Ongoing History Of New Music

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

One of the byproducts of doing a show like this for as long as I’ve been doing it is that it’s really hard to shut off your brain. I’m always thinking about topic ideas, ways to connect facts and trivia, reading a lot of books, talking to a lot of people, and otherwise trying to come up with a constant stream of topics we can discuss. The result of all this research and thinking and writing are some ideas and perspectives on music, music history, how music is made, how it’s consumed and distributed, and how seemingly small things have led to big changes…that’s one thing. Another is the opinions formed by observing the opinions of others…why do people like some things and hate others?... another is a list of ideas that aren’t quite fully formed…it seems like I’ve almost grasped a concept. Still, it doesn’t feel right yet—but I feel there’s a germ of truth somewhere. I’ve also learned that when you’re unsure about something, source the crowd…you might like the answers, but it’s better than living in your own he

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder—or in the case of music, the ear…what’s pleasant to one person is nothing but noise to someone else… This is where it’s good to have some patience…there are some forms of art whose beauty isn’t obvious at first…you need to stick with it…and after you’ve given it a chance and decided that it’s not for you, fine… But what about those times when something happens—suddenly or slowly and either on your own or with the prompting of someone else—and you realize that the weird music you’re listening to is actually pretty good?... This is the payoff…yeah, you really had to work for it—but it was worth it…with me so far?.. “Beauty” doesn’t mean “perfect”—at least in the technical sense…sometimes imperfection makes something more beautiful…or at least more interesting… This brings me to the topic of singing voices…this is a very subjective area…how many times have you said, “Listen to that guy!... I can’t stand his voice!...how did he ever get a record deal?... I mean, listen to him!

For a very long time—too long—women were locked in very defined roles when it came to rock’n’roll…girls were expected to look pretty and do little more than sing…okay, maybe shake a tambourine or something…but that was about it… And when it came to singing, “Just stick with conventional stuff, dear…don’t get any crazy ideas in your head…this is a woman’s role in rock, and you should stick to it…that’s a nice little lady”… But then along came punk rock in the 1970s…punk did many things for rock—including knocking down a lot of heretofore inviolable gender roles…the central tenet of punk was that anyone should have the right to say anything in any matter they want regardless of who they are…that included women and their right to self-expression… The result was fantastic. Freed from all the old expectations, women were free to reinvent themselves as musicians in a million different ways leading to a wonderful array of female performers… Some of my favourites are the ones who decided to spit in the face of virtua

All right…I hope you’re ready because a lot of information—some of it important, some of it useless—is about to come your way in a rapid-fire way. Again, this is material collected over the last 12 months while I was looking for “ongoing history” ideas…some of this info doesn’t fit with the mandate of the program…some of it is orphaned from programs that never quite took shape…and some of these items were just too weird to gloss over, so I made a note…what you do with what you’re about to hear is up to you. Let us begin with 60 mind-blowing facts about music...the 2024 edition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The way I see it, there are three types of bands that stretch across a spectrum…first, there’s the extreme sort, a group that will do almost anything to attract attention…you’re probably thinking of some names right now. Next to them are the traditional sort, and they comprise the vast majority of bands out there…these are groups that go out there, do their thing earnestly and honestly, and hope that this will be enough for music lovers…they occupy a huge part of this spectrum. And then we have the third type: the quirky, eccentric, and weird…these groups come in all sorts of flavours, from mildly bent to the gloriously stupid and the confoundingly weird…these bands go a long way into making music fun and unpredictable. Not all land with audiences—they’re too strange, not enough people get the joke, or maybe they’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But there can be a balance between being quirky and fun and having songs that have widespread appeal…they have just enough of the nerd factor to set them

If Rivers Cuomo of Weezer were to walk past you on the street, you probably wouldn’t notice him…if you did, you might think that this stranger kinda looked like Louis Tully, the nebbish accountant played by Rick Moranis in a couple of “Ghostbusters” movie. Chances are he’d be wearing skinny jeans, a t-shirt, a hoody, maybe a baseball cap, indistinguishable from a hundred other short, slight, guys with glasses that you encountered that day…and that’s just the way he likes it. But Rivers Cuomo is an unlikely sort of rock star and is extremely committed to being a rock star—or at least doing the things that he hopes will keep him at that level. He’s highly educated, deeply introspective, very private, and always looking to learn something new, be studying the mysteries of writing the perfect song to computer programming to intense forms of meditation to careful study of the music industry… and one day, he wants to make a weezer movie—not a tour film, but some kind of actual movie. Weezer has been together for mo

We’re about to get all dreamy and floaty and all blissed out by taking a look at another specific genre…a post-punk genre called “dream pop”…it’s a thing unto itself but it’s also related to other genres where atmosphere, sonic textures, and (in some cases) sheer volume reign supreme…and from its origins in the early 80s, dream pop has had a profound effect on music that is felt even today. It touches on and overlaps with other alt-rock subgenres including shoegaze and anything resembling modern psychedelic material…it has a volume continuum that ranges from barely-there softness to somewhere beyond a jet engine…but at the same time, it never loses touch with melody. So, complicated stuff—and i haven’t even mentioned vocal styles, guitar effects, production methods, and all the other goodness that goes into making something dreamy—or in extreme cases, nightmarish. Here…let me show you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices