FFWD Weekly
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Street Sounds by Aubrey McInnis With a vow to become the Howard Stern of Canada, local DJ Rich Maidment (a.k.a. The Messenger) also plans to bring local independent musicians along for the ride as the stars of his radio show. "One day I was talking with the guys from Fistfulloftoes, they were actually called Cry Luna at the time," Maidment says. "They were bitching that radio stations don’t give them airplay, so I figured, let’s make a show about independence. (I) started off with that, a bunch of cassettes and me trying to be funny for two hours and it’s progressed. June of ’98, I started – and it’s taken this long to get no word out." He calls himself The Messenger because he doesn’t fall into either musician or music critic category – he is simply recognizing and amplifying indie music that does not receive attention or rotation from commercial radio. His program, The Stepping Stone (www.angelfire.com/rock/thesteppingstone), can be heard every Sunday on Radio Radio (104.5 cable FM) and through the streaming audio link found on www.ravenmusic.com. Too racy for commercial radio and CJSW, Rich can get as nasty as he wants to be on his cable program. "CJSW won’t let me do what I do the way I do it... and I have a real authority problem. So (Radio Radio) basically tell me as long as I don’t bash women, races, or whatever, then it’s pretty much anything goes. "I get to pick the music, I’m the program director, the music director, the advertising guy, I’m the everything. It’s all my decision. I play music (for) people sitting around outside around a fire pit on a Sunday afternoon. Two hours of entertaining music. It’s music that most people never hear. I hand out tapes of my show and they’re like, ‘Oh, who is that?’ The big stations won’t play it until they get famous." A magnet for controversy, Rich takes an extremely "anything goes" approach to broadcasting. He and his sidekick Crazy Drunk Al talk about everything from music to lesbian experiences, and have guests such as Dr. Bumlove. "It’s a beautiful thing – it’s two hours of having fun and putting the word out about some of the great music that’s out there while I’m doing it. I’m not doing it for kicks, I’m doing it because I plan on being the Canadian version of Howard Stern. I just want to get the word out, like, I want it so that you’re driving down the street and you see The Stepping Stone everywhere – whether it’s clothing or the back of a bus or whatever it may be. And hopefully one day it’ll make me really damn rich. "If the feedback wasn’t positive then I wouldn’t be doing it. But the people that do listen, the part I love the most is (when they ask), ‘Who is that band and where can I get their CD?’ I wanna be the guy that played the next Van Halen, I wanna be the guy that first played their tunes. "Support independence, everybody was independent at one time, they all come from a garage somewhere, or their parents’ basement."

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