'42-year-old Canadian musical cold case' may have Kitchener-Waterloo ties, say online sleuths
Reddit forum moderator Joe Gaschler says there's no info about the song CIA
More than 40 years ago, someone recorded a song from the radio onto a cassette tape.
It wasn't an unusual thing to do in the 1980s, but all information related to the song is now gone, creating what online sleuths call a lostwave — a tune with no information attached to it. No one knows who sang it, where it was recorded or even its real title.
For now, it's known as CIA.
People online have been looking into its origin story for years, and that search has expanded to Waterloo region in southern Ontario, with some hoping people here may have answers.
Joe Gaschler is one of the moderators of a forum dedicated to searching for the information behind lostwave songs on the website Reddit.
"One of the key songs we've been trying to look into, it's something we've given a placeholder title CIA because that's one of the words in the song," he said.
"It's a 42-year-old Canadian musical cold case."
Gaschler said there are "literally thousands of people who've played some part to try to find out who on earth this band is" either by listening to the song to try to pick up on a clue or answering questions from the amateur musical detectives.
"There's quite a large online community now," he said.
Here's what they know:
- The song was played on CFNY-FM, now known as 102.1 The Edge.
- They believe it was recorded onto tape in the mid-1980s, perhaps specifically in 1984.
That's it. That's all they know.
Typical 1980s vibe
The song sounds typical of the mid-1980s, with a vibe that may remind listeners of bands like A Flock of Seagulls, Platinum Blonde, The Cure, The Romantics or Duran Duran.
Gaschler said "pretty much everyone in Toronto" with knowledge of the 1980s music scene has been asked about the song.
"The search has now moved on to possibly the Kitchener-Waterloo area," he said, with people believing the band is "possibly from somewhere a little bit outside of the Greater Toronto Area."
WATCH | Listen to the song CIA:## Mystery's gone on for years
The song was first uploaded to YouTube by user DJFormaldehyde on July 20, 2020, after it had been put on Reddit by a user named datafreq in February the same year.
In a post to Reddit in 2024, DJFormaldehyde detailed how they have talked to many people who worked at CFNY-FM and a number of musicians.
"I feel like we are still miles away from solving this," DJFormaldehyde wrote in that post.
One of the people DJFormaldehyde spoke to is Alan Cross, a longtime broadcaster, music writer and a former music director at CFNY-FM.
At first, Cross thought it could be a different song, a lostwave from the 1980s dubbed the most mysterious song on the internet. That song was identified in 2024 as Subways of Your Mind by the German band Fex.
WATCH | Subways of Your Mind was a lostwave identified in 2024:Cross has posted about CIA to his own website, asking for people to help identify the song.
He told CBC News he's also talked to people who worked at the station at the time, including Liz Janick, who hosted the show Streets of Ontario, and Ivor Hamilton of The Original Import Show.
Neither has any knowledge of the track.
"There is no record of it anywhere. Trust me," Cross said, noting the radio station's archives are in his house.
"The people that would have most likely played it don't know anything about it. It could be that everything has been misremembered and the whole thing has taken on a life of its own."
The search continues
The people who are searching for the truth behind CIA have spent hundreds of hours chasing leads.
They're encouraged by other lostwave mysteries that have been solved, like Subways of Your Mind and a similar discovery in 2023 for How Long Will It Take, which Reddit users discovered was actually by Vancouver musician Paula Toledo.
The Reddit subforum includes people analyzing the vocals, which musical instruments were used, whether they can hear people talking on the track itself and asking questions about contests run at the time, including the Great Ontario Talent Search.
So far, nothing has helped them figure out who is singing or playing on the track.
'Interesting paradox' to the song
Kate Galloway is an assistant professor of popular music at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo.
She said that with the "forensic listening" being done by fans of the song, it's unusual no information has turned up.
"[It's] this kind of interesting paradox of the internet because we're often hearing about how the internet makes music easier to distribute than ever, it's easier to make than ever, it's easier to identify than ever," she said.
"It actually can be surprisingly difficult sometimes to identify who created certain recordings depending on how they came to be online, but it is also very hard for musicians to remain permanently anonymous."
In today's world, people can ask their smart speakers to identify a song or use apps like Shazam to help track down who sang what.
Gaschler said if it was that easy, they wouldn't still be searching.
"You'll come up with people who've sampled the song, people have claimed the song, but you won't find the actual band behind the song."
Search for song's origin can create community
Galloway said some of the joy in the hunt for a lostwave artist is the community that forms online as people follow the breadcrumbs to, hopefully, reveal the musicians.
"There's definitely this kind of retro nostalgia to this type of case," she said.
"As long as it remains a mystery, that kind of social interaction is retained. And that's why a lot of communities of kind of popular music, forensic listening and forensic fandom are sustained and cherished by the communities.
"That kind of communal coming together online would be lost because they would have solved the mystery."
Cross said he's not sure if this musical mystery will ever be solved.
"In an era where everybody knows everything about everything, and information is just a couple of pokes away at your phone, it's kind of cool to have everything a little mysterious once in a while."
Asked if he would be OK never knowing the band behind CIA, Gaschler laughed.
"The mystery is just incredible," he said.
"The great thing about searching in this area of lostwave is when you come across a whole bunch of other obscure bands that probably never got the attention they deserve. And I've come across some amazing music. My playlist now has got a whole bunch of really obscure bands that are just fantastic. It's part of the joy of the search."
He said that ultimately, he wants the band to be revealed so it can understand just how many fans it has gained over the years.
"Whoever did this song did an amazing job. It's a great song. People love it. I think they deserve the attention that they'll get if we do finally find out who the band is," he said.
"Someone pressed record back in, we think, about 1984. They preserved what's a great song … and I think they really deserve the credit."
**Do you have information about this song? **
You can log onto the sub-Reddit CIAlostwave or email CBC K-W at yournewskw@cbc.ca with information.