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Ongoing History of New Music

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Curiouscast

Ongoing History of New Music looks at things from the alt-rock universe to hip hop, from artist profiles to various thematic explorations. It is Canada’s most well known music documentary hosted by the legendary Alan Cross. Whatever the episode, you’re definitely going to learn something that you might not find anywhere else. Trust us on this.

#452

Stupid History: The Music Version 1

For some people, history is dry and boring…it’s all dates and wars and dusty facts about things that don’t have anything to do with life today…and yes, that can be true…but history also helps us understand why things are the way they are…study the past, understand the present, and maybe predict the future—at least to some extent. But history can also be stupid…and when it is, it can be fun to learn about these things…and in addition to all the dates and wars and famous people, i think we need to stupid history’s stupid bits…i’m calling this instalment “stupid history: the music version”. These are some of the dumbest stories from music history that i believe should be taught alongside the serious stuff…i think it adds colour and understanding—and it shows that history’s heroes are as dumb and weird as everyone else. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit [megaphone.fm/adchoices] (https://megaphone.fm/adchoices) ... Read more

16 Oct 2024

40 MINS

40:52

16 Oct 2024

#451

Survey Says: Useful and Odd Music Surveys and Polls

By the time this episode is over, you will learn things about your fellow music fans (and music in general) that you can use to astound your friends…and when they say “go on, that’s not true,” you can simply point them to the research. Some are the result of serious, empyreal scientific work at universities and labs…other were conducted by professional pollsters and survey-takers…and then there’s the category of survey where a piece of research is really just a masquerade for an advertisement. Everything you’re about to hear that is the result of a legitimate study—or at least something pretending to be. I call this episode..."Survey Says: Useful and Odd Music Surveys and Polls". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit [megaphone.fm/adchoices] (https://megaphone.fm/adchoices) ... Read more

09 Oct 2024

39 MINS

39:02

09 Oct 2024

#450

Oasis at War Part 2 - Revisited

After years and years or rumour and speculation, we now have an Oasis reunion. The brother Gallagher have agreed to reunite…and possibly burry the hatchet. This for a series of shows next summer in the UK, Ireland, Canada, the USA, Mexico, and beyond. A lot of this coincides nicely with the anniversaries of their first two albums….1994’s Definitely Maybe, and What’s the Story Morning Glory from 1995. We really don’t know how we arrived here with a reunion, I mean…this is Noel and Liam after all…but anyway, it's here...it's happening. So we thought why not go back into the podcast vault and re-release a two part series we call “Oasis at War”. It’s a look at one of the most intense sibling rivalries in music…and boy…there is a lot to go through. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit [megaphone.fm/adchoices] (https://megaphone.fm/adchoices) ... Read more

06 Oct 2024

27 MINS

27:36

06 Oct 2024

#449

The Last Moments of - Part 3

We don’t like to think about our favourite musicians as being mortal…because let’s face it, we believe that they do extraordinary things and make us feel in ways we otherwise wouldn’t. Rock stars are special, superhuman, because they can do what we can’t and live a lifestyle that we can only dream about. Yet they are just as human as you and, fallible to temptations, in danger of accidents, and vulnerable to all the failings that may plague the body and brain. When one of our favourites die, it’s like a little bit of us goes with them…in most cases, we’ve never met these people…we might have never seen them in the flesh…but because what they do speaks to us in only the way music can, it hurts when they’re gone. And in a weird way, it’s instructive to look at how they died…these deaths can be cautionary tales that we as fans can learn from—you know, “hey, i’m not gonna let that happen to me!”. Their deaths may provide retroactive insight into the music they made—where in their hearts it came from—so we understand them better as both artists and humans…when they’re gone, we may appreciate their music even more…you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone, right. This is another installment of “the last moments of”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit [megaphone.fm/adchoices] (https://megaphone.fm/adchoices) ... Read more

