Ongoing History of New Music

Before we get to the topic at hand, I’d like to revisit the movie “Forrest Gump,” specifically Forrest’s shrimp boat buddy, Benjamin Buford Blue—but you can just call him Bubba…he knew all the ways one could serve up shrimp… What Bubba could do for shrimp, other people can do for punk…punk rock comes in as many different varieties of shrimp…there’s hardcore punk, ska-punk, cyberpunk, synthpunk, anarcho-punk, cowpunk, gypsy punk, Christian punk, Celtic punk, art punk, garage punk, glam punk, crust punk, horror punk, street punk, melodic punk, afro-punk, skate punk, Chicano punk, folk funk, trall punk… There’s punk blues, punk pathetique, punk metal, riot grrrl, queercore, rapcore, straight edge, emo, and oi… And then we can get into all sorts of subgenres…hardcore punk includes bent edge, deathcore, pornogrind, screamo, powerviolence, positive hardcore, nard core, nintendocore…and that’s about all I know about that… Most of these punk derivatives are pretty niche and none of them have a hope in hell of growing beyond a cult following…but a few have blown up into worldwide phenomenon’s—including a version that I haven’t mentioned, which remains one of the most popular forms of punk rock of all time… This is the history of pop-punk, part 1… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At some point, you may end up being invited to your high school reunion—and you’re probably going to go because you wanna see what happened to all those people… Where’s the jock that made your life miserable?...the girl or the guy who snubbed you for that date and broke your heart…the shy, nerdy guy who was really smart…who did well?...who got what was coming to them… But—oh, wait: people at the reunion are going to be thinking the same about you…how’s your hair and your waistline and your complexion?...dammit!...what am I gonna wear?...what am I gonna say to these people?...and so the anxiety sets in… But you’ll still end up going…why?...because we’ve all got the “where-are-they-now” gene…it’s only natural to be curious about the whereabouts of people we were close to (or at least in close proximity to) during an important time in our lives… Connecting people this way was one of the first projects for the internet…classmates.com went online way back in 1995…its sole purpose was the find anyone you might have gone to school with from kindergarten to university… This was also the purpose of a site called “Friendster” back in 2002…then came MySpace in 2003…anyone remember “hi 5?”...it showed up in 2004…then finally, Facebook in 2005… You know what we need?...a site that links together all the artists and musicians we once knew—a proper one-stop-shop where-are-they-now resource for music… As far as I can tell, such a site doesn’t exist so we have to piece together things ourselves….so let’s try to do that again…this is another look at lost Canadian alt-rock bands of the 90s and beyond… Damn…would someone get on that idea?...it would make doing a show like this a lot easier… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sometimes, life becomes too much…things get too weird, there’s too much pressure, too many decisions, too many wrong choices….the uncertainty builds—and then you just kinda lose it… We lose the plot, go off the rails, hit the ditch, blow a gasket, and generally freak out…sometimes, these incidents are fueled by drugs, alcohol and mental illness…other times, it’s the body and brain’s way of saying “thanks, but I’ve had enough for now…I’m going to go over here and have me a little breakdown right now”… Creative types can be especially vulnerable to these problems…maybe because they’re wired differently…or they’ve developed some bad, self-destructive habits tolerated or even encouraged by those around them…or because they can live in a bubble, they don’t exactly know “normal” is to the average person… The results can be scary…and if we don’t know the backstory to these breakdowns and freak-outs, it’s very hard to help these people in their time of need…but the more we understand how and why people find themselves in these situations, the more we can help…and maybe, the more we can learn to cope with life ourselves… This is musicians who lost it, part 2… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s something about creative types that make them different than the rest of us…if you’ve ever spent any kind of time with any kind of artist, you’ll what I mean…they’re just different, you know?... That’s not any kind of judgment…it’s just an honest observation…they look at the universe differently, feel things in ways we don’t, and interpret life in interesting ways…that’s what makes them artists—and it’s why they’re so important to the rest of us… Sometimes, though, some of them will lose the plot…they’re so wrapped up in their bubbles that they start behaving…weird—even for them… Maybe it’s a mental health issue…maybe it has to do with drugs or alcohol…maybe they’ve just fallen in with a bad crowd, the kind that encourages bad, self-destructive behaviour… Some are able to rebound, straighten out and otherwise save themselves and those around them from any further grief…other times, well…. These are stories of musicians who lost it… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This show is going to blow the lid off some secrets and mysteries in new rock. Admittedly some you may have already have heard rumours about, but others....well this may be the first time you are ever hearing about them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the 1990s there was a massive flood of stand-up comedians making the leap to television to star in their own stand-up sitcoms thanks in part to the success of the Cosby Show and Roseanne. Those shows were followed by other massive hits like Seinfeld, Home Improvement, Martin, Ellen and The Drew Carey Show. All of them featured a previously established stand-up comic who had been scouted from the comedy club circuit. But there were lots of other shows starring comics that had high expectations but went down in flames like Grace Under Fire starring Bret Butler, All American Girl starring Margaret Cho and anything featuring Andrew Dice Clay. On the next two episodes we are going to take a look back at some of the hits as well as some the failures from that decade. On part one, we look back at the stories behind Roseanne, Seinfeld, Home Improvement, Martin and Ellen. Contact: Twitter: @1990shistory Facebook: @1990shistory Instagram: @that90spodcast Email: [email protected] Guests: Paul Brownfield, magazine writer, former TV critic at LA Times Twitter: @paulbrownfield Greg David, TV critic and partner at www.TV-Eh.com Twitter: @greg_david Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everyone talks about being first at something because it’s cool to be the first to do something…but what about being last?... There’s something called “Telesphobia,” which is the fear of being last at something…but sometimes, you just don’t have a choice… The last person killed in World War 1 was George Edwin Ellison, who was shot by a sniper 90 minutes before the Armistice went into effect at 11 am on November 11, 1918… The last time a TV commercial for cigarettes ran on American TV was on December 31, 1970…it was for Virginia Slims, by the way… And the last man on the moon was Eugene Cernan…Apollo 17, December 1972… After reading through all sorts of famous “lasts,” I got to thinking: what are some famous music lasts?...here’s what i managed to find out… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a show all about fake names…sure we could spend an hour talking about how people like Courtney Love and Elton John and Madonna use fake names on hotel registers…or we could go into how Bono’s real name is “Paul Hewson” and Deadmau5 has “Joel Zimmerman” on his driver’s license and that lorde is really Ella Yelich O’Connor… We could talk about how singers and bands sometimes perform gigs under fake names to throw off the press…the Foo Fighters, The Arcade Fire, Metallica, The Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead, Franz Ferdinand, REM, Kaiser Chiefs, Led Zeppelin, The Clash and hundreds of others have done that… But no, we’re going to kick it up a big notch…we’re only interested in real bands—big bands—who have released albums under fake identities…or, at the very least, have tried to obscure their identities for whatever reason…they’re side projects, yes, but very special ones… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here at the Ongoing History of New Music, we get questions....a LOT of questions. So many that it's often difficult to answer all of them. But we do. And what we've gathered in this edition of the Podcast are some of the most asked ones we get. So if you've often had these particular questions, here are the answers! But if you still have a question, please send it along and we will get the answer. We Promise. Send them to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you've ever wanted to be a musician, chances are you dreamed of going on tour. The romance of the road and everything that comes along with it. But it's not as easy as you think. Not everyone is U2 and charters their own plane to get from gig to gig. Chances are you're going to be using a tour bus....or more likely....in a van. It is such a grind that kills many a band. There are the hassles, the expense, the accidents, the weirdos, the arguing, the screw ups, and more. Murphy's law is in full effect: whatever can go wrong...will go wrong. Get in the van. Let's hit the road. You'll see what I mean. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the beginning—and I’m talking about, say, 1955—it was easy to categorize popular music…there was rock, pop, country and r&b…it was nice and simple…pretty much all mainstream music you heard could be dumped into one of these four buckets… But even back then you could get more granular…you could slice certain genres into thinner slices to include big band, Dixieland, Ska and hillbilly…and jazz…and gospel…and Broadway show music…and I guess we can’t leave out classical, can we?... And as rock’n’roll grew, it fragmented and separated and stratified with each passing year…before long, it wasn’t enough to say that you were in a “rock band”…you had to specify what kind of rock band you were… In 2014, a guy named Glenn McDonald created a project called “every noise at once”…he was able to identify 1,264 micro-genres of popular music…and new micro-genres are being invented every day…every hear of blackgaze or deep filthstep or skweee?...they exist…trust me… Some of these genres rise and fall pretty quickly…they’re “of the moment” and soon sound completely outdates…others, though, have staying power…they can be with us for decades…why?...because they just work, that’s all… And one genre that’s been working very well for over half a century is called “power pop”…this is its story… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You may have noticed that the most of the biggest rock acts in the world aren’t that young…Green Day?...middle 40s… Dave Grohl?...creeping up on the half-century mark… Trent Reznor?...as we sit here right now, he’s 52…Pearl Jam: early-to-mid 50s… Average age of U2?...upper 50s…Springsteen?...68…Paul McCartney?...75…and The Rolling Stones?…do you have to ask?... I am not ragging on old rockers…this is not about ageism…i just can’t subscribe to that whole “rock is for the young” B.S.…if these acts can continue to do what they do well into their pension years, all the power to them… Part of the reason so many people are still into these groups is because their bodies of work are incredibly strong and still sound great….most of The Beatles music is still brilliant even though much of it is more 50 years ago… The other reason these acts still attract attention is because there hasn’t been much of anyone to replace them…where are all the superstar rock acts of the 21st century?... This isn’t to say that they don’t exist because they do—but the stars seem to have gotten, well, smaller—not to mention fewer and further between… Wait…perhaps i should clarify what I mean by “superstar”…I’m talking about an act that sells music by the millions and millions of units…I’m talking about concerts by acts for which tens of thousands of people will crawl over broken glass to get tickets… I’m talking about acts who manage to great a deep catalogue of hits released over a period of years…and I’m talking about acts where there’s consensus by millions of people that they are great and worthy of everyone’s love and devotion… But thanks to changes within the music industry—and because we music fans are now consuming music differently—everything has been turned upside down…we need to look at things this way: why is so much harder to be a superstar rock act in the 21st century… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the second part of out examination of the Alt-Rock scene and this time we go from mid 80's right up to today. Goth has always had a bad rap so we're going to try to clear everything up with our deep dive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we go back into the Ongoing History archives to talk about Fashion. This is a request for Amy in Cambridge who asked "have you ever done a show that talks about how fashion was influenced by and through Alt Rock?"Why yes we have and here it is! From Mods, to Grunge, Goth, Punk and a whole lot more. Enjoy and thanks for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are some bands that you can take at face value, what you see is what you get. Then there are others which have backstories that go on for ever and ever. Pearl Jam is one U2 Green Day. Nirvana and also Muse. Muse is an interesting case because we here in North America, we're a little slow to catch on to what they were doing. They'd already been massive stars in the U.K., Europe and Japan before they hit North America. This sort of thing doesn't happen very often. It's like we suddenly and collectively discovered a band that was already in full flight, a deep library filled with road tested and chart tested songs. A solid live show and some very impressive musicianship. It was like we walk into a party that was already in Top Gear. North America has now embraced music every album and tours a big event. But then there's still that back story. We're still sorting through it, even though you may be a fan. How much about Muse? Do you really know? Let's find out. I call this show 10 Things about Muse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We all know that Canada has created some of the biggest selling musicians in the world. I mean think about it... Celine, Alanis, Shania, Nickelback, Drake, Bieber, The Weekend....you get the idea. I mean by capita...does any other country really come close? But what about those behind the scenes like record producers? Canadian's shaped some of the most important and influential bands and artists in new rock history. We have a long history of production talent and we look at the legends and the new breed. This show is from mid 2003 so since then, there are a lot more Canadians to add to the list! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

