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...

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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...

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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”.

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This is part 2 of our look at true stories of plagiarism and unfortunate sonic coincidences in the world of Alt-Rock

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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

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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...

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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...

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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.

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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.

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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.

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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...

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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...

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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

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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”...

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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...

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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.

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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...

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In the old days before the internet, musicians had an aura of mystique about them...we only knew what they wanted us to know or what music writers could ferret out...it was an era of secrets and information that was kept quiet...

Now, though, things are different...because of social media and our always-on culture, information is everywhere...artists have never given up as much personal information as they do today...too much information, sometimes...

 We don’t want our heroes to be life size...the reason we admire them in the first place is because they seem to operate on a plane higher than us...they’ve got a special talent that affects us not just emotionally but occasionally, spiritually...

 What, then, do we make of things when we hear our favourite artist is human and fallible like the rest of us and suffer from health problems?...I’ve seen two reactions...

 One is a disbelief that they’re mortal...don’t they have some kind of superpowers that keep them free from sickness and disease?...we might have a hard time accepting that...

 The second reaction is that such challenges humanize them... You know: “hey, they’re like the rest of us...I can relate”...perhaps this knowledge intensifies our relationship with that person...

 And if the artist is open and honest about their condition, it can be inspiring...maybe even by talking about what they’re facing, they can help other people with the same challenges keep moving forward...this, I think, is the real value in the personal health information they share...

 Here is part two of a program featuring musicians who have had to deal with disease...

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The human body is a wonderful thing, a marvel of evolution, biology, chemistry, and more than a few bits—like consciousness—we don’t understand...and for the most part, this meat bag of water and chemicals works pretty well...

But it’s not perfect...we will continue to age as long as we can’t figure out how to improve the reproduction of telomeres, those little strands of special proteins at the end of our chromosomes...after many, many reproductions, they become ratty and degrade, which has a bad effect on our DNA and leads to the symptoms of aging...

We’re susceptible to infections by bacteria and invasions by viruses...and sometimes there are things within our own bodies that turn on us, resulting in cancer and other diseases...

However, this is all part of life...it’s still we gotta deal with...and because musicians made of the same stuff as us, we often hear of the health issues that befall them...in this sense, they are just like you and me...

What we’re going to do is look at 25 musicians who have health issues, how these challenges have affected their music, and how they’re managing to keep on keeping on, despite the difficulties...

There are some stories of bravery and inspiration here—and maybe, just maybe, these stories will help someone...this is part one of musicians battling disease...

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There’s no way to sugarcoat it: the music industry has a reputation of being unkind to women...it has been a struggle from the beginning...and even after decades of work, things have evolved to the point where less than a quarter of the acts on some music charts are women...

The actual figure for the billboard hot 100 is around 22%...and it’s been stuck at that level for over a decade...

I found a few more stats...if we look at that same decade-long period, women made up only 13% of songwriters...and if we look at female producers and engineers, the number is less than 3%...in other words, gender parity is a long way off...

So yeah, it’s tough out there and it needs to get better...fortunately, there have always been women driven to make it regardless of the obstacles and difficulties in their way...they want to remake the world of music to make it more inclusive and, in some cases, have forced it to bend to their will...this has been true since the dawn of recorded music until today...

In fact, what today’s female artists lack in sheer numbers, they make up for in power and influence...here...let’s tally up some of the women who are changing the game in the 21st century...

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Once upon a time not that long ago, all music was expected to sound clean and clear. Pure, accurate, right in tune. And lo, it was…fine. 

But with the introduction of the electric guitar and the amplifiers that went with them, some intrepid players started experimenting with ways to toughen up that sound. They wanted more power, more growl, more rawness. And over a period of about 20 years, the clean, pure sound of the original electric guitars gave way to something dirty, distorted, filled with harmonics, and various amounts of feedback and noise. 

What was once considered undesirable, irritating, excruciating noise is now looked upon as beauty. 

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There’s the La Tomatina festival that happens on the last Wednesday in August in Spain...this is the largest public tomato fight in the world...first of all, why would you do this on a Wednesday?...and second, this seems like an awful waste of food...

No one is really sure where this tradition began, either...we think it started in 1945 when there was a brawl in the main square and one of the few weapons available were the tomatoes on carts of the vegetable stands...

They do something weird in Denmark, too...if you’re 25 years old and it’s Valentine’s Day and you’re single, your family and friends are supposed to throw cinnamon at you...no one really knows why or when this started...but it is a thing...

And how about this...there’s a temple called Sir Saneswar in India...there is a tradition whereby parents who were married at this temple throw their newborn babies from the top of the building...it’s a 50-foot drop...the baby is caught by people holding a big cloth below...I’m sure there are reasons for this, but they all escape me...

Let’s segue to this...rock music has been around long enough—three-quarters of a century—that some we’ve developed some weird habits and behaviors, things that we do just because...

We engage in this behavior or do these things because everyone else is doing it...and if you were to ask around a reason why, no one would have a good explanation...you just accept this thing—whatever it is—as part of the culture...

But what if you really, really want to know?...what if you just can’t take someone’s word that this is what’s supposed to be done?...that’s where this program comes in...This is another edition of something I call “the rock explainer”...

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Humanity has always been set by disasters, whether they’ve been acts of god or something we somehow brought on ourselves...war, disease, earthquakes, famine, floods, volcanic eruptions, fire, plane crashes, industrial accidents, sinking ships, extreme weather...

The worst disaster of all time?...probably the influenza epidemic of 1918 to 1920...it’s possible that up to 100 million died during that three-year period...

Then again, world war ii was worse....by some estimates, the death toll was 120 million...and the black death of the 14th century was bad...it may have claimed up to 200 million lives or about 20% of the population of the planet...

Then there the kinds of things that happen when people are supposed to be having fun...on February 14, 2004, the roof of an indoor waterpark in Moscow collapsed, killing 28 people...

On December 8, 1863, up to 3,000 people were killed in a fire at a church celebration in Santiago, Chile...

Or how about this: sometime around the year 283, a wall at Circus Maximus, the chariot-racing stadium in Rome collapsed...it’s said that 13,000 spectators died...and that happened about 150 years after a previous collapse where there were around 1500 deaths...

The universe is gonna do what the universe is gonna do...you can be as careful as humanly possible yet still get caught up in something awful...

This applies to the world of rock, too...it has seen its own situations where there has been loss of life...they need to remembered and memorialized to we can minimize the chances of these things ever happen again...

This is a list of rock’s greatest disasters...

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This is a program about the hidden audio that lurks in your music collection. You don’t know about it…you didn’t ask for it…you maybe didn’t even want it…but it’s there…and it needs to be exposed…

And it’s more than just hidden songs, too…there’s all kinds of weirdness tucked away—if you know where to look…and when I say “weird”, I mean “super weird”

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Once upon a time, musical instruments were divided into two groups: those appropriate for women to play and everything else... 

That first group was very small...playing the piano was considered feminine...the violin?...yes, providing it was done gently and with ladylike comportment...and then—well, that’s about it...

Drums?...forget it...too physical and sweaty...brass instruments were out...in fact, so were all wind instruments, not even the flute...however, the acoustic guitar was okay...it wasn’t very loud and produced tones delicate enough to be appropriate for a young lady to play... 

This, of course, was silly...women had been doing amazing things with guitars stretching back to the invention of what became the modern acoustic guitar back in the early 1800s..and we can go back through the stringed instruments in history: the lute, the kithara, the chartar, the tanbur, the oud, the mandolin, the cittern, and so on...women played all of them—although we know almost nothing about them...

That’s the way it was for decades...and let’s not even talk about the electric guitar...even as late as the 1980s, there was this sexist attitude that girls just couldn’t play like the boys...they did not know how to rock out with a Les Paul or a strat or whatever...

In 2003, Rolling Stone published a list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time...you know how many women were on that list?...two...two!

Today we know that’s crazy...there are plenty of excellent guitars with double-x chromosomes...and thanks to them, people are exploring the history of the guitar heroine, women advanced the cause of the six-string, public preconceptions be damned...

This is a look back at the women who made the guitar sing...

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There was a time in this country when Canadians didn’t really care about Canadian music...no, wait...let’s start over...

There was a time in this country when Canadians didn’t like Canadian music and did whatever they could to ignore it and pretend it didn’t exist...yeah, that’s more accurate...

There was one exception to this rule: if a Canadian artist received some kind of validation from outside the country—preferably the united states—then suddenly, they were worth paying attention to at home...

It was a mix of insecurity and what I believe are Canada’s two unofficial mottos...the first is “why can’t you be happy with what you have?”...the other is “who do you think you are?...you think you’re better than everyone else?”...

That’s harsh, but it’s true...and for years, ambitious, talented Canadian musicians flowed south to seek their fortune in America...Paul Anka...Neil Young...Joni Mitchell...

And yes, there were those who remained in Canada—Gordon Lightfoot is one...The Guess Who is another—but they really weren’t fully accepted at home until they had a hit in America...suddenly, the attitude swung 180 degrees?... “them?...oh, yeah they’re one of us!”...

This is the way it was for several decades—a frustrating situation for countless musicians...

But then things started to warm up a bit in the 1980s...and by the time the 90s arrived, attitudes towards homegrown talent had swung in the other direction...not only were Canadian music fans loving Canadian bands, Canadian music being heard all over the world...wait—let’s try that again, too...Canadian music was in demand all over the world...

