This week we go back into the Ongoing history vault from 2008 and the first of two parts on world records. Chances are you have at least some kind of talent. Maybe it's not something very useful, but at least it's something that you can do that no one else can. My mom used to say that everyone is good at something or at the very least, known for something that no one else is. For example, I grew up with a kid who could dislocate his thumbs at will. It was great for freaking out substitute teache...
Aug 16, 2023•27 min•Ep 305•Transcript available on Metacast If you're a fan of a particular artist, you want as much as you can get from that artist, you know, the albums, the singles, the t-shirts, all the downloads and all the swag and that's great when your favourite group releases an album. But with some bands going 234 or even more years between records, things get kind of dry. Now in the olden days, that was too bad distribution systems being what they were access to everything a band did was pretty much impossible. The access was tightly, tightly ...
Aug 09, 2023•25 min•Ep 304•Transcript available on Metacast There’s a fine line between “wonderful” and “weird”...things that are “wonderful” tend to inspire you with awe...you feel warmth and light and awe and admiration...and you may suddenly find yourself believing in goodness and a higher power... I saw a total solar eclipse once...that’s exactly how I felt...maybe you’ve had a similar experience... But just a few centimeters from “wonderful” is how you feel when you run across something that’s genuinely “weird”...you might still feel awed—but you mi...
Aug 02, 2023•29 min•Ep 303•Transcript available on Metacast Money is a weird thing...when you don’t have it, it’s all you can think about...when you do have it, it’s the last thing on your mind... It’s gotta be especially weird for successful musicians...99.9% of all rock performers come from very modest backgrounds...for years, they make sacrifices for their art, hoping and praying that one day, they won’t have to worry about where their next meal comes from or how they’re gonna manage to pay the rent.... But 99.99% of professional musicians will never ...
Jul 26, 2023•29 min•Ep 302•Transcript available on Metacast The standard musical diet consists of three things: sex, drugs and rock’n’roll....all three of these stapes affect the same areas of the brain... We’ve talked about this before, but here’s a quick refresher course in neuroscience... In your head, you have the amygdala, the cerebellum and the nucleus accumbens...they’re involved in the process of creating and regulating dopamine, which is the hormone that makes you feel good... These regions analyze what’s going on when you have an orgasm, take c...
Jul 19, 2023•26 min•Ep 301•Transcript available on Metacast It is a fact of human nature that those given the power to make rules that govern the behavior the rest of us will devote their lives to making and enforcing those rules... Most of the time, that’s a good thing...if you murder someone in cold blood and you’re caught, you’ll face justice...robbery is illegal...and so is owning a pig in France and calling it “napoleon”... No, seriously...it’s against the law to name your pig “napoleon” if you live in France...in California, women may not operate a...
Jul 12, 2023•29 min•Ep 300•Transcript available on Metacast I think we take music for granted...as much as we love it; we also treat it like something disposable... And I don’t if we can be blamed for it...I mean, there’s just so much music out there...there’s a never-ending supply... We hear a song...we evaluate it–sometimes in less than 3 seconds–and then we either accept or reject the song...and if we accept it, we’ll listen to it only until something better comes along... We seldom stop to think about all the effort–the time, the inspiration, the emo...
Jul 05, 2023•28 min•Ep 299•Transcript available on Metacast Some things just go together naturally... A nice sauterne is a fine companion to foie gras that is served with fruit compote...or, if that’s too rich, strawberry jam works well in a sandwich with peanut butter... And, as even the most casual observer knows that rock music often comes with side order of drugs... In case you haven’t noticed, rock and drugs often have some kind of symbiotic relationship... I mean, the self-appointed moralists who want to sanitize life for the rest of us kinda have ...
Jun 28, 2023•31 min•Ep 298•Transcript available on Metacast From the outside, being in a famous touring rock band seems like a glamourous thing...you travel the world, playing for thousands of adoring fans night after night with your gang of buddies... Oh, the gloriousness of it all...the private jets!...the media exposure!...the excitement!...the perks!...the sites!...the sex!...the drugs!...your every whim catered to by people whose job is to, well, cater to your every whim... And that really is the reality–for maybe the top 1/10 of one per cent of gro...
Jun 21, 2023•30 min•Ep 297•Transcript available on Metacast This historical, true crime podcast hosted by Kru Williams from History Television's hit original series Deadman’s Curse: The Legend of the Lost Gold investigates the curse and legend surrounding the lost gold mine of Pitt Lake. On their quest they're joined by members of the Stó:lō and Katzie First Nations, historians and cultural experts of diverse backgrounds, as they sort fact from fiction and give Slumach a voice from the other side of the veil. You'll hear about how an Indigenous prospecto...