02 Oct 2024

40 MINS

40:51

02 Oct 2024

#448

Oasis at War Part 1 - Revisited

After years and years or rumour and speculation, we now have an Oasis reunion. The brother Gallagher have agreed to reunite…and possibly burry the hatchet. This for a series of shows next summer in the UK, Ireland and beyond. A lot of this coincides nicely with the anniversaries of their first two albums….1994’s Definitely Maybe, and What’s the Story Morning Glory from 1995. We really don’t know how we arrived here with a reunion, I mean…this is Noel and Liam after all…but anyway, it's here...it's happening. So we thought why not go back into the podcast vault and re-release a two part series we call “Oasis at War”. It’s a look at one of the most intense sibling rivalries in music…and boy…there is a lot to go through. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit [megaphone.fm/adchoices] (https://megaphone.fm/adchoices) ... Read more

29 Sep 2024

26 MINS

26:34

29 Sep 2024

#447

Connections 3

It may not seem like it, but everything in this universe is connected in all kinds of unseen ways. Humans have always known that chaos is a capricious and fickle thing, something that can show up when you least expect it…i find this aspect of history fascinating. There’s the butterfly effect, the concept that a butterfly flapping its wings in China will set off a complex domino effect in the atmosphere that somehow results in a low-pressure wave blasting from Africa across the Atlantic causing a hurricane in the Caribbean. That doesn’t really happen…it was a metaphor created by a meteorologist and mathematician named Edward Norton Lorenz in 1963 when he discovered that a miniscule change in atmospheric conditions ---he ascribed a value as tiny as 0.000127—could make an enormous difference down the road …this shows why it’s so hard to forecast the weather…a little difference can add complexity and instability to a system. Remember that “treehouse of horror” episode from “The Simpsons” where homer accidentally turns a toaster into a time machine? ...he travels into the past where he manages to screw up the future multiple times by making the tiniest mistake. This is based on a 1952 short story by Ray Bradbury entitled “A Sound of Thunder” …a man named Eckels goes back in time and kills a dinosaur…when it returns to the present, everything is different. We hear about “black swan” events, a random thing that no one expects or could have predicted, yet it happens…and suddenly, everything changes. Covid-19 was an example of that…whatever spawned the virus—bats, infected animals in a wet market, a lab leak—started as something very, very small but ended up changing the lives of virtually everyone on the planet. We can also apply this sort of investigation to the world of music…if you pick a topic or thing, you can often trace it back to something that illustrates the wonderful and awful randomness of the universe. This is another episode that I call “connections”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit [megaphone.fm/adchoices] (https://megaphone.fm/adchoices) ... Read more

25 Sep 2024

46 MINS

46:35

25 Sep 2024

#446

Lostwave

Tell me if this sounds familiar…you’re sitting around with a bunch of friends talking about music when someone says “what’s that song with the thing at the beginning and the boom-boom sound effects?....it’s got that guitar—or maybe it it’s not… you know the one!”…and then the friend gets frustrated when he gets a bunch of blank stares. If you’ve ever worked in a record store, you know the stare because you’ve done it with the customer who wants you to identify the artist, song, and album from her little acapella performance…and then she gets mad when you come up blank. Same thing happens with me and with all people who work in radio….a couple of times a week, I’ll get an email like this: “i’m hoping you can help me find a song”…uh-oh…“I think it’s from the 80s but maybe not…there are some beats on a bassline with a melody that goes “oooooooeeeooo” or something…the video has a bunch of dancers in it…do you the song?”…uh, no…i don’t. Some attach audio files of them plunking out notes on an instrument—and there have been at least a couple of people whistling. But here’s the weird thing…sometimes—just enough times—you actually get it right…it’s like a tiny explosion in your head as your personal database throws up the correct answer…when that happens, it feels so good!...you solved a mystery and made someone happy in the process…i love that feeling. Things have changed in this century, of course…tracking down a mysterious song is easier than ever thanks to listening apps like Shazam and Soundhound…or you can enter some lyrics into a site like lyricfind.com. Even throwing a bunch of random words into the google search bar can get you started…I’ve found crowdsourcing a song identification problem through certain websites (reddit, for example) can sometimes be helpful. But even with all this technology and the ability to tap into the minds of music fans around the planet, some songs just don’t want to the identified…and this has become a serious game for music fans… “challenge accepted,” as they say. These mysterious songs that are missing from the musical record are part of a category that’s been dubbed “Lostwave”…and this is their story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit [megaphone.fm/adchoices] (https://megaphone.fm/adchoices) ... Read more