They only exhisted for barely 4 years and released just 4 albums but without them would there be a Smashing Pumpkins? Nine Inch Nails? Marilyn Manson? White Zombie? This is a program in the "what's the big deal series?". An occasional look at why todays music sounds like it does and this time it's one of the most influcential bands of the 80's We ask: "What's The Big Deal About Bauhaus?!?" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The problem with so many interviews is that they can come across as interrogations…” I have a list of questions I must get through in the allotted time so let’s begin”… Depending on the circumstances, that’s sometimes the route you have to take…but there’s nothing more human than sitting down for a simple chat…if you can get some people in a room and just get them talking, then everyone forgets they’re being interviewed for something… They get into a groove and start remembering things and telling stories that aren’t included in any official bios or Wikipedia entries…this is the whole purpose of these occasional episodes I call “in their own words”… Not only do we learn about the artist, but we get to see them as proper human beings…we get to really know them in ways we otherwise might not…and that’s fantastic… I had a chance to chat with Ian Thornley…he’s one of Canada’s great guitar players, session guys, and performers…let’s hear more of what he had to say…this is Ian Thornley, in his own words, part two… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recently, I had a chance to sit down with Ian Thornley to talk about his career in our ongoing series of “in their own words” shows And this time we cover everything…and I mean everything…. This is Ian Thornley, in his own words, part 1… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the most robust creatures on the planet is the cockroach…gross things, but you have to admire ability to survive…I mean, they’ve been around for 280 million years… Not only can a cockroach hold its breath for 40 minutes, live for a month without food and run up to three miles per hour, but one can live for up to a week without its head…I repeat: without its head! Impressive, but there’s a tiny creature known as a tartigrade that’s even toucher…one of these things are about half millimeter long, but they’re almost impossible to kill… They can survive temperatures of -273.15 Celsius, which is absolute zero…you physically can’t get colder than this…that means a tartidgrade can survive in the vacuum of space and will get back to business if you warm them up… At the under end of the spectrum, a tardigrade can handle pressures six times greater than what you find at the bottom of the ocean…that’s about 30,000 time more than the atmosphere around us… You can even boil one of these little buggers in alcohol and it’ll be fine…and if things dry up, a tardigrade will shrivel into a little ball and can stay that way without water for years… This is the only creature to survive all five of earth’s great extinctions… So why am I going on about tardigrades and cockroaches?...because we’re about to get into more of the history of the longest-living electronic media we’ve ever known…many attempts have been made it kill it, but yet it’s still here…this is 100 years of radio, part two… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode begins shortly after 9 am on the Saturday I turned 6…for reasons that will forever remain mysterious, the present from my grandmother was a Lloyds portable transistor radio…model tr-62…made in Taiwan…built with 6 transistors… This thing revealed a wider world to me…I grew up in a small town with three tv stations (one of which was in French) and the only radio I heard was what mom and dad listened in the kitchen or in the car… But now that I had my own radio, I discovered that there were many, many, many other stations out there…and in the wintertime, when the atmosphere turned into a giant reflector for distant am signals, I started to listen to stations from Minneapolis, Denver, Chicago, Louisville, and many others… At some point, I decided that I wanted to be part of this world of news and information and entertainment and music…and to make a long story short, here I am…. ‘course, you may be listening to this as an internet stream or a podcast…but the original construction of the program was for traditional, terrestrial over-the-air FM radio… Radio is everywhere: the clock radio, the kitchen, the stereo in the living room, the car, the office, the gym, the store…in fact, there are so many radios that they outnumber people in North America…there are thousands of FM stations and thousands of am stations…. But because radio is so ubiquitous, most people don’t give it much thought…it’s always been there, and it’s always been free and it’s so easy to use…radio has become so tightly integrated in our lives that we don’t notice it perhaps as much as we should… And then there are those who maintain that radio is dead and that no one listens anymore…that’s rubbish, of course…I could cite you all kinds of all kinds of statistics to prove that radio is still very popular, powerful, and profitable—like almost 90% of the population listens to radio over the course of a week—but just take my word for it… But radio is in a period of transition as new technologies come into play…however, the radio industry is very aware of what’s going on… These are all reasons why I want to talk about radio….plus this will give me an excuse to play some great songs about the medium… Oh—did I mention that radio has now officially been around for 100 years?....yes…yes, it has—and here’s its story… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the olden days of newspapers—and I’m talking decades ago—there was a specific way printing photographs…photos were given to the printer who copied the picture using a special camera that converted everything to something known as “half-tone” so it could be put in the paper… If you looked closely at the resulting picture, you’d see that it was made up of a pattern of dots…each one was a different size and proportional to the blackness of the original photo in that particular location of