Some have called this the great Can-Rock revolution of the 1990s...and it changed everything...here’s how it all started...

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If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years dealing with musicians, there are artists and then there are artistes...here’s how I tell them apart...Artists make art, but they also have other interests, pursuits and abilities...Bono is an example of an artist...he’s the front man of U2 but is also involved in politics, activism, tech, and a load of other things...and everything he does is done with an artistic flair and the soul of a performer...

Artistes also make art...but it’s all they do...in fact, it’s all they can do...they live to create art and are often not very good at anything else...in fact—to put a fine point on it—they may be hopeless at life in general...

That’s not a judgment or a criticism...it’s just how their brains are wired...they are on this earth with an almost supernatural ability to do nothing but create beauty through art...

But this power comes with pitfalls......they might have trouble with day to day tasks like handling money, shopping for groceries, keeping a schedule, or being able to deal with everyday social situations...

They may suffer from depression, anxiety, bi-polar disorder...they may be on the autism spectrum...and they may be prone to addictions: alcohol, drugs, sex...and if they managed to become well-known for their art, the insane pressure, crazy schedules, hedonistic lifestyle, and living in a bubble of fame can exacerbate things until—well, until things get very, very bad...

I’ve met a few such artistes in my life—and in my experience, there is no better example than John Frusciante, who, of course, is best known for his work in the Red Hot Chili Peppers...

His life, both in and out of the band—and he’s joined three times and quit twice—has been very long and strange...this is part two of that journey....

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And if I’m sitting with my taxonomy flowchart, this is where I write the name “John Frusciante,” the occasional guitarist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers...

And I use the word “occasional” deliberately because he’s been in and out of the band a number of times over the last 30 years...as I write this, he’s “in”—but who knows for how long...

And I’m classifying him as periplaneta americana because despite everything he’s been through, he’s still alive...I mean, he’s live a hard life...drugs, various health problems both of the physical and mental variety—even dabbling in the occult...yet through it all, he’s been able to help the Chili Peppers create the best music of their career...

This is the long, strange trip of John Frusciante...

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The most powerful and strangest lump of organic material in the known universe is sitting inside your skull...the human brain weighs about three pounds—call it about 1400 grams if you’re feeling metric—and contains about 10 billion neurons...a piece the size of a grain of sand contains 100,000 neurons and over a billion synapses...

At the same time, it uses only about 10 watts to function...that’s ten times better than your laptop...and one brain (we think) is equivalent to at least 100,000 laptops when it comes to computing power...

 Even then, it can do things no computer can do, no matter how big...that thing in your head could have a storage capacity of perhaps up to 2.5 petabytes, although no one knows for sure yet...in fact, the capacity of the brain might be unlimited...not bad for something that’s 60% fat...

There is no obvious biological reason for it, but our brains seem to be hardwired for music...there are special areas of the brain devoted just to deal with music...

Maybe this is a result of our ancient ancestors trying to imitate birdsong...it could be related to language...maybe it has something to do with storytelling...details are sometimes easier to remember if they’re put to music...or maybe music developed along with religious rituals and chants...

Because the way music is wired into the brain, it’s a very useful tool when it comes to figuring out how that 10-watt lump of fat in our skulls work...and sometimes we learn things that are completely unexpected and almost always totally wonderful...

Let me show you...here are some mind-blowing facts about music, the brain, and the body...

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Have you ever heard of a woman named Rosalind Franklin?...probably not, but you can draw a line from today’s covid vaccines all the way back to her in the 1950s...she conducted some serious research into the makeup of rna molecules...

Rosalind also did some groundbreaking research into the structure of DNA molecules...without her, Jim Watson and Francis Crick may not have discovered how DNA was constructed...they’d go on to win the Nobel prize in 1962...was Rosalind ever given the credit she deserved?...no...

What about grace hopper?...ring any bells?...back in the 1940s, lieutenant Grace Hopper invented some computer programming techniques used by the army during World War II…this was the basis of Cobol, the compute language still used by business, finance, and administrative software today...

Let’s try Susan Kare...no?...she’s the one who came up with the trash can icon and the command key on mac computers...she was integral to making the mac operating system as user-friendly as possible...

Okay, here’s a name you may know: Hedy Lamar...famous actress from old Hollywood in the 30s and 40s and one-time date of Howard Hughes, right?...but she also worked with a guy named George Antheil to come up with a radio “frequency hopping” technology that made today’s Wi-Fi, cellular phones, Bluetooth, and gps communications possible...in fact, some call Hedy Lamar “the mother of Wi-Fi”...but does she get the appropriate credit for that?...nope...

Those are just a few unsung heroines of technology...their work changed the world...and there are so many more in other fields, too...back in the late 1800s, Nellie Bly became the first investigative female journalist...effa Manley was the first woman to own a sports team...that was back in the 1930s...Beulah Henry was nicknamed “Lady Edison” because she was such a prolific inventor...

And while we all know about Joan of Arc, what about Matilda of Tuscany?...she had a 40-year military career who successfully led troops against the Holy Roman Emperor again and again almost a thousand years ago...these are just a few unsung heroines from history...

There are similar stories from the world of music: women who changed so much but have been given so little credit...let’s see if we can’t do a little bit to fix that...

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If the doomsayers are correct, something monumental–something transformative–is going to happen on December 21, 2012...this is the day the b’ak’tun cycle ends...

The Mayan long count calendar runs out...after 5,125 years, it comes to an end date...what will happen next is up for debate...

It could be the end of the world...Earth may collide with Nibiru, its long-hidden nemesis planet...some say a black hole may swallow us up...a catastrophic shift in the polar magnetic fields...

Others believe we will achieve some kind of spiritual enlightenment, which will usher humankind into a new era of peace...

Or maybe nothing will happen...okay, so maybe we’ll get another bad John Cusack movie on the subject...that’s not good and the prospect is admittedly frightening–but it’s just a movie...

History has shown that humans are really, really bad at predicting the apocalypse with any degree of certainty...

I, however, have another theory...I believe that there may be a fundamental shift on planet earth around the time of December 21, 2012...and it has to do with rock music...

No, no–stay with me on this...I’m not crazy...or at least, I might not be...I hope not...

This is the fifteenth and final chapter of a series I call “the complete history of alt-rock”...

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To fans of any kind of rock, may 18, 1999, seemed like the end of the world...the Backstreet Boys released their new cd called Millennium...on that first day, it sold more than 500,000 copies...by the end of the week, it had sold 1,134,000, a new all-time sales record...

And those are just the u.s. Numbers...add in the rest of the world and the total was much higher...

And it was only going to get twice as bad...just 308 days later, ‘N sync–another blood boy band–set an even scarier record...by the end of its first week in the stores, their No Strings Attached sold 2.4 million copies...

And just 56 days after that, Britney Spears sold half a million copies of Oops!...I Did It Again on day one and 1,319,193 in its first seven days....

When the dust cleared at the end of 2000, it was clear that vacuous pop music had taken over the universe...these CDs weren’t just selling by the tens of millions....they were selling by the hundreds of millions...

In second place was rap and hip-hop, thanks to people like Eminem, Nelly and Dr. Dre...the biggest selling rock records of the year were from Sreed, Santana and a Beatles r compilation that featured songs that were more than 35 years old...

The prognosis wasn’t good...if rock–all rock–wasn’t dead, it was at least very, very ill...and unless somebody did something, it looked like it was all over...

This is chapter 14 of the complete history of alt-rock...

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If you were around in the early 90s, you probably remember it as a time of awesome new music...it seemed that every single day, there was a cool new band, a great new sound, a scene you didn’t know about...

Grunge was king with nirvana and Soundgarden and pearl jam...green day and offspring had brought punk back...Manchester led into Britpop with Oasis and the Stone Roses

Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys, Tool, Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins, all these bands and more grabbed everyone’s attention...hair metal was dead!....classic rock?  Over!....Lollapalooza was the coolest event of the year...

The alternative nation had triumphed!....no more bad, boring, mainstream pop and rock!...

Well, hang on...rock music has always run in a series of cycles that can be traced back to the 1950s...we’ll get into that later, but all I need to say is “what goes up must come down”...and the alt-rock party came down...hard...and it hurt...

This is chapter 13 of the complete history of alt-rock...

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It is almost impossible for anyone from a lightweight boy band to transition to serious, respected artist…it can be done—we can look at Justin Timberlake and, um…well, we can look at Justin Timberlake….

And as tough as that is, it’s even more difficult to move from being pigeonholed as a novelty act to one that carries gravitas and serious artistic merit…yet that’s what the beastie boys managed to do…

No one took them seriously for the first eight years of their career…they were spoiled, snotty frat boys writing goofy songs and making funny videos… “Licensed to Ill” was a parody of hip hop…a good one, but a still a parody…let’s not forget that “Rolling Stone” described the album as “three idiots make a masterpiece”…

But then something changed…The Beastie Boys grew up…they grew as artists…they grew as businessmen…they grew as humans…

They took risks…they experimented…they branched out…they sought to make a difference—not just in music but in the world…and by the time it all came to an end with the death of Adam Yauch in the spring of 2012, The Beastie Boys had cemented a reputation as one the most important bands of not one but at least two generations…

This is remembering The Beastie Boys, part 2.

