Ongoing History Of New Music

After World War II, Germany was destroyed…the country was divided…the east was under the control of the USSR…the west was in democratic Europe…and then there was berlin, sitting in the east but cut into different zones dominated by the Russians, the Americans, the British, and the French.  Most history books look at the political and military side of things…what we don’t hear about nearly as much as how Germany society was rebuilt…imagine being a young person who is too young to have been in the military…what prospects did you have growing up in a divided country ruined by war.  This is where art comes in…art is always downstream from whatever is happening in society…and in the case of West Germany, many artists wanted things to be different.  Young German musicians had some very serious ideas of what needed to be done…many were into rock…but they were determined to create rock that was different from what was being made in the UK and America.  And they certainly didn’t want anything resembling traditiona

What do you remember from history class back in school?... Maybe a few dates and events…maybe the names some important people…and probably how dull a lot of history classes were.  I remember being inundated with a bunch of facts—which was fine (i guess), but it didn’t really make history come alive, you know? ...and it didn’t have to be this way.  History is more than this country going to war with that one, who married who to create what royal alliance, and which explorers went where to inflict harm on what indigenous people…there are many other branches of historical study. There’s social history, economic history, the history of science and technology, technology—and (my favourite) stupid history…these are stories of how civilization changed because of stupid people and stupid things…and if we were taught stupid history alongside all the record stuff, those classes would have been a whole lot more fun. For example, in 1545, winemakers in Saint-Julien, France, were in a panic because their vines were be

There are plenty of thankless jobs out there…think about the people who have to work outside in all kinds of weather…line workers for power companies…garbage collectors… construction workers. Same goes for prison officers, nurses, teachers, and first responders of all types…i could go on, but you get the idea…so much needs to go on behind the scenes for us to be able to live our lives.  There are dirty jobs but someone’s gotta do it…for the most part, they do their jobs so well that we don’t even think about them…but if not for these people, society wouldn’t function.  Now let’s look at the music industry…the performers get all the glory, but we’d know nothing of them if it wasn’t for the massive support they get from people in the background.  That includes support staff at record labels and management companies,  publicists, assistants, and thousands of other positions that helps make the music happen.  One of the most important positions is paradoxically both visible and invisible…if they do their job

At its best, rock is a transcendent experience, something that takes us somewhere away from the ordinary, the normal, and the safe…there’s a huge fantasy element to it…done right, rock removes us from this universe and transports us someplace completely different where anything could happen—at least for a little while. Sometimes the music alone is enough to take us there…but there’s so much more that can be done to enhance the experience. Costuming, for one…make-up and wild hair make a nice addition…how about going hard on the visuals and theatrics?...sure!...why not?...can’t hurt…how about dropping in some sci-fi…good…what about sex and horror and shock and the occult and then really, really exaggerate everything?... Bring it on.  And you know what else might be fun?...a big dollop of sexual ambiguity…that’ll freak people out. What I’ve just described is a lot of today’s music…the rock era has been around long enough and has gone through so many bouts of extremism that it seems like there’s we can’t be s

This is the fifth edition of an occasional series called “The Rock Explainer.” The idea is to explore the strange, unexplained, and traditional aspects of rock culture that don’t get enough attention and analysis… In many cases, we just accept these things and don’t question them as much as we should…but if we stop for just a second and cock a quizzical eyebrow and actually ask the question, then it’s possible to review new things about music that you might never have imagined… Where do accents go when people sing?...why do artists sing the melody lines when they perform live?... How come we hear lyrics wrong?...let’s answer those questions and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The mp3 had a spectacular rise…the tech was everywhere…it brought music and the industry into the digital era. But like almost everything in this universe, it has a finite lifespan…it’s still with us and in many ways is still ubiquitous in some circles, but things have changed. And yes, it did kill the music industry—at least the old one that insisted on selling fans their music on pieces of plastic I’m going to try to tell the story of how mp3 technology came into our lives—and how it is slowly leaving it. It’s a story with all kinds of twists and turns…there are heroes and villains…there are casualties and survivors…and one thing is for sure: music has been forever changed in a billion different ways. This is the rise and fall of the mp3. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Maybe it was the first time you saw your favourite musical. Maybe they played a set list that you thought was perfection. Maybe you were front and centre and the singer crowd surfed right over your head! So sure...an absolutely legendary gig! But what about those gigs that redefined alt-rock? Those concerts or shows that stand out as legendary for what came after them? The bands they inspired or the lasting legacy of that show on the audience? Well we're going take a look at 8 of them and try to explain why they are so legendary in the history of alt-rock Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People who study such things say that the human brain—this folded lump of mostly fat—has a pretty good hard drive…the average adult brain has a capacity of about 2.5 petabytes…put another way, that’s 2.5 million gigs…that’s a lot. We’re talking personal memories, facts, academic education, learned behaviors, and muscle memory…there are also special places where things like musical memories and lyrics are stored. Some memories remain rock solid, barring some kind of injury or illness…but because we’re always experiencing new things, we forget other stuff as new experiences crowd out the old stuff. As a result, things fade…significant details about something can start to fade away within days—even hours or minutes, depending on circumstances surrounding that memory…some will become corrupted—which is why eyewitness accounts are often considered unreliable in court…and it’s not like we can download a backup of our memories—at least not yet. This is why it’s a good idea to a little maintenance on the hard drives

