Ongoing History Of New Music

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 have

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

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 wit

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

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

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 re

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

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 h

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

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 atti

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

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

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

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 r

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 s

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

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

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

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, reall

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