Jun 17, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you’re listening to this show, you are a music fan...any arguments?...probably not... “fan” is short for “fanatic”–a person who is extremely passionate and enthusiastic about something...could be sports, could be movies, could be music...and fans tend to be reasonably uncritical about the objects of their affection... But all “fanaticism”–and we’re using the proper dictionary terms here–is not the same...we can go from being a casual fan of something to being a devotee...but then “fan” gives ...
Jun 14, 2023•29 min•Ep 296•Transcript available on Metacast There’s an old saying that goes “he who dies with the least regrets wins”... Good words to live by because by the time we shuffle off this mortal coil, all of us are going to have done and said things that we wish we hadn’t...and chances are, we hope that no one finds out about this stuff... It’s the skeletons in the closet–pieces of our past that we try not to show (or even try to hide) from other people... But in the era of tabloid celebrity, paparazzi, Facebook, MySpace, twitter, Wikipedia, b...
Jun 07, 2023•26 min•Ep 295•Transcript available on Metacast I have a fascination with the strange...what seems ordinary at first glance is–well, isn’t ordinary at all.... Once you get in the habit of looking past the obvious, the universe opens up in some interesting, unexpected and really cool ways... For example, if you’re ever in Albania and you agree with what someone says, shake your head from side-to-side...if you disagree, nod...in other words, do the opposite to what you would do at home...that’s just the way it is in Albania... Here’s another......
May 31, 2023•32 min•Ep 294•Transcript available on Metacast It’s always a shock when we hear that a rock star has died...but when the news about Chris Cornell came out on May 18, 2017, it was extra-jarring... The overall impression was that he was a guy who had it good...he’d been a central fixture of the grunge era as the front man of Soundgarden...there was an totally unexpected hit with the Temple of the Dog project...then a solid three-album run with Audioslave... His solo recordings were hit-and-miss, but given everything else he’d done, fans gave h...
May 24, 2023•26 min•Ep 293•Transcript available on Metacast This universe is very weird...so weird, in fact, that we often don’t question its weirdness even though it’s right in front of us...we’re completely caught up in it... For example, when someone takes a group picture, there’s always that person that demands that everyone “say cheese”....that’s a way to get everyone to smile...you can’t help but smile when you say “cheese”. No one is really sure who was first to employ the “cheese” trick for photography... In the early days of the camera, it was c...
May 17, 2023•38 min•Ep 292•Transcript available on Metacast Times are good for vinyl...the format was all but dead until some desperate record store owners invented “record store day” in 2008...since then, we’ve seen double-digit increases in vinyl sales year after year after year... Things are so good that in several countries, the revenue brought in by selling vinyl is greater than the revenue generated by compact disc sales...we haven’t seen anything like this since the late 80s... What’s driving the boom?...many things, from audio quality to the abil...
May 10, 2023•31 min•Ep 291•Transcript available on Metacast If you’re going to commit to being in a band, you have to prepared to deal with the bad as well as the good... The good stuff can include fame, money, perks, and the ability to make a living by playing music...enviable stuff... But then there’s the bad stuff...problems with your record label...lineup changes...dealing with the fickle tastes of the public...writer’s block...internal struggles...management hassles...I guess we can add pandemic lockdowns, too... I could go on, but you get the point...
May 03, 2023•39 min•Ep 290•Transcript available on Metacast Being in a band is hard...keeping a band together is harder still...and if a band can keep it together for more longer than a decade, they should get some kind of medal... Let’s give props to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, still going since their establishment in 1983...Metallica has been with us since 1981...both new order and Depeche Mode go back to 1980... The current lineup of U2 has been the same since that day in March 1978 when they changed their name from “The Hype”...as they were doing thei...
Apr 26, 2023•40 min•Ep 289•Transcript available on Metacast There is a new gold rush going on right now—but this one is different...it has nothing to do with minerals or oil or any other traditional commodity...it’s not what we’ve seen with crypto currency...it may have to do with stock markets, but not always...and yet it’s a form of investment, one that should continue to pay off for decades to come... I’m talking about the rush to buy up song catalogues, the rights to material created by some of the biggest artists on the planet...you’ve probably hear...
