Ongoing History of New Music
433 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 days ago - ★★★★★ - 491 ratingsOngoing 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.
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Episodes
1994
April 24, 2024 04:00 - 30 minutesThe 1990s was a golden era for Gen X music fans…classic and heritage artists were still a thing, but it was clear that a new generation of rock artists was in control and was releasing music that captured the hopes, dreams, wishes, anger, and aggression of young people…we hadn’t seen that kind of thing since the 70s during the punk, post-punk, and new wave times…and for a little while, pop was not dominant…it was a time for rock-with-a-capital-R… Things really got into gear in 1991…momentum ...
A History of Anonymous Bands
April 17, 2024 04:00 - 35 minutesUsually, the whole idea of being famous is to be, well, famous…you’re known by everyone…your face is everywhere…you’re a celebrity…and you get invited to the best parties, you get endorsements, you get free stuff… Sure, there’s a trade-off…your right to privacy is greatly diminished…your every move is scrutinized…it might become harder to maintain meaningful relationships…and then there’s the constant pressure to live up to this thing you’ve become…this is emotionally draining… After a while,...
Uncharted: The Ever-Popular Kurt-Cobain-Was-Murdered Conspiracy
April 10, 2024 05:00 - 55 minutesWhen something bad happens, we want to know why…the weirder and badder the event, the more we need to know… It can’t possibly be random…someone needs to be responsible and held accountable…someone needs to be blamed…and there had better not be any loose ends… Certain segments of the population have always been suspicious of the official story…forget the simplest of most logical explanation…these awful events or phenomenon’s are the work of some kind of secret cabal or organization pulling the...
Connections 2
April 10, 2024 04:00 - 33 minutesHistorians love to investigate causes and effects…it’s possible for a teeny-tiny seemingly inconsequential thing to set off a cascading series of events…and before you know it, the universe has changed forever… Let me give you an example…a bunch of inept anarchists in Sarajevo were out to make a statement about the liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina under occupation of the Austro-Hungarian empire… When the Archduke Franz Ferdinand visited Sarajevo on June 28, 1914…two guys were set to toss ...
Lo-Fi: A History
April 03, 2024 04:00 - 31 minutesFor the first 60 years of the recorded music industry, things sounded awful…the quality of the recordings people had to put up with were terrible…the old 78 rpm records played on gramophones were no match when it came to hearing music live…we just didn’t have the technology to capture audio so that when we listened back, it sounded real… That began to change in the late 1940s with the introduction of vinyl records: the 33 1/3 rpm vinyl album and the 7-inch 45 rpm single…it changed further wit...
Introducing... Crime Beat | Out of the dark
March 30, 2024 04:00 - 38 minutesIn the summer of 2006, a young Calgary woman was on top of the world. She had a supportive family, amazing friends and a great job. But life as she knew it came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the night on August 6, 2006. In this episode, Global News senior crime reporter Nancy Hixt shares details of a violent attack- a story that’s every woman’s worst fear. www.calgarycrimestoppers.org - reference case # 06274598 https://newsroom.calgary.ca/sexual-assault-case-from-2006-has-new-lead/ Cont...
Songs Based On Real Events
March 27, 2024 13:13 - 26 minutesStreaming 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 ...
Alexisonfire: In Their Own Words
March 20, 2024 04:00 - 52 minutesA band is like a plant…stay with me on this…like a plant, a band grows from seeds to maturity, bursts for with new seeds and then eventually withers and dies…it’s the cycle of life, you know?... But like plants (or animals or any other living thing), the lifespan of bands varies greatly…you could last as long as rehearsal—kinda like, what, a dandelion?…or you might find yourself on some kind of 50-year-anniversary tour—the equivalent of a bristlecone pine tree that can live as long as 5,000 y...
Rock Explainer 4
March 13, 2024 04:00 - 35 minutesA boy cannot become a man in the Satere-Mawe tribe of the Amazon Rain Forest until he can stand being stung by a swarm of Bullet ants…they’re called that because it’s said their sting is as painful as being hit by an actual bullet…if the kid can handle it without shedding a single tear, then he is officially a man…I can’t explain it…and I’ll bet that no one in this tribe can, either…it’s just always been their thing, something that has always been done… Let’s try something more modern…have yo...