We’ve been talking about life beyond earth for decades…and one of the best places to look (for starters) are the moons of Jupiter and Saturn…wouldn’t it be cool if we could land a probe on one of them to have a little look around? ...but that won’t happen for decades, right? Wrong…it already happened…in 2005, the Huygens probe descended to the surface of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn…it was a monumental achievement in space exploration. Oh…forgot that that one, huh? ...okay, let’s try another. Anyone remember when an entire country went bankrupt? ...you would if you were from Iceland…in 2008, the entire Icelandic banking system collapsed forcing the nation to declare bankruptcy…but Iceland recovered by actually holding bankers accountable and initiating a series of financial reforms that are worth studying by other countries. Don’t remember, huh?... One more. What about the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010…it was the largest marine oil spill in history and cause an incredible amount of environmental

How many times have you been told to “live in the moment?”…it usually comes with statements like “the past can’t be changed, the future is unknown, so all you can do is experience the present to the fullest extent of your being”. In other words, be more like a dog…i’m always watching my bull terriers go about their day…they don’t worry about the past and have little concept of the future…it’s all about eating, sleeping, doing their business outside, playing, and demanding affection…and when they engage in any of those things, they are all-in. A lovely idea, but humans don’t work that way…heaven forbid that we get lost in our thoughts—or worse, get bored—standing in line at the checkout…let’s avoid those awkward moments with ourselves and not have to be in that moment. But maybe whipping out the phone at every available second is a defense mechanism…we live in a world with so much change that we need constant distraction from how quickly things are moving… doom-scrolling isn’t healthy, but it is a way to say “

It’s wild how so much in this universe is connected in ways we don’t understand…there’s something in quantum physics that Einstein called “spooky interaction at a distance”. Quantum theory says that you can have a particle-like, er, this one here—which is connected to another identical particle billions and billions of light-years away. And if I give this one a flick—boop!—I just booped its twin on the other side of the universe at the same time…change it here, and it changes there instantaneously…yeah, I know, it’s freaky…but that’s how quantum physics works. History can be like that, too…you poke at this one person, this one thing, this one event, and it has an effect on another person, thing or event way over there. It doesn’t happen instantly because our existence is in the universe ruled by classical physics where such things can’t happen…but in retrospect, you see how one little thing in the timeline can unleash a series of cascading events and unintended consequences. This is why I believe every once i

If you’re a Boomer, a Gen Xer or an early millennial, this is going to hurt. If someone says “25 years ago,” now, they mean something that happened in the 1900s, not in the 21st century. Despite how it might feel, the 90s weren’t just 20 years ago…neither were the 80s…if you’re a certain age, you know exactly what I’m talking about. This hurts, too…at some point, you’re going to hear a kid talk about a song that came out “in the late 1900s”…ouch. We’re already a quarter of the way through the 21st century. I still find that hard to process. On the other hand, younger Millennials, Gen Zed kids, and Gen Alpha, first 25 years of the 2000s is recent history…if that’s you, you’re still getting caught up…and if you’re in those special years when you develop your musical awareness, you’re probably a sponge for information…what did I miss?...and how did we get to where we are now? Whatever your perspective, this series of “ongoing history” episodes aims to help…this is part 6 of our look back at the 100 greatest mome

People love lists…magazines, broadcasters, and websites are always publishing them…the ones that seem to get the most attention are those that rank a specific thing from worst to best. And let’s be honest: most of these lists are designed to court controversy, to create arguments, and to get people talking about how things got ordered and why or why not someone or something should be at number one…i get it. But not all lists are created equal…some are just supposed to keep track of something…what to buy at the grocery store…errands that need to be done…things you need to pack for a trip. Then there’s middle ground…lists that keep track of something while attempting to slot them in some order of importance, influence, or impact. Such lists will still result in arguments and debate over how things were ranked—which is fine—but the primary purpose of such a list is an attempt to remember what happened. We’re already 25% the way through the 21st century…and with the pace of life, it’s harder and harder to keep up

