Ongoing History Of New Music

When I say the word "Shrine"...what comes to mind? Lords? A temple in the Himalaya’s? Something secular...like a war memorial? They could be something makeshift like flowers placed on the side of the road where someone died.  Shrines appear in pop culture too. Any place that has been deemed important because of its history or associations...can be considered a shrine. It's a place people visit so they can see things for themselves.  Now rock n roll has many shrines. The field where Buddy Holly's plane crashed, the site of the first Woodstock in 1969, Elvis' Graceland....doesn't get much bigger than that. But what about in the modern era of rock? There must be places where people make pilgrimages. Well of course there are....and here are a bunch of them.    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is it just me or has there been an uptick in the number of one-hit-wonders over the past couple of years?...think about all the hot bands who have had just one good album–or even just one good song–before they’re forgotten... In the old days, a group developed and evolved over a series of albums...three, four, five, six records, even...it was slow and look a lot of patience and a lot of fighting to keep things together, but more often than not, it paid off...look at U2...or REM...or Blur...or Depeche Mode...or Nine Inch Nails... None of these bands was what you’d called immediate, instant, hit-it-out-of-the-park successes...each group was allowed to build a career the old-fashioned way: slowly and carefully...and most importantly, they were allowed to make mistakes along the way... Oh–you know who we missed in that list of bands?...Radiohead... They started slow–really slow...they’ve made a bunch of mistakes...they’ve conducted a lot of experiments–some successful, some failures...but because they’ve stuc

Here's the thing. As a musician you can spend thousands and thousands of hours, days, weeks working to be a success. You know, make enough money to pay the bills, have a living, and make a career...provide for yourself and the family. And maybe if you work hard enough, catch the right breaks, make the right moves...you will make that happen. You'll be successful and it will all seem worth it. Other times...just when you are on the way up, about to have that big break...or maybe you already have...you end up dying.  And that sucks... But...weirdly,  in some cases you end up being up more successful in death then you were in life. You end up making far more money after you shuffled off this mortal coil then you did on it.  And that's not really fair now is it? Here's a look at some cases where death turns out to be an interesting career move. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before 1971, there really wasn’t much of a Canadian music industry…sure, there were record labels and recording studios and promoters and agents, but we didn’t have what you’d call a “first-world” industry… Canada was a backwater, a place where the big labels had branch offices…anyone who wanted to make it big had to leave the country, usually for the United States… But then came the Canadian content laws in January 1971…overnight, it became law that Canadian radio stations had to devote 30% of their playlists to Canadian artists…this created an artificial demand for this music which a lot of people screamed bloody murder about… But this demand needed to be serviced, so a modern music industry grew up around it—all the infrastructure required to have a proper domestic scene…that meant more record labels, more recording studios, more promoters, more agents… A domestic star system began to emerge…Canadians started buying more music by Canadian artists…and those artists who didn’t want to bolt for the united

If you came of age musically in Canada in the 1990s, you’ll remember that it was an extraordinary time…there was this mass embracing of homegrown music…it was part nationalism and part patriotism, but it was also something else… A vast generation of young people simultaneously said, “Canadian music is as good as anything the rest of the world has to offer and we want more of it”…and we got it… More acts were signed to the big labels and made records…radio played those records…MuchMusic ran the videos…there were tours and festivals…record stores stacked this new stuff up front…and over a few short years, a brand new star system emerged… Some of those stars are still with us…Our Lady Peace, Matthew Good, The Barenaked Ladies, Sloan …they’ve all had fruitful mult-decade careers that began in either the very late 80s or early 90s… The Tragically Hip became a juggernaut…Alanis Morissette had the biggest-selling album from female artist of all time…and let’s not forget that a couple of the “Big Shiny Tunes” com

Building and maintaining a band is a lot like building and maintaining a sports team…you struggle and wheel-and-deal and trade and sometimes steal to put together just the right lineup… And it’s not just sound and talent…it’s chemistry…leadership…stamina…all those intangible things that goes into making the whole greater than the sum of its parts… The perils are the same, too…your star quarterback goes down…that guy on the second line has tons of talent but he’s a cancer in the dressing room…the person you thought was healthy and strong turns out to have some kind of issue that’s getting worse and worse…or someone just might die on you… When everything goes pair-shaped, you have two choices: give it all up and call it a day…or you rebuild…. With a sports team, there are enough players out there that you can find a replacement…a trade, some cash, a draft pick, a free agent and you’re back in business…or maybe someone on the team steps up and unexpectedly fills that hole with talent and leadership… The sam

