1-4

I remember playing ball with this guyanese kid who introduced me to the song "Rockit" by Herbie Hancock. Most D.J.'s over 30 will tell you that song got them into scratching, they all wanted to know how they made that "CHIKK CHIKKA CHAAAA" sound. I loved it, and my fascination of this grew and gravitated right into the direction of hip hop. We would sneak into my friends brothers room when he was not home and play Whoodini, or Marvelous Marv & DJ Cash Money. We got brave and started scratching on a belt driven turntable with no mixer... proably sounded horrible but I was happy doing it.
I became a fiend, I was like a fat kid in a candy store, I wanted more and that is were I was turned onto CKLN's FANTASTIC VOYAGE program every Saturday from 1-4  hosted by Ron Nelson. My saturdays were so routine as a child, wake up , cartoons, wrestling from 12-2 and I would have tapes ready to record the show.
One thing I take great pride in being a part of was how my group of friends went about our spare time. You would have yugoslavian, Filipino, Jamaican, guyanese, Chinese, white, rich , poor, old and young all playing street hockey, listening to the latest hip hop threw a "Ghetto Blaster".  Maybe after 3-4 hours of ball hockey we would drag out the cardboard and break dance... and we would break to what we taped off the show.
This took place in Malvern back in the early 80s, I will bet anyone a 100 bucks this kind of thing does not go down today, in Marlvern or pretty much anywhere else. It was truly a cherished time in my childhood
The other thing was meeting this short little hip hop kid named Sean.  We both loved the Fantastic voyage program. Sean was the kind of guy you would catch beat boxing, then he would start freestyling some crazy stuff. He was the true hip hop head of the neighborhood, he beat boxed to the classroom, he got KRUSH GROOVE on tape before any video store. I consider him one of the truest guys in hip hop then and more so now, DJ LAW! The guy is a monster, and he is doing so much good for the city and its growth with in the  hip hop universe. This all can be rooted back to every Saturday from 1-4 back in the 80s, it was the spark before the flame.

I did not want to go into detail about the station, because all the essintials are in the clip below.

From the vimeo page...
The most important three hours for hip-hop in Toronto has always been Saturdays from 1-4 p.m. on CKLN 88.1 FM. It all began back in 1983 with The Fantastic Voyage, the first hip-hop radio shot to exist in Canada. The torch was passed to The Power Move Show, The Real Frequency then Mixtape Massacre, making this timeslot the longest running source for hip-hop music in the country. 

On Saturday, February 12, 2011, a monumental gathering took place when all four generations of radio shows came together for a single broadcast. The impact of this musical institution is captured in the short documentary, "1 to 4".



1 to 4 from Real Frequency on Vimeo.