Surrey\u2019s Captain Maniac music podcaster still rocks at age 76, \u2018Proudly a Nasty Canadian\u2019<\/p>\n
Published 5:30 am Tuesday, September 1, 2026<\/p>\n
Colin Hartridge turns 76 this week and he\u2019s still drumming up an audience with his Captain Maniac music podcast, more than 600 episodes in. <\/p>\n
The longtime Surrey resident, drummer with Sparkling Apple and other bands years ago, records a monthly show with diverse themes.<\/p>\n
The latest is a timely Proudly a Nasty Canadian episode (#621), which riffs on the Canada-U.S. trade war with two hours of songs by Burton Cummings, Guess Who, Sass Jordan, Amanda Marshall, Headstones and more.<\/p>\n
Other recent episodes include Let There Be Drums (song titles focused on drums, drumming or percussion) and 2120 South Michigan Ave. (artists recorded for Chess Records).<\/p>\n
More than a decade ago he began posting Captain Maniac shows on Mixcloud<\/a> from his Guildford-area home.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all still in my head, all the memories of the concerts I\u2019ve been to and bands I\u2019ve seen and information about bands,\u201d confirms Hartridge, a walking, talking encyclopedia of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll music.<\/p>\n The first concert he ever saw, as a 14-year-old in 1964, was The Beatles at Empire Stadium in Vancouver \u2014 a landmark event that led to a life of concert-going for Hartridge, who also saw Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Led Zeppelin and other greats over the years, thousands of concerts in all.<\/p>\n Months ago a computer crash forced him to take a break from the podcast, but he\u2019s back at it now. <\/p>\n \u201cI lost past shows and also a book I was writing, basically a memoir of my days with Sparkling Apple,\u201d Hartridge lamented. \u201cI was kind of discouraged by losing it all. I thought that I could put it all together again, but it\u2019s a lot of work. I\u2019ll just go without.\u201d<\/p>\n While Captain Maniac shows run close to two hours, Hartridge spends more time creating them monthly, down from the weekly schedule he once kept.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t get any payment, it\u2019s just for my own enjoyment,\u201d he said. \u201cSometimes I look at all the shows I\u2019ve done and think, \u2018Oh, I\u2019ve covered that subject already.\u2019 I double-check that the theme hasn\u2019t already played.<\/p>\n \u201cAs far as the music goes, I\u2019ll search for songs either on YouTube or in my own collection, and I upload them to the show I\u2019ve built. That\u2019s what attracted me to Mixcloud because they pay for all the copyright on songs and take care of any restrictions.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s earned listeners around the world. <\/p>\n \u201cOn Mixcloud I can talk to listeners, message them, and they\u2019re from the United States, German, Australia, all over the world. I talk to people there and also on Facebook.\u201d<\/p>\n Dating back to 2014, old episodes of The Captain Maniac Show are found on archive.org\/details\/@captain_maniac<\/a>, with more recent shows on mixcloud.com\/CaptManiac<\/a>. Also check out Hartridge\u2019s graphic design work on captainmaniacgraphics.wordpress.com,<\/a> visit The Captain Maniac Show<\/a> on Facebook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Surrey\u2019s Captain Maniac music podcaster still rocks at age 76, \u2018Proudly a Nasty Canadian\u2019 Published 5:30 am Tuesday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":879604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-879603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}