Ongoing History Of New Music

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 n

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

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

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... L

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 Ada

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 expl

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

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

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