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The British music scene has always operated at warp speed...songs and bands and sounds have always come and gone very quickly, even before the age of the internet...

This is what happens when you have a lot of people crammed onto an island linked together by a huge and obsequious national broadcasting network and goaded by a hyper-competitive music press...

But every once in a while–maybe once a decade–something sticks...a movement takes root, grows organically and then suddenly explodes to the point where everyone is talking about it...it even goes international with its songs and sounds and fashion and politics..

In the 60s, it was the British invasion, led by the Beatles and the Stones...in the 70s, it was the British spin on punk rock with the Pistols and the Clash...the 80s began with all those telegenic British bands on MTV which set off the music video revolution...and in the 90s–well, that’s where it gets a bit complicated...

Not complicated in a bad way...i mean in an interesting way...it was an explosion of pride in British-ness that we hadn’t really seen since February 7, 1964, when Pan Am flight 101 from London landed at JFK airport in New York carrying a band called the Beatles...

This is chapter 12 of the complete history of alt-rock–and it’s all about the thing they called “Britpop”...

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For an entire generation of music fans—two generations, really—The Beastie Boys were always there…and now that they’re no longer with us, there are a lot of people who feel like there’s a void in music…

But we’ll always remember their contributions…and there were a lot…this is part one of “Remembering The Beastie Boys”…

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One of the great indirect heroes of modern rock’n’roll was born on March 21, 1865...his name was brigadier general George Owen Squier....he was an Army officer with a PhD in electrical science and a thing for music....he invented a technology to designed to compete with a new thing called “radio”....

Wireless radio, he figured, was useless...it was prone to static and fade-outs and just didn’t sound very good...his idea was to run wires into homes and businesses, just like we have with cable TV today or as they were beginning to do with telephones back then...he called the concept “wired radio”....

Just before he died in 1934, he came up with a new name for his invention.....playing with the words “music” and “Kodak,” he came up with “Muzak”...

The whole thing with “wired radio” didn’t take off with consumers, but businesses were into it...closed circuit music, specifically tailored to their environment, 24 hours a day without interruption or static?...that’s brilliant....and shopping malls and elevators haven’t been the same since....Muzak became the world’s biggest supplier of elevator music...

So where am I going with this...great question...

By the 70s, Muzak corporation was earning more than $400 million a year by distributing this type of music all over the world from its headquarters in Seattle.....it was used for crowd control, a management tool and something to fill the empty silence of a department store or dentist’s office...

And for a time, the Muzak executives thought this was a good unofficial slogan: “boring work is made less boring by boring music”....you bored yet?...

Fifty-two years after the George Squire died, a new type of music started coming from the back room of Muzak headquarters in Seattle......but it wasn’t exactly elevator music....

The music came from the shipping room where a Muzak employee named Bruce Pavitt spent his coffee breaks running a new independent record label devoted to the local music scene.....in fact, Muzak’s payroll supported at least half a dozen local musicians......and while no one could have possibly known what where this was going to lead, the decidedly non-muzak music these people were into would eventually change the world of rock’n’roll forever.....

This is the complete history of alt-rock, chapter 11...

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We're digging back into the original Ongoing History vault and have found this requested show on lost albums.

Sometimes an artist will work on, and almost finish an album. But for whatever reason...creative concerns, fear it is too "out there", misplaced master tapes...the album never sees the light of day.

Why is that? How many times has it happened in alt-rock? And to who?

Well...we're glad you asked.

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Once upon a time, all music was made mechanically...something had to be hit with a hand or a stick...or strummed or plucked...or air had to be forced over a reed or through a valve...

Then along came electricity...it took a while, but electricity was tamed so that it could not only power new forms of musical instruments, but the energy itself could be made musical...

By the beginning of the 1980s, the people of planet earth were most pleased at what they had accomplished...but in the background, some people knew that there was still more work to be done....

They began asking “what if anything could be made into music?”...others still mused “what if we could take existing music, chop it up and reassemble it into something brand new?”...

Some used the old ways, chopping up these sounds mechanically using proven machinery like turntables and tape machines...but others learned to use new inventions called “computers” and “samplers”...

And so it came to pass that all through the 80s, people began to experiment with electricity and the new machines...and by the time the decade ended, there was plenty of new and interesting music to go around...music was being made by machines, orchestrated by computers and programmed by punks...and things would never be the same again. 

This is the complete history of alt-rock, chapter 10...

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Women helped changed the face of ROCK as hair metal from the 80’s gave way to brand new sounds and VERY different attitudes in the 90's. On this episode of "Driven by Her" presented by our friends at Porsche Canada we're showcasing amazing, driven women like Alanis Morrissette, Ani DiFranco, and Bikini Kill. They carved their own path and created the seismic shift in music that came with Generation X because the 90's couldn't have rocked at the level they did without their influence along with the other women who helped define a generation.

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Okay, stay with us as this could get a bit confusing.

Since the Ongoing History takes the summer months off to write and research new shows, we dig into the vault to post older episodes that first aired on radio from 1993 onward.

Some still sound relevant, and others...not so much.

This episode is "Radio episode 601" (aired in 2009-ish) but "Podcast Episode 345.

So if some of the content seems a bit "dated" this could be the reason.

But we feel the material is still relevant.

Enjoy and please continue to send in your questions to Alan so we can keep doing episodes like this one.

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It had taken a few years, but by the middle 1980s, the underground music scene in north America had reached some kind of a tipping point...enough people had discovered punk, new wave and all the sub-genres associated with both so that things started to become really interesting...

Campus radio stations began to have more clout...the more support they gave to these non-mainstream bands, the more they were appreciated and the more power they wielded...

And as these stations began to communicate with each other through publications and charts and conventions, their influence and reach grew even more...turns out that a surprising number of people were really tired of whatever the mainstream rock industry was pumping out...each day, the “alternative” scene–that’s what we were calling it by the mid-80s–attracted more fans who were only too happy to evangelize the epiphanies that led to their conversion...

Yes, college radio helped...so did all the bands willing to tour alt-friendly clubs...and so did independent record stores which set themselves apart from the big chains by stocking more of the weird stuff....

But we can’t forget the roll of MTV and any channel or show that played videos from all those weird, new telegenic bands from the UK...

If you spent any time at all watching music videos in the middle 80s, it was obvious that as interesting as the growing alt-rock scene was in north America, there was something just as interesting happening on that cold, rainy rock in the north Atlantic...and it was all happening so fast...

This is the complete history of alt-rock, chapter nine...

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Sometimes people get so pissed off or so inspired by something that they just have to sing about it…this is the protest song and it’s been with us for centuries…

It’s music that encourages political and social change… and if done right—and if circumstances are correct—the song can mobilize people to take action, lift spirits and annoy (or even scare) authorities of the establishment…

Protest music comes in all forms: classical, folk, reggae, pop, hip hop and, of course, rock…it can rail against war, demand social justice, call out politicians and petition for greater rights for women, minorities, labour and the marginalized…

The singers and musicians behind this music may be regarded as thought leaders, social influencers and even prophets—and least for a time…

What i’d like to go is go through the history of protest in song from the world of alt-rock, those times when a loud guitar becomes tool for making things better—for everyone…

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When punk rock first appeared in the middle 1970s, the major record companies in north America really didn’t care...they were happily making millions and millions of dollars from big rock bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles.....

And there was millions more coming in from disco...which was sweeping the world....it was like a plague–but a profitable one...so why would they bother with this weird stuff bubbling up from tiny, scary clubs on both sides of the Atlantic?...they were too busy going to big stadium shows and getting down at Studio 54...

But this new music wouldn’t go away...so when Led Zeppelin broke up and the Stones and The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac disappeared up their own buts and the disco bubble finally burst the record execs tried to tame it......marketing the gentler and less intense bands under the umbrella of something they called “New Wave”.

Oh, they tried with punk, but they got it really, really wrong...you gotta wonder what was going through that executive’s head when The Ramones were picked to open shows for toto....

No, seriously...The Ramones were the opening act for Toto on one tour...I swear I didn’t make that up...it happened in Lake Charles, Louisiana...January 26, 1979...they were also paired up with Foreigner and Blue Oyster Cult...

But we have to be fair....the general public just didn’t get punk....when The Sex pistols appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in the fall of 1977, it was one of their poorest-selling issues, ever....mind you, the headline read “rock is sick and living in London”...the story began with a quote from Isaiah 3:24: “instead of perfume, there will be rottenness”....

After that, most Rolling Stone writers were instructed to stop writing about this music...it was bad for business...really bad...

But there were people who got it....and frankly, fans of non-mainstream music were quite happy to be left alone...they were into this new music precisely because they hated the mainstream...and over the next dozen years, the musical underground was allowed left to gestate undisturbed......it slowly mutated and evolved into something very unique---very powerful...this is the complete history of alt-rock, chapter 8...