the photograph… Viewed at a distance, it looked like a normal picture…but if you got up close, all you saw was the dots… Wait…try this…have you ever sat up close to a tv?...I mean really close…so close that you can see the individual pixels…that’s kind of cool because you get to see the tiniest components of the video that’s being broadcast… But looking at a pixel or two isn’t helpful when you’re actually hoping to understand anything that’s been broadcast…you’re too close…there’s no perspective to anything… Sometimes to really understand things, you need to sit back—waaaaaay back—in order to perceive things, to understand things, to appreciate things and why they are the way they are…in other words, you need the big picture… To torture this metaphor even more, the same principles can be applied to music before certain things come into focus…and that’s what we’re about to do…this is part two of a program called “big picture stuff”… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When it comes to music, it’s so easy to get lost in the weeds…to become distracted by all the minutiae and trivia… There’s nothing wrong with that, of course…it’s the study of exactly this kind of granular stuff that pays my salary…however, there is a “can’t see the forest for the trees” angle to all this… Sometimes, we need to stand way back—and I mean way back—before some vital things come into focus… I’m not talking about just learning not just to see the trees but the forest, but the whole of the countryside…no, wait…more than that…we need altitude…not just for a 35,000-foot view, but maybe all the way up into geosynchronous orbit so we can assess everything about a certain subject… Wait…this metaphor is getting out of control…what I’m trying to say is that if we step back far enough, we can learn some really interesting things about why music is the way it is… What you’re about to hear may change the way you think about the history of music…this is big picture stuff—really big stuff—part 1… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Back in the day...when singles were released on vinyl...you needed to put a song on either side of the record. Sometimes it was another version of the same song, or just the same song again, or maybe a live version...or maybe something completely different. A song that the band didn't know what to do with. Something special...something unique. What I've gathered here are 9 great B-Sides. Some are landmark singles in a bands history, some are ones you might never have heard before... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People often ask me where I come up with ideas for this program…my answer is always the same… you know that feeling when it’s Sunday night and you promise yourself you’ll start on that assignment that’s due the next morning as soon as “the Simpsons” is over?... Yeah, that’s me…every week…and after more than 700 of these one-hour assignments stretching back to 1993, I hit a wall…total writer’s block… I started to panic…there are hard deadlines…I have a contract…I’m expected to deliver another new show…there are radio stations all over the place that need new programming from me…what the hell am I gonna talk about this time when I got nothin’?... I mean, this is the seven hundredth and forty-sev— Wait…show number 747?...that’s the same as the airliner…what about stories of alt-rock and airplanes?... And so I started go back through all my files—and sure enough, there’s tons of stuff on the subject…plane crashes, near-misses, air rage, terrorist bombings… Well, that settles it…show number 747 will be able civil aviation and alt-rock…there…that wasn’t so hard, was it?... Dodged that bullet for another week… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is a fact of life that there are periods where everything old is new again…if you look at Broadway, for example, old productions are always being brought back… Take “West Side Story,” for example…it first premiered in 1957 and was brought back in 1960, 1964, 1980, 2009, and 2020…that’s five revivals…the Gershwin musical “Porgy and Bess” has been brought back seventimes… Movies are always being rebooted… “Ghostbusters,” “Planet of the Apes,” “King Kong,” “Robocop,” “Willy Wonka,” “Halloween,” “Spider-Man”…“A Star is Born” first appeared in 1937 and was remade in 1954, 1976, and 2018… Then there are all the tv remakes…”MacGyver,” “90120,” “Dynasty,” “Lost in Space,” “Roseanne,” “Twin Peaks”…“Star Trek,” of course… And then there are musical reboots, scenes and sounds that are brought back by people who are sometimes generations removed from when this music first appeared… Maybe it starts with people who stumble on some old records…or maybe they independently discovered sounds and styles that they thought they were new… Whatever the cause or source, music is constantly being recycled and renewed…and that’s what we’re looking at with this series of shows…this is “alt-rock revivals: part 5”…and the focus is New Wave… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Take a look in your closet…are you the kind of person who won’t throw out anything because you’re sure it’ll come back into style one day?... I am…long after this stuff have ceased sparking joy, it’s still hanging in my closet…I have these sport coats and suits that I paid good money for…and even though I haven’t worn any of them for years, I can’t bring myself to throw them out… “yeah, they look a little dated, but one day”…maybe…hope springs eternal…none of them will fit, but that’s beside the point… For support, I look at my vinyl collection…there was a time when vinyl was considered nothing more than toxic landfill… “the future is digital!” We were told… “free yourself from all those bulky, dusty, crackly vinyl records…throw them out!...throw them out!”… For some reason, I didn’t fall for that…I kept my vinyl…and now that the format has been revived, I look like a genius… Bottom line, though, is that even though many things in this universe come in cycles, we’re not always sure when something old will become new again… At some point, everyone enjoys a comeback, a resurrection, a re-establishment, a re-introduction…but you never rush these things, especially in music… Something has to happen where a significant number of people in different areas simultaneously come to the conclusion that it’s time to revisit some older music and put a modern shine on it… This is what happened with garage rock at the very end of the 90s and the early 2000s…after laying low for a couple of decades, it roared back so strong that it set the agenda for much of modern rock for years to come… Let’s look at this….it’s alt-rock revivals chapter 4: garage rock… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We hear this phrase all the time: “once in a generation”…fine, but how long is a generation?...according to Wikipedia, it’s about 30 years, which is the time it takes children to be born, grow up, become adults and then start to have children of their own… The international society of genetic genealogy sets the length of a generation between 29 and 31 years… But that’s if we’re talking about the