The Podcast team clockwise L-R: Steve Pratt, Nicole Goodman, Jenn Aikman, John Paolozzi, Mark Macarthur, Grant Lawrence, Chris Kelly, James Booth, Ahmed Khalil.

Five years ago, CBC Radio 3 director Steve Pratt (top left, blue shirt) asked me if I would take a shot at hosting a pilot for something called the “CBC Radio 3 Podcast”. And I wasn’t the first choice, either. At the time, I was hosting a national Saturday night radio show on CBC Radio 2 and I thought was that about as big as it got. I totally and utterly was not interested. Really, what the hell was a Podcast?

Steve was convincing and in charge (still is), so I did it, introducing eight Canadian independent songs. That pilot became the first episode. A couple episodes later, our friend Lane Dunlop at iTunes Canada picked it up and all of the sudden it took off, quickly becoming the #1 Podcast in Canada. It was the first music podcast from CBC, and one of the first podcasts in the world to play music legally.

Since that first episode five years ago, we’ve now made 245 weekly shows, we’ve had millions of downloads, and have spawned shows and ideas like the CBC Radio 3 Bucky Awards, the Sweatin’ to the Indies workout podcasts, the Sing For Your Song Canada Day specials and much more. Over the half decade we’ve received mail from over 60 countries in response to the thousands of Canadian artists and songs we’ve showcased.

Now the fifth anniversary show is here… and you can download from right here.

Thanks for listening! Wait… you know what a Podcast is… right?

Dennis Hopper was a true American survivor, a Hollywood party boy, an artist, a genius character actor, and a human lineage in some of the coolest films of all time. Before there was the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, there was the Three Degrees of Dennis Hopper.

I first saw Dennis Hopper on “screen” when my movie-loving Dad sat me down as a young teen to show me Hopper’s incredible and most famous portrayal as the doomed hippie in 1969’s Easy Rider (side saddle with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson). Soon after that, I got into movies in a big way and started noticing Dennis Hopper popping up in some of the most iconic films of all time... his first major film role was along side the ill-fated trifecta of James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo in 1955’s Rebel Without A Cause. A year later he could be seen again with his buddy James Dean in the screen epic Giant with Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor.

After that Dennis Hopper’s filmography reads like a zeitgeist of the times… he showed up in classic westerns like Gunfight At The OK Corral, and John Wayne’s best movie ever, True Grit. Hopper had an uncanny knack of landing supporting roles in what would be the lead actor’s defining roles, such as Paul Newman’s Cool Hand Luke and Martin Sheen’s Apocalypse Now.

In later years Hopper took lead roles as dark and truly twisted villains in art-house films like Blue Velvet and Paris Trout, but paid the bills with lead roles in Speed, the bizarre hippie comedy Flashback opposite Keifer Sutherland (with the tag line “The 90’s are going to make the 60’s look like the 50’s”… or something like that), and his unforgettable monologue as Christian Slater‘s father, opposite Christopher Walken in True Romance. He was even in the Vancouver-shot Out Of The Blue, featuring legendary Vancouver pop-punk band The Pointed Sticks.

Dennis Hopper was thee Hollywood bad boy who lived through it all while many around him did not, be they Hollywood legends, Manson Family members, or Beach Boys, and today we raise the bong to the real Rebel Without A Cause.

Mojave desert mud bath.

Chimo! Just arrived back in Vancouver and sliding back into reality… my lovely new wife and I had a fantastic yin-yang honeymoon, the first half in luxurious Palm Springs, the second half in rough ‘n’ tumble Desolation Sound. Down in Palm Springs we got around in a convertible red Mustang. In Desolation Sound we got around in a convertible beat up blue speedboat named Big Buck$. Thanks very much to everyone who has overwhelmed us with warm wedding wishes, emails, tweets, and gifts. It’s truly humbling in many ways. I’m back to doing the daily live show on CBC Radio 3 and working on a few different Podcast Specials for June and July.

Don’t forget that this Friday night in Vancouver it’s the live event A Night At The MOV. Hope to see you there! I’ll be a guest and I’m looking forward to it!