18 Sep 2024

43 MINS

43:22

18 Sep 2024

#445

Twee Pop: A History

There’s a scene in the 2000 movie “High Fidelity” that introduced a lot of people to the name Belle and Sebastian. Rob, the owner of a record store, and his employee, Dick, are enjoying a new arrival. Then Barry, another employee played by Jack Black, bursts through the door. This goes on for a while before Rob has enough and rips the cassette out of the machine. I have a couple of issues with that scene…first, I have a hard time believing that an obnoxious snobby indie record store clerk would love “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves that much…way too commercial, way too overplayed. Second, there is nothing wrong with Belle and Sebastian—although I will admit they’re not for everyone. They are part of a genre called “Twee Pop”…you may never have heard the term before, but its influence is everywhere these days…and it has a long history when it comes to alt-rock and indie rock…it’s certainly something we should take a look at…so let’s do that, shall we? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit [megaphone.fm/adchoices] (https://megaphone.fm/adchoices) ... Read more

11 Sep 2024

31 MINS

31:48

11 Sep 2024

#444

A History of Moshing

I do not dance…I’m too awkward and too self-aware of my awkwardness…I know we’re all supposed to dance like no one is looking, but when it comes to me, people will look, point, and judge… My wife realizes this…since we were married decades okay, she’s had to be content with the fact that she got that dance at the wedding and that’s pretty much it…and that’s because she’s not into dancing, either… I can feel the judgment stop it… This doesn’t mean that music doesn’t move me…I’ve got that involuntary need to move when the music is great…and I don’t mean tapping a toe or nodding my head, although that’s where it starts… Put it this way: I’ve done my time in the pit…I’ve been elbowed, kneed, kicked, head-butted, burn with cigarettes and joints, and doused with water (at least I hope it was water)…no problem because that’s all part of the pit experience…the only thing I haven’t done is stage dove or crowd-surfed…I’m not sure why… But here’s a question: why is there a pit in the first place?...who came up with this idea?...how did it spread?...and is it the same everywhere?... These are important anthropological questions…we’re deal with a type of human behavior that’s seen all over the world…I think we need to study this…here a whole hour on the history of moshing… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit [megaphone.fm/adchoices] (https://megaphone.fm/adchoices) ... Read more

04 Sep 2024

34 MINS

34:03

04 Sep 2024

#443

Hidden Figures

I’ve always been something of a nut when it comes to the space program…but even though I’ve read all the books, seen all the documentaries, and watched all the movies, I was still surprised to learn something new with the movie “Hidden Figures”… This was a 2016 film based on a book of the same name…it told the true story about black female mathematicians who worked at nasa during the hottest period of the space race… They were “computers” in the original sense of the word: people who computer things complex things like flight trajectories, re-entry methods, and landing coordinates…they were even assigned to check and correct the calculations spit out by NASA’s big ibm mainframes…their work was essential to the American space effort… But this being the 60s, these women were segregated away from the other scientists, meaning that their work was largely forgotten until the movie and book came out… This got me thinking…are there any forgotten figures in music?...I’m talking about women who did awesome and important things but have largely been ignored by the traditional history of rock?...I’m talking about people beyond Deborah Harry, Janis Joplin, Stevie Nicks, Chrissie Hynde, and Courtney Love… Well, yes…yes, there was…and we need to know about them…let’s do that now… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit [megaphone.fm/adchoices] (https://megaphone.fm/adchoices) ... Read more

