Michael Waite

Michael Gregtheodeg Waite was struck by the rock and roll bug the first time he heard The Beatles as a kid, then seeing them live at Maple Leaf Gardens.

By the early 1970s he was the singer and bassist for local experimental electronic/pop band, Breathless, which lasted a few years on the underground Toronto scene and saw over a dozen members come and go. One of those going through the revolving door was Jeff Plewman, aka Nash The Slash. The later version of the band recorded some material together but were unable to take it any further, and the songs were shelved.

When the band ran its course after a couple of years, Nash joined FM, then went on his own for a few years. Waite meanwhile carried on doing his own thing, forming his new group, Eyes – with drummer Mike O’Brien and Martian Wars on electric violin and mandolin. They laid down some tracks at InterSound Exchange and he formed his own label, Eye to Ear Records.

COSMIC WAVE, their only album, was released in ’82 and limited to 1,000 copies on white vinyl, and was then picked up by A&M early the next year. Call it what you want – experimental electronica, progressive pop fusion, or anthing else. It soon became an underground hit, where he called on his buddy Nash for a helping hand, on the lead off “Electric Violence.” Kim Mitchell also came in and laid down some guitar beds on the only single, “Me & The Silver Sufer” and on “No Brains – No Pains.”

After some local area club dates, he became Nash The Slash‘s manager, and served as producer for FM‘s 1985 album, CON-TEST, featuring Nash coming back to the fold. Along with production duties, Waite co-wrote and played on two of the tracks – “Just For Me” and “Stop!”

He returned to produce the next FM album, as well – 1987’s TONIGHT, and co-wrote nearly half the tracks while also providing bass and bg vocals.

By this point, he’d already bought a local Sam The Record Man franchise, and decided to focus his attention on that. When Sam went bankrupt in ’01, he converted it to his own independent record store in the same location – Mike’s Music.