Next to music and my dogs, my biggest obsession is cars. I’ve always been a car nut. I’m one of those people with a list of cars I’ll buy when i win the lottery…

I’ll start with production sports cars. A Porsche 911 Turbo 4 will be my daily driver, although there will be a Lamborghini Uris SUV for those times I need to haul people and stuff. For those summer days, I think a McLaren 750s Spider would be cool.

I’ll need a car for track days, of course. No one else in the neighbourhood would have a Koenigsegg. I’d probably order the Jekso Absolute (1600 horsepower sounds about right.)

And just to show everyone that I’m not out to completely destroy the planet, there will be at least one EV. Right now, that would be a Rimac Nevera.

That’s what? Four million dollars’ worth of vehicles? Not including insurance and maintenance, of course. I’m never going to win that kind of lottery, but it’s nice to dream.

For other people, though, this is the kind of machinery sitting in their air-conditioned, highly secure underground garages. That includes a lot of rock stars.

Eric Clapton is so well-known at Ferrari that the company built him a custom one-of-a-kind model that probably cost him upward of five million. Neil Peart had a selection of very collectible sports cars from the 1960s, all in silver.

Brian Johnson of AC/DC has a bunch of Bentleys, Ferraris, and some classic race cars. Same with Nick Mason of Pink Floyd. He’s even written a book about this collection.

Then there’s everything we use in the car to listen to music. Radio, car audio, satellite radio, infotainment systems, and all that.

All this got me thinking about the relationship between cars and rock. The two things go hand-in-hand. We should look at this history, yeah?

Songs heard on this show:

• Jonathan Richman, Roadrunner
• Coldplay, Speed of Sound
• Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, Rocket 88
• Weezer, We Are All on Drugs
• Greta Van Fleet, Highway Tune
• Foo Fighters, Something from Nothing
• The Clash, Brand New Cadillac
• Blink-182, The Rock Show
• Jamiroquai, Black Devil Car
• Joy Division, Love Will Year Us Apart

Eric Wilhite has his usual playlist.

The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on the following stations:

• 102.1 The Edge/Toronto – Sunday night at 7pm
• Q107/Toronto – Sunday night at 8pm
• Live 88-5/Ottawa – Saturdays at 9am and Sundays at 6pm.
• 107.5 Dave-FM/Kitchener – Sunday nights at 11pm
• FM96/London – Sunday nights at 8pm
• Power 97/Winnipeg – Sunday nights at 11pm
• Sonic 102.9/Edmonton – Sunday at 8am and 8pm
• The Zone/Victoria – Sunday at 8am and 9pm
• The Fox/Vancouver – Sunday at 11pm
• Surge 105/Halifax – Sunday at 7pm
• WAPS/WKTL The Summit/Arkon, Canton, Cleveland, Youngstown – Mon-Fri at 9pm
• We’re still looking for more affiliates in Calgary, Kamloops, Kelowna, Regina, Saskatoon, Brandon, Windsor,  Montreal, Halifax, Charlottetown, Moncton, Fredericton, and St John’s and anywhere else with a transmitter. If you’re in any of those markets and you want the show, lemme know and I’ll see what I can do.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

You might not have heard his name, but you’ve heard his machine. Japanese engineer Ikutaro Kakehashi passed away in April 2017. He was a founder of Roland, the music electronics company, and the inventor of the ubiquitous Roland TR-808 drum machine.

The 808 has cemented its place in music history and pops up on a wide variety of tracks, from Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” to Kanye’s entire 808s and Heartbreaks album.  But the machine almost died early.

The 808 was originally released in 1980 as a cheaper alternative to fancier machines. But cheaper parts meant less memory and more electronic sounds, which critics did not like. The 808 was pulled from shelves only three years later, but saw a resurgence thanks to underground producers in the worlds of techno-pop, hip hop, dance and techno. Used machines were selling for only a couple hundred dollars, and the interface was super easy to program. It didn’t take long for the 808 to start showing up everywhere.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Inspiration oftentimes comes from unexpected places and the story of co-producer Guy Stevens’ mad genius in the making of The Clash’s London Calling fits the bill.