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Pearl Jam is one of the most-documented bands of the last 30 years…even before the internet came along, fans were obsessive about cataloguing everything the band did…tour schedules, setlists, bootleg recordings, news stories…

Pearl Jam encouraged this, too…a big part of their long-lasting appeal has been this relationship—this covenant—they’ve had with their fans about collecting and archiving stuff…

The band understands this because they’re collectors, too…all you have to do is look at the 20th anniversary box set for the “Ten” album that came out in 2009…it came with things like a replica of Eddie’s notebook at a cassette designed to be just like the one Eddie used to audition for the band back in 1990…

The band’s stories have been told many times, but you get the sense that the history of Pearl Jam is so deep that there still must be more to learn about theme…imagine what it might be like for a fan to dig through all kinds of Pearl Jam emphera to see what unusual things can be found there…

That’s been done…and i’m here to report back…

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Before we go any further with our history of alt-rock, a lesson in cosmology is in order...sometime around 16 billion years ago, there was this infinitely dense and infinitely tiny thing called a “singularity”...don’t ask where it came from or who made it...that’s just asking for trouble...

The best anyone can tell is that one day–well, there weren’t “days” back then because time didn’t exist (again, let’s not go there)–this thing just exploded...astronomers call this “the big bang”...

This explosion moved outward in all directions, stretching space (well, creating space–but that makes the brain hurt)....then started to cool, got lumpy and clumpy and eventually coalesced into stars, planets, people and goats...

Everything we see and perceive is the result of that big bang...sorry, creationists...the world isn’t flat, either...and don’t send me emails...

Now it’s time for a wild but very apt analogy...if we look at the punk rock of the middle 1970s, we can think of it as a musical big bang...the ideas and attitudes it generated spread out in all directions and eventually began to coalesce into new ideas and attitudes...they were all made up of the same basic elements, but they combined to form totally new life forms...and there were probably goats involved somewhere, too...

This is the story of some of those new life forms...it’s chapter seven of the complete history of alt-rock...

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Nirvana is one of those bands where it seems we know everything…when they broke through with the “Nevermind” album in 1991 and 1992, there was a rush to learn everything we could about them…and then we Kurt died—which happened roughly at the same time the internet began to be a thing with the general public—that interest exploded…

Now, in the decades since nirvana ceased to exist, study of the band, its history, its individual members and its influence can best be described as scholarship…that’s how deep we are into the band…so what’s there left to learn, really…

While, you might be surprised…here are ten unusual and little known things about one of the best documented bands in the history of rock…

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In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a group of young French film makers decided to mess things up...they insisted on more artistic control and less meddling by the studios......this free-form attitude, they said, was necessary to advance the art of film.....                         

It worked...lots of praise and success.....and in the process, their movement acquired a name: “nouvelle vague”.....film historians now say that this style and attitude was one of the most important developments in the history of motion pictures.....

Punk rock was dying...it had burned itself out after just a couple of years...but its legacy was still valid: that a free-form attitude towards music was the only way to advance the art of rock’n’roll..... It was “nouvelle vague” all over again.....only this time, they used the English translation....they called it “new wave”...This is chapter six of the complete history of alt-rock...

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In this episode of "Driven By Her," presented by our friends at Porsche Canada, Alan Cross and Ongoing History of New Music explore a subject that has fascinated Alan since he saw Karen Carpenter play a drum solo in the band's first television special in 1976. Turns out Karen considered herself a drummer who could sing and she had to fight to prove her legitimacy and talent to the rest of the world, especially in the male-dominated music industry. But if there was one woman who could play this well, there had to be others? were there more?

During the mid-70s the answer was "not really" but there were a few and in the decades that followed, more and more appeared, and today, female drummers are everywhere comprising a worldwide sisterhood some have called "chicks with sticks".

They were drummers, driven by that one thing that they needed more than anything else in the world. The one thing they were truly passionate about... in all cases it was the one thing that made them feel truly free. It's what drove them to singularly focus on crafting their unique talent and chase their dreams down whatever road it led them. 

But the road wasn't easy... there were a lot of roadblocks, plenty of skepticism, and loads and loads of sexism... Barriers that needed to be broken, attitudes that needed to change abilities that needed to be proven time and time again... This is the story of women with rhythm who changed the way we look at music. 

In partnership with Porsche Canada.

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I started thinking about “firsts” the other day, so I started looking things up…the first McDonald’s was in san Bernardino, California…the first guy to literally walk around the world on foot was Dave Kunist…it took him four years to walk 14,452 miles …the first person to be killed in an automobile accident was Bridget Driscoll of Surrey, England…in 1896, she was hit by a car traveling at 4 miles per hour…the first porn film?...”Bedtime For The Bride,” 1895…

We can get weirder…the first thing ever sold on ebay was a broken laser pointer for $14…the first video on YouTube is still up there…it’s called “Me At The Zoo”…the first person with a Facebook account outside the company who wasn’t a friend of Mark Zuckerberg was a guy from India named Sachine Kumar…

The more I looked at famous firsts, the more I started wondering about firsts in music….

Who was the first person to perform on a guitar run through an amplifier?...the first song downloaded from iTunes?...who was the first to drop an intentional f-bomb on record?...what was the first song to fade out instead of having a definite ending?...

You see where I’m going with this, right?...I started compiling a list of “firsts” in music—and then I set out to find some answers…which I did…prepare yourself…this could be the first time you hear about this stuff…

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Every once in a while, humankind has one of those pivotal years where everything changes...

325 AD and the council of Nicea...1215 and the signing of the Magna Carta...the discoveries of 1492..The revolutions of 1789...1919 and the Treaty of Versailles...the great stock market crash of 1929...the dark days of World War II in 1942...the unrest of 1968...the fall of the iron curtain in 1989...

In there somewhere is 1977...okay, so to say it was as important to world history as some of these other years might be stretching it...but still, a lot happened...

On January 3, a new company called “Apple Computer” was incorporated and the Apple ii went on sale that June...in October, Atari released the ground-breaking 2600 video game console...and in November, boffins running a computer network called Arpanet successfully test something called “tcp/ip” which lay the foundation for the internet...

As for music, most of the planet took notice when Elvis Presley died that summer...a big story, yes–but it’s not the music story that I’m thinking of...for that, we have to go to England where a perfectly good royal celebration was sullied by four clots called The Sex Pistols...and for that, we should be very grateful...

This is the complete history of alt-rock, chapter 5...

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Nerd…noun…a foolish or contemptible person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious…definition 2: a single-minded expert in a particular technical field...example: a computer nerd…

It’s an old word, too…the, er, nerds at google have a thing called “the ngram viewer” which scans the text of books going back to 1500…in other words, pretty much right back to the inventing of the printing press…

According to these nerds, “nerd” (the word) shows up for the first time in an book called “a true discourse of the assault committed upon the most noble Prince, Prince William of Orange, County of Nassau, Marquesse De La Ver & C,” by John Jarequi Spaniarde: with the true copies of the writings, examinations, and letters for sundry offenders in that vile and diuelifh (i have no idea what that word is) attempt”…

I can’t tell you what “nerd” referred to in that book because it’s written in old Spanish and i couldn’t be bothered to find a translation…I’d need a real etymological nerd for that…

The word fell into disuse after about 1725 returning into the popular lexicon thanks to Dr. Suess in 1950…to him, a “nerd” was some kind of creature found in a zoo…

But the following year, Newsweek magazine reported that “nerd” was being used in Detroit to describe an awkward sort of dude who wasn’t very cool…it kind of lingered in the slang world for the rest of the 50s and into the 60s before it really took off in 1974 with the TV series “Happy Days”…Fonzie was always calling Richie and Potsie “nerds” for being uncool dorks…so props to Henry Winkler…

By the end of the 70s—and coinciding with the rise of the culture around the personal computer, consumer technology and “Star Wars” and other science fiction pursuits—the use of “nerd” became even more widespread…remember the “Revenge of the Nerds” movies in the 80s?...

But now in our technological society, being called a nerd is a compliment…people aspire to be like Bill Gates and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg…look at shows like “The Big Bang Theory” and “Silicon Valley”…we’re actually celebrating nerddom…people want to be nerds ‘cause—well, it’s kinda cool…the geeks have truly inherited the earth…

This brings me to music…nerdishness is now so widespread that nerds even have their own genre of music…and as you might guess, it falls squarely in the world of alternative music…

This, then, is a short history of what we unreservedly, unashamedly and unironically call “nerd rock”…

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In the middle 1970s, Britain was a mess...like the rest of the west, the country was blindsided by the Arab oil embargo...it was a recession that just wouldn’t end...

And to make matters worse, everyone seemed to be going on strike; from coal miners to gravediggers...unemployment was high, especially amongst young people...

The once mighty British Empire was in big trouble...there was a sense that it was all over...done...there was no future...

Complicating this was the class system...those at the top (including the Monarchy) kept on doing whatever they wanted to do while everyone else–well, let them eat cake, essentially...(I know I’m getting my countries and monarchies mixed up, but you get the point)...

Something had to blow, especially with the young...and when it did, it blew up real good...

This is the complete history of alt-rock, chapter 4...

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A few years back, the Ongoing History took a "break".

It's a long and somewhat complicated story, but we eventually picked up where we left off. 

This episode is the start of OGH v2.0 and a catch up from Alan's "Walk about" in the 3 years between the original radio episodes 691 and 692 of which this Podcast is based on. 

So please don't be confused if the radio episodes and podcast episode numbers don't add up. We're just digging into our vault to see what we can find and share. 

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The early 70s were like a bad hangover from the 60s...the hippie generation had its victories–civil rights, women’s rights, the pill, the end of the draft and the Vietnam war–but it there was also a sense that the whole “peace and love” approach to social change had played itself out...