The History and Future of AI in Music
March 06, 2024 05:00 - 43 minutesThe biggest tech story of recent years has been the rise of artificial intelligence…the subject of ai is everywhere… it’s been “AI this” and “AI that”… The Wikipedia article on ChatGPT, the company that really got things rolling in this area, was the most popular Wikipedia article in all of 2023…50 million visits… That made it more popular than even Christian Ronaldo, the world’s most famous athlete…that’s more than “Barbie” or “Oppenheimer” put together… This tech is being adopted everywhere...
Another Look At Bootlegging: Part 2
February 28, 2024 05:00 - 37 minutesOnce upon a time, I was deep into collecting bootleg recordings of my favourite bands…and this obsession came from a really good place…at least I thought so… I’d already bought all the albums and singles, collected a bunch of memorabilia, snapped up the t-shirts, and gone to all the shows…but I wanted more…the only place let to go was unofficial—read: illegal—releases… Almost everything I accurate was on cd…some were burned discs that I traded for with other hardcore fans…I might go to eBay o...
Uncharted "Sneak Peak" - Episode 9: The Disappearance of Richey Edwards
February 23, 2024 15:43 - 29 minutesHey It's Alan...and I want to introduce you to my brand new, one-of-a-kind true crime podcast called Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry. On this podcast I take you inside unbelievable stories of murder, plane crashes, court battles, and even run-ins with the mob! In this podcast you'll hear all about the dark side of world of music. We're releasing new episodes every two weeks, so search for and follow Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry wherever you get your pod...
Another Look At Bootlegging: Part 1
February 21, 2024 05:00 - 30 minutesOn December 24, 1877, Thomas Edison filed a patent for a new invention he referred to as a “talking machine”…for the first time ever, audio could be captured, played back, stored, shared, and analyzed… When asked what the point of his machine was, Edison listed some future possibilities…. His phonograph (as he called it) would eventually be used as a method of preserving great speeches….it could also be used for making audio letters, giving dictation, a talking clock, a telephone answering ma...
Rock Firsts By Black Artists
February 14, 2024 05:00 - 35 minutesWe would not be sitting here talking about rock music if it weren’t for people of African descent…if you start in the present and begin to trace things backward to important innovations and accomplishments, nine times out of ten, you’ll end up exploring something from black culture… And we can go way, way back—right to 1619 when the first slave ship arrived in north America at the British colony of Virginia carrying about 20 captives… Over the centuries that followed, the people of Africa, co...
UFOs, UAPs, and Rock
February 07, 2024 05:00 - 29 minutesI really, really want to believe…there are trillions of galaxies in the observable universe, each containing billions of stars…there’s gotta be something out there…we can’t be alone… Organisms floating in the acid clouds of Venus…remains of bacteria in the Martian soil…creatures swimming in vast oceans below the ice of Europa…something lurking in the methane lakes of Titan…and that’s just the start… Roswell…the “wow” signal…fast radio bursts…the possibility of a Dyson sphere around “Tabby’s S...
Uncharted "Sneak Peak" - Episode 7: The Linkin Park Cyberstalker
February 02, 2024 20:21 - 11 minutesHey It's Alan...and I want to introduce you to my brand new, one-of-a-kind true crime podcast called Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry. On this podcast I take you inside unbelievable stories of murder, plane crashes, court battles, and even run-ins with the mob! In this podcast you'll hear all about the dark side of world of music. We're releasing new episodes every two weeks, so search for and follow Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry wherever you get your pod...
What A Drag It Is Getting Old (Musically)
January 31, 2024 05:00 - 37 minutesDecades ago, I was the best man for my buddy Charlie and was in charge of driving the bridal car from the church to the reception…the happy couple were in the back seat…next to me up front was the bride’s sister-in-law… When I started the car, “Welcome To The Jungle” started playing on the radio…the sister-in-law freaked out… “What is this garbage?...turn it off!”…I looked at Charlie…he looked at me and shrugged… no sense in making waves…I switched to a pop station…but the sister-in-law’s vio...
2023 In Memoriam
January 24, 2024 05:00 - 27 minutesA year ago, I began what will unfortunately be a regular series of these programs from now on…it’s an annual look back on the musicians we lost in the previous year… Rock star deaths have been on our mind since late 2015 when Scott Weiland of the Stone Temple Pilots died, followed a few weeks later by Lemmy of Motorhead…then the floodgates opened in 2016: Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Glenn Frey of the eagles, both Keith Emerson and Greg Lake from Emerson Lake and Palmer, and George Michael—j...