The Clash turned to Stevens to return them to their rock and roll roots for their third album, London Calling. CBS Records, on the other hand, was appalled that the band had chosen such an unconventional and substance-abusing guy. And sure enough, when the time came to begin recording at Wessex studios in August of 1979, he showed up with two bottles of tequila, and the mayhem began.

The Clash loved Stevens’ antics: shouting in faces, wrestling for control of the board, knocking down stacks of chairs, throwing a ladder at guitarist Mick Jones during a solo, and pouring beer into numerous pieces of equipment. Ultimately, Stevens was more interested in capturing emotions rather than fiddling with knobs and dials. Something about grabbing them by the throats and screaming instructions really elevated The Clash’s performance.

It worked. London Calling is a certified classic.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

It’s time for another look at the greatest contract riders in history.  The rider is the part of the deal that the promoter strikes with a performer over what will be supplied to the artist on the day of the show.  It’s supposed to cover everything from the nature of the load-in of the equipment to–and this is the interesting part–what needs to be supplied to the artist backstage in the dressing room.

Here’s what Iggy Pop once requested in an 18-page rider:

• A copy of USA Today
• Seven dwarfs dressed up as the characters in Snow White
• Something unmentionable about morbidly obese people
• And a Bob Hope impersonator to “perform jokes about golf, Hollywood and Bing Crosby.”  Iggy is a big golfer, but I had no idea he liked to warm up for a gig this way.  Or so he says.

To be clear, he wasn’t serious. He included these points in his rider to make sure the promoter actually read the thing.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Manitoba’s Opposition Progressive Conservatives lost a seat in the legislature Tuesday as three-term member Bob Lagasse announced he is leaving the Tory caucus to sit as an Independent.

Lagasse said his constituency association board is coming with him, and he plans to run in the next election, slated for October 2027, as an Independent with their support.

“There were things that were not sitting right with me, that occurred with the party itself,” Lagasse said in an interview shortly after announcing his decision in the legislature and leaving the building.

Lagasse pointed to a few incidents, including an ethics commissioner’s report last year that found three other Tories broke the conflict-of-interest law by pushing for approval of a silica sand mine near Lagasse’s Dawson Trail constituency, east of Winnipeg.

The Tories unsuccessfully pushed to get environmental approval for the project after losing the 2023 election and before the incoming NDP government could be sworn in, the ethics commissioner’s report said. One of the three Tories, Jeff Wharton, continues to sit in caucus.

“To still be sitting beside the member who directly was found in violation and not thrown out of the party … was extremely problematic for me.”

Lagasse also cited an incident last year in which party leader Obby Khan mimicked shooting himself in the head while listening to a NDP cabinet minister in question period. Khan apologized for the gesture, but Lagasse, who has talked openly about having mental health struggles, said it was “incredibly insensitive”.

Lagasse said there were other issues, but he didn’t want to focus on Khan.

“I think it’s pretty evident by what’s been going on, how things are within the party but … I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of having a platform on this.”

Lagasse’s move comes a few days after another Tory, Richard Perchotte in Selkirk, announced he will not seek re-election because he can do more as a private citizen than as a member of the Progressive Conservative Opposition. The Tories now have 20 of the 57 legislature seats.

Khan wished Lagasse well and told reporters he would not discuss any talk with Lagasse.

“I don’t feel it is right for me to share a private conversation with anyone, let alone the media, especially about caucus issues or conversations that we’ve had,” Khan said.

“Bob served here, he did some good work here, and now I wish him nothing but the best.”

A political analyst said the change comes at a time when the Tories are trying to rebuild after losing the 2023 election. Since that vote, the Tories have lost a byelection in a traditional stronghold in the Tuxedo constituency in Winnipeg, are raising much less money that the governing New Democrats and are consistently polling behind the NDP.

