CKU Who?

WORDS & PHOTO: KEELEY BRAUNSTEIN-BLACK

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Stylus: How did you get started with this show?

Electric Jon: This show has been on for two or three months. Last summer, I was at the memorial for Chris Jaques, whom we started with in 1989, and I ran into some people from the station, and they said they needed content. So I kicked around a couple of ideas and asked him if he wanted to do a show. Back in the day, we did a show called the Noon Time Blues. This show is more of a concept and theme with recurring segments, but still kind of loose.

Jason Eastwood: kind of local music, and other music, combined with absurdist aches and -

EJ: Basically, yeah, we say that Shrimpfarm.Crypto represents the analog relevance within the digital resonance. Which sounds abstract, but it’s about the invisible environment that culture creates. Our generation, we grew up in the 70s and 80s; we were the first experiments of the digital age: the arcade

with Electric Jon and Jason Eastwood

Midnight - 1 a.m. on Sundays

kids. We are trying to tie a link between being the arcade kids and the computer and cyber culture happening now. The world of tokenized digital assets and putting tokens in games. That kind of a digital experiment that we were a part of.

J: The analog into the digital musically too. We started recording music and radio back on tape recorders —

EJ: four-track recorders.

J: —and then recording music onto tape at analog studios and then getting into digital recording. We were pre-internet too. I had a computer in 1982, an Apple 2 E, that was totally useless, you couldn’t connect with anywhere, so I just played Choplifter on it.

EJ: We have been training for this exact thing. We met when we were five-years old in kindergarten. When we were 7-years-old Jason played at the Burton Commings as a kid on a CBC special called Portage and Main, he made enough money — $80 I think — It was enough to buy a tape recorder, and we would do fake radio shows with slap and sound effects and foley art.

J: We also play some of our own music on the show. I did an album called Linked In in 2017, it was the idea of the show, almost the analog into the digital. I tried to do it as a reflection of that time — so our theme song is called “Calculator Watch.”

EJ: We ground all the highminded nonsense with — we do a segment called “Jets 3.0.” Where we satirize sports analysis. We are Jets fans, so it’s sincere, but there is a lot of satire to it. We also do something called the “Crypto Market Report,” where we satirize what is happening in the new economy and digital finance — blockchain — things like that. We have a thing called the “Mindful Minute” where he does a thing — deep thought — while playing his guitar.

J: We show love to the things we love by satirizing them and making fun of ourselves.

S: What sort of local music can we expect to hear on your show?

EJ: We play Venetian Snares, Ghost Twin . . . we play electronic acts like that.

J: We also play Show Pony, Cookie Delicious — that’s Joel Klaverkamp — he’s almost as old as us, but he’s still putting out music. He has a band called Skingerbreadman which used to be popular —

JE: and the Hummers —

J: Patrick Michalishyn we play some of his synth stuff — Mohair Sweets — Colin Bryce he had a band called the Dub Rifles. They were big during the 80s, but he still puts out new music.

JE: Classic Winnipeg punk bands like Personality Crisis. We’ve played Mise en Scene. There is a lot of really diverse local music.

S: I always say Winnipeg doesn’t know what it has

J: Absolutely, Jon lived in Toronto —

EJ: Ten years —

J: I did seven years in Halifax and five years in B.C.

EJ: We’ve been all over the country. It’s amazing what Winnipeg has as far as artistic talent.

S: How would you describe your show?

EJ: We try and keep you entertained for an hour on Saturday night.

J: It’s a variety show that combines absurdity with comedy, real facts and great music and a lot of personality and touches on nostalgia but at the same time tries to make it relevant.

EJ: We try to make them laugh into thinking. We introduce each show with a bunch of samples. There is a bit of weirdness to it. A few years ago, I bought blockchain domains, and I bought one called Shrimpfarm.Crypto because I thought it was funny. He used to have an alter ego that used to joke about shrimp.

J: I do love shrimp, but I blew it out of proportion. This character, the only thing that mattered to him, was shrimp.

EJ: At one point, if you asked, “what does he think about most?” and it would be shrimp and “what do I think about most?” and the answer would have been Crypto. So we are Shrimpfarm.Crypto.