28 Aug 2024

30 MINS

30:37

28 Aug 2024

#442

A Brief History of Alt Psychedelic Rock

Here’s one of the most misunderstood and misused words in the English language: “psychedelic” … The word first came into use in 1956 when a psychiatrist named Humphrey Osmond was studying a new class of pharmaceuticals that had potential when it came to treating certain mental disorders… A chemical known as lysergic acid diethylamide—LSD, for short—had been extracted by a Swiss scientist named Albert Hoffman from a fungus called “ergot”…from 1943 on, medical professionals tried to figure out what it could be used for…it was even marketed commercially for a while under the brand name “delysid”… Then the CIA got involved, thinking that LSD could be used for things like interrogation, chemical warfare and mind control…but that’s a whole other story... Because the chemical resulted in people entering an altered state of perception, some started using it recreationally… artists discovered its properties and started taking acid trip, looking for inspiration and new creative roads… Then other psychedelics went mainstream, including mescaline (which comes from the peyote plant) and psylocybin (which you get from certain mushrooms) before just about all of these drugs were made illegal… Meanwhile, “psychedelic”—which means “soul-revealing” in Greek—became an adjective…it describes anything that could be described as mind expanding, anything that alters the way we perceive reality… Naturally, this quickly extended to music…psych became a thing in the 60s—that sound, feel, vibe, attitude continues today with alt-rock… This is a quick history of psych in the world of alternative music… Songs used in this episode: 1--Kula Skaker - Tattva 2--The Soft Boys - Give It To The Soft Boys 3--Teardrop Explodes - Sleeping Gas 4--Echo and the Bunnymen - Bring on the Dancing Horses 5--Siousxie and the Banshees - Dear Prudence 6--Spaceman 3 - Revolution 7--The Bangles - Hero Takes A Fall 8--My Bloody Valentine - Soon 9--The Verve - Slide Away 10-Tame Impala - Elephant Learn more about your ad choices. Visit [megaphone.fm/adchoices] (https://megaphone.fm/adchoices) ... Read more

21 Aug 2024

28 MINS

28:30

21 Aug 2024

#441

The History of the Record Store

Before we begin, I am very aware that there are people listening to this program who have never, ever set foot in a record store…they came of age musical after the Internet changed everything about how we hear about, acquire, and consume music… But remember this: for over a hundred years, the only way you could hear music on-demand was to own it…you had to purchase a piece of plastic for x dollars and for that price, you could listen to that music an infinite number of times for no additional charge… You made not just an emotional investment in that music, but a financial one as well…and dammit, you were going to make sure you listened to that piece of plastic until you wrung out a possible bit of enjoyment you could from it…otherwise, you’d have to come to terms with the fact that you wasted your money… There was another aspect to this emotional investment, too…in order to acquire this music, you had to leave your home, find your way to a record store, and search through all the shelves hoping to find something…if you were looking for something specific and it wasn’t in stock, you had to special-order it, which was a whole new level of emotional investment… And while you were at the record store, you interacted with records that you didn’t know about…just flipping through the racks looking at albums was an education in itself…maybe you’d go with a couple of friends, fan out across the store and then compare finds… Maybe you’d meet a stranger and strike up a conversation…and if you were a regular, it’s possible that the person behind the counter became a trusted source for recommendations…or maybe you’d go see an artist play live or for some kind of autograph session… Record stores are still with us, but there are fewer and fewer of them—certainly way less than the glory days of music shopping from the 60s through to the late 90s…and a lot of legendary stores and chains have disappeared forever… But while it lasted, it was pretty amazing…this is the story of the record store… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit [megaphone.fm/adchoices] (https://megaphone.fm/adchoices) ... Read more

14 Aug 2024

37 MINS

37:09

14 Aug 2024

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