As a youngster vacationing for a couple of weeks every summer on Lake Champlain in Northern Vermont, I was an avid listener of 97.7 CHOM-FM. It was a Progressive Rock station in the 70s, with a bilingual staff. As an experiment, the CRTC gave given them permission to use both languages, although I remember all the commercials being in English. It was co-owned with English Top 40 980 CKGM.
As a Progressive Rock station, the music could range from James Taylor and Gordon Lightfoot to Led Zeppelin and The Who. The DJs were great, although with my limited French, I didn't really understand much about what the primarily French DJs would talk about. The only two DJs names I remember were Live Earl Jive, who did afternoons and Jeffery Olivier Brown who did evenings. They also had a woman DJ on weekend mornings, a rare female voice on the radio in the 70s.
You could tell Earl Jive was a refugee from Top 40 radio. He enjoyed the freedom of a Rock format that the DJs themselves could choose the music for. I remember on Friday afternoons, he'd go through the Top 5 hits of the week, playing the Rock songs all the way through but stopping the more bubblegum selections after a few notes. Despite his Anglo surname, Brown was French. He had a great voice and a very laid back style.
Althought the staff was supposed to be bilingual, the French DJs weren't totally fluent in English and most of the English DJs were pretty bad in French. Jive only said a few sentences each hour in French, often the weather forecast, which I guess he could read.
The best part was the station policy to have the DJs talk between themselves when the shifts were changing. They'd talk about a concert or movie they saw or just chat about a song that had just played. I remember one night it had been raining and apparently Brown rode his bike every evening to the station. So he and Jive discussed that, although it was clear when they switched to French, Jive had a bit of trouble expressing himself. When Brown ended his shift and another French DJ came in, they spent most of their rap in French.
Unfortunately, the CRTC withdrew permission for CHOM to be bilingual a few years later, so it reverted to English only, where it is today. But that also ended French Rock radio in Montreal. I've heard there is or was a French Rock station in Quebec, but there is none in Montreal. So I suppose French Rock fans are listening to CHOM in English.
And unfortunately, CHOM is no longer easy to hear around Lake Champlain. It still has the same antenna height and power as most Montreal FM stations but there are new FM stations in Vermont on 97.5 and in New York state on 97.9. You can still hear 92.5, 94.3, 105.7, etc. from Montreal on the U.S. side of the border because those frequencies don't have adjacent U.S. stations. But CHOM is just a memory now, south of the border.
And its bilingual Progressive Rock sound is also just a memory now.
As a Progressive Rock station, the music could range from James Taylor and Gordon Lightfoot to Led Zeppelin and The Who. The DJs were great, although with my limited French, I didn't really understand much about what the primarily French DJs would talk about. The only two DJs names I remember were Live Earl Jive, who did afternoons and Jeffery Olivier Brown who did evenings. They also had a woman DJ on weekend mornings, a rare female voice on the radio in the 70s.
You could tell Earl Jive was a refugee from Top 40 radio. He enjoyed the freedom of a Rock format that the DJs themselves could choose the music for. I remember on Friday afternoons, he'd go through the Top 5 hits of the week, playing the Rock songs all the way through but stopping the more bubblegum selections after a few notes. Despite his Anglo surname, Brown was French. He had a great voice and a very laid back style.
Althought the staff was supposed to be bilingual, the French DJs weren't totally fluent in English and most of the English DJs were pretty bad in French. Jive only said a few sentences each hour in French, often the weather forecast, which I guess he could read.
The best part was the station policy to have the DJs talk between themselves when the shifts were changing. They'd talk about a concert or movie they saw or just chat about a song that had just played. I remember one night it had been raining and apparently Brown rode his bike every evening to the station. So he and Jive discussed that, although it was clear when they switched to French, Jive had a bit of trouble expressing himself. When Brown ended his shift and another French DJ came in, they spent most of their rap in French.
Unfortunately, the CRTC withdrew permission for CHOM to be bilingual a few years later, so it reverted to English only, where it is today. But that also ended French Rock radio in Montreal. I've heard there is or was a French Rock station in Quebec, but there is none in Montreal. So I suppose French Rock fans are listening to CHOM in English.
And unfortunately, CHOM is no longer easy to hear around Lake Champlain. It still has the same antenna height and power as most Montreal FM stations but there are new FM stations in Vermont on 97.5 and in New York state on 97.9. You can still hear 92.5, 94.3, 105.7, etc. from Montreal on the U.S. side of the border because those frequencies don't have adjacent U.S. stations. But CHOM is just a memory now, south of the border.
And its bilingual Progressive Rock sound is also just a memory now.