child-parent-child cycle of human existence…we can also use the word “generation” to describe other cycles—like music…let’s try to do that… We all go through a period of “coming of age” with music…this is the period in our lives when music is central to everything we do…we use music to figure out who we are…we use it to bond to other like-minded people…and we use music to project our identity to the world… “thisis who I am!” That period—and I’m generalizing here—begins when we enter high school and ends when we get around to being adults…that’s roughly 10 years: 14 to 24, plus or minus a couple of years… If we consider that ten-year period to be a generation in music, the cycles will repeat much faster than the standard genealogical definition of “generation”… Extrapolating this reasoning (as dodgy as it might seem to some), it’s should be no surprise that we experience periodic revivals in music as age into, through, and out of that musical sweet spot in their lives… So how long are these cycles?...well, using the rules I just described, we should experience revivals every 10 to 12 years…ish… This brings me to Emo…when can we expect a revival in that area?...this is chapter 3 of a series entitled “alt-rock revivals”… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Certain types of music have been around forever…jazz, for example, has been with us for over a hundred years…classical music goes back at least six hundred years…and then there’s religious music which can date back a thousand years or even more… If you study this sort of thing—it’s a form of ethnomusicology—you’ll see that revivals happen all the time all over the world with all kinds of different music… If type of music lasts that long, it’s gotta be always there in the background…it can’t ever have actually died off…and it really helps if these old sounds experience periodic comebacks…you know, just to give things a boost from time to time… Music revivals can be defined as social movements where a segment of the population decides that a specific era or musical system needs to be restored…they’re tired of what’s happening in the mainstream and look for something from the good old days to soothe their souls… And revivals have an interesting side effect…when a form of music comes to the fore again, it has a chance to renew, to regenerate, to evolve… This is where we encounter one of the most durable and regenerative music of the last hundred years…this is chapter two of alt-rock revivals…and this time, we’re going to talk about Ska… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We begin this episode with Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, verses 1-3…ish: “to everything there is a season, a time to every purpose under the heaven…a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted…a time to rock, a time to dance, a time to head bang, and time to chill”... Okay, I don’t think that last part is in any edition of the standard bible…I might have made it up… Here’s what I’m trying to say…the universe moves in cycles…things are born, build up, peak, and fade away…but they don’t necessarily die…they just go into some kind of stasis, a type of hibernation before something triggers a rebirth…and if the conditions are right, the whole process repeats again… This happens with music a lot…certain genres, certain scenes, have periodic revivals… Lemme give you an example…in the late 50s, all the cool kids were into folk music…stuff that was a generation old suddenly became the thing all the hipsters were listening to…the Kingston trio…Peter, Paul, and Mary… This translated into a big boom for modern folk music that eventually manifested in Bob Dylan and everyone who followed him… Around the same time in the UK, the big thing was known as “trad jazz”…English hipsters who were unimpressed with this new rock’n’roll thing, decided that traditional jazz that was originally big 60 years previous was where it was at… Again, there was a revival with new artists like acker bilk, Kenny Ball, and Monty Sunshine…suddenly, New Orleans Dixieland was in vogue…things lasted until about 1965 before it all died away… In 1973, 50s rock’n’roll made a comeback... “American Graffiti,” “Happy Days,” Elton John singing “Crocodile Rock”—stuff like that… Alternative rock has been around long enough so that it has seen its own internal revivals…sounds from alt-rock history that have been rediscovered and advanced by a new generation of fans… Even the punk rock of the middle 70s was a revival of sorts…at its heart, that punk was a back-to-basics form of rock’n’roll but done with speed and a sneer…and that’s where we’ll start…this is alt-rock revivals, part one: punk… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ongoing History of New Music looks at things from the alt-rock universe to hip hop, from artist profiles to various thematic explorations. It is Canada’s most well known music documentary hosted by the legendary Alan Cross. Whatever the episode, you’re definitely going to learn something that you might not find anywhere else. Trust us on this. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are some bands that are very consistent with their sound—and fans love them for it…no two records are never exactlythe same, but whenever a new album is announced, we have a pretty good idea of what to expect… And when we get into the album, there’s a sonic linearity to the songs…nothing wrong with that… Then there are bands who like to take chances, take risks, from record to record…the last thing josh homme and whatever his crew is in queen of the stone age want to do is repeat themselves…that requires not only imagination and creativity but guts… But while they acknowledge that this approach can confuse people and maybe alienate fans from release to release, they also know that a certain percentage—a solid one at that—love that the band likes to use the curve ball Heck, it goes beyond that…we never know who’s gonna appear on a queens album…people in, people out, contributions here, contributions there…no wonder things change up all the time… And then there are all the side projects that are different still…so, yesit’s confusing…and i think that’s exactly what josh likes…keep ‘em guessing… Let’s get deeper into all this with part two of “Secrets of Queens of the Stone Age”… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How old is rock’n’roll now?...if we use 1955 has some kind of abritary ground zero, rock is now eligible for all kinds of senior’s discounts…. That’s a long time…and the older rock gets, the more difficult it becomes to stick out, to find distinctive approaches and to be unique in an ocean of other acts… How many bands of the last, say, 20 years, can you name that has a sound so distinctive that you know exactly who they are within just the first couple of seconds? I have one: Queens of the Stone Age…there’s something about what they do that sonically sets them apart from everyone else… But it’s more than just guitar sounds, arrangements and lyrics…the elements required to create this uniqueness are complex and varied—and, I think, worthy of study…in fact. You can’t separate the sounds of Queens from their history—which is also very, very complex…let’s see if we can untangle everything… These are some secrets of Queens of the Stone Age, part 1…. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Like a lot of music fans, I’m fascinated by what goes on in the kitchen…how is music made and recorded?...who is responsible for doing what?... You may have wondered what a producer does or what’s the difference between a producer and an engineer?...how have things changed over the decades when it comes to recording technology?...and what’s the difference between the attitude towards recording music back in the day vs. What’s happening now?... The only way to get proper answers to these questions is to call in an expert…I found Chris Birkett, a producer, engineer, musician, and songwriter who has seen things evolve over a number of decades… Let’s get into some studio stories… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our memories are shaky constructs…we remember things wrong or forget things altogether…I’ve found—and other people agree with this—that if you want to dig through your brain to recover things that have gone missing is to just start talking… The more you talk, the more will come back…and if you have a group of people with a shared history and they all start talking, it’s amazing what comes flooding back…it can be cathartic, therapeutic, nostalgic and just plain fun…hold that thought… The longer a band exists, the more hazy the memories become…maybe it’s just age…maybe it’s because drugs and alcohol were involved…maybe some members die, taking their stories with them… In far too many instances, we’re forced to piece together a group’s stories from second- and third-hand accounts: friends and associates, press coverage from back in the day, and various other imperfect recollections told either in person or documented online…but hey, it’s better than nothing, right?... But what if you could get a band with a billion of these stories together in a studio and get them to talk things through?...what memories and feelings will emerge then?... This is exactly what I did with The Headstones: Hugh Dillion, bass player Tim White and guitarist Trent Carr in the same place, talking about how they got there…this is The Headstones in their own words, part 2… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At one time, The Headstones were the scariest band in Canadian music…they scared audiences, scared record companies—hell, they scared themselves… There were other words to describe them…intense…self-destructive…but I think the word the group liked the most was “furious” But that doesn’t been to tell the story of The Headstones…strap in…this is a good one… The Headstones In Their Own Words…Part 1… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the decades, drummers haven’t received a lot of respect…all the jokes…the running gag in “Spinal Tap”…the issues so many groups seem to have finding the right drummer… But there are also those who stand out and are not only admired but worshipped…and not just by music fans, not just by other drummers, not by just other musicians, but by everyone has a chance to hear them play…they’re that good, that special… I’ve been a drummer since I was in high school…I later played in bands and worked as a drum teacher to get my way through university…and I still play today…and you know why?...Neil Peart of Rush… My first exposure to him was a stereo salesman who was demonstrating a pair of speakers by playing “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” from Rush’s “Fly By Night” album…I was immediately sucked into it by Neil’s playing…and when the song gets to those three drum breaks, I was hooked for life… Later, someone played the “Overture” from “2112” for…and that’s when I decided I needed to learn how to play the drums…same thing for millions of other kids… For someone who played so hard and so loud, Neil was the quiet one, the introvert, the reluctant drumming institution…interviews with Neil were rare…meet’n’greets with fans were always handled by Alex and Geddy…it was just understood that Neil didn’t do these things… I’ve probably seen rush in concert more than any other artist…I’ve traveled to different countries to see them…I’ve worked on Rush projects for their record label and their management company…I know all the people behind scenes…I’ve hung out with Alex and worked with Geddy…but I never got a chance to meet Neil… I, like so many others, have unending respect for his abilities as a drummer, a lyricist, and a writer…he was a thinker, articulate, and extremely well-read…he also had a wicked sense of humour… Stay with me as we remember Neil Peart… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I love trying to figure out why things are the way they are…it’s a need to understand, you know?... Take a guy like Jack White, for example…if you go deep into his background, you have a much better understanding of why he is the way he is and why his music sounds the way it does… Another example is the Beastie Boys…how did they grow to what they became…if you look at Green Day’s upbringing, you get them even more… Same goes for Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl, Eddie Vedder—they all have life experiences unique to them and crucial to the music they end up making… Lemme give you another name: The Arctic Monkeys…you may, like me, have always found something different about these guys…they rock pretty good, but their songs are constructed in a distinctive fashion….and lyrically, they’re above and beyond so many bands… And they started so young…they got it while they were still teenagers…and the way they became famous was completely antithetical to the way you’re supposed to do things in the music business… To put it another way, The Arctic Monkeys are unusual—and I mean that with the utmost admiration…tell you what: let’s see if we can deconstruct the band to see what makes them tick…then maybe we’ll figure how why they are the way they are… For a total of $70 off your first three weeks of Hello Fresh, go to HelloFresh.ca/OngoingHistory70 and enter the code “OngoingHistory70”. That’s HelloFresh.ca/OngoingHistory70 and enter the code “OngoingHistory70”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is so hard to have a hit record these days…hell, with all the music out there it’s nearly impossible to attract any kind of attention…all the noise and distractions and competition… If you’re a new band with a debut record, you’ve got anywhere from six to thirteen weeks to make an impression once that first single comes out….if you fail to achieve significant traction with radio and retail and with fans during that short window, you’re in trouble…and if your record label doesn’t make it happen for you with the second single—well, I hope you didn’t quit your day job… It wasn’t always like this…back in the day when music was harder to come by, a record label could afford to wait for a band to develop and mature through two, three, four, five albums… Look at U2…they stumbled through their first two records before settling down with “War”… Look