60 Mind-Blowing Facts About Music in 60 Minutes: The 2023 Edition
January 17, 2024 05:00 - 36 minutesI’m not gonna lie…I’m addicted to listicles…not the click-baity ones that have sub-headlines like “and you won’t believe #6!”…I’m only interested in the ones that offer interesting or weird facts…usually that means Buzzfeed, Bored Panda, Upworthy, Laughing Squid—you know the kind…“today I learned” and “I was today years old when I discovered”…that sort of thing… Here's one…there is a species of moth that lives in the amazon jungle that drinks the tears of sleeping birds…it’ll sit on a bird’s ...
Uncharted "Sneak Peak" - Episode 5: The Satanic Panic
January 11, 2024 05:00 - 15 minutesHey It's Alan...and I want to introduce you to my brand new, one-of-a-kind true crime podcast called Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry. On this podcast I take you inside unbelievable stories of murder, plane crashes, court battles, and even run-ins with the mob! In this podcast you'll hear all about the dark side of world of music. We're releasing new episodes every two weeks, so search for and follow Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry wherever you get your pod...
Modern Guitar Heroes 2: The Women
January 10, 2024 05:00 - 25 minutesIt’s been a rough decade for the electric guitar…sales of new instruments have dropped by a third, from 1.5 million globally to around just one million… Why?...generations brought up on electronics are opting out of creating music with traditional instruments like the guitar…instead, they use laptops, iPads, gear like Ableton Live an any number of programmable keyboard devices… Most guitars are being bought and sold by older players…and there are fewer and fewer of them each year… All this ha...
Modern Guitar Heroes: The Men
January 03, 2024 05:00 - 27 minutesWhat is a guitar hero?...yes, yes, it’s a video game that vaguely simulates playing a real guitar…what else?... Yes, yes, it means someone who can rock the “expert level” at guitar hero, the video game…but before that, it meant something totally different… A guitar hero was a guy—and it was almost always a guy—who had achieved a seemingly supernatural mastery of the electric guitar…they were so good that other experts looked to them to learn and for inspiration… Chuck Berry…Jimi Hendrix…Eric ...
OGHONM 1000th Episode: The Q&A From the Live Recording
December 27, 2023 05:00 - 1 hourHey it’s Alan and this week we’re going to do something a bit different for the podcast… When we recorded our 1000th episode of the ongoing history at Corus Quay…we ended up with a lot of content that we couldn’t fit into the radio show. If you caught last week’s podcast, you will have heard the story of how the ongoing history came to be, and how we got to 1000 shows. You also would have heard part of the Q&A session we did with the Q107 morning show, and our live audience. But…there was...
The 1000th Episode of the Ongoing History of New Music
December 20, 2023 05:00 - 54 minutesOn Tuesday December 5th, in front of a live audience at Corus Quay, the Ongoing History of New Music recorded the 1000th episode of the radio program. What some people don't know is that this Podcast started out as a radio show in February 1993 on 102.1 The Edge in Toronto. It has taken over 30 years to reach out 1000th episode! This is a podcast of that evening complete with part of the Q&A that took place. Next week there will be a "Part 2" Podcast containing everything not included in this...
Alt-Rocks Great Bass Players
December 13, 2023 05:00 - 24 minutesWith over 300 OGH podcasts to choose from, we know that sometimes older episodes get lost in the library. So, here is a topic we had a request to dig up again...and this episode first aired on radio in November of 2010 as we look at one of the most under appreciated and underrated members of any rock band...the bass player. These are the most influential bass players in the history of alt-rock. Next week...it's the 1000th episode of the Ongoing History of New Music Learn more about your ad...
The Great KGB Punk Rock Conspiracy
December 06, 2023 05:00 - 32 minutesYou may be aware of a podcast that came out in the spring of 2020 that sought to get to the bottom of a certain musical mystery…it’s called “wind of change” and it explores the possibility that a metal power ballad was a contributing factor to the fall of the soviet union in the very early 90s… Stay with me… “Wind of Change” was a global hit for The Scorpions; a metal band out of Hanover in what was then WestGermany… The Scorpions sing in English…but they also recorded a Russian version under...
Life After Music
November 29, 2023 05:00 - 28 minutesIf you are a professional musician—that is, you’re being paid to write and perform music and can actually make a living from it—you’re part of an infinitesimal quintile of people who are able to do that… you are living the dream… This, in fact, may be the only career you’ve ever known…you’ve never had a “real” job…maybe you’ve had a chance to see the world because of music…and if you love what you’re doing and the money works, you want this to go on forever…but it won’t…at some point, the mus...
Remembering Sinead O'Connor
November 22, 2023 05:00 - 37 minutesLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Music vs Technology Over The Years
November 15, 2023 05:00 - 38 minutesIn the mid-15th century, France was ruled by Louis XI, otherwise known as “Louis the Prudent”...but he was always known as “Louis the Cunning” and “The Universal Spider” because he was always spinning plots and looking for conspiracies...when it came to dissent and wars, he was a brutal sort... Being a despot is hard work and sometimes you need cheering up...that’s why he challenged Abbe De Baigne, a builder of things, to create a brand new musical instrument for his amusement... The result w...
Gord Downie - Canada's Rock Poet
November 08, 2023 05:00 - 30 minutesIt was Tuesday, May 24, 2016...you know how when you land the flight attendant says it’s now permissible to “use transmitting and receiving functions your portable devices” while you’re taxiing to the gate?... I’d just landed on a 14-hour flight from Hong Kong...and as soon as I flicked my phone out of airplane mode, it blew up...emails and texts all about one thing: The Tragically Hip had just announced that their singer, Gord Downie, had brain cancer... At first, this didn’t make sense...ha...
Introducing... Black and Blue: Behind the Badge | Catching Hell
November 04, 2023 04:00 - 36 minutesIt’s 1986 and Michael Morrison is offered the opportunity of a lifetime. A chance to leave his life of poverty in Newark and start afresh. It’s a job offer he can’t afford to refuse. Michael has no idea what this new job has in store. But he soon realizes: he’s just joined ‘the biggest gang in America’. Join Seren Jones to hear Michael’s story and find out what it means to be both Black and Blue. Want to hear more? You can follow along on your favourite podcast app here: https://link.chtbl.co...
The Last Moments Of - Part 2
November 01, 2023 04:00 - 39 minutesWhen someone dies, our first reaction is disbelief...we’re stunned...that’s immediately followed by a need to know what happened...how?...where?...it’s only natural...we need information to help us process the news and the emotion that comes with it... The next stage is might be “could anything have been done to prevent this?”... “Could someone have helped or intervened?”...In some cases, perhaps...in the case of health issues, maybe not... And finally, there’s this:... “could what happened t...
The Last Moments Of - Part 1
October 25, 2023 04:00 - 38 minutesIt’s always a shock when a rock star dies...and our first reaction is “what happened?...how did this person die?”... That’s completely natural...whenever we’re met with something incomprehensible, we demand an explanation...sometimes one comes quickly...other times, it takes days, weeks, months, and even years for the truth to come out—if at all... And how much are we entitled to know?...when do we cross the line from being curious and concerned to gawking and prurient and prying and invadin...
Introducing...Uncharted: The Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash
October 24, 2023 16:00 - 31 minutesThe old days of air travel were quite risky…compared to today, the chances of your flight going down were far greater …every airport had kiosks and coin-operating vending machines where you could buy life insurance before you headed to the gate—you know, just in case you thought you weren’t going to make it to your final destination… 1977 was one of the worst years for accidents in aviation history…in addition to several violent hijackings every month—sometimes with fatal results—There were a...
The History of the Drum Machine
October 18, 2023 04:00 - 29 minutesOne of the most important parts of music is beat and rhythm...without beats, without rhythm, there’s no groove...without a groove, there’s no movement or dancing or really physically getting into the music...beats and grooves are essential building blocks for so much of modern music... In some songs, the beat is subtle but there...you feel it without someone having to keep it for you...but in others, you need a timekeeper, someone to emphasize and augment and the beats and the rhythms... For ...
The History of the 2010s Part 5: Music and Tech
October 11, 2023 04:00 - 32 minutesFor centuries, there’s been a dance between music and technology with each affecting the other in some way...almost always, though, there’s no fighting progress...music (and everything to do with it) ultimately bends to the needs and demands of new technology... For example, when the Catholic Church built big, echo-y cathedrals in the Middle Ages, the sacred music in those buildings adapted to this new architecture so that it made use of the natural reverb... Fast-forward a bunch of centuries...
Introducing.... Bad Parents | Vacationing with Children
October 07, 2023 04:00 - 32 minutesWe as parents get so little time to ourselves. So if you know when vacationing with kids actually becomes a relaxing vacation… please let us know. In this episode we discuss the literal ups and downs of traveling with kids. You can find and listen to this podcast wherever you get your podcasts: https://link.chtbl.com/badparents Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The History of the 2010s Part 4: The Revivals
October 04, 2023 04:00 - 23 minutesIt’s an established fact that music comes in many different types of cycles...a sound and style will be big for a while, reach a peak with the public, and then slowly fade out....but once established, it’s unusual for a sound to completely disappear, never to be heard from again... The only genre I can think of is---maybe alt-rock-style rockabilly...it was big in the very early 80s with bands like the stray cats...but then it just kinda went away...there’s never been a rockabilly revival—at l...
The History of the 2010s Part 3: The New Genres
September 27, 2023 04:00 - 23 minutesIt must have been so easy to write about rock back in the 50s...comparatively easy to today, i mean...everything was so new that that’s all you had to pay attention to...there wasn’t exactly anything called “rock history” back then because the music had no history... What began as a spark in the early 50s turned out to be the musical equivalent of the cosmological big bang...and as the years and decades passed, this music—which began as a fresh take on the 12-bar blues template—separated, seg...
The History of the 2010s Part 2: The Role of Indie Rock
September 20, 2023 04:00 - 26 minutesTraditional wisdom says that the recorded music industry is dominated by the major labels...there used to be a bunch of them, but over the last 25 years, their number has been whittled down to just three companies: universal (the biggest), Sony, and warner music... Here’s something you may not have know...at last estimate, about 95,000 songs are uploaded to the streaming music services every day...of that number, only about 4% are from those three majors...the rest is from indie labels and do...
The History of the 2010s Part 1: Rock Struggles Again
September 13, 2023 04:00 - 30 minutesWe never know we’re living through history as it happens...for example, if we’re trying to assess what happened in a particular decade, we can’t really do it justice if we attempt to analyze things day to day...you need a break, a little time for things to settle into place when it comes to the grand scheme of things... Take the 60s, for example...this sounds a bit weird at first, but they didn’t end when the calendar flipped over to January 1, 1970...decades have momentum—sometimes a hangove...
The More Things Change Part 2
September 06, 2023 04:00 - 29 minutesContinuing to dive into the Ongoing History of New Music archives, here's a show for 2016 that we are surprised has not been posted yet! At some point in your life, you said “I’m never going to become like my parents”…yes, you did…don’t lie…we all did… We vowed that we’d never become old and stodgy and boring and stuck in their ways and closed to new ideas… Do not panic…this is totally natural…this cycle of life has been going on since the invention of music—and it only accelerated with the ...
The More Things Change Part 1
August 30, 2023 04:00 - 26 minutesContinuing to dive into the Ongoing History of New Music archives, here's a show for 2016 that we are surprised has not been posted yet! Have you every heard yourself say this? kids these days! What’s wrong with them? All their crazy music. It’s just noise! That usually leads to… music isn’t as good as it used to be. When i was younger—high school, university—music was awesome! That’s followed by a list of bands and songs you believe to be the greatest ever, a lot of which aren’t as popular ...
The Book of World Records Version 1.0 - Part 2
August 23, 2023 04:00 - 22 minutesThis week we go back into the Ongoing history vault from 2008 and the second of two parts on world records. Most people want to leave this earth being known for... something. We want it to be at least a little memorable... to some, so that our time on this planet won't be forgotten so quickly. It's that whole sense of self my soul has self-esteem issues thing that we're all born with. Maybe you want to be known for being kind to animals. Maybe you're good at math, and you want people to reme...
The Book of World Records Version 1.0 - Part 1
August 16, 2023 04:00 - 26 minutesThis 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 t...
Tracking Down Demos
August 09, 2023 04:00 - 24 minutesIf 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, tight...
100 weirdest Things in Alt-Rock: Part 10
August 02, 2023 04:00 - 28 minutesThere’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...
100 Weirdest Things in Alt-Rock: Part 9
July 26, 2023 04:00 - 28 minutesMoney 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 nev...
100 Weirdest Things in Alt-Rock: Part 8
July 19, 2023 04:00 - 25 minutesThe 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, tak...
100 Weirdest Things in Alt-Rock: Part 7
July 12, 2023 04:00 - 28 minutesIt 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 operat...