Meanwhile, the 60s generation had grown up, graduated, moved on, settled down and basically got on with the business of being adults and dealing with the first oil crisis, inflation, recession, the cold war, unemployment, the shootings at Kent state and a corrupt American president who was forced to resign...

Rock music–which had been a big part of these sweeping social changes–was tired...the good vibes of Woodstock were destroyed by the violence of Altamont...the Beatles had broken up...Jim, Jimi and Janis were dead...and the last thing that people seemed to want was music with any kind of message...

But underneath this sombre, conservative mood, something radical was happening...sometimes things have to get really, really bad before someone says “right!  That’s enough!  I’m going to do something about it!”....and that’s exactly what happened....

This is the complete history of alt-rock, chapter 3...

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At some point, all of us will shuffle off this mortal choir and join the choir invisible…doesn’t matter who you are, how much money you may have or how famous you might be…in the end, we’re all mortal…

This really hits home when musicians we love disappear forever…it’s not like we personally know these people, but because their music helps us know ourselves, a little piece of us dies with them…

The circumstances of their passing’s vary…misadventure, accidents, overdoses, suicide…some can be explained away while other deaths will forever remain a mystery…

With that in mind, let’s take a look back on the last hours of some of those musician’s who have left us…

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As rock’n’roll approached its sweet 16 birthday in the early 1970s, it was obvious that it had grown up quite a bit...with each passing year, rock was becoming more sophisticated in both sound and execution...the first wave of rockers from the 50s and 60s had grown up.....they were now better musicians and could do more than play simple three-chord songs....

Rock was also becoming more complicated because it had the tools...by the early 70s, a four-track recording studio was hideously antiquated...people wanted to use studios with 16- and 24-track consoles and big tape recorders and racks of machines that could add cool effects to music...

Guitar amplifiers were bigger and more powerful, allowing for fatter chords and longer sustains and cooler feedback...and guitarists now had a huge array of foot pedals and other gear to help them create individual signature sounds...

And let’s not forget about everyone at home...home stereo systems began to improve... “hi-fi” wasn’t just for electronics geeks anymore...everyone was looking to get big amps with huge speakers...

You could even listen in the car...yeah, 8-tracks were clunky, but for the first time, you didn’t have to depend on the radio for music when you were on the road...

But then again, your city might have been lucky enough to have a progressive FM rock station.....imagine: music on the radio that was in stereo...

But for some, things were getting a little too sophisticated, the musicianship a little too accomplished, the recording a little too slick......there were those who felt that the road to technical perfection was not a good one.... something had been lost...it was time to get primal again...this is the complete history of alt-rock, chapter 2...

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Everything is virtual these days…outside of the stuff you’ve got in your pocket, money is nothing but a bunch of zeroes and ones…we shop online at virtual stores…we read virtual books on our tablets…

Even our relationships have gone that way because of Facebook and twitter and Instagram…

A lot of our music is virtual, too…it’s been that way since we started ripping our cds and trading mp3s online...then came stores like iTunes with its digital tracks and albums and metadata…

So it stands to reason, that we should have virtual artists, performers that don’t exist in real life…sure, there’s some human component, but the stay in the background where we rarely (if ever) see them…

Back in the 60s, we had the Archie’s, who were followed by Josie and the Pussycats…then Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem on “The Muppets” …

Dethklok, The Chipmunks, Prozzak, Crazy Frog, The Banana Splits….Mistula is from the Philippines and represented by a bunch of female dools…the bots are all cg creations…Hatsune Miku is a Japanese hologram…then there’s Jen and the Holograms…

They all have their appeal, but there is one virtual group that eclipses them all…not only have they had hit singles and multi-platinum albums, but they also tour…they’re even listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most-successful virtual band of all time…

This is the story of The Gorillaz…

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Today, we can choose from an infinite array of music...there are so many songs and so many artists from so many genres over so many years that none of us will ever come close to experiencing it all...

But that’s okay because most of us have a favourite style of music...we tend to find a sound we like and stick with it over all others...for all kinds of very personal reasons, it becomes our favourite brand of music...

For example, if you’re listening to me right now, you’re probably a big fan of rock music...more specifically, you’re listening to this show on this station because at least some of your preferences lie in the realm of new rock, modern rock, alt-rock, indie music, alternative music–whatever you want to call it...there is a specific aesthetic and sensibility when it comes to rock music that seems to, well, move you...

But what, exactly, is that aesthetic?...how did these sensibilities and styles develop?...where did they come from?...why do we consider one band “alternative” and another one to be something else entirely?...and why are we so tribal when it comes to our choices in music?...

These are complex questions...and the answers can only be found by examining 60 years of rock history....this is the complete history of all-rock, chapter 1...

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It's another trip back into the Ongoing History vault to find this episode all about things you many not have known about some of your favourite Alt-Rock musicians. 

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When a band forms, there’s little expectation that this could be a long-term endeavour...I mean, being a professional musician is hardly a sure thing...so many things could go wrong...

But sometimes, a group will gain a little bit of traction...suddenly, a year passes and things are still happening...then two...then five...then ten...and if things are just right when it comes to the music and the audience and the industry and technology and plain stupid luck, the band might wake up one day to find that they’ve been professional musicians for 25 years...

This is exactly what happened with The Trews...

A band’s silver anniversary is cause for celebration...that’s a long time to be in business...so it’s a good time to get everyone together to tell some stories...this is The Trews in their own words...

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Music is one of the greatest gifts the universe has bestowed on humanity...it provides so much joy and comfort and inspiration and enjoyment and motivation... It’s used in ritual and worship...and it allows us to communicate when words fail us...

Every culture we’ve ever known has had music...an existence without music?...inconceivable...

But like everything in this life, even the best things can be perverted and corrupted for malevolent purposes...and that includes music...

It can be something as simple as your brother or sister annoying you by playing their awful music at high volume...or music can be employed as a weapon, a tool of war, an instrument of torture, a form of intimidation, and a way of inflicting pain and distress...

And to be fair, it can also be used as gentle non-lethal retaliation against some kind of incursion or attack...no bullets may be fired, but a point will be made...

This use of music in these ways is almost as old as music itself...and this history isn’t pretty...welcome to the story of using music as a weapon...warning: this could get loud...

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One of the things that makes rock great is the energy and the power that comes with the music..and depending where you go, that energy and power varies from place to place...

If you’re looking to exorcise a little aggression and anger and frustration, you have several choices...there are various flavours of metal that can serve your purpose, ranging from the melodic (Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” for example) along with Sabbath and Ozzy to the straight-from-hell insanity of black and death metal...

Industrial music is another option...guitars, synthesizers, and driving beats from acts like Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, and Ministry...

A third option is punk rock...it comes in many flavours, so there’s almost something for everyone...

But if you really want pure adrenalin, something aggressive, something super-physical, something primal, and something that can be dangerous and violent, there’s one particular part of the punk world that you’ll find very attractive...

It’s a space where things can’t be too hard, too fast, or too angry... And for many people, it’s become a lifestyle and even a lifesaver...it isn’t for everyone, but as we’ll see, its influence has extended far, far beyond just a bunch of guys yelling over loud guitars...misunderstood?...maybe...important?...definitely...this is the history of hardcore...

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It’s never too late to follow your dreams…here are a few inspiration examples…

Anna Mary Robertson was born in New York in 1860…for years, she worked as a housekeeper before moving to farm work with her husband, Thomas Moses…they had ten children…

When Thomas died, Anna needed something to occupy her time, so she took up painting…she was 78 years old…Anna became known as “Grandma Moses” and is one of the most celebrated American painters of the 20th century…she’s also held up as an example of never being too old to follow your dreams…

Then, early in 2022, I ran across the story of Ruth Slenczynska…she was the last surviving pupil of classical legend Sergei Rachmaninov…Ruth first met him when she was declared a child prodigy many, many, many decades ago, back in the 1920s…

She recorded some classical records for Decca in the 50s and very early 60s, but that was it…the contract lapsed and wasn’t renewed—that is until early 2022 when she signed a brand new record deal with Decca for a solo album entitled “my life in music”…Ruth Slenczynska got this record deal at the age of 97…

This got me thinking…rock is supposed to be for the young…new artists are almost always in their teens or early 20s…but not always…sometimes it takes a little longer and a lot more work before certain artists were able to get their big break…some had to wait until their 30s—ancient by any measure when it comes to the contemporary music business…

And given the ageism that persists throughout contemporary music, these accomplishments are all that more impressive…

Let’s take a look at the late bloomers of rock’n’roll…

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When someone in your band decides to leave, gets fired, or heaven forbid, dies, you have a problem…this is an issue if any member leaves, but if we’re talking about your singer, that’s a hurt on an entirely different level…

Your front person is an integral part of your sound…it’s the voice of your music…and there is nothing important to your music than its voice…

It gets worse, too…your front person often provides the central image of your band…that person is the one out front…that person takes centre stage live…that person is the one the camera follows in a video…that person is the one photographers focus on…and chances are, it’s that person’s name that comes to mind first with fans…

So what do you do when that person bails?...you have two choices…fold your tent and go home and maybe come back in a different form with a different name…or you suck it up and risk replacing that singer with someone else…

That is hard on so many levels…again, I go back to the notion of “voice”…you could find a sound-alike like we’ve seen with journey, a period of time with Judas Priest, and perhaps Queen…but the fans know you’ve just plugged that whole with a reasonable facsimile at best or a out-and-out fake at worst…

Instead, it’s probably best to focus on skills and chemistry…so maybe the new person does sound like the old one…but maybe they bring something new to the table, some intangible talent that not only dressed the wound but makes the body as a whole stronger?...

