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CTV News
10 minutes ago
- CTV News
From the Stones to Cardi B, this college haunt has attracted big acts for 50 years
A mural of past concerts at Toad's Place is displayed above one of the bars in New Haven, Conn., on Friday, May 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill) NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Nestled on a narrow, one-way street among Yale University buildings, a pizza joint and an ice cream shop, Toad's Place looks like a typical haunt for college kids. But inside the modest, two-story building is a veritable museum of paintings and signed photos depicting the head-turning array of artists who've played the nightclub over the years: The Rolling Stones. Bob Dylan. Billy Joel. Bruce Springsteen. U2. The Ramones and Johnny Cash. Rap stars Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Kanye West, Cardi B, Run-D.M.C., Snoop Dogg and Public Enemy. Blues legends B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and John Lee Hooker. And jazz greats Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie and Herbie Hancock. This year, the New Haven institution is celebrating 50 years in business. And the people who made it happen are reflecting on Toad's success in attracting so many top acts to a venue with a standing-only capacity of about 1,000. 'You know, I thought it would be good for a few years and then I'd be out doing something else,' said owner Brian Phelps, 71, who started as the club's manager in 1976. 'And then the thing started to happen when some of the big bands started to come here.' Music and cheap beer fuel success Original owner Mike Spoerndle initially opened Toad's Place in January 1975 as a French restaurant with two friends he later bought out. Before that, the building had been a burger and sandwich joint. But when the restaurant got off to a slow start, Spoerndle had an idea for bringing in more customers, especially students: music, dancing and beer. A Tuesday night promotion with bands and 25-cent brews helped turn the tide. Among the acts who performed was New Haven-born Michael Bolotin, who would change his name to Michael Bolton and go on to become a Grammy-winning ballad writer and singer. The gregarious and charismatic Spoerndle, who died in 2011, endeared himself to bands and customers. A local musician he tapped as Toad's booking agent used his connections to bring in area bands and, later, major blues acts. Then, in 1977, came a crucial moment. Spoerndle met and befriended concert promoter Jim Koplik, who would bring in many big names to Toad's over the years, and still does today. 'Mike knew how to make a really great room and Brian knew how to really run a great room,' said Koplik, now president of Live Nation for Connecticut and upstate New York. A year later, Springsteen stopped by Toad's to play with the Rhode Island band Beaver Brown after he finished a three-hour show at the nearby New Haven Coliseum. In 1980, Billy Joel stunned Toad's by picking it — and several other venues — to record songs for his first live album, 'Songs in the Attic.' That same year, a little-known band from Ireland would play at Toad's as an opening act. It was among the first shows U2 played in North America. The band played the club two more times in 1981 before hitting it big. An unforgettable show for US$3.01 On a Saturday night in August 1989, Toad's advertised a performance by a local band, The Sons of Bob, and a celebration of Koplik's 40th birthday, followed by a dance party. The admission price: US$3.01. After The Sons of Bob did a half-hour set, Spoerndle and Koplik took the stage. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' Spoerndle said. Koplik followed with, 'Please welcome the Rolling Stones!' The stunned crowd of around 700 erupted as the Stones kicked off an hourlong show with 'Start Me Up.' 'Thank you. Good, good, good. We've been playing for ourselves the last six weeks,' Mick Jagger told the crowd. The Stones had been practicing at a former school in Washington, Connecticut, for their upcoming 'Steel Wheels' tour — their first in seven years — and had wanted to play a small club as a warmup. The band's promoter called Koplik, who recommended Toad's. The band agreed, but insisted on secrecy. Those at Toad's kept a lid on it for the most part, but swirling rumors helped pack the club. Doug Steinschneider, a local musician, was one of those at the venue that night after a friend told him the Stones would be playing. He wasn't able to get in, but managed to get near a side door where he could see Jagger singing. 'It was amazing!' said Steinschneider. 'For being a place where major bands show up, it's a tiny venue. So you get to see the band in their real element. In other words, you're not watching a screen.' A few months later, Bob Dylan's manager reached out looking for a club where he could warm up for an upcoming tour. Dylan's 1990 show at Toad's sold out in 18 minutes. He played four-plus hours — believed to be his longest performance — beginning with a cover of Joe South's 1970 song 'Walk a Mile in My Shoes' and ending with his own 'All Along the Watchtower.' 'That was a good one,' Phelps recalled. Variety is the key to longevity Phelps — who bought out Spoerndle's stake in Toad's in 1998 — believes the secret to the venue's longevity has been bringing in acts from different genres, along with events such as dance nights and 'battle of the bands'. Rap shows especially draw big crowds, he said. Naughty by Nature and Public Enemy played Toad's in 1992. After releasing his first album, Kanye West played there in 2004 with John Legend on keyboards. Drake played Toad's in 2009, early in his music career. And Snoop Dogg stopped by to perform in 2012 and 2014. 'When you have all these things, all ages, all different styles of music, and you have some dance parties to fill in where you need them, especially during a slow year, it brings enough capital in so that you can stay in business and keep moving forward,' Phelps said. On a recent night, as local groups took the stage for a battle of the bands contest, many were in awe of playing in the same space where so many legends have performed. Rook Bazinet, the 22-year-old singer of the Hartford-based emo group Nor Fork, said the band members' parents told them of all the big acts they'd seen at the New Haven hot spot over the years. Bazinet's mom had seen Phish there in the '90s. 'Me, the Stones and Bob Dylan,' Bazinet added. 'I'm glad to be on that list.' Dave Collins, The Associated Press
CTV News
an hour ago
- CTV News
‘The ends are hot right now': Scarborough's ‘Shook' captures life on Toronto's edges
Amar Wala, director of the film "Shook," poses for a portrait at Rooms Coffee in Toronto, on Tuesday, July 22, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Arlyn McAdorey TORONTO — There's a scene in 'Shook' in which the drama's lead tells a Toronto hipster that he lives in Scarborough. Her response — 'Oooh, Scarborough' — comes off as if he just name-dropped a war zone. 'That literally happened to me,' says director and co-writer Amar Wala, who grew up in the multicultural east-Toronto suburb. 'I didn't know that Scarborough had this dangerous reputation growing up. To me, it was just Scarborough. It was fine.' The moment stuck with him. 'I told myself, 'I'm going to put this in a movie one day.' It took a while, but here it is.' 'Shook' stars Saamer Usmani as Ash, a South Asian twentysomething trying to make it as a novelist while navigating his family's unravelling, a romantic entanglement and the quiet class divisions of the Greater Toronto Area. The film, out Friday, draws from a turbulent stretch in Wala's mid-20s, when he was chasing his filmmaking dreams amid his parents' divorce and his father's subsequent Parkinson's diagnosis. 'It was a lot of things all hitting at once, when you're supposed to figure out what it means to be an adult,' Wala says in a virtual call from Toronto. 'At the time, I was doing what I think a lot of us do when we're writers: travel downtown, sit in coffee shops, write — or pretend to write most of the time — and figure out what it actually means to be a working artist.' Despite his proximity to the city's cultural core, Wala says breaking into the arts community felt like trying to push through an invisible wall. Wala says he wanted to make a Toronto film that captured the subtle, everyday obstacles that come with being 'a brown kid from the suburbs.' One recurring gag sees South Asian characters give baristas a 'fake white name' that's easy to write on coffee cups. 'It's stuff I felt was relatable to a lot of people who live just on the outside of major cities, where you might as well be from another state,' he says. 'That distance may be short in terms of kilometres — you can see the skyline — but you're not that connected to the arts community or to the power structures or the money of the city, and so that distance feels gigantic.' When Wala started out more than a decade ago, he had no industry connections and no clear path in. While he aspired to make narrative features, documentaries offered a more accessible entry point. His debut doc, 2014's 'The Secret Trial 5,' examines Canada's post-9/11 use of security certificates to imprison Muslim men without charge. 'Shook,' Wala's debut scripted feature, co-written with Adnan Khan, isn't overtly political. Instead, it centres on Ash's personal coming-of-age as he explores a budding romance with barista Claire, played by Amy Forsyth, while trying to deal with the emotional debris left by his parents, played by Bernard White and Pamela Mala Sinha. Still, the film captures the invisible systems that shape who gets to feel at home in a city like Toronto. When Ash and his friends miss the last subway train home, they must weather the chaos of the night bus — known colloquially as 'the vomit comet.' 'It just seems silly that last call is at 2 a.m. but the subway shuts down at 1:30. That tells you who they're actually thinking about when they build these systems,' Wala says. 'Shook' joins a growing wave of Canadian films set in Scarborough — including 2021's 'Scarborough,' 2022's 'Brother' and this year's 'Morningside' — and does so with a self-aware nod to its cinematic company. 'The ends are hot right now,' a publisher tells Ash as he pitches a novel set in the east-end suburb. Wala suspects Scarborough artists are feeling more pride after years of being 'on the outside looking in.' But he's wary of how quickly the industry can turn authenticity into formula. 'As soon as they realize, 'Oh, there's an audience for this stuff,' they only want to give you the same version of that thing over and over again,' he says. 'They don't understand it's a diversity of perspectives from these places that the audience is craving.' Wala hopes 'Shook' challenges the narrow, often dreary portrayals of the area by presenting Scarborough as he remembers it: vibrant, lived-in, lush. 'People say to me, like, 'Scarborough looks so good in the movie. You shot it so beautifully.' And I'm like, I didn't do anything to it,' he says. 'We just used some nice lenses and colour corrected it. It looks gorgeous because that's what it looks like. A lot of those bleak depictions of it — you have to go out of your way to make it look like that.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 7, 2025. Alex Nino Gheciu, The Canadian Press
CBC
7 hours ago
- CBC
Sculptor Martha Sturdy appointed to Order of B.C.
Acclaimed artist Martha Sturdy, who grew up in Vancouver's Kerrisdale neighbourhood in the 1950s, has had her sculptures featured in Vogue and other renowned fashion magazines. The latest highlight in her six-decade-long career was being appointed to the Order of B.C. this week. She advises aspiring artists to be true to themselves as they start their careers.