Being a kid of a rock star isn't the easiest life to live. The celebrity, the expectations to be like your dad or mom who's a famous rock star. Everyone watching you to make a mistake. But there are times it has its rewards too. This is a look at what it's like to be a Rock Star kid Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s just something fun about learning to play one of your favourite songs for yourself…you know, learning the lyrics, figuring out the chords and the rhythm and deconstructing all the constituent parts… Then you get deeper…you begin to appreciate how everything fits together, the artistic decisions made by songwriter made, what kind of musical skill is required, the sort of production that was employed all that…and by the time you’ve learned the song, you’ve learned a whole lot of other things, too…and you’re probably a better musician as a result…this is why learning to play other people’s music is so important… Now let’s look at it from the other side…if a song can be interpreted multiple times by many different people and it still sounds good, then that is a great song… The best compositions not only sound great when played by a full band, but also sound great when performed by one person around a campfire… And finally, there’s the fan aspect of all this…people love to hear songs done in different

For this Ongoing History bonus Podcast, we go back to the spring of 2004 to take a look at the "Was Kurt Cobain Murdered" conspiracy. These shows originally aired 10 years after the death of Cobain and looks at all the angles, all the facts, all the theories, and all the conspiracies about how Kurt dies.  And now, almost lmost 25 years from his death some people are still debating whether Kurt Cobian comitted suicide...or if he was murdered.  Lots to unpack in this 2 part series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I hope you’re ready for an interesting interview with Ash and Jay from USS…because this is another one of those occasional “in their own words” profiles where I just let the artist tell their stories in whatever fashion they choose…and if listened to part one, this talk with USS was not in anyway ordinary… When you sit down with Ash Boschultz and Jay “The Human Kebab” Parsons of USS, you end up having a conversation where you’re not sure how you arrived at this place, but there you are…so just open your mind, sit back and take it all in… It’s part two of USS: in their own words… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For this Ongoing History bonus Podcast, we go back to the spring of 2004 to take a look at the "Was Kurt Cobain Murdered" conspiracy. These shows originally aired 10 years after the death of Cobain and looks at all the angles, all the facts, all the theories, and all the conspiracies about how Kurt dies.  And now, almost lmost 25 years from his death some people are still debating whether Kurt Cobian comitted suicide...or if he was murdered.  Lots to unpack in this 2 part series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you’re a fan of a particular artist, you want to know everything you can about them…maybe you scour things like their official bios, their Wikipedia pages and maybe read through as many interviews and articles as you can… All that is fine…but what if there’s a way to get more?.... When it comes to telling the story of an artist, it is always best if you get the artist to tell it themselves…you get the unvarnished truth, told from the heart by the people who are actually making the music… That’s great in theory, but it’s awfully difficult to get everyone in one place at one time, what with touring schedules, recording commitments and life…but if there’s just two people, then it’s a little easier… With a little bit of wrangling, I managed to get Ash and Jay from USS into the studio…has their story been told before?...yes, of course…but not like this… This is USS in their own words, part 1… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I love the smell and feel of recording studios…if you’ve been inside a proper one, you’ll know what i mean… The air is kept clean and dust-free to protect the equipment…the a/c is usually cranked up to offset the heat generated by the electronics…there’s a slight whiff of ozone created by all the electrical circuits…and it’s usually very, very quiet…loads of isolation and baffling and sound-proofing… To me, a recording studio is the musical equivalent of an operating theatre; a place that’s dedicated to one thing and one thing only…and what goes on within the walls is deadly serious… Okay, I’m not saying that recording a song is the same as a heart transplant or something, but there is the same sort of vibe… There used to be dozens and dozens of these places around the planet…people would travel thousands of kilometers to work there because they were thought to be magical in some way… But that’s when you needed a full-equipped recording studio to make a record…today, you can do a pretty good job with a l

I used to be a big fan of “King of the Hill”…Hank Hill would often look at his son Bobby and say…  “that boy ain’t right” I know how he feels…you know when you encounter someone and there’s something off about them?...they’re not malevolent or evil in any way…they’re not a danger to themselves or anyone else…they’re just different… They look at the world in ways you wouldn’t think to—which is kinda cool in a lot of ways… but at the same time it might be a bit—well, maybe “unnerving” is too strong…but at the same time, you’re not really sure what’s going on or how you should react… This happens a lot with music…you encounter artist who has a complete unexpected attitude to towards the universe…this is to be expected…art can comes from a strange, uncharted place in the soul…and since all souls are different, you’d expect that some weird will leak out from some of the weirder souls… And because alt-rock has a history of being open to different forms of expression, some of these souls have found homes in thi

