finally was turned down by Les Moonves, then the top program decision-maker at CBS.
But I'm betting you're still going to see "The Vinyl Cafe" or some derivation of it on American television within the next few years. McLean now has given his blessing to an attempt to turn it into an animated sitcom like "The Simpsons" or "King of the Hill." This way McLean himself would do the narration, but the characters also would have voices of their own. He says they're talking about a Christmas special this December, possibly the story of Dave and his turkey from 7-11.
Whatever happens with that deal, I'm predicting
right here and now that Stuart McLean is going to find a way
to conquer America just as he has conquered Canada.
His stories speak specially to Canadians, but they're universally
entertaining. (Simon & Schuster has committed to a second
McLean book next year.) All I had to do was look at that large
crowd of Americans who turned out for him in Bellingham, representing
all ages and all walks of life. He speaks our language, too.
For me, McLean means something else that I consider very special. He aptly demonstrates that a brilliant writer and skilled performer still can make the wonderful medium of radio crackle with excitement. It was once the prime source of American entertainment and there's absolutely no reason why radio today has to be restricted to nothing but recorded music, news and right-wing talk shows.
Stuart McLean found a way to build a huge audience of listeners in Canada. Maybe he--or someone like him--can do it here, too.
"The Vinyl Cafe" is heard Saturdays from 10 a.m.-11 a.m. on CBC2 and Sundays from Noon-1 p.m.
©2005 by Ron Miller. This column first posted May 16, 2005.
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