That’s really, really, hard…but it can be done…and here are 18 examples of bands who have done just that…

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I get a lot of email from young musicians looking for advice…they all ask pretty much the same questions: how to do I get more people to know about my music?...how do I get them to listen to my music?...how do I get my songs on the radio?...how do I get a record deal?...listen, if I had the definitive “silver bullet” answers to any of these questions, I’d not only be rich, I’d be worshipped as a God—which, come to think of it, would be kinda cool…

It has always been hard to make it in the music business…you need to not just be good but great…and—never discount this—you have to be lucky, to be in the right place in the right time with the right sound and image and attitude…

And since the internet disrupted everything, it’s become even harder…at the moment, there’s a split when it comes to artists…the majority of them made their bones and established their reputations before the internet hit the music industry around 2000—and everyone else…

The internet—free-flowing digital files, streaming, social media, YouTube, and all that ilk—has not only made music more accessible to everyone, but it’s also increased competition amongst musicians exponentially…it has never been harder for a new act to be heard about the noise of everyone else…

Here’s an exercise: name all the rock bands who have emerged since 2000 who are capable of filling an area as a headliner today…Arcade Fire, for sure…Muse, is another…Linkin Park, although they’re no longer with us…White Stripes and Jack White…and after that, you start to run out of names…

Here’s one more: Imagine Dragons…they were formed in 2008 and have since become a major alt-rock band…and yes, they can fill an arena…how did they do that?...let’s investigate….

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Back in 2014, I was invited to the foo fighters headquarters...this is 606 studios, the band’s hangout and nerve centre in Van Nuys, California...I was there to talk about the new album and TV series, “Sonic Highways”...

I got there before anyone from the band arrived...first to roll up was Taylor Hawkins...he was driving the same beat-up 1986 Toyota 4 x 4 pick-up truck that he bought for $400 when he was in high school...he could have taken his other truck, which was a 2005 Subaru Baja...

“not a very rock star ride,” I said when he got out...Taylor smiled—of course, he smiled—and said “it gets the job done”...Taylor was never much for the trappings of rock stardom... Here’s a quote: if you want to play music, play because you want to play music, not because you want to be rich and famous”....

We went inside where I noticed a poster on the wall for an obscure solo album by Queen drummer, Roger Taylor...it was a 1981 release called “Fun in Space”...what was that doing here?...

Taylor came alive... “Roger Taylor, man!...my favourite drummer ever!...Queen was my first concert and I’ve always been a fan of the guy...I mean, just the way he plays”...

And that’s how the conversation went until everyone else arrived and we had to start the interview...but during those 15 or 20 minutes, Taylor made me feel at home, a welcome guest in this sacred and very private Foo Fighters space...

I forgot that was talking to the drummer of one of the biggest bands on the planet...he was just this goofy, fun surfer dude who wanted to talk about music...I think he even made me an espresso...

That’s what I thought of when I heard that Taylor had died...he wasn’t just the Foos’ drummer and a beloved member of the band, he was a nice, normal guy, who wanted to do nothing more than be a dad and play rock’n’roll...

Let’s spend some time remembering Taylor Hawkins...

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We’re thrilled to share a special preview of the Broken Record podcast from Pushkin Industries. In honor of the Red Hot Chili Peppers new album, Unlimited Love, the band members sit with their legendary producer Rick Rubin to share exclusive insights about the band’s dynamic. In this preview,  Rick, John, and Anthony discuss John rejoining the band after a 10 year hiatus and how right it felt to be playing together again. You can hear the full episode, and more from Broken Record at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/brokenrecordrhcp?sid=ongoinghistory.

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I’m going to explain why you might get frustrated at spellcheck on your phone or computer…and the answer has to do with a guy named Noah… no, not that Noah from the bible with the ark…another one…

Noah was annoyed…as a proud new American, he believed that his new country needed to set itself apart from its former colonial masters in every way possible so they new nation could truly be different and independent and separate…

By 1828, there was no need to take up arms anymore, so Noah picked up his pen…as an author of schoolbooks, his annoyance had to do with the way the British spelled some of their words…why could “colour” have that extra “u?”…the proper way to spell “centre” was “c-e-n-t-e-r,” not “r-e”…everywhere he looked, he saw what he believed to be nonsensical spellings…

He made a list of such annoyances…and in 1828, at the age of 70, Noah Webster published his “American dictionary of the English language”…and it was a hit—largely because Noah was already that guy with all the spelling books being used in school…

And so came to pass that Noah’s preferred spellings—again, modifications to the original British versions of these words—became adopted by America…and these spellings are what’s accepted today as correct in the U.S…

That means if you have a computer or a phone or whatever and you have your default language set to “English,” it’s most often means “American English” by default…and that means if you try to spell certain words the British or the Canadian or Australian way, you get a squiggly line underneath…

That really annoys me (and maybe you, too)—almost as much as when my iPhone insists that I mean to spell “ducking”…but that’s another story…but this story does explain why your device seems to hate your spelling skills…it goes back to grumpy Noah Webster and his nationalistic demands on language…

Rock music has been with us since the early 1950s…that’s long enough for many things to become entrenched, familiar, and basically just part of the scenery…there are so many things about rock that we just accept and don’t really question or wonder about…

But just like the spellcheck on your phone, if you start thinking about some of these things, you might wonder where they came from, why we do it, or who came up with the idea in the first place…let’s see if I can help…I call this episode “the rock explainer”…

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It’s hard being in a band…all that time close together, day and night, in cramped vans and crappy dressing rooms…record company issues, personal issues, personnel problems and the general fragile state of the human condition…it’s no wonder so many groups break up...after a while, it’s just too much trouble. But there are exceptions, bands that somehow manage to stay together in the same form forever, no matter what happens… the Radiohead that we know today is really the only Radiohead there’s ever been…U2 hasn’t had a lineup change since 1978… ZZ Top has been the same three guys since 1969…

And here’s another one to add to the list: Billy Talent…same four guys since 1993…how have they managed that?...well, if you want the truth, go to the source…

This is Billy Talent: in their own words, part 3

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Artists make art because they have it…there’s something in their hearts that forces them to turn what they feel inside into something the rest of us can see and hear and feel ourselves…

It supposed to be this pure thing…the pursuit of beauty for beauty’s sake…undistilled human emotion designed to create a reaction, to spread a profound messages, to make the universe a better and wiser and more joyful place…

Yeah…those are nice thoughts…but the universe being what it is, things don’t work that way…

Artists need to eat…they need to pay the rent…they need tools and supplies…they may need to travel from place to place…and they may need help from others—people that demand payment…

In other words, artists need money to survive…they may find that money from donations…maybe they have a patron…but in the modern world, what they really need is a regular income…

It used to be that musicians would play gigs and sell their music to the public…if they got it on the radio, then that was revenue stream…then came selling t-shirts and other merchandise…

But around the turn of the 21st century, things began to change…economic realities surrounding the evolution of the music business forced musicians to look at different ways of bringing in income…

What was once considered compromising artistic principles and destruction of your integrity of music by prostituting yourself to soulless multi-national corporations (and the like) started to look like not just like a pretty good idea but a very necessary one…

Oh, sure, you can reject the evil lure of money to maintain the purity of your music, but that’s not going to take you far if you’re homeless and hungry…and after a while, you realize that the shame levied upon you for finding new ways of making a living is actually the result of the audience’s idea of artistic purity…the audience expects you to do what they believe is the pure thing for their entertainment…

Whoa…these are complicated concepts…let’s proceed with part two of “the concept of selling out”…

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I’ve done hundreds of interviews with individual artists over the year…it’s relatively easy...all you have to do is get one person in a room, turn on the recording devices and you’re set…

When it comes to interviewing a band, you’re lucky to get two members in the same place and the same time… 

But getting every member of a band in the same place at the same time for an interview is next to impossible…I’ve only managed to be so lucky a couple of times… U2, Kings of Leon, Foo Fighters, Green Day, Blink-182—and that’s about it…

And lemme tell you something: each of these interviews required extraordinary efforts under extraordinary circumstances…

Such circumstances miraculously presented themselves with Billy Talent…all four guys around the same table in the same studio…the purpose?...to get them to tell the story of the band in their own words…this is part two of our conversation…

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One of the worst insults you can throw at an artist is to accuse them of “selling out”…the most basic definition is when the pursuit of money compromises, corrupts or otherwise interrupts the pursuit truth and beauty and all the purity and goodness that is supposed to flow from art…

But that’s an awfully broad definition which can be applied in a billion different highly subjective ways…at one extreme, some people believe that taking money for any kind of art is perverse…at the other, anything and everything has its price, high or low, depending on the circumstances…

And the world has changed…making any kind of art costs money…competition for attention among artists have never been greater…and we’d like to thing that great art inevitably and naturally rises to the top, but it just doesn’t…in a true meritocracy, it would…but we all know that’s not true…

And ever since the internet started shaping the way we find and consume music, the value ascribed to it—that is, how much we’re willing to pay for it—has dropped to near zero…thanks to streaming and YouTube, almost all the music ever created in the history of humankind is available for free…

But there are costs to making music…musicians (and those associated with its creation) have a right to make a living…where does the money come from?...