at the Red Hot Chili Peppers…warner brothers let them discover themselves through three albums before they could deliver the a little breakthrough with “Mother’s Milk” and then the big breakthrough with “Blood Sugar Sex Magick”… And look at REM…they released five indie records, each better than the last, before they were signed to a big major record label deal…that was hard…they were on a treadmill of recording and touring and recording and touring with little downtime…but they wanted it bad, so they did what they had to…it’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock’n’roll, y’know?... You can say the same of the Black Keys…a lot of people might think that these guys have what, three records in their catalogue…nope… They have eight full albums, two eps, one live album and close to two dozen singles…and unless you’re a longtime or hardcore fan, you may not know about some of the stuff they’ve done… Let’s fix that for all the latecomers…this is catching up with the Black Keys… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I have a long list of music-related facts that came to my attention this year…many of them were incorporated in various “ongoing history” programs over the last 12 months…but there’s also a lot of orphaned stuff—material that is interesting and fascinating but didn’t make it into any program for whatever reason… Maybe they didn’t fit into any of this year’s topics…maybe it was too off-brand…maybe they were just too “out there”… But this research will not go to waste…i have distilled this information to a tight list of 60 so i may present them to you…this is the fifth annual edition of “60 mind-blowing facts in 60 minutes”…. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here are a couple of musical terms you may have heard of… Earworm: that’s when a clip of a song keeps running through your head on a loop over and over and over again. Mondegreen: a misheard lyric…a great example is in Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze”…he sings “’scuse me while i kiss the sky”…some people hear that as “’scuse me while i kiss this guy”…there are lots of mondegreens in popular music… I propose we need a third term…it’s that opinion that overcomes us when we believe one song sounds almost exactly like another… I know you know what i mean…you hear a new song and a brief sense of déjà vu fills your head as your brain tries to correlate its musical database with what you’re hearing…and when all the processing is completely, you might think (a) “hey! Someone ripped off [artist x]!”…or (b) “someone’s gonna get sued!”… But you know something?...it’s not that simple…far, far from it…welcome to the murky world of unfortunate sonic coincidences… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The human body can be both very strong and very fragile…given its complexity, it generally works pretty well…but there are those among us who face challenges because of various disabilities… Some of these are genetic…others come as the result of accidents, trauma or some other kind of misfortune…then there’s the effect of disease… It can be very rough…there can be discrimination…and there can be a lot of misunderstanding… At the same time, though, there are opportunities for learning, compassion, and dialogue about what some of our fellow humans need in this life—and, just importantly, what special things they can offer back… Musicians are just like the rest of us, subject to the whims and frailties of this bag of water and chemicals we inhabit…these are some of their stories… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are a lot of things wrong with Facebook—don’t get me started—but there’s no denying that it can be addictive… The best thing for me is finding out where people from my life have ended up…high school, university, my home town, other places I’ve worked…and with over 2 billion active monthly users, there’s an excellent chance that almost everyone you’ve ever known as a Facebook account… But the “where are they now” thing doesn’t have to be restricted to people you know…you can lurk on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn to track down the current whereabouts of just about anyone…that includes musicians and bands that seem to have dropped off the radar… For example, where are some of these Canadian alt-rock artists of the past?...what are they doing now?...I’ve been doing some lurking—and here’s what I’ve found out… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There have been many times over the last one hundred years where technology has changed the way we make music… Take the microphone, for example…before it came along, singers had to be naturally louder than the orchestra…they needed to have a voice that could reach the back rows of the theatre…but when the microphone came along, certain singers like Bing Crosby, realized that you could use it to create a whole new mood for singing by getting up close and personal… Amplification was another game-changer…at one point, you needed a dozen or more people in a band to fill the room with music…with amps, you needed fewer people to make as much noise… Magnetic tape and multitrack recording made it possible to create entirely new soundscapes, the kind you could never get in the real world…the studio became an instrument for new sonic frontiers… And then we had developments like the electric guitar—and I don’t need to tell you how much that changed everything… This is how things were for the late 50s, all through the 60s, and into the 1970s…amps and mics and electric guitars and multi-track recording gear…those were the tools for making music… But then there was another change in that started to really be felt in the mid-70s…a new era featuring electronic machines that made sounds that had never been imagined anywhere in the universe… So many new possibilities opened up during an era that’s become known as “the golden age of synthesizers”…everything changed—and changed fast… If you’re into any flavour of today’s electronic music, you will find this fascinating… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You don’t need me to tell you that being a rock star isn’t a normal kind of job…you live in a bubble that’s as far removed from the regular 9-5, Monday-to-Friday thing… You spend a lot of time living in hotel rooms…there’s a lot of downtime between gigs which can get really, really boring…and your working hours are almost completely opposite to your natural circadian rhythms… A lot of people will end up coping with bad food, drugs, alcohol and self-destructive behavior—anything to alleviate the boredom…or the pain…or the loneliness…or the insecurities… And because you’re a rock star, there aren’t many people who are going to tell you to smarten up and sort out your life…in fact, your bad behavior is more likely to be encouraged than police… And it can be even worse when you get off the road…suddenly, any day-to-day structure you had on tour is gone…and all that’s left you in your house with your bad habits… I bring all this up because this is where we’re going to pick up the story of Deryck Whibley and Sum 41… The band