Apr 19, 2023•41 min•Ep 288•Transcript available on Metacast My main interest with skateboarding is the music that’s evolved along with it...in fact, there’s a whole subgenre of alt-rock built on skateboarding culture....and there are plenty of legendary rock acts that found their first fans among the skate crowd... This music goes back a lot farther than you might expect, too...i think it’s time that we gave skate punk its due... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Apr 12, 2023•29 min•Ep 287•Transcript available on Metacast I vividly remember my first encounter with Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails...it was April 17, 1990, at the old RPM club in Toronto... Nine Inch Nails were opening for Goth God Peter Murphy and frankly, no one cared... I was there with a bunch of people chatting at the bar while this noisy band blitzed their way through the first four songs of their set...and then came song number five...it was an insanely heavy version of the Queen song, “Get Down Make Love” from their 1977 album, “News of the ...
Apr 05, 2023•40 min•Ep 286•Transcript available on Metacast This is part 2 of our look at true stories of plagiarism and unfortunate sonic coincidences in the world of Alt-Rock Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mar 29, 2023•29 min•Ep 285•Transcript available on Metacast Let me ask you this...how many times have you heard a song and said "Hey that song sounds just like something I heard last month. That guitar riff is really familiar....don't they realize those chords were used in a song years ago?!?!?!" This sort of thing happens all the time...in fact it happens more than most people realize. Sometimes quiet deals are worked out behind the scenes and the public never knows, other times things get ugly.... These are true stories of plagiarism and unfortunate so...
Mar 22, 2023•26 min•Ep 284•Transcript available on Metacast We’ve all been there...tickets for a concert you really, really want to see are set to go on sale at exactly 10am...you’re on the Ticketmaster site as the clock ticks toward the appointed time... 9:59:57...9:59:58...9:59:59...ten o’clock!...show time... Enter...nothing...refresh refresh refresh the browser...nothing...you try mashing the f5 button a bunch times...no luck....you hit control-r a couple of times...still nothing...but then, one last time and you’re in!...except you’re not...at 10:01...
Mar 15, 2023•50 min•Ep 283•Transcript available on Metacast Let’s define a “concert ticket”...it is a contract between you, an act, a promoter, and a venue that allows you admission to specific event at a stated time and place...seems simple enough...let’s continue... A concert ticket can cost money that goes to covering costs and making a profit for those staging the concert...or in some cases, it can be free and is used mainly for tracking attendance... Fair enough...a concert ticket can be pre-printed on card stock...it can be printed by a machine whe...
Mar 08, 2023•39 min•Ep 282•Transcript available on Metacast Once upon a time, it was illegal—criminal—to be another other than heterosexual...any hint that you may be something other than straight could get you into all sorts of trouble—and career suicide was the least of your worries... In 1895, the famous English playwright, Oscar Wilde, was put on trial for homosexual practices...he was found guilty and sentenced to two years in jail...he never recovered from the ordeal and died soon after his release... In 1959, Liberace, the famous pianist, sued the...
Mar 01, 2023•31 min•Ep 280•Transcript available on Metacast I vividly remember sitting down to write the first-ever episode of “The Ongoing History of New Music”...I was in my living room with a blank yellow note pad...and I was terrified... To be brutally honest, I did not want this gig...but the powers-that-be decreed that this was my new job...if didn’t want to do it, that would have been cool...I was told I’d receive a manila envelope containing a modest severance package... That wouldn’t work...I’d just gotten married and I’d just bought a house wit...
Feb 28, 2023•22 min•Ep 281•Transcript available on Metacast A couple of years back, I did an episode called “The Diversity Show”...it ran in February as part of Black History Month...the goal was to salute the contributions of people of African descent to the world of rock... It was quite the list...Jimi Hendrix...we had to talk about Jimi, one of the greatest guitarists of all time...then there was Death, a criminally overlooked band from Detroit called Death who were about 20 years ahead of their time... We talked about Bad Brains, the great hardcore b...
Feb 22, 2023•26 min•Ep 279•Transcript available on Metacast At the dawn of the 21st century, vinyl was dead, dead, dead...we were all going digital and there was no point in keeping this ancient format...vinyl records were dusty, scratchy, and noisy...they took up too much storage space...they warped and got water damaged... But the biggest knock against vinyl was that it wasn’t portable...MP3s were a brand-new thing back then and the idea of being able to carry around a thousand songs on a device that could fit in your pocket was pretty sexy... While vi...
Feb 15, 2023•35 min•Ep 279•Transcript available on Metacast Like Homer Simpson, I love my TV...without my local, network, cable, on-demand, and streaming shows none of us would have made it through the pandemic... The downside is that in order to remain distracted and entertainment, I became over-subscribed...mixed with my perpetual fear of missing out, I’ve ended up paying for more cable channels than I need and subscribing to channels I don’t even watch... I’m just too lazy to go through my credit card statements, find the offending charges, and then g...
Feb 08, 2023•38 min•Ep 278•Transcript available on Metacast 