From a lot of different places, as it turns out…the sources of this working capital may be distasteful to some, but if you want to be a working musician these days, some creative and philosophical compromises need to be made…

What I’m trying to say is that “selling out” ain’t what it used to be….here…let me show you

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The best way to construct a profile on an artist is to round up everyone together, put them in a studio and get them to tell their story themselves…

But that can be difficult, especially with a band…beyond touring and recording schedules, everyone has their own lives and may even live in different cities…putting everyone in the same place could be impossible…

It took a while, but we did it…i have all four members of Billy Talent in one place…and they’re here for one purpose: to tell their story in their own words…

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In the days before Covid, I was always on the road…if it wasn’t a music conference in Singapore, it was an interview in London, the Juno’s in—wherever, or a concert in Los Angeles…this means I have seen more than my share of hotel rooms—everything from five-star luxury spots to sub-one-star establishments that come with a complimentary dead hooker under the bed…

This means I’ve developed a certain attitude toward hotels…

First thing you do when you get into the room is ditch the bedspread…they are never, ever cleaned…just tear it off, pile it in the corner, and then wash your hands…then try not to imagine what’s happened on that couch…

At night, there’s the sound of the air conditioning, the noises coming from the hallway…and what are they doing in the room next door?...

Then in the restaurant and the bar and the fitness room, you run into fellow guests…who are they?...what are they doing here?...what’s their story?...occasionally, I’d find out—like the time I ran across a Nobel prize winner who was living in this Asian hotel because he was too ill to fly back home…

Hotels are fascinating places where things happen that don’t happen anywhere else…strangers come together from everywhere to do things that they might not do anywhere else…no wonder so many books and TV shows and movies are set in hotels…I am fascinated with these places…

Here’s the segue: rock stars spend a lot of time on the road, meaning that they spend a lot of nights in hotels…and some of the rooms they stay in end up become part of rock’n’roll history…let’s take a look at some of them, shall we?...

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There are some people who just can’t get along…it could be the result of politics, religion, philophies, property, honour, a personal slight, a perceived insult, or—well, a million things, really…

The most famous feud in history might be the Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s who fought each other along the border between Kentucky and West Virginia in the late 1800s…it started over a hog…did it belong to Floyd Hatfield or Randolph McCoy?...in the end more than a dozen people were killed on both sides of the feud, largely over a pig…

Here’s something a little more relatable…German brothers Adolf and Rudolf Dassler co-founded a shoe company in their mother’s basement…when U.S. sprinter Jesse Ownes used their shoes for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, sales blew up…

But the brothers couldn’t deal with the success and kept fighting and fighting and fighting…finally, in 1948, they couldn’t take it anymore and the company split in two…Adolf called his company “Adidas”…Rudolf named his “Puma”…

And this is a good one…R2D2 and C3PO never liked each other…Anthony Daniels (C3PO) was a classical trained actor and never really like the fact that he had to play this robot…meanwhile, Kenny Baker, the little guy inside R2D2 was a circus performer…Daniels never, ever let Baker forget that he’d never been in the same league as him…

And that’s just one of many different feuds to be found in the performer arts…when artistic types have a beef, it can get very, very weird…

The Beatles vs. The Stones (although that was a manufactured fight…they were actually very good friends…but after the Beatles broke up, Paul and John scrapped a lot in the media…Ray and Dave Davies in The Kinks…no love lost there…David Gilmour vs. Roger Waters in Pink Floyd…Brian Love and Mike Wilson in The Beach Boys…

And think of all the rap beefs…Biggie vs. Tupac, Kanye vs. Drake, Nas vs. Jay-Z…that list is endless…

But what about more contemporary rock feuds, fights that have happened over the last couple of decades?...thanks for asking because here they come.

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Ever been to a concert and wondered "How do they make all of this work?". "How have I not gone deaf?" or "Why does the dude on stage wearing what looks like a pair of ear-buds?"Well we're here to answer those questions and more as we delve deep into the history of concert sound...

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In assessing popular music in the last half of the 20th century, rock music was a massive cultural phenomenon…initially driven by young baby boomers, rock grew bigger and stronger, starting in the middle 60s, eclipsing all other genres…and central to this conquest was the electric guitar…

That sound, with all its power and distortion and infinitely diverse tonalities, can still drive music fans into ecstasy,

For many, the electric guitar is a symbol of rebellion and liberation…it was a new vehicle for freedom of expression…and it opened the doors to new types of creativity…and it was because of the electric guitar that rock went global…

Its history is a complicated one involving musicians, inventors, tinkerers, happy accidents, big multinational companies and lone wolves…some names are well known while others, despite their contributions to the decades-long evolution of instrument, languish in obscurity, known only to guitar geeks and obsessives…

And while there have been many occasions where pundits have declared that rock (and by extension, the tools to make this music) is dead, the electric guitar has proven to be extremely adaptable and has (so far) been able to take on all comers, especially when placed in the hands of radicals and rule-breakers…

If a power chord played through a Marshall stack has ever given you chills, then you’re in the right place…this is the history of the electric guitar, part 3…

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For centuries, music was nice and clean…while different instruments gave notes different timbres, the frequencies of those notes was expected to be clear and pure…yes, you could add a little umph by playing fortissimo, but the dogma was “let’s not overdo it”…

But sometimes the situation called for overdoing things…banging a piano turns a melody and a beat into some stompin’ boogie-woogie…a raspy, hard-blown saxophone brings energy to a performance…

But creating pleasant distortion with either of these  instruments—and we can name a few others—is limited to the abilities of the human body…volume and distortion and all the energy that comes with playing this way is restricted by how hard you can hit or blow into something…

The electric guitar has no such limitations…it can be played so that the notes are pristine…or you can summon all demons of hell with volume, distortion, power, and glory and that is cool…

The electric guitar is one of humankind’s greatest musical inventions…starting in the 1950s, it revolutionized many types of popular music: country, the blues, jazz, and most of all, rock…after it appeared, nothing was ever the same—and the sound of music changed forever…it’s impossible to imagine what today’s music would sound like had the electric guitar not been invented…

But how did we get here?...let’s pick up the story….this is the story of electric guitar, part 2…

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There are few instruments more powerful than the electric guitar…when the first primitive models appeared in the 1920s, no one gave them much thought…the electric guitar was brand new, unproven, and completely lacking in any of the kinds of traditions and gravitas enjoyed by the piano, the violin, or any number of brass instruments…

Besides, unlike all the other musical instruments in use, these required electricity, a concept that was still quite new…electric household appliances were just starting to catch on…and having a radio was still a novel thing…

But over the next 30 years, the electric guitar found its place in music, helped along by technology, the need for volume, changing social conditions, and the ever-evolving musical tastes of the public…

By the 1960s, the electric guitar was regarded as one of the most powerful musical inventions of all time…it was the sound behind rock’n’roll and all the social and cultural changes it created…it was the sound of freedom, power, rebellion, joy. heartache, aggression, and more…

In short, the electric guitar defined music for the latter half of the 20th century…it’s still an essential part of popular culture…and despite several challenges to its supremacy over the decades, it’s not going away anytime soon…

But how did a semi-obscure acoustic instrument get electrified in the first place? Who were the inventors and promoters? What technological innovations were needed? And of all the noisemakers you could choose, how did it become the foundation of rock’n’roll?...

This is the story of the electric guitar, part 1…

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The human body is a remarkably good piece of construction…it has its quirks and shortcomings, but for the most part is a pretty cool thing: functional, durable, and to other humans, attractive…

But there’s always room for improvements and modifications and decorations…archeologists have found mummified remains that are thousands and thousands of years old that’s sport tattoos…

There’s a guy named Otzl that was found in the Swiss Alps when a glacier melted…he’d been there for over 5,000 years—and the dude had 61 tattoos…

Egyptian mummies plus pacific islanders, members of ancient African communities, bodies dating to iron age Britain, early Japanese societies, and the Indigenous people of North and South America have all engaged in this kind of body art…

Tattoos have also been used to identify prisoners and slaves, to display religious connections, and associations with armies, navies, bikers, and criminal gangs…and for many people tattoos still carry some kind of stigma…only deviants and weirdos got tattoos…

But that’s changed a lot in the last 60 years—especially since the beginning of the 21st century…tattoos have long gone mainstream…in fact, in some circles, if you don’t have any ink, you’re the outsider and the weirdo…

This brings me to the world of rock’n’roll…tattoos are everywhere…and almost no one stops with one or two…the last time anyone counted, Travis Barker of Blink-182 has 117 different and distinct tattoos from the top of his head right down to his toes…

We’ll get to Travis in a bit…but let’s begin with a look at the history—the whole phenomenon—of rock’n’roll tattoos…

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We’ve all heard the stories about where punk came from…the New York Dolls and a few other bands start playing in a crappy area of New York that attracted musicians, artists, and degenerates with low rent…

This leads to the opening of CBGB, a club that becomes the centre of a music scene that gave a home to bands like television, Blondie, The Talking Heads, The Heartbreakers, and, most importantly, The Ramones…

In July 1976, The Ramones fly to London and play a show attended by curious kids who then either continue on with their punk plans—that would be The Sex Pistols, The Clash, and a few others—or inspire others to form their own groups…and from there, punk spreads across the world…

That’s a nice succinct look at punk’s origin story…what’s missing is Canada’s involvement—and believe me, the great white north had a lot to say about punk in those early days…and I mean, a lot…

Toronto was like the third leg of a punk triangle that extended to New York and London…ideas and trends and music was constantly exchanged…meanwhile, out on the west coast, there was a fierce Vancouver scene that worked mostly along north-south routes into the U.S.