It’s a summer night in 1998. Vienna, Austria. And petty thief Daniel Blanchard is about to carry out the heist of a lifetime. Stealing a crown jewel. The last remaining diamond Sisi Star. His plan? A daring night-time parachute jump. Daniel is no ordinary thief. His heists are ingenious, meticulously planned; his escapes from the law defy belief. And Daniel knows that if he can get his hands on the star, it will launch him into the criminal big-leagues. Daniel’s exploits unleash a relentless game of cat-and-mouse, as police track him across continents yet vanishes from their grasp.  What he doesn’t know is that the Sisi Star has a history. A dark history. Its original owner, the legendary Empress Elisabeth of Austria, used it to carve her own legacy of absolute beauty and power. That pursuit drove her to her very limits.  And now Daniel’s fate is fixed to that same star. But how long can Sisi’s star stay lucky for Daniel?  This is A Most Audacious Heist – it’s the story of a master thief, an intercontinental

Time has a way of getting away from us, especially at the speed at which news cycles travel…with a firehose of information coming at us from traditional media, online sources, social media, and just life in general, it’s really easy to forget where we’ve been and what we’ve done. The speed of 21st century life has either created our ultra-short attention spans or exacerbated what was already there. Me?... Sometimes it feels like I have the memory of a goldfish…somebody will mention something that happened and I’ll go, “oh, yeah…that happened a couple of years ago”…and then they’ll say, “no, that was 21 years ago”. It’s been so long since the 90s that the music of that era is number one for nostalgia, eclipsing the public’s fascination with the 80s, the 70s, and the 60s…people who weren’t alive in the 90s have latched on to that music in a very fierce way. Maybe that’s why to older folk the rock from that time still seems fresh and top-of-mind—because to a substantial number of young music fans, it’s fresh and

The great 20th century philosopher Ferris Bueller once said “life moves pretty fast…if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”. I think of this wisdom a lot, especially when someone starts talking about, say, the music of the 1990s…my instinctive reaction is always the same… “yeah…the 90s…that was ten years ago, right?”. Obviously not…Nirvana’s “Nevermind” still lives and that record is over 30 years old…all the legendary grunge artists are in their 50s and 60s if not dead…but so much of the music of the era is always in the air so it’s not like it ever had a chance to be forgotten. I was in an airport recently—a big public space serving people of all ages and all backgrounds from around the world—and “Man in a Box” from Alice in Chains was playing on the p.a. And then there are all those moments in the grocery store when I hear music playing and think to myself “when did supermarket music get so cool?”. The truth is that this music is a lot older than my brain wants to believe…even

So much can happen in 25 years…let’s go back to how the 20th century began…in just a quarter century, we got radio, airplanes, the Great War, the Russian revolution, the Soviet Union, and the rise of Communism. The Titanic sank…women were empowered to vote…Einstein came up with the theory of relativity…Henry Ford changed manufacturing forever with the use of the assembly line, not to mention the introduction of cars. We also go stainless steel, the first x-ray machine, the zipper, neon lighting, and instant coffee…and that’s just for starters. Now let’s look at the first 25 years of the 21st century… 9/11 and the wars that followed…the rise of China as global power…the Arab Spring…an awareness of climate change…LGBT rights and social movements…covid…trump…the incorporation of the internet into everything. Now that the century is a quarter done, it’s also a good time to look back on what happened in music…the short answer is “a lot”…but because change happened so consistently and was adopted by so many people,

Keeping up to date with the news cycles is exhausting…so much comes at us from so many different directions that it’s impossible to know if we’re in the middle of something important or not…everything seems urgent, threatening, and life-changing…there’s precious little time for careful consideration, study, and analysis. Keeping up with technology and its effect on society is another big challenge…one moment everyone seems caught up with a particular gadget or app—but a month or even a week later, that’s old news and everyone has moved on. Remember how the world was supposed to end when the planet’s computers melted down over the Y2K bug?...wasn’t the world supposed to end with the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012?...weren’t we supposed to have run out of oil by now? When you mix technology with the news cycle, our ever-shortening attention spans,  how the world is interconnected 24/7, and how we’re able to individualize everything that we take in, it’s easy to lose track of what the hell is happening…one of

A couple of years ago, it became obvious that we were entering an era where music fans were increasingly going to be sad…that’s because our musical heroes are shuffling off this mortal coil. It really hit hard in 2016—that was a bad year with the deaths of David Bowie and Prince—that really brought home the unfortunate reality that we will continue to lose people who have been making music for us for years, maybe decades. We didn’t necessarily know any of these people personally…but it was through their music that learned something about ourselves…so when they die, a little bit of us might go with them. I think it’s important that we remember those musicians who have passed on…that’s why we have this annual look at who died…we need to honour the work of these musicians and music people…and with so many of them going, we at the very least need to remember that they did indeed pass away. This is the 2024 “In Memoriam” show…grab yourself a box of tissues. Songs in this episode: Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill