The Table, The Camel - Where the hell are they?

After successfully finding a 1/2 track, stereo open reel machine (A PR99 to be exact) and successfully finding a part for it on eBay to get it running (Fader Start PCB....thanks CoryLinda in Regina), I've been frantically dubbing a bunch of old open reel tapes to CD to archive. The tapes are over 10 years old and are recordings of the radio shows my friends and I produced for my old pirate radio station, FM 106, The Camel. (No relation to Camel 106, KMEL-FM in San Fransisco...that was just a coincidence or theft of our idea)


Most of the shows were actually not recorded in the little studio I had in my Mom's house, but in the studios of CJSR radio at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. I was a volunteer at CJSR at the time, and then Program Director Christine Chomiak, used to let us use the studio when it was available. CJSR was my first real exposure to professional audio. Now with a more trained ear, I can hear all my mistakes like bad compressor settings and just overall BAD mixes. Hey, I didn't know any better at the time!

In any case, listening to all these old shows again have been bringing back memories. We had such a blast making these shows. We were in high school (Victoria School of The Visual and Performing Arts to be exact) at the time and our group was known at school as "The Table." We all sat at the same table in the cafeteria everyday and were kind of a pain in the ass.

When the rest of "The Table" found out I had the equipment at home and was already broadcasting with another friend of mine at "Vic," they wanted in. I gave several people their own 1 hour time slot that they were allowed to do whatever they wanted. Which we did! At that point in high school, radio and TV had already been my choice for a career. So I made a schedule, produced promos and stations IDs. I engineered every show that went to air and ran all the tapes from my basement studio every weeknight. We almost sounded like a legit radio station. The 'almost' being: we were a bunch of teenagers from an arts-based high school (yeah, like "Fame!") set loose on the airwaves.

To hear a sample, CLICK HERE. It's an MP3 playlist to a 56 minute dub of "The Mike and Matt Show" (a show my friend Matt, of 20 years, and I have always called any recording we did) from February 1995.

"FM 106, The Camel" @ 106.3 FM Edmonton was on the air for over two years. We signed off in late 1996 when I had no time to do it anymore because I got a job working at CISN-FM.

I am still in touch with several of the "Camel Staff," Matt Arpin (who I'm working on doing a podcast with), Jeremy Reid, Jay Marchant, Andrew Roth, Frank Downey and Kyle McNabb. But there are three people from "The Table" I've completely lost touch with in the last 10 years. I'm hoping that this blog entry will help in my search to find them. Sure, there's Google, and various people search sites but they haven't been helpful. The internet is a really big place!

Steven Olsen - who I worked with at A-Channel in Edmonton for several years after high school. He moved to Calgary in 2002 and I haven't been able to find him since.

Ray Beckmann - Lost touch with him after high school. Ran into him in 1997. He's fallen off the planet since.

Megan Shaw - While she wasn't necessarily part of our on-air announcers, she was part of "The Table." We lost touch when we had a major falling out. (There's a long story involved including the fact that I was "the other guy" when Megan was going out with Andrew.) This fallout extended to the rest of the group and almost completely split our group up entirely.
Anyway, I am searching for those people because I want to connect with them again. I would also like to give them copies of those shows we did years ago as a 'thanks' for being part of it all. So if you are one of them or you know who they are, e-mail me.

I will attempt to put together an "FM 106, The Camel" website. I have also been thinking of resurrecting it as a streaming station on the internet with some new shows. But with work and life, it's tough to take on another project like that.