burned very hot and very bright from 1996 through to 2005…and finally, something had to give…and it got real scary… This is the Sum 41 story according to front man Deryck Whibley, part 2… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you’ve ever seen Sum 41 perform live, they seem larger than life…big…loud…brash…in your face…very punk rock…and out front is Deryck Whibley…he’s like a man possessed….it all makes for a great show… But in person, Deryck is life-sized…he moves carefully and takes care to sit up straight because of a chronically bad back…the tea he likes to drink can make him almost appear delicate… But when it comes to conversation about Sum 41 their career, he’s super-engaged…as the only permanent member in the history of Sum 41, he is the band…so when I wanted to talk about where this group came from and how things have evolved over a quarter century, he’s really the only guy I needed to talk to…and man, we talked… This is the Sum 41 story according to front man Deryck Whibley, part 1… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It all came to an end on august 28, 2009, with a plum thrown against the wall…after eighteen years, the most volatile band in the world came to an end… Noel Gallagher and Liam Gallagher had always fought, but never like this time backstage five minutes before a show in Paris…words were exchange, the plum was thrown, violence was threatened, and a guitar was destroyed.... Two hours later, Noel issued a statement: "it's with some sadness and great relief to tell you that I quit Oasis tonight. People will write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer." Noel had left Oasis before…but this time he meant it…and since then, he’s kept his word…no amount of money or demands from fans or passive-aggressive pleading from Liam will changed his mind… Instead, Noel has gone his own way, both professionally and personally…and the impression I get is that he’s never been happier, more relaxed, or more confident with the way his life is going… Let’s get caught up with solo Noel by having a chat with the man himself…. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is no question that the vast majority of rock history involves dudes…it’s been a very male thing…not always, but most of the time… There was a time when it was “common knowledge” that girls just couldn’t rock…they didn’t have the feel…they were built wrong…it just wasn’t in their DNA like it was with guys… That’s crap, of course…but it took a long, long time for those prejudices to be defeated—dead and buried… The original punk rock of the mid-70s was a great help, thanks to the movement’s dogma that anyone with anything to say should be able to say it, regardless of musical ability, social class, race, or sex…lots of women were able to get on board with that… But there was some backsliding in the 80s…for example, hardcore punk was among the most testosterone-drive bro-rock ever…women were pushed to the back…and when grunge came along in the early 90s, it was again very dude-heavy… Even though parts of the grunge world were down with feminist causes and ideals—Kurt Cobain and the guys in Pearl Jam pretty woke and sympathetic, the scene as still very much a boy’s club…very male… This time, though, a group of women were determined to carve out their own space…music that would be about them and for them…music that would speak to issues that they cared about…and music that could rock just as hard and be just as abrasive as what the guys were doing…sometimes even more so…a lot more… They became known as “riot grrrls”…and this is their story… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m trying to imagine what it might be like to design an Amazon warehouse…a typical fulfillment centre is at least a million square feet filled with a zillion kilometres of shelving… And given that amazon is all about speed—the company is always trying to cut down the time between the time you click “checkout” and when the package shows up at your door—they’re always looking for the most efficient ways to find whatever you ordered on those shelves and stuff it into a box… The logistics of this is mind-boggling…not only do you have to categorize millions of items but you have to group them in such a way that things that are in the demand the most don’t create choke points for the robots that grab the stuff off the shelves… Music is a lot like an Amazon warehouse, except in some cases, it’s worse…not only do we have to categorize everything to a very granular detail, but we also have to make it possible for us to fortuitously stumble over something you might like… This is when we get into the whole idea of genres…at last count, Spotify has organized things into 2,424 different genres…there’s also website called “every noise at once” that lists about 2,000… This is both terrifying and fascinating…and it deserves study…this is a guide to genres, part 2… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Humans have always tried to make sense the world by putting things into neat little piles and filing them away somehow for further reference…it just makes things easier… If you study biology, you’ll know about kingdoms, phylum’s, classes, orders, families, geneses, and species…libraries organize books with things like the Dewey decimal system and the universal decimal classification….and when you go grocery shopping, there are signs directing you to the right aisle or department… This applies to music, too…we like to organize music into categories called “genres”… This used to be fairly easy…at the turn of the 20th century, we basically had popular songs of the day (vaudeville, show tunes and the like), folk and traditional music, religious music, and material from classical composers… Music has always separated and stratified and evolved, leading to sub-categories…within classical music, for example, we had baroque, chamber music, choral, and so on…. But as the population changed and as the recorded music industry began to take hold and more people began to buy records, music this fragmentation began to speed up… Jazz showed up in the 1910s and soon splintered into a bunch of different sounds…by the 1920s, we were hearing the origins of what eventually became all the flavours of country and western music…the blues records of the 20s and 30s was the forerunner of rhythm and blues… And then when rock’n’roll came along in the 50s, things started simply enough—it was a vaguely defined sound that you knew when you heard it…but the more time went by, the more complicated rock became…genres, sub-genres, sub-sub-genres, sub-sub-sub genres…derivations, offshoots, spin-offs, outgrowths, branches, by-products… And now that we’re all about streaming algorithms—things that require many, many different data points if they’re going to work properly, the number of genres has exploded…people are confused… That’s why we’re going to do this: strip back all the terms used to describe rock in order to understand the natural order of things when it comes to organizing things…this is the ongoing history guide to genres… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices