Ongoing History of New Music

It’s an established fact that music comes in many different types of cycles...a sound and style will be big for a while, reach a peak with the public, and then slowly fade out....but once established, it’s unusual for a sound to completely disappear, never to be heard from again... The only genre I can think of is---maybe alt-rock-style rockabilly...it was big in the very early 80s with bands like the stray cats...but then it just kinda went away...there’s never been a rockabilly revival—at least in the sense and style and scope of what we heard way back then when it was huge for about 18 months... Instead, after enjoying a time at the forefront of music, many of the cycle-prone rock sounds recede into the shadows, never really going away...they lie in wait until someone comes along—often a generation or two later—to rediscover and reactivate it... When that happens, it’s usually given a sonic update and if the timing is right, the sound enjoys a new period of time in sun before the cycle repeats yet again... The longer you live and the more music you become familiar with, the more you begin to see these cycles play themselves out, sometimes over and over again...we see it every decade... The 2010s were no different...we saw a series of revivals, rediscoveries, and comebacks, all based on the musical dna of what had come before...let’s examine that...this is the history of the 2010s, part 4... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It must have been so easy to write about rock back in the 50s...comparatively easy to today, i mean...everything was so new that that’s all you had to pay attention to...there wasn’t exactly anything called “rock history” back then because the music had no history... What began as a spark in the early 50s turned out to be the musical equivalent of the cosmological big bang...and as the years and decades passed, this music—which began as a fresh take on the 12-bar blues template—separated, segmented, stratified, mutated, evolved—with increasing speed... New genres began to appear yearly, monthly, and sometimes even weekly...today, it seems like every single day results in some kind of derivative spin-off sub-sub-sub-sub-genre... The new sound and approach may gain traction and stay with us for some time, perhaps even carving out its own permanent space in the rock universe...more likely, though, a new genre will have a half-life shorter than hydrogen 7...and to save you from looking that up, that’s a tiny, tiny fraction of a second: a decimal point followed by 23 zeroes... But there’s no stopping the fission and fusion of rock...we’re always going to get new sounds...keeping up with them all is another matter... This is part of what makes writing a musical history of the 2010s so challenging...the number of iterations rock went through in that decade was insane...but if we’re going to understand what happened to rock during that time, we’re going to have to at least try... This is the history of the 2010s, part 3... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Traditional wisdom says that the recorded music industry is dominated by the major labels...there used to be a bunch of them, but over the last 25 years, their number has been whittled down to just three companies: universal (the biggest), Sony, and warner music... Here’s something you may not have know...at last estimate, about 95,000 songs are uploaded to the streaming music services every day...of that number, only about 4% are from those three majors...the rest is from indie labels and do-it-yourself musicians... Let me flip that around: 96% of all new music comes from independent musicians...the market share of indie labels has been rising by double-digits for almost 25 years now... Indie music—or at least material from bands not directly signed to one of the three majors—was an important aspect of the 2010s...major label acts were still important, but without the indies, it would have been a pretty empty decade...but thanks to the sheer volume of new music and some crafty distribution by indie-friendly companies, we got to hear a lot of it... The width and breadth of indie over those ten years was staggering...and without the influence of independent musicians, styles, and trends, major label mainstream rock would have been much different... Let’s examine that...this is part two of the history of rock in the 2010s... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We never know we’re living through history as it happens...for example, if we’re trying to assess what happened in a particular decade, we can’t really do it justice if we attempt to analyze things day to day...you need a break, a little time for things to settle into place when it comes to the grand scheme of things... Take the 60s, for example...this sounds a bit weird at first, but they didn’t end when the calendar flipped over to January 1, 1970...decades have momentum—sometimes a hangover—that carries things forward for a year or two or even three afterwards... For example, the 50s carried on until probably 1963...it took the assassination of JFK to really kick off the new decade...historians have made convincing arguments that the 60s didn’t end until 1972-ish... The 70s may have ended relatively on time, brought about by things like the death of disco, a terrible recession, the election of Ronald Reagan, and other markers that said the “me decade” of 70s were done... I’d say that the 80s ended by the end of 1991, thanks to the first gulf war, another awful recession, and a wholesale sea change in music as we quickly transitioned from a world awash in hair metal to the new alternative generation... I’d put the end of the 90s in 2001..buried by 9/11 and the retaliation that followed, the rise of the internet, the bursting of the dot-com bubble, and the end of the traditional music industry, the introduction of the iPod... The aughts?...that’s another decade that I feel ended on time...so much came to a screaming halt with the financial crisis—the great recession in 2008—and by the time the clouds parted, we were done with that decade... This leaves us at the dawn of the 2010s which was one of the few decades that started right on time...and for the next 10 years, we saw everything from prosperous economic growth to the rise of authoritarism...and technology?...wow...the 2010s saw more people get into tech and gadgets than at any time in history...smart phones, the explosion of social media, cord-cutting... Which brings us to music...when we look back on that decade, what happened?...what did we learn?...and how were trends and styles and consumption different than earlier decades?... Let’s find out...this is the history of the 2010s, part 1... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Continuing to dive into the Ongoing History of New Music archives, here's a show for 2016 that we are surprised has not been posted yet! At some point in your life, you said “I’m never going to become like my parents”…yes, you did…don’t lie…we all did… We vowed that we’d never become old and stodgy and boring and stuck in their ways and closed to new ideas… Do not panic…this is totally natural…this cycle of life has been going on since the invention of music—and it only accelerated with the birth of the recording industry in the late 1800s… Every generation has its thing…and every generation thinks that the people who came before them and comes after them are weird and wrong… This is part two of the more things change, the more things stay the same… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Continuing to dive into the Ongoing History of New Music archives, here's a show for 2016 that we are surprised has not been posted yet! Have you every heard yourself say this? kids these days! What’s wrong with them? All their crazy music. It’s just noise! That usually leads to… music isn’t as good as it used to be. When i was younger—high school, university—music was awesome! That’s followed by a list of bands and songs you believe to be the greatest ever, a lot of which aren’t as popular as you still want them to be…and then things usually end up like this… if today’s kids would stop and listen to what we used to listen to, they’d see that i’m right! Then we’d start getting some goodnew music! Don’t worry…if any of this sounds familiar, it’s because this is totally natural… People always hate the music of the generations that are coming up behind them…and I mean always… The young are always denigrated for their music, their way of dancing, their technology and their overall disrespect for their elders and history and the way things used to be… It’s the cycle of life…and it’s been going on for not just decades, but centuries…here…let me show you… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we go back into the Ongoing history vault from 2008 and the second of two parts on world records. Most people want to leave this earth being known for... something. We want it to be at least a little memorable... to some, so that our time on this planet won't be forgotten so quickly. It's that whole sense of self my soul has self-esteem issues thing that we're all born with. Maybe you want to be known for being kind to animals. Maybe you're good at math, and you want people to remember your gift for solving difficult differential equations. Or maybe you want to be known as the only man who has ever eaten an airplane. You heard me. Michelle Lottito is also known as Massio Monge-tut, which translates as Mr. Eat Everything. He's the world record holder of the largest meal ever eaten. In this case, it's a Cessna 150. This is an airplane, and has a wingspan at just over 33 feet and weighs about 1100 pounds. It can carry two people at a maximum altitude of 14,000 feet for just over 400 miles, and this dude ate one. Apparently, he has a stomach lining that's twice as thick as it should be, which allows him to digest things like nuts and bolts and sheet metal and chain. Wonder what kind of wine goes with the prop assembly. Anyway, Michelle Lottito will be forever known as the guy who ate an airplane. A meal that size is a world record. Which is another thing that got me thinking. What are some of the superlatives and some of the weirdness that comes from the world of New Rock and alternative music when it comes to stuff like this? So I started looking, and I found out a lot. This is the Ongoing History of New Music Book of World Records, part two. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we go back into the Ongoing history vault from 2008 and the first of two parts on world records. Chances are you have at least some kind of talent. Maybe it's not something very useful, but at least it's something that you can do that no one else can. My mom used to say that everyone is good at something or at the very least, known for something that no one else is. For example, I grew up with a kid who could dislocate his thumbs at will. It was great for freaking out substitute teachers. He got to go home early a lot. Another kid could pop a wheelie on his bike and ride it all the way home like that, and he'd live more than a mile from the school. Sometime in the 1970s, though, the world discovered the Guinness Book of World Records. And that's when we realized that there were things out there much stranger than we could ever realize. Like the dude from India whose fingernails had a combined length of over 20ft. Or Elaine Davidson, the world's most pierced woman; 720 piercings, including dozens in her face. Another dude from Scotland has tattoos over 99.9% of his body, making him the world's most tattooed man. Then, in the summer of 2008, Sandy Allen died. She was the world's tallest woman. At 7ft seven inches, she lived in the same Indiana nursing home as Edna Parker, who died year earlier at the age of 115. And up until then; she had been the world's oldest woman. Now, this kind of got me thinking. Has anyone ever put together a list of world records for the world of new rock? A list of all the superlatives, the biggest, the shortest, the highest, the longest, the most expensive, all those things? And I couldn't find one. So I thought to myself, hey, there's a gap in the market. There’s got to be enough genuine and morbid curiosity out there to make it worthwhile. And who knows? Maybe a project like this might inspire someone to-do something great, or at least something weird. Which, of course, would be good, too. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, I give you…The Ongoing History of New Music “Book of World Records version 1.0” part one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you're a fan of a particular artist, you want as much as you can get from that artist, you know, the albums, the singles, the t-shirts, all the downloads and all the swag and that's great when your favourite group releases an album. But with some bands going 234 or even more years between records, things get kind of dry. Now in the olden days, that was too bad distribution systems being what they were access to everything a band did was pretty much impossible. The access was tightly, tightly controlled, but the best you could hope for was for one of those rare elusive and highly legal bootleg records, unauthorized recordings issued by some shadowy label without the permission of the artist. Mostly these bootleg recordings featured live performances. After all, they were the easiest to make, but some contained stuff in the vaults that was never ever designed to be heard by anyone outside of the band's inner circle. Heck, some of this material wasn't even heard by the executives of the group's record label for years. We had this cat and mouse game between the labels and the artists and the bootleggers and hard core fans were right in the middle, waiting, hoping and praying that they could somehow get their hands on this stuff. Bootleggers moved offshore to places like Italy, Singapore and Indonesia where copyright laws were, uh shall we say a little looser? One of the great bootleg labels was called KTS. They were renowned for two things, super high quality live recordings that they got from somewhere and a wide selection of studio recordings that were never ever supposed to be released. I have a bunch of KTS releases and they are very, very good. Then along came the internet and the bootleg CD industry suddenly dried up pretty much overnight. Why bother putting out something that you had to manufacture in a Backstreet factory in China when you could just put it all online. Meanwhile, a strange thing happened with performers and managers instead of being all freaked out about this unfinished or unapproved stuff getting released into the wild by someone else, they started doing it themselves. I mean, why not use this material to forge a deeper relationship with their best customers, their biggest fans. The result has been an explosion of interesting material from some very big bands. And here's how you can track down some of it for yourself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s a fine line between “wonderful” and “weird”...things that are “wonderful” tend to inspire you with awe...you feel warmth and light and awe and admiration...and you may suddenly find yourself believing in goodness and a higher power... I saw a total solar eclipse once...that’s exactly how I felt...maybe you’ve had a similar experience... But just a few centimeters from “wonderful” is how you feel when you run across something that’s genuinely “weird”...you might still feel awed—but you might also experience disbelief, confusion, disgust...and you may even feel a little throw-up at the back of your throat... Or you might laugh...”Weird” fan be funny....or you might think that something “weird” is really, really cool...see, there’s good “weird” as well as bad... “wonderfully weird,” if you will...it’s all in the eye of the beholder... Let’s see where this stuff fits in with you...its part ten of “100 weird things about new rock”... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Money is a weird thing...when you don’t have it, it’s all you can think about...when you do have it, it’s the last thing on your mind... It’s gotta be especially weird for successful musicians...99.9% of all rock performers come from very modest backgrounds...for years, they make sacrifices for their art, hoping and praying that one day, they won’t have to worry about where their next meal comes from or how they’re gonna manage to pay the rent.... But 99.99% of professional musicians will never hit the big time...they may make an okay living, but they’ll never be rich... But what about that 1/100th of 1 per cent that do hit the big time?...for them, life changes a lot and it changes fast...suddenly, they’re able to do and have things that they never even dreamed of... Some can handle it and ease into the über-rich lifestyle with elegance and grace...others–well, not so much...others still use their positions to do strange, excessive and occasionally destructive things... And, not surprisingly, things on all sides of the ledger can get quite weird... This is part 9 of “100 weird things about new rock”...it’s 10 tales of wealth, success and excess. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The standard musical diet consists of three things: sex, drugs and rock’n’roll....all three of these stapes affect the same areas of the brain... We’ve talked about this before, but here’s a quick refresher course in neuroscience... In your head, you have the amygdala, the cerebellum and the nucleus accumbens...they’re involved in the process of creating and regulating dopamine, which is the hormone that makes you feel good... These regions analyze what’s going on when you have an orgasm, take cocaine or listen to a great song...dopamine is released into the bloodstream, which is a signal to the rest of the body that says, “this is good! Let’s have more!”... Needless to say, dopamine is a pretty addictive hormone...mix music and drugs and you’re heading down a slippery slope...as we’ve seen many times–including earlier this in this year–things can get very weird very quickly... But musicians taking drugs is often a very solitary and personal thing...with sex, other people are involved...most of the time...but then again, we are talking about weirdness, aren’t we? You might want get the kids and grandma to do something else for the next hour...this is “100 weird things about new rock, part 8"–and the topic what happens when new rock and alternative music mixes with weird sex... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is a fact of human nature that those given the power to make rules that govern the behavior the rest of us will devote their lives to making and enforcing those rules... Most of the time, that’s a good thing...if you murder someone in cold blood and you’re caught, you’ll face justice...robbery is illegal...and so is owning a pig in France and calling it “napoleon”... No, seriously...it’s against the law to name your pig “napoleon” if you live in France...in California, women may not operate an automobile while wearing a house coat...and in Canada, it’s apparently illegal to remove a bandage in public....who knew?... Then there are all the weird lawsuits–like the dry cleaners who were sued for $54 million for losing a pair of pants...or the American politician who filed a suit against god for causing natural disasters and inspiring terrorists... And then there are all the tiny legal nuances that either allow cases to proceed or have them dismissed on a technicality—hello, O.J. Simpson... The world of rock is not immune to legal foibles...crimes, felonies, misdemeanors, weird lawsuits, legal charges, jail time–the works... Which got me thinking: what are the weirdest intersections of the law and new rock of all time?...I came up with a list of ten.... This is “100 weird things about new rock, part 7: 10 stories from the legal files:... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I think we take music for granted...as much as we love it; we also treat it like something disposable... And I don’t if we can be blamed for it...I mean, there’s just so much music out there...there’s a never-ending supply... We hear a song...we evaluate it–sometimes in less than 3 seconds–and then we either accept or reject the song...and if we accept it, we’ll listen to it only until something better comes along... We seldom stop to think about all the effort–the time, the inspiration, the emotion, the skill, the technology, the money–that went into creating that one song... While music can be written and created anywhere, you need a recording studio to preserve it, to put it into a form in which it can be duplicated and then distributed to the world so we–the fans–can finally get to hear it... And recording studios can be weird places...confining windowless rooms where time seems to lose all meaning...yet the goal is to capture the energy of a live performance... In other words, there’s a lot that can happen between the time a songwriter feels that creative flash and we finally get to hear the end result...and yes, it can get very, very weird along the way... This is part 6 of “100 weird things about new rock”...I call this episode “studio stories”... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some things just go together naturally... A nice sauterne is a fine companion to foie gras that is served with fruit compote...or, if that’s too rich, strawberry jam works well in a sandwich with peanut butter... And, as even the most casual observer knows that rock music often comes with side order of drugs... In case you haven’t noticed, rock and drugs often have some kind of symbiotic relationship... I mean, the self-appointed moralists who want to sanitize life for the rest of us kinda have a point...the world of rock’n’roll is filled with stories of druggy excess and the kind of misery only drugs can offer... A lot of lives have been ruined or ended by that dangerous combination of rock music and drugs...and more often than not, things can get really weird...really weird... I have ten stories where rock and drugs have intersected with very strange results... It’s part five of “100 weird things about new rock”... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the outside, being in a famous touring rock band seems like a glamourous thing...you travel the world, playing for thousands of adoring fans night after night with your gang of buddies... Oh, the gloriousness of it all...the private jets!...the media exposure!...the excitement!...the perks!...the sites!...the sex!...the drugs!...your every whim catered to by people whose job is to, well, cater to your every whim... And that really is the reality–for maybe the top 1/10 of one per cent of groups in the world...for other 99.9%, going on the road is a trying ordeal that can get pretty uncomfortable real fast... I mean, think about it...for the entire time you’re on tour, you’re living in a bubble, going where you’re told to go, doing what you’re told to do and living out of suitcases for months on end... You can wake up in the van or the bus one morning after the gig and quite literally have no idea what country you’re in, let alone what city... Then there’s the bad food, the interviews with the same stupid questions all the time, annoying fans, the late nights, too much alcohol, too many drugs and not enough sleep... The only thing that makes it all worthwhile is the fact you get to play every night...but even that gets old after a while...all you want to do is go home, do the laundry and finally be left alone for a while... With that kind of working environment, life on the road can get pretty weird...how weird?...let us count the ways... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This historical, true crime podcast hosted by Kru Williams from History Television's hit original series Deadman’s Curse: The Legend of the Lost Gold investigates the curse and legend surrounding the lost gold mine of Pitt Lake. On their quest they're joined by members of the Stó:lō and Katzie First Nations, historians and cultural experts of diverse backgrounds, as they sort fact from fiction and give Slumach a voice from the other side of the veil. You'll hear about how an Indigenous prospector, accused of murder set a curse on anyone who searched for his hidden gold just before he was hanged. Over a century later, a prospector, a mountaineer, a truth-seeker and a way-shower band together to walk the same paths of those who went looking for Slumach’s cursed gold and never returned find how a single bullet was the catalyst for a 150-year-old mystery. Click here to find it on your favourite podcast app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you’re listening to this show, you are a music fan...any arguments?...probably not... “fan” is short for “fanatic”–a person who is extremely passionate and enthusiastic about something...could be sports, could be movies, could be music...and fans tend to be reasonably uncritical about the objects of their affection... But all “fanaticism”–and we’re using the proper dictionary terms here–is not the same...we can go from being a casual fan of something to being a devotee...but then “fan” gives away to the negative connotations of “fanatic,” all the way up to “zealot” and “militant”...this is where things get unbalanced, obsessive and dangerous... If you’re a public figure—say, a famous musician–your whole goal is to attract fans...your whole life is about finding people who really, really like what you do.... The problem is, however, that with the good come the weirdo’s...and this is where things can get very, very strange... This is part three of “100 weird things about new rock”...ten tales of fans, stalkers and the downright crazy... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s an old saying that goes “he who dies with the least regrets wins”... Good words to live by because by the time we shuffle off this mortal coil, all of us are going to have done and said things that we wish we hadn’t...and chances are, we hope that no one finds out about this stuff... It’s the skeletons in the closet–pieces of our past that we try not to show (or even try to hide) from other people... But in the era of tabloid celebrity, paparazzi, Facebook, MySpace, twitter, Wikipedia, blogs, tmz.com, the smoking gun and Pérez Hilton, it’s getting harder and harder to keep the bad stuff buried...it has a way of being exhumed... You know the kind of stuff I’m talking about...the rumour that Hitler’s paternal grandparent was Jewish...the alien autopsies at area 51....Angelina Jolie’s allegedly history of bisexuality [pause]...uh, sorry...where was I?... Anyway, all of this got me thinking: what are some of great secrets from the world of new rock and alternative music that today’s performers would rather we not discuss?... This is part two of “100 weird things about new rock”... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I have a fascination with the strange...what seems ordinary at first glance is–well, isn’t ordinary at all.... Once you get in the habit of looking past the obvious, the universe opens up in some interesting, unexpected and really cool ways... For example, if you’re ever in Albania and you agree with what someone says, shake your head from side-to-side...if you disagree, nod...in other words, do the opposite to what you would do at home...that’s just the way it is in Albania... Here’s another...how many different characters have been featured on The Simpsons?...those who have the time to count those sorts of things say the number is 320... One more: the highest possible score on an old-style Pac-Man game is 3,333,360 at the end of level 256...at that point, the game suffers what can be best described as a “nervous breakdown” and the display goes all weird...game over... Stuff like this got me thinking...would it be possible to compile a list of the weirdest things ever from the world of new rock and alternative music?... Of course it would...prepare for wonderment... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s always a shock when we hear that a rock star has died...but when the news about Chris Cornell came out on May 18, 2017, it was extra-jarring... The overall impression was that he was a guy who had it good...he’d been a central fixture of the grunge era as the front man of Soundgarden...there was an totally unexpected hit with the Temple of the Dog project...then a solid three-album run with Audioslave... His solo recordings were hit-and-miss, but given everything else he’d done, fans gave him a pass when he stumbled... Then came the Soundgarden reunion, which began in 2010 and ran for almost eight years...there was a new album—“King Animal” in 2012—and sold out tours...there were also plans for a second post-reunion record for which Chris had already recorded some vocal takes... But then he gone by his own hand in that hotel room in Detroit...another member of the grunge brigade, joining Kurt Cobain, Andrew Wood, and Layne Staley...and it’s possible that Chris’ fate had a fatal effect on his good friend, Chester Bennington, who took his own life two months later... Chris may be gone but we’re still talking about him, still listening to his music, still marveling at that voice...as with all great artists, the fascination continues... Let’s take a dive into Chris’ world with ten interesting things about the man that you may not know... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This universe is very weird...so weird, in fact, that we often don’t question its weirdness even though it’s right in front of us...we’re completely caught up in it... For example, when someone takes a group picture, there’s always that person that demands that everyone “say cheese”....that’s a way to get everyone to smile...you can’t help but smile when you say “cheese”. No one is really sure who was first to employ the “cheese” trick for photography... In the early days of the camera, it was considered undignified to be captured with any kind of grin...the command from the photographer used to be “say prunes”...that’s why so many old photos have people doing duck lips... The earliest reference to “say cheese” comes from a Texas newspaper report in October 1943...Joseph E. Davies, a former ambassador to Moscow, was interviewed gave away his secret to look pleasant no matter what the circumstances... “just say ‘cheese’”, he advised...Davies wasn’t the inventor of the phrase, though...he says he learned it from some politician... Let’s try something more current...when we enter the full address of a website in a browser, we go http://www. Whatever”...that’s a bit unwieldy...the story of the URL is very complicated, but it breaks down like this... The “http” stands for “hypertext transfer protocol,” the set of rules that govern transferring files over the internet...the “www” is “world wide web,” which is where the url lives...but what’s with “//”?...that’s a holdover from the computer code that was written for the Apollo missions to the moon... And by the way, the guy who first put all this together is Tim Berners-Lee back 1992...he’s really, really sorry for all the confusion and if he had it his way, he’d go back and come up with something better... Since we’re on the topic of rockets, why is there a countdown to launch?...seems obvious, right?...tick down the seconds until the engines fire...but get this: nasa took this idea from a 1929 silent film called “frau im mond”—which translates as “women in the moon”...it’s considered to be one of the first serious sci-fi films...for its rocket launches, it features a countdown from “six”...6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, now!” Again, this is stuff right in front of our faces that we’ve just accepted as part of life without ever really questioning what’s going on...now let’s extend this to the world of music...there are many strange things that we just accept as fact and protocol...but why?...let’s find out... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Times are good for vinyl...the format was all but dead until some desperate record store owners invented “record store day” in 2008...since then, we’ve seen double-digit increases in vinyl sales year after year after year... Things are so good that in several countries, the revenue brought in by selling vinyl is greater than the revenue generated by compact disc sales...we haven’t seen anything like this since the late 80s... What’s driving the boom?...many things, from audio quality to the ability to display the music you love in your home... “look at how many linear feet my record collection takes up!...not only that, but I’ve chosen a format that isn’t portable and requires me to purchase special equipment to play it...that’s how much I love music”... Vinyl is something you can hold in your hand...plus there’s the disc itself, the artwork, the liner notes, the lyrics and all the tactile sensations that go with playing a record... Once you’re smitten, it’s not too hard move to collecting interesting records...you hit used record stores, go to record shows, and scour sites like discogs and eBay to fill in the gaps in your vinyl library... And then there’s the final leap: you become a hard-core collector and look at vinyl as an investment...you start lusting after records that are insanely rare and very valuable—and very expensive...these records cost hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, and in a couple of very special cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars... What are these records?...where can you find them?...and what’s it gonna cost me?...this is a tour through some very valuable vinyl...and hey: maybe one of this records is in your music library right now… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you’re going to commit to being in a band, you have to prepared to deal with the bad as well as the good... The good stuff can include fame, money, perks, and the ability to make a living by playing music...enviable stuff... But then there’s the bad stuff...problems with your record label...lineup changes...dealing with the fickle tastes of the public...writer’s block...internal struggles...management hassles...I guess we can add pandemic lockdowns, too... I could go on, but you get the point... These are the things that can be deadly for any group at any level...but none of these issues are necessarily fatal...and this is where I direct you to exhibit “A”: Canada’s 54-40... This band has been a going concern since 1980...and while there have been a couple of lineup changes over the years—three, by my count—the core of the group is still there... This is the story of 54-40—in their own words, part 2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Being in a band is hard...keeping a band together is harder still...and if a band can keep it together for more longer than a decade, they should get some kind of medal... Let’s give props to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, still going since their establishment in 1983...Metallica has been with us since 1981...both new order and Depeche Mode go back to 1980... The current lineup of U2 has been the same since that day in March 1978 when they changed their name from “The Hype”...as they were doing their thing in Dublin, the cure was coming together in England... Pretty good...here are a few more longevity champions...Blondie, formed in 1974...Kiss, 1973...The Eagles, 1971...The Who, 1964...The Rolling Stones, 1962...The Beach Boys, 1961... Now let’s look at just Canada...Sloan has been with us since 1991...The Tragically Hip, 1985...Loverboy, 1979...April Wine, 1969...Rush lasted a full 50 years before they broke up...they were formed in 1968...and we there’s still a version of The Guess Who out there, maintaining a streak that started in 1965... I should also point out that the Nanaimo Concert Band has been a going concert since 1873—not with the original members, of course...there have been some lineup changes... Another name that needs to be added to this list is 54-40...they were established in 1980 and are still going...there have been some changes in personnel, but the core of the band is still intact, still touring, still recording, still on the radio.. They outlasted the original wave of punk, new wave, 80s hair metal, grunge, the resurrection of indie rock in the 2000s, the rise of the internet, the demise of music video channels, and—well, you get the idea... So this is as good a time as any to sit down with the band to let them talk about their decades in the Canadian music business...this is “54-40, in their own words, part 1” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is a new gold rush going on right now—but this one is different...it has nothing to do with minerals or oil or any other traditional commodity...it’s not what we’ve seen with crypto currency...it may have to do with stock markets, but not always...and yet it’s a form of investment, one that should continue to pay off for decades to come... I’m talking about the rush to buy up song catalogues, the rights to material created by some of the biggest artists on the planet...you’ve probably heard of some of these transactions... Everyone from the killers to Barry Manilow to Silverchair to the Beach Boys to members of Alice In Chains have cashed out...Imagine Dragons netted $100 million...Justin Bieber, $200 million...the Chili Peppers, $140 million...Bruce Springsteen sold his music for over half a billion dollars... There are about a dozen well-capitalized companies in this game...they’re spending billions of dollars hundreds of thousands of songs...who are they and where’s the money coming from?... If someone is buying, who’s selling?...who sets the price?...if you’re a successful musician, what are the advantages to selling you’re life’s work?...how long has this been going on?...and what do these big catalogue says mean for the future?... Let’s find out...this is a primer on the stampede to buy (and own) the greatest music of all time... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My main interest with skateboarding is the music that’s evolved along with it...in fact, there’s a whole subgenre of alt-rock built on skateboarding culture....and there are plenty of legendary rock acts that found their first fans among the skate crowd... This music goes back a lot farther than you might expect, too...i think it’s time that we gave skate punk its due... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I vividly remember my first encounter with Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails...it was April 17, 1990, at the old RPM club in Toronto... Nine Inch Nails were opening for Goth God Peter Murphy and frankly, no one cared... I was there with a bunch of people chatting at the bar while this noisy band blitzed their way through the first four songs of their set...and then came song number five...it was an insanely heavy version of the Queen song, “Get Down Make Love” from their 1977 album, “News of the World”... It took about 30 seconds for the crowd to pick up that the band had launched into a cover...and it was a good cover...an excellent cover...and I remember seeing the entire audience turn as one toward the stage to see what the hell was going on... My memory is that everyone suddenly got into the band...and for the rest of the set—which consisted of “Ringfinger,” Down In It,” and “Head Like A Hole”—the crowd went nuts...and we were rewarded for our attention by the band smashing their gear to bits at the end... That was it...I was sold on this new band and I’ve been a fan ever since... Nine Inch Nails is one of my desert island bands...I’ve seen the band more times than I can count...I’ve interviewed Trent on multiple occasions... I have just about every single physical release, including several box sets...if you look in my cd library, you’ll find that I have more Nine Inch Nails bootlegs than anyone else...I even wrote a book on the first two albums... With all that in mind, here are some of my favourite stories about Trent and the band...and because I like being cute about things, I’m calling this show “Nine Inch Nails tales”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is part 2 of our look at true stories of plagiarism and unfortunate sonic coincidences in the world of Alt-Rock Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let me ask you this...how many times have you heard a song and said "Hey that song sounds just like something I heard last month. That guitar riff is really familiar....don't they realize those chords were used in a song years ago?!?!?!" This sort of thing happens all the time...in fact it happens more than most people realize. Sometimes quiet deals are worked out behind the scenes and the public never knows, other times things get ugly.... These are true stories of plagiarism and unfortunate sonic coincidences in the world of Alt-Rock...part 1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’ve all been there...tickets for a concert you really, really want to see are set to go on sale at exactly 10am...you’re on the Ticketmaster site as the clock ticks toward the appointed time... 9:59:57...9:59:58...9:59:59...ten o’clock!...show time... Enter...nothing...refresh refresh refresh the browser...nothing...you try mashing the f5 button a bunch times...no luck....you hit control-r a couple of times...still nothing...but then, one last time and you’re in!...except you’re not...at 10:01 and 17 seconds, the show you so desperately wanted to see is sold out... What the--...you did everything right...how could so many tickets get sold so fast?...hello, what’s this?...tickets are already for sale on the secondary market?...and the price is double the face value?...what just happen This is just one ticket-buying scenario...maybe you were able to get in only to discover that tickets were already selling for quadruple the original price—and that’s through the primary seller—in this case, Ticketmaster... You’re the act’s biggest fan!...you should be able to get tickets to at least one of their shows...and you’ve been shut out in less than 90 seconds...hello?...ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?... Hold on...back up...there’s a lot to process here and it can get pretty emotional...buying concert tickets can be one of the most frustrating of all retail experiences...and a big part of the problem is that the average person doesn’t understand how it works... Wait...that sounds condescending, but I don’t mean it to be...getting a ticket to a concert should be simple—but it’s not...the complexities of buying and selling concert tickets today would drive Einstein insane... Stick around and I will do my best to unravel everything for you and by the time we’re done, I won’t have made it any easier to get a ticket, but maybe you’ll understand why you can’t get one...this is the weird history of concert tickets, part 2... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let’s define a “concert ticket”...it is a contract between you, an act, a promoter, and a venue that allows you admission to specific event at a stated time and place...seems simple enough...let’s continue... A concert ticket can cost money that goes to covering costs and making a profit for those staging the concert...or in some cases, it can be free and is used mainly for tracking attendance... Fair enough...a concert ticket can be pre-printed on card stock...it can be printed by a machine when you buy it...it can be a bar or QR code on a piece of paper you print out at home...it may have a little hologram thingy on it or some other sort of security device...that ticket may be tied to the credit card used to buy the ticket—or it may not...and when you go through the door, a person may take your ticket, tear your ticket in half, or just scan it... But maybe you don’t have a physical ticket at all...you have an e-ticket which has been living on your phone for months...you poke through a bunch of screens until you finally find it, holding up everyone in line and thinking to yourself you should have really called it up earlier because you couldn’t remember where you stored it and then get that scanned... Fine...that’s a concert ticket...but who are the people behind issuing and redeeming all these tickets?...what entities get to determine how much we have to pay?...how come we have to buy so many tickets through Ticketmaster?...and what about these services charges and dynamic pricing and scalpers who somehow get their hands on tickets in second if not before tickets go on sale to the general public? And here’s a bold statement: everything you know about concert tickets is probably wrong... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Once upon a time, it was illegal—criminal—to be another other than heterosexual...any hint that you may be something other than straight could get you into all sorts of trouble—and career suicide was the least of your worries... In 1895, the famous English playwright, Oscar Wilde, was put on trial for homosexual practices...he was found guilty and sentenced to two years in jail...he never recovered from the ordeal and died soon after his release... In 1959, Liberace, the famous pianist, sued the London Daily Mirror for libel for implying that he was gay...it went to trial and on the stand and under oath, Liberace stated that–this is 1959, remember–he had never indulged in homosexual practices...the judge believed him and he won $24,000... In 1982, a former male bodyguard sued him for palimony–and this time, Liberace had to pay out $95,000...finally, in 1987, he died of AIDS–and the Daily Mirror came calling, looking for a refund of their $24,000... And look at Elton John...despite the fact that he married a woman in 1984, the rumours of his homo- and bisexuality helped erode his fan base in the late 70s...he had to hide it for decades, something that took a serious emotional toll... When you put everything into this kind of context, you can see how far things have come today...if someone comes out, this admission is greeted by most with a shrug...it’s like “okay...cool...whatever”... And not only that, but sexual orientation is protected by law in much of the world...for example, in late 2004, the French parliament adopted legislation that could get a person one year in jail for insulting homosexuals...this law treats anti-gay and sexist comments in the same way other laws treat racist and anti-Semitic insults...say something homophobic in France and you could end up with 12 months in the clink plus the equivalent of a $75,000 fine... But it wasn’t always this way, including in the world of new rock, which was supposed to be so progressive, liberal and tolerant...here of some stories of brave people who took a lot of arrows for who they were. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I vividly remember sitting down to write the first-ever episode of “The Ongoing History of New Music”...I was in my living room with a blank yellow note pad...and I was terrified... To be brutally honest, I did not want this gig...but the powers-that-be decreed that this was my new job...if didn’t want to do it, that would have been cool...I was told I’d receive a manila envelope containing a modest severance package... That wouldn’t work...I’d just gotten married and I’d just bought a house with a 12 ½ per cent mortgage...and I’d done radio all my adult life, so I didn’t really have a lot of skills for any other line of work... So I told the bosses that “okay, I’ll do it”...what other choice did I have?... So there I am, sitting looking at this blank yellow note pad this was before the internet and before anyone started writing books on the history of alternative music... ...where to start?...how to organize everything?...and how could I come up with something every single week?... What’s that quote from the ancient Chinese philosopher, Laozi?... “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”...so I just started scribbling notes... A few days later, I had a script for the first episode of “The Ongoing History of New Music”...I decided that the best way to begin was to make a pilot, a show that laid out what the program would be...I was a total guess...I had no idea...none... I figured I’d do the show for a couple of years and then move on...people would get tired of it, it would outlive its usefulness, or I’d just end up getting fired—for real, this time... But here we are, 30 years later, and I’m still doing “Ongoing History” shows...and as I sit here, it’s February 2023, we’re about 30-ish episodes from Ongoing History show number one thousand...that’ll happen sometime in November... Things have changed a lot since I wrote and recorded that first episode, things that we’ll get into when we get to show number one thousand...but for now, to mark 30 years since the first episode aired, we’ve pulled the recording from the archive and are making it available for the first time as a Podcast...God, the concept of Podcasts was still years away when we started this... So just for fun, let’s take a listen to that very first program, broadcast on February 28, 1993...I hope this isn’t too cringey... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A couple of years back, I did an episode called “The Diversity Show”...it ran in February as part of Black History Month...the goal was to salute the contributions of people of African descent to the world of rock... It was quite the list...Jimi Hendrix...we had to talk about Jimi, one of the greatest guitarists of all time...then there was Death, a criminally overlooked band from Detroit called Death who were about 20 years ahead of their time... We talked about Bad Brains, the great hardcore band from DC...we moved to English for discussions about Ska stars The Specials and The English beat...the punk-funk of Fishbone, the metal crunch of both Living Colour and Ice-T’s and BodyCount And we included Lenny kravitz, Bloc Party, Bakar, Kenny Hoopla, and more... But the list was incomplete, of course...there was only so much time and there are so many people and events we need to talk about...so let’s spread the recognition around a little more for Black History Month 2023... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the dawn of the 21st century, vinyl was dead, dead, dead...we were all going digital and there was no point in keeping this ancient format...vinyl records were dusty, scratchy, and noisy...they took up too much storage space...they warped and got water damaged... But the biggest knock against vinyl was that it wasn’t portable...MP3s were a brand-new thing back then and the idea of being able to carry around a thousand songs on a device that could fit in your pocket was pretty sexy... While vinyl never went out of production, fewer and fewer records were manufactured...pressing plants shut down and the machinery either sold off for parts or scrapped entirely...and if you happen to need a new turntable or a cartridge, good luck...try and find one... Two groups of people stood between vinyl and its extinction: hardcore collectors who never bought into all the digital promises and djs who preferred spinning records instead of mixing CDs... Vinyl was doomed...but then it wasn’t...starting in 2008, a weird thing happened...like some zombie in one of those old Italian horror movies of the early 80s, the format rose from the dead... And today, vinyl is doing something it hasn’t done since the early 90s: generating more revenue than cds...the world still buys more compact discs, but because vinyl sells at a premium, it brings in more money than CDs... Despite supply chain issues, shortages of polyvinyl chloride, back-ups at pressing plants, and higher and higher prices, more people are getting into vinyl every day...that’s why I thought it was time that we explored a few more stories about a format that refuses to go away... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Like Homer Simpson, I love my TV...without my local, network, cable, on-demand, and streaming shows none of us would have made it through the pandemic... The downside is that in order to remain distracted and entertainment, I became over-subscribed...mixed with my perpetual fear of missing out, I’ve ended up paying for more cable channels than I need and subscribing to channels I don’t even watch... I’m just too lazy to go through my credit card statements, find the offending charges, and then go through the hassle of calling customer service and cancelling my subscription...I gotta do that... But I’ve been a TV junkie since I was a kid...and one of the things that’s always fascinated me are TV theme songs...some are bespoke compositions commissioned specifically for a show...others are formerly standalone songs that licensed for a program... In both cases, being the writer of a theme song can be extraordinarily lucrative, especially if the show is a hit and goes into syndication...every time the theme you wrote gets played on TV—broadcast or streamed—anywhere in the world, you get paid...every...single...time... And since having your song played as part of a TV show, you’re constantly advertising its existence to the world...if you’re lucky, it’ll blow up into something even bigger...and although it doesn’t happen much anymore, your label might decide to release your TV theme as a single...and if it becomes a hit that way, wow.... What I’d like to do is look at the history of some of these TV themes, focusing on rock bands who made some very good money—sometimes-insane money—from somehow ending up being associated with television... This could very well alter the way you listen to TV from now on... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Back in the late 70s, the BBC debuted a science education show called “Connections”...the host was James Burke, an affable, professorish guy, usually dressed in a beige polyester leisure suit who gave the term “interdisciplinary” a whole new meaning... His thing was to take disparate developments in science and technology and show how they were actually interconnected in ways that led to our modern world...nothing, he demonstrated, existed in isolation over the long term... One show connected the invention of the cannon to the first movie project in the late 1800s...there were obviously a lot of steps in between, but Burke was able to draw a very clear line...another demonstrated the few degrees of separating between drinking gin and tonics to astronomers discovering the true size of the universe... “Connections” remains one of my all-time favourite TV shows...and to be honest, more than a little of this program is inspired by the way James Burke was able to tie things together... I’ve always wanted to create a proper “connections”-type show, but it’s been hard because so much knowledge and research and analysis and synthesis is required...and if I’m honest, what you’re about to hear has taken years to pull together...I hope I can do things justice... Here is my attempt to create some connections between rock music and some seemingly unconnected inventions, events, and discoveries from the past... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When humans first started making audio recordings of music, they were limited as to how long those recordings could be... An original Edison cylinder could maybe hold two minutes of music, therefore any songs committed to the format had to be two minutes or shorter—otherwise you’d run out of space... When Emilee Berliner came along with his flat rotating disc that spun at 78 rpm, capacity increased a little bit...you now had around three minutes for a song before you ran out of space...so everyone who wanted to make audio recordings adapted to the limitations of the technology... And this, more than anything else, standardized the length of songs in modern popular music to around three minutes, something that persists even today...how long are most songs?...somewhere in the neighbourhood of three minutes... Another thing: in the old days, there was just one version of a song...you wrote it, you recorded it, it was manufactured, sent to the stores—and that was it... But in the 1960s, this, too, began to change with the rise of the album...radio stations loved their three minute songs because it meant they could get in more songs per hour...but with the extra space provided by albums, songs grew longer than the standard three minutes...the only way to get a great (but long) song on an album onto am radio (which dominated at the time), you made to make that long song shorter... This gave birth to the first radio edits...there was the shorter single version and the longer original album version...sometimes there was serious butchery involved, but hey: radio wanted things down to around three minutes... But why stop there?...couldn’t you have multiple versions of the same song destined for different uses?...why couldn’t, for example, a short song be made longer?...or made more interesting with different mixes and instrumentation and arrangements?...the original song is the same...it’s just that you could add (or subtract) or re-arrange things from the original recording and release that, perhaps expanding the market and reach for the song and the artist... This gave birth to the remix, an artistic and technological development that took what were once finished single static songs and turned them in to something entirely different.... This is the history of the remix... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you ever had to work together with your significant other?...and I don’t mean anything like housework or parenting or anything like that...I’m talking about a job—your primary source of income—where the two of you have to work on the same things under the same circumstances in the same place?... This can go one of two ways...first, the bond between you grows stronger because you have shared interests, goals, and frustrations...your combined knowledge and talents can make things proceed more efficiently and perhaps in directions two uninvolved people might never think to take... Or things can go south...no work-life balance...disagreements on how the work should be done...this can led to lots of unhappiness, fights, and maybe a breakup...is it worth it?... When it comes to the history of rock, there are a lot of couples working in the same bands...sometimes things work out great....other times, these arrangements annoy others in the group...if the couple breaks up, does the band break up, too—or does everyone suck it up and keep going?... And then there’s the worst case scenario when one member of the couple de-couples with one member of the band and then couples up with someone else within the group...what happens then?... Time for a little couples therapy...let’s see if we can sort through everything from wedded bliss to horrible divorces and break-ups... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sometime around 2016, I got the sense that we were entering into a new era of rock history: a period when the musicians we loved and admired began to die... Listen, there had been many deaths before then, but they seemed reasonably few and far between...but 2016 seems to have been the year—for me, anyone—when I realized that many of our most beloved musicians were getting older and starting to die off... That one year alone we lost David Bowie, Glen Frey of The Eagles, Prince, Leonard Cohen, and George Michael....we lost both Keith Emerson and Greg Lake of the prog band Emerson, Lake, and Palmer...Paul Kantner of Jefferson Starship...Maurice white of Earth, Wind, and Fire...Beatles producer George Martin...and that’s only a partial list... In 2017, it was Gord Downie, Tom Petty, Gregg Allman, Chris Cornell, ac/dc’s Malcolm Young, Walter Becker of Steely Dan, and Chuck Berry, among others.... The following year, we lost Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries, Mark E. Smith of the fall, Avicii, Aretha Franklin, and Pete Shelley of The Buzzcocks. Then in 2019, Keith Flint of The Prodigy, Mark Hollis of Talk Talk, Ranking Roger of The English Beat and General Public, Ric Ocasek of The Cars, drumming legend Ginger Baker...I could go on, but you get the idea... The one thing that binds all humans on this planet together is that some day, we’re all gonna shuffle off into the great beyond... No one is getting any younger...and over the next decade, we’re going to lose some of the personalities who have always been with there for us over the last 30, 40, 50, or even 60 years... With that grim reality in mind, I think the time has come for an annual look back for those whom we’ve lost in the last 12 months as a way to recognize their contributions to the world of music...this is 2022 in memoriam... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In most rock bands, we hear most about the singer and the guitarist...you know...those two up front tend to get the most attention, and the most adoration. That leaves the bass player and the drummer to do the best that they can. This is often extremely unfair as they form the foundation of any bands sound....the bass and the beat. You can have the greatest lead singer on the planet, and the flashiest guitarist around...but if you ain't got that swing...you ain't got a thing. So we're gonna salute the people at the back of the stage. The people who lay down the groove so the singer and guitarist have something to work with. These are new-rocks greatest rhythm sections. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When it comes to what you are about to hear, there is nothing wrong with your equipment or how it was produced...this music is exactly as it was intended to be. It is exactly as it was record, and exactly as it was to be presented to the universe. We are now ready to dive into some of the most alternative music you will ever hear. Welcome to the ultra strange world of Outsider Music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A few years ago, there was a revival. A rediscovery of a sound that we used to call Techno-Pop. Some people loved it...some people hated it. But whatever the opinion, it was a very important part of Alt-Rock history. So what was Techno-Pop? Who were the main artists? Where did it come from? And where did it go? Let's explore... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, it’s that time again...another year is almost at an end—and once again, we have been subjected to the whims of the universe and human stupidity through 2022... It got better with covid but then we have the war in Ukraine...politics are more polarized than ever no matter where you go...social media is still making us stupider...and try as he might to leave the planet, Elon Musk is still here... When it comes to the world of music, we lost Taylor Hawkins, Andy Fletcher of Depeche Mode, Paul Ryder of The Happy Mondays, Mark Lanegan, Dallas Good of The Sadies, Meat Loaf, Ronnie Hawkins, Coolio, Olivia Newton-John, and Ronnie Spector, among others... It’s still hard to make a living from streaming, artists are getting burned out on the road, and inflation is killing everyone... That’s a lot to deal with...here’s hoping that 2023 will be better...we gotta think that because otherwise, we’d go crazy... This is also the time of year I try to clean up the home office where I do all my “ongoing history” research and writing and production...I’m always looking for interesting and cool stuff to talk about when it comes to anything related to music...when I have enough material on a particular subject, I can write a new episode... But there’s also a lot of orphaned material—research that has gone unused because I couldn’t find a place for it for whatever reason...it would be a shame for all this knowledge and trivia and factoids to go to waste, so it’s time for the annual purge... So watch out...a lot of information is about to dumped on your...this is the 2022 edition of 60 mind-blowing facts about music... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It was a classic battle between good and evil and it gave us one of the greatest toys of all time. Today, we journey back to revisit the history of the iconic Transformers. From their early days in Japan to dominating TVs and toy shelves in North America, this is another defining 1980s toys franchise that was also a masterclass in marketing. So hit play and let's roll out! Support the show and get bonus audio content at Patreon.com/80s Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Joe Strummer died on December 22, 2002, no one could believe it...first of all, the guy was only 50...second, this was a guy who ran marathons...third, he’d been strict vegetarian since 1971... And fourth, it was Joe Strummer, one of the toughest and most uncompromising musicians in the history of not just punk, not just alternative, but rock period, full stop... Yet it happened in his kitchen in Somerset, England, just after he finished walking the dog...cause of death?...heart attack, caused by an undiagnosed defect in his heart that had been there all along...sudden heart failure...he immediately lost consciousness and never woke up... To be specific, he suffered from an “intra-mural coronary artery”...this is when one of the main vessels supplying blood to the heart ends up growing inside the heart muscle as the person grows older...it is an exceedingly rare condition with fewer than 100 fatal cases recorded worldwide in the last 50 years... That’s what took Joe from us?...what are the odds?...I guess I just told you... But even though Joe has been gone for 20 years, he’s still remembered and still revered as an iconic figure—and someone whose work has been discovered by generations since he died... To help that along—and to commemorate 20 years since his passing—I’ve come up with something I call “20 short stories about Joe Strummer”... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rock’n’roll is built on the electric guitar...well, mostly...and not really in the beginning...in fact, the electric guitar as we know it, didn’t have much to do with the birth of rock at all... The earliest rock evolved out of rhythm & blues combos...by the early 50s, many of them featured some kind of electric guitars...but the honk and rhythm came from saxophones and pianos which were slowly pounded into matchsticks... The piano contributed bits of jazz, boogie-woogie, barrelhouse, and juke-joint energy...and even through the 1950s, the construct known as the “guitar hero” was largely absent from the world of rock’n’roll—outside of chuck berry, of course... Instead, the early pioneers were piano heroes...Little Richard...Jerry Lee Lewis...Fats Domino...Ray Charles...Huey “piano” Smith... But when guitars got louder, started sounding dirtier, and began to wail more powerfully, the number of rock’n’roll piano heroes were outgunned and began to recede into the background...not entirely, though... Again, I’m talking just about pianos...none of this fancy synthesizer stuff... Elton John, Billy Joel, and Carole King have had massive careers based largely on piano songs...the Beatles—especially Paul McCartney—served the cause...Freddie Mercury of Queen wrote much of their greatest songs on piano... There are others...Leon Russell, Mike Garson (who played with Bowie for years), Chuck Liddell (a favourite of the Rolling Stones), Dr. John, Billy Preston, Stevie Wonder, Ray Manzarek of The Doors, Rick Wakeman of Yes, Keith Emerson of Emerson Lake and Palmer... But you notice what’s missing from that list?...any piano heroes from the world of alt-rock...does even such a thing exist?...actually, yes...they’re a bit hard to spot, but they’re out there...here—let me show you... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From 1964 to 1966, The Beatles played only a handful of shows in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. Each show was pandemonium but the story of the Beatles in Canada goes far beyond that. From their first visit to Canada in Winnipeg, to the famous Bed-In in Montreal in 1969. Support: patreon.com/canadaehx Donate: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/craigU Donate: canadaehx.com (Click Donate) E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: twitter.com/craigbaird Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cdnhistoryehx YouTube: youtube.com/c/canadianhistoryehx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Being a music fan was much different in the era before the internet...news traveled slowly often passed through many filters—so many filters, in fact, that a tremendous amount of information was either stripped out or drastically altered by the time it reached us... This was never more true in cases when something awful happened—like, say, someone dying...think back to all the confusion and speculation and conspiracy theories that popped up in the wake of Kurt Cobain’s death... Three years later, we encountered something similar...it was another suicide—maybe...and for much of the world, this death was treated as a tabloid story because of some speculative and some very lurid details involving the three key elements: sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll.. But for others, especially in Australia, this death was a very big deal and extremely traumatizing...it had such an impact that a quarter of century later, fans are still talking about what may (or may not) have happened in a luxury hotel suite in Sydney on November 22, 1997... This is the story of inxs and the death of Michael Hutchence... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices