Chris Sheppard is one of the planet's most successful multi-faceted artists - a DJ (both Club and Radio), Remixer, Musician and Producer who has enjoyed success in every endeavour. From 2002-2004 Sheppard's out-of-control schedule had him living between London (England), Toronto (Canada) and Frankfurt (Germany) while creating several of the best-selling records in the U.K. These included 6 Top 40 singles, 4 Top 10's and a Number One. Midway through 2004 (after unsuccessfully selling his purple house in Toronto, despite one of the biggest housing booms in recent history), Sheppard went to see the legendary Kraftwerk perform at a hometown venue. "What I had noticed from seeing that same show in other cities," Shep recalls, "was how much Toronto had forgotten how to dance. Sure there are some amazing clubs in Toronto, and obviously some great dancers, but I'm talking on the whole. Toronto's dance scene had become the equivalent of Green Bay, Wisconsin - not that of a cosmopolitan city like New York, Paris or London!"

     Sheppard delved more deeply into the mystery as to why the masses were no longer movin' the way they had when he left his beloved city to conquer the world. During his research as to why only the city's ultra-hip were still dancing and not the masses, Sheppard came to the same conclusion that many expert observers had, that television had created a generation of couch potatoes and that radio - his most beloved form of media - was also part of the problem. Radio in the T-dot had become boring, unexciting, unrhythmic. Stations he had once led, pushing the envelope as a DJ and pioneering music director, had become middle-of-the-road, trash rock stations.

     But what really pissed him off was the way that they (the radio Establishment) had re-written history, taking a cue from Sheppard's programming revolution, but undermining it with unimaginative and uninspiring content. The mix shows he had first fought so hard to air had become nothing more than a poor imitation of what he had invented so many years before. They played the same songs over and over again, presented in the same boring, predictable way.

     A few months before the Kraftwerk show, while on tour with Duran Duran, Sheppard was surprised by the large number of, who he describes as, "beautiful people" who came up to him saying that they, too, were upset and bored with radio. Their admiration instilled Sheppard with the inspiration to take back what belonged to the people in the first place - the air waves.

     Not long afterwards, Sheppard heard of what would prove to be the perfect vehicle to spread "The Peoples' Message." A powerful new station called Jack was launching in Toronto - a station with enough power so that even Shep's loyal supporters in New York State could hear his gospel. The program director there was also on a mission to clean up Toronto's air waves and was bringing together the country's best talent under one frequency - 92.5 on the FM dial. Jack's stated motto was playing what "we want" - and what the City of Love wanted was Chris Sheppard.

     Starting June 12, on Saturday nights from 8pm -10pm on Jack, 92.5 FM, Chris Sheppard returns to the airwaves with his new show, "Out of Control". The DJ who always looked forward for the freshest, hottest new releases now looks back on his favorite songs from the past and re-invigorates them with the sounds of today. Virtually the opposite of a "retro" format, a word that does not exist in his vocabulary, Shep's resurrection of classic tracks opens the door to a vast new future of sonic possibilities.

     Excited about this new venture which finds him reviving some of the hard-to-find records that made him famous in the first place, Sheppard explains that technology has progressed so much since some of those songs were first recorded, that he can, in effect, remaster many of them for his mixes. Shep went into the studio for hundreds of hours, devoted to the pleasant task of remixing the music for this fresh format.

     In some cases Shep went as far as to completely rebuild a song from just a vocal track, while, in others, he might have employed just a single edit, or none at all. "It brought back so many memories from when I remixed The Cult single, 'Wildflower,' in the 80s," the DJ recalls. "I remember that the drums were, of course, live and no live drummer is as consistent as a drum machine or computer. That's what makes remixing this music a much more difficult process than remixing a hip hop, pop, house or techno record. But it's well worth it to hear the sound of live instruments again."

     Careful not to disrupt the soul of the songs that had become the soundtrack for so many peoples lives, Sheppard says, "It's amazing how great these songs are, how they stand the test of time and how so much of what has come out recently is completely inspired by them. I find it somewhat surprising that so many young people are now being turned on to this music - music that, in many ways, is the music their parents love. Just recently a young girl told me how bored she was with rap music and the gangsta baggage it carries. And so-called "New Rock" songs are just poor knockoffs of the earlier era. What I like is: these are great songs that you can dance to that are often really positive and they make you think."

     As he takes the helm of his new radio show, fashion, film and TV ads are also finding inspiration from the styles of the 80's & 90's - it looks like Sheppard is still a futurist after all.