Streaming is a very cool way to access tens of millions of songs with a few pokes on your phone…the idea of being able to listen to virtually any song from any era of human history with such ease is something akin to magic… The downside of streaming is that it doesn’t provide any context to what we’re hearing…a continuous stream of music tells us nothing about the artist or the song…it’s just music, standing alone with nothing to anchor it to anything… It was different in the old days…if you bought an album, dammit, that was an investment…you paid money for it, which created a fiscal relationship with the artist…that meant you were more likely to stick with an album and get deeper into the artist and the songs…otherwise, you had this nagging feeling you had wasted your money… Context means so much to the enjoyment of music—which is probably a reason you’re listening to me right now…you want more than the notes that make up a song… Yeah, sometimes a song is just a song…you know, it’s got a good beat, you c

It's another bonus episode and this one by request. Someone asked recently: "Have you ever done a show about alt-rocks really out-there people? I don't mean that they've done terrible things...just...they have their challenges?"Why yes we have...about 12 years ago in fact. This is Alt-Rocks Craziest People. Songs used in this episode: Iggy Pop - Real Wild Child David Bowie - Alladin Sane Joy Division - She's Lost Control Killing Joke - Love Like Blood The Verve - The Drugs Don't Work Nivana - On A Plain Courtney Love - Mono The Vines - Highly Evolved The Libertines - Up The Bracket Pre) Thing - Faded Love   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When we started posting "bonus" epiosodes of the Ongoing History, lots of people began requesting topics...wondering if we had ever covered them. With 800+ shows in the vault, there is a good chance that we have. One request came to us from a drummer who asked "I'm sure you've done shows about singers and guitarists...but what about drummers? I play the drums and often am the butt of jokes because...well I play the drums". Well...good thing you asked becasue in May of 2004 we paid homage to the Drummer. And here it is...in Podcast form. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every song comes from some sort of story. Sometimes it’s just the story of a feeling…good or bad…or maybe it’s just a way of getting a point of view across. Other songs are actual stories. They have a narrative, characters, drama, beginning, middle and end. But what if you’re a composer and you have a story that is too long….too complex to fit in the standard four minute song. Well then maybe you need to think about breaking it out to its constituent parts and telling the story across multiple songs. You do this over enough songs and you create a concept album. A record where a story or a variety of themes tie everything together front to back and back to front. Your four-minute short story has turned into an hour-long novel. This is part 2 of the history of the concept album in alt-rock. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's not easy making a living as a rock band in Canada... This is afterall the second largest country in the world. And when you consider that the Trans-Canada Highway is over 7600 kilometers long, and there is nearly 10 million square kilomters of land spead out over 6 time zones, well...it's a little daunting to say the least.  And even though 77% of Canada's 36 million people live in big cities, bands still have to work really really hard to reach everyone.   It's even harder when you factor in that we live right next door to the largest exporter of pop-culture in the universe.  Geography has chewed up the domestic careers of countless bands...but some have it figured out. They've got the routine and fanbase all figured out. They may not be rich, but they are making a solid and respectable living as rock stars in Canada. Sloan is one of those bands. They've been around since 1991and have become somewhat of a Canadian institution.  This is Sloan in Their Own Words...Part 2. Learn more about your ad ch

There are many ways to tell a story...a book, a movie, at TV, a comic book. You also use music of course; a ballad is a story set to music,  a lot of music videos tell a story. Operas and ballet are more grand.  The other musical option is the concept album. These are records where all the songs, all  the imagery, is somehow tied togethor by some sort of unifying theme or thesis. The music, the lyrics and sometimes even the artwork come togehtor to tell a story.  These were big in the '60's and 70's but they were seen as old rock and needed to be expunged from popular culture.  But then a funny thing happened. They started to make a comeback...the stigma vanished, and they even found a place in Alt-Rock. Here...let me show you. Songs in this episode: Green Day - American Idiot, David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust, Kraftwerk - Computer Love, Husker Du - Pink Turns to Blue, Nine Inch Nails - Hurt, Smashing Pumpkins - Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Weezer - No Other One, Tool - Stinkfist, Marilyn Manson -