And then across the country, there were pockets of punk that had their own influence…

This history needs to be told…and we’re going to do it by looking at the stories of 14 incredibly important Canadian punk bands from back in the day…

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Whether we want to admit it or not, each of us is product of our parents…we are like mom and/or dad…and that may manifest itself in different ways…

Maybe one of them was a great cook and that’s led to a life-long love of food…maybe they introduced to travel and now you spend all your extra money on airfare…or maybe one of them had some kind of craft that you gravitated towards…carpenter, knitting, gardening…

And chances are if you have musical parents, you’re going to end up musical, too—at least to some extent…it’s again that combination of nature and nurture…

Now imagine that your mom or dad is a famous musician…cool people are always dropping in…there are tours and time spent in the studio and parties and industry events…for anyone else, that would be mind-blowing…but for you, it’s just how life is…

And because that’s how your life is, you just fall into the lifestyle…you learn to play and write and perform…and because the parents have some connections and relationships, you might have the inside line on establishing a career…

Others without famous parents will cry foul, but that’s just the way it is…you’re a member of the lucky sperm club…

Some of these sons and daughters have actually done very well for themselves…Sean and Julian Lennon, son of John…four of five of Frank Zappa’s kids have had musical careers…R&B singer Stella Santana, daughter of Carlos…Norah jones is the daughter of Ravi Shankar, the Beatles’ favourite sitar player… and more recently, we have Wolfgang Van Halen, son of Eddie…

Here’s one that you may have missed…Redfoo of lmfao (he’s the one with the afro and the big glasses) is the son of Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown…think he was able to parlay dad’s contacts into something?...and here’s one I missed for years…Gary Lewis and the playboys was a big 60s pop group…Gary is the son of Jerry Lewis, the comedian…

What other parent-children connections are out there?...let’s have a look…this is another edition of musical offspring…

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With the way the music industry operates, this guys career should have been dead and buried long ago. I mean no offense…but look at this dude.

Even when he was young, he looked dorky. Bad glasses and poor posture. This was a guy who was a computer programmer for a cosmetics company. And in the age of Punk when everyone had safety pins stuck to their clothes, and leather jackets….this guy insisted on wearing a sport coat.

Yet he’s still here…still making music…and not only does he have the respect and admiration of many generations of fans, he’s collaborated with everyone from Paul McCartney to Burt Baccarat.

He’s delved into punk, sting quartets, jazz ensembles, and more…so how does he do it. And what’s the big deal about Elvis Costello?

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Although they were around really for just 4 years, The Smiths succeeded in becoming the most influential British indie band of the 1980's. They hastened the deal of tech-pop, and laid the foundation of what was to become Britpop. 

But how exactly did that happen and really, what is the big deal about The Smiths?

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Back in the day, they called The Clash "the only band that mattered" and few voices are more important or influential in the history of rock than that of Joe Strummer. Without Joe and The Clash, we wouldn't have a fraction of the bands and musicians that we do today. Put simply;  Joe Strummer is one of the most significant musicians in the history of rock. Full stop.

December 22nd, 2021 marks the 19th anniversary of Joe's sudden passing at just 50 years old. To mark the occasion, and honour Joe, we go back into the Ongoing History achieves and present our profile of Joe that first aired in the spring of 2003. 

This is our tribute to the legend of Joe Strummer...

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Is it really almost the end of 2021?...if I’m honest, it’s all been a blur, almost like 2020, with covid on my mind 24/7…it’s just reality…

You know how I’ve been spending my time?...I’ve spent almost two years in my office, throwing myself into work…I think i’ve read a record number of books…my iPad tells me that my screen time is up 23%...and I’ve posted somewhere around 2500 stories on my website…

Now that the end of the year is approaching and we’ll soon be into the holidays, it’s time for the annual office clean-up…

There are post-it notes everywhere with little tidbits of information I’ve found…i’ve bookmarked a ton of sites…there’s a little journal filled with scribblings…books with pages turned down and e-books with passages highlighted…

Much of this has already been turned into (or will be turned into) “ongoing history” programs and posts…but there’s also all kinds of fascinating stuff that I couldn’t use…they just didn’t fit in with anything that I’ve done in 2021…it’s orphaned material…

But I can’t throw out any of stuff…it’s too interesting, too important, to ignore…this information needs to be disseminated to the public at large…knowledge is power, right?...this material needs to be set free…

So once again it’s time for the annual data dump known as “60 mind-blowing things about music in 60 minutes”…

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Once upon a time, before social media and the internet, all musicians were mysterious…outside of seeing them live, our only connections with them were through their music, the liner notes and album artwork, and stories in music magazines…

Yes, there were the occasional tv appearances, but those were quite rare…in fact, it wasn’t really until music videos started to be a thing in early 80s that fans began to grasp what their idols looked like in a major way…

And consider this: it wasn’t until MTV and MuchMusic started interviewing musicians that we began to discover what their speaking voices sounded like…

Today, though, there are no more secrets…artists are in constant touch with their fanbase through social media…fans are constantly trading news online…camera phones are everywhere…we live in a world of oversharing and tmi…

Hell, even kiss—a band that spent its first decade hiding behind makeup as a way of creating myth and legend and essentially invented the concept of the mysterious, unknowable rock star—gave up on that idea in the 80s…

However, I’m happy to report that there are still some mysteries, artists who have managed to main a degree of anonymity…some have successfully obfuscated their identifies through disguise and subterfuge…others have disappeared into a hermit-like existence where they remain beyond the reach of the general public while still releasing material and maintaining a fanbase…

Who are these artists?...and how did they managed to stay out of the limelight?...these are alt-rock’s most mysterious musicians…

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I remember being in London in the summer of 2001…I made my usual pilgrimage up to the original Rough Trade records store on Talbot Street, off Portobello Road in Notting Hill…

I was a little bummed out with music at the time, so I was hoping for some inspiration…the mainstream was awash in pop music…spice girls, backstreet boys, Britney Spears…

And alt-rock had kinda lost its way after grunge burned out…the big acts were searching for direction…there were far too many one-hit wonders…and nu-metal, the biggest thing at the time, was very, very polarizing…you either were really into it or you hated it…

It also seemed that this new genre dubbed “electronica” was siphoning off a lot of rock fans…music made the old-school way with guitars, bass, drums, and vocals seemed old-fashioned, out of date, and played out…

But that couldn’t be true, could it?...in the past, every time rock was declared dead, someone or something came along and breathed new life into everything…

I told this story to Nigel, the guy at the desk of the tiny shop… “Give me something that is exciting, new, and fresh,” I said… “Give me hope”…

Nigel reached under the counter and pulled out a cd single… “Here, mate,” he said, “This should cure all your ills”…it was a song from The Strokes.

Turns out he was right…The Strokes were one of the very, very first new bands behind the indie-rock revival that began at the tail end of the 90s and blew up over the next couple of years…nice one, Nigel…

But why The Strokes?...where did they come from?...and why was this guy in London telling me about a band from New York?...this requires some explanation…

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This time we go deep into the vaults for an episode about the now seemingly long lost concept of "Album Artwork".

We'll look at some of the most famous of all time, and look into why this concept has all but faded away.

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Once upon a time many centuries ago, someone came up with the idea of taking all the world’s available knowledge and storing it one place…that way everyone who had questions had somewhere to go to get the answers…and thus the concept of the library was born…

Considerably later, this same concept was applied to recorded music and governments, public broadcasters and companies began collecting together as much of humankind’s recorded audio as they could…

The BBC famously has hundreds of kilometers of shelving for physical media…there’s a guy in Brazil named Zero Freitas who is on a quest to create a private collection of all the records ever made…he has at least 8 million records and more than 100,000 compact discs…

Nice…but this still doesn’t cover everything…

In the 80s, some people started to conceive of a giant computer somewhere that could hold humanity’s music in digital form…if you needed a song—any song—it would be available from that computer instantly…

In 1994, a law professor named Paul Goldstein popularized the term “celestial jukebox”…in his mind, this would be networked database available to anyone with a connection or this thing called the “internet”…

Five years later, napster went online...suddenly, it seemed that you could download any song you wanted—however illegal that might be…

Then, in 2003, came the iTunes music store…starting with several hundred thousand songs, it has since expanded to about 60 million tracks that are all for sale…but that still doesn’t quite cut it because it still involved buying this music…

Today, we have streaming…all the platforms draw from a digital music library that contains at least 75 million songs—and more are being added every day…and we can access this music anytime we want, from wherever we are, using whatever device we happen to have…and the price?...given what we’re able to do, it’s negligible…in fact, it can even be totally free…

Think about that: we can listen to virtually any song ever recorded in seconds and pay nothing…we now have theoretical celestial jukebox, something that was considered science fiction not that long ago…question: how well do you know how all this works?...this is 23 points you might not know about streaming, part 2”…

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