“There are a lot of ominous signs that they’re not in good shape to be ready for an election,” Paul Thomas, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Manitoba said.

Other Tories have announced they will not seek re-election, such as veteran politicians Kelvin Goertzen and Ron Schuler.

While it’s not unusual to see a Manitoba politician kicked out of caucus, the most recent case saw the NDP remove Mark Wasyliw, who sits as an Independent, in 2024, having one leave voluntarily to sit as an Independent is rare.
The New Democrats said Lagasse’s departure shows the Tories are in trouble.

“There’s something going on there, and that something, I would say … is a failure of leadership,” deputy premier Uzoma Asagwara said.

© 2026 The Canadian Press

B.C. Premier David Eby met with the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, on Tuesday afternoon.

Hoekstra was pretty tight-lipped after the meeting, but said it was a good one.

“I’m still smiling, so yeah,” Hoekstra said. “I think he is too, so that’s great.”

Eby did not speak after the meeting, but did speak to reporters before, saying he would be raising three specific issues – softwood lumber, the need for a stable relationship around Canada’s free trade agreement with the U.S. and asking President Donald Trump and Congress to consider keeping permanent daylight saving time.

Eby also said he expects to discuss the province’s ban on U.S. liquor.

“I’m eternally hopeful that we’re able to find some sort of path forward with the President and with the United States,” Eby said.

“They’re our closest neighbours. We cannot replace that trading market, even as we try to diversify, and we will, to other countries. We need to have good relations with the Americans. And so my hope is that we are able to move some direction in that way.”

Hoekstra said after the meeting that he and Eby “covered a whole range of issues that you would expect.”

He said they did talk about daylight saving time in a lighthearted way.

“I don’t know how we can get all the states and the provinces all on one page,” he added.

“But it would be nice if it happened.”

Hoekstra said they did discuss U.S. alcohol products, only saying that American alcohol is an “awesome product.”

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

The president and CEO of United Way of British Columbia says the days immediately following the Lapu Lapu tragedy on April 26 were unprecedented.

“In the immediate aftermath, we had staff in contact with the victims’ families to try to assess what their immediate needs were and we were able to respond with support for things like you know rent payments, travel assistance, whether it’s you know, local travel — we assisted some extended family to travel to Vancouver from other parts of the world to be with their families at a … horrific time,” Michael McKnight told Global News in a sit-down interview.

He said that United Way helped pay for some burial expenses and co-ordinated with the Vancouver Police Department’s victim services and social workers.

Four days following the tragedy, in which 11 people were killed and dozens more were injured, United Way BC announced the Kapwa Strong Fund, saying 100 per cent of donations will directly support those affected by the tragic events.

McKnight said that the organization’s role transformed into working with the community to offer trauma support and figure out how to mobilize support for people impacted.

Donations poured into the fund, which raised more than $2 million.

A quarter of it went to the festival organizer, Filipino BC, at the request of donors and the rest, more than $1.5 million, was distributed.

United Way BC ended up handing out 45 grants to organizations that applied, and a report will be compiled after March 31 showing how the organizations used the money and the results.

The committee that decides is made up of eight people — four from United Way BC and four external members.

United Way stated that the four external members were leaders in the Filipino community.

“We worked with the Filipino community and the broader community to hear what they had to say about how people affected, that they directly work with day in, day out, might be best supported in that aftermath,” McKnight said.

“And, you know, everybody heals differently. So we were open to what the community told us, their clients, or the people in their organizations needed, and we worked to provide grants that fulfilled those needs that were identified.”

United Way confirmed that 21 funding applications were not approved.

Full breakdown of the Lapu Lapu tragedy donations and where the money went

Global News has heard from victims of the Lapu Lapu tragedy that they are not getting the financial support or help they expected.

McKnight said he can’t speak to what everyone’s expectation of where the donated money was going to go.

“I think we communicated in our solicitation to the community the type of work that United Way does,” he said.

“For the last 97 years, United Way has been working with community-based organizations to support social service needs. So it’s consistent with what we’ve done for the last 96 years. And our role in supporting community is about community well-being.”

McKnight said that United Way’s role has always been to support the broader community and that victims are defined in many different ways.

He added that they can’t force members of the public to attend any of these events that are funded by the grant money.

According to its Kapwa Strong Funds Distribution report, one grant of $30,000 was given to the Bandits Community Foundation, based in Langley, to refurbish a basketball court in the Philippine flag colours and to offer free youth camps led by Filipino coaches.

“That grant wasn’t for refurbishing a basketball court,” McKnight said.

“In our conversations with the Filipino community, the community told us that young Filipino or Filipino youth really connect with basketball. And this was a grant to provide basketball camps in combination with available counselling in the moment to support those kinds of youth. That’s what the grant was issued for. And I guess we’ll find out in the final report if it was consistent, the funds were consistent with that proposal, but it wasn’t to refurbish a basketball court, it was to provide basketball camps for Filipino youth.”

AJ Sico suffered a traumatic brain injury and now requires a wheelchair after he was severely injured in the Lapu Lapu Festival tragedy.

His loved ones say they have not received financial support from United Way BC.

“The fact people donate thinking it goes to families, it goes to organizations who have to apply to grants to get the money, who can do whatever they want with it,” Sico’s girlfriend, Vanessa Hill, told Global News previously.

“That’s a huge bait and switch.”

McKnight insists that United Way’s role is to support the broader community.

“What we tried to do, and again, this isn’t an incident that any of us have any experience with, but where we saw the immediate need, we tried to step in and help before these other systems kick in, whether health care, insurance, other kinds of organizations and supports that are outside of United Way’s role and mandate,” he said.

“There are different organizations whose mandates are specific to addressing the needs of victims in tragic circumstances,” McKnight added.

“United Way’s rule, our expertise, our ability, is to support the broader community. It always has been. And that’s where our strength and our capacity and our knowledge is. We were never set up to help individuals during those types of tragic situations.”

When asked to respond to criticism that the grants appear to be a haphazard patchwork of services, McKnight admitted that charities are not always efficient.

“Well, the network of community services isn’t highly coordinated. It’s often impassioned individuals who want to do something,” he said.

Premier David Eby said his office is looking into issues raised by victims.

“Our staff have reached out to the United Way to talk about the distribution of money and to ensure accountability to both who donated and those who were expecting support, who may not have received it,” Eby said.

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Calgary city council has revealed its main priorities for its upcoming four-year budget, but concerns over a lack of specifics in the plan have some on council questioning the path forward.

The priorities, unveiled during a strategic council meeting Tuesday, will be used by city administration to craft what’s included in the upcoming 2027-30 city budget.

The six main focus areas council chose include: reliable and sustainable infrastructure, a safe city, a functional transportation network, community livability and well-being, balanced growth and evolving neighbourhoods, as well as a trusted and collaborative government.

Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas said he heard a desire from Calgarians during last year’s municipal election campaign for council to focus on the basics, like potholes, snow removal, and garbage pickup.

“I think the broad consensus of our council is to be known as the infrastructure city council, to really be focusing on those fundamentals,” he told reporters.

Although city council voted in favour of the six priorities, some members of council were critical of the “broad” outcomes listed for administration to interpret while building the budget.

Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot took issue with the wording used for the outcome on transportation, which said “there is ambitious investment in transit and economic corridors.”

“That, to me, is the epitome of give an inch and take a mile,” Chabot said to council. “Increased investment in transit, I think this council could support that, but ambitious investment in public transit implies we’re going to meet all the objectives identified in RouteAhead, which is a significant investment.”

Chabot was among the four councillors who were opposed to the priorities, as well as Ward 7 Coun. Myke Atkinson, Ward 2 Coun. Jennifer Wyness and Ward 4 Coun. DJ Kelly.

According to Kelly, he agrees with “all the content” laid out in council’s budget priorities, but felt they don’t include “real focus or real direction” to city administration.

“We don’t get into the details in terms of where we need to prioritize the infrastructure of the city.  Safety is in there but we don’t get into the real details about downtown, CTrain lines, pedestrian safety,” he told reporters following the vote.

“Those are the kind of things we should’ve been giving to administration as direction for them to bring back specific programmatic ideas.”

City council will debate the next four-year budget and its impact on Calgarians in November, but Wyness is concerned the strategic direction for city administration will result in a large proposed property tax increase.

“This document that is before council today says, ‘Do everything,'” she said. “Every one of the departments in this city will say, ‘I need a budget increase because this is a strategic priority of council.'”

According to Les Tocher, the city’s chief financial officer, council will get an update on the costs of the upcoming budget in May.

That update, he said, will include the base costs of delivering services as well as any additions that used one-time funding in the 2026 budget, and the priorities outlined by council on Tuesday.

Budgetary impacts for the Calgary Police Service, Calgary Fire Department, Calgary Transit and other city services will also be included in that update, Tocher added.

“These overlays will be high level and designed to provide directional costs and provide information with the goal of receiving council direction to either include this work and continue with more details, or remove from the overall budget documents as we prepare to move into the fall,” he told city council.

David Duckworth, the city’s chief administrative officer, said that update is council’s opportunity to “dial up or dial down” certain aspects of the budget.

Another update is planned in July for city council to review proposals in the four-year budget, before it is unveiled in October.

“At this point in time, we’re not deciding on a budget,” Farkas said. “We’re just at an extremely high level in terms of what city administration needs to hear from us in order to be able to sharpen their pencils and come up with more detailed proposals.”

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

The City of Regina is urging residents to be more careful with what goes into their recycling carts as contamination rates climb far above the acceptable limit.

Officials say items like bagged recyclables, foam packaging and plastic wrap are frequently placed in blue bins, even though they must be handled elsewhere.

The problem can jam sorting equipment and force entire loads of recyclable material to be thrown out.

If contamination levels don’t improve, the city could face penalties that may eventually increase recycling fees for households.

Manjot Singh has more in the video above.

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Police services across Canada reported 16,905 incidents of online child sexual exploitation (OCSE) in 2024, which was a 16 per cent decline from 2023. That’s according to a Statistics Canada report released Tuesday, but the numbers dating years back paint a different picture.

Between 2014 and 2024, the rate of OCSE rose by 347 per cent, with hundreds of children in Manitoba estimated to be impacted every year.

These statistics match up with what Cybertip.ca, Canada’s national tipline for reporting online child sexual exploitation, has been seeing.

“We saw a massive increase especially in cases of luring, sextortion that really ramped up during the COVID pandemic,” says Cybertip.ca director David Rabsch. “What we have seen is that steady increase, but that drop off in ’24 and another increase in ’25. This is a huge problem and it’s not looking like it’s going away anytime soon.”

Cybertip.ca receives an average of six sextortion reports per day. Rabsch believes stronger regulations are desperately needed to change that.

“Like online harms legislation that recently passed in the U.K., hopefully in Canada in the future. Age restrictions that they put in place in Australia. We want to make sure government specifically is putting the obligations on to industry forcing them to make these changes that need to be made, through regulation and through legislation.”

Addressing this skyrocketing issue is something that Manitoba Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine says will require collaboration between three levels of government.

“If you are somebody that does this work for years, unfortunately these numbers aren’t shocking,” explains Fontaine.

“As the minister responsible, we support organizations right now that are working with men to try and combat that.”

Fontaine also stressed that social media companies need to play a pivotal role in getting offenders off their platforms and reporting them to proper authorities.

The most recent statistics from 2024 show nearly 17,000 incidents of online child sexual exploitation. That’s a rate of 223 incidents per 100,000 people aged 17 and younger.

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.