MODERN MUSICOLOGY

To celebrate our 100th EPISODE, we've turned the show over to our listeners! We asked our audience to send us questions that we would answer as we launch into our THIRD YEAR, and wow did we get some doozies! In this episode, you'll learn some of our dream guests, the weirdest gigs we ever played (or attended), how we would cast each other in a blockbuster film, the most surprising things we learne...

The Winter Holidays are full of great music! Anthony, Stephanie and Alan share some of their favorite holiday traditions and talk about their favorite Christmas music. And as you'd expect, it's an eclectic mix to say the least, ranging from traditional Latin hymns to heavy metal holly! We have a couple of controversial tunes, breakup songs, camels crossing the desert, remembrances of lost friends,...

To continue our 2nd Anniversary celebration, we are pleased to welcome back to our show Go-Go's drummer GINA SCHOCK! She has an insane amount of stuff going on right now. She tells us all about reviving her band House of Schock, and gives us the lowdown on their new single, “Smile Pretty.” She tells us the story behind her new visual art project The Art of Rhythm, a series of art pieces created in...

This week is our SECOND ANNIVERSARY! And we're celebrating by inviting back one of our favorite guests from last year -- musician and songwriter GARY CLARK. Mr. Clark is the composer of music for the new AppleTV Original Film, FLORA AND SON. He takes us behind the scenes to talk about the process of composing these songs, collaborating with actors Eve Hewson, Orén Kinlan and Joseph Gordon-Levitt o...

Rolling Stone Magazine is at it again! Another list specifically crafted to make music fans' heads spin! This time they count down their ranking of the 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time! And, this being Rolling Stone, there are both some very odd inclusions and exclusions. Anthony and Alan dive into this controversial list and highlight some of their faves, like Eddie Van Halen, David Gilmour, P...

With the release of "Now and Then", the new single from The Beatles, comes reissues of the iconic two-volume collection, 1962 - 1966 (The Red Album) and 1967 - 1970 (The Blue Album). This week we are joined by Alan J. Porter, author of Before They Were Beatles: The Early Years 1956 - 1960 and host of the podcast Before They Were Beatles, to discuss these newly-remastered and newly-expanded landmar...

No matter how good a band or artist is, a producer can make or break them. A good producer can elevate mediocre material, and a bad producer can turn great songs into sludge. This week we're talking about some of the GREAT producers, those geniuses who work magic in the studio. We mention Eddie Kramer, Giorgio Moroder, Steven Wilson, Bob Ezrin, Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, Trevor Horn, Quincy Jones,...

We're at a moment in history -- the release of "Now and Then", the very last new recording by the greatest rock band in history, The Beatles. We're joined by Ira Elliot, the drummer of Nada Surf and the Beatles tribute band Bambi Kino, to analyze this old/new track and the "long and winding road" it took to see fruition. We talk about the song itself, the music video, the making-of documentary, th...

GHOST In time for Halloween, we thought we'd do a show all about our favorite spooky band, Ghost! Alan and Anthony are joined by our good friend Vicki Hudson, lead singer of the Atlanta-based Rush tribute band, The Spirit of Rush, to do a deep dive into the culture of Ghost; seeing the band live; their influences; protesters outside of rock concerts; favorite songs, albums, and covers; and much mo...

GREAT FINAL ALBUMS Every artist or band eventually has a final album -- whether that be because of retirement, lack of interest, or in many cases, death. This week, Anthony, Rob and Alan talk about those bands or artists that went out on a high note, with a really great final album. We cover albums by The Beatles (but which one, eh?), David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Amy Winehouse, Rush, The Police, Genes...

We recount some of our favorite OPENING BANDS we've ever seen! And trust me, we've seen a lot! We talk about some really unexpected bands like Opus, Billy Satellite, Flesh for Lulu, Red Rider, Molly Hatchet, Ned's Atomic Dustbin and The Plasmatics!  You wanna hear stories? WE GOT STORIES! Like that time a member of Galaxie 500 peed in Rob's mother's rose bushes; or that time Steph's band The Aquan...

This week we take our musical time machine back to the year 1993! It's a crazy year with a lot of competing styles and genres, which makes it exciting! We talk about great albums by bands like Nirvana, Mazzy Star, Sarah MacLachlan, Crowded House, Daniel Lanois, Prince, David Bowie (two of 'em!), Matthew Sweet, Duran Duran, Pet Shop Boys, Velocity Girl, Bratmobile and more, plus debuts by Aimee Man...

HIPGNOSIS -- the graphic design team comprised of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey "Po" Powell -- dominated the music scene in the 70s and 80s and created some of the most iconic album covers ever. Their client list included Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney & Wings, Peter Gabriel, Def Leppard, T. Rex, the Pretty Things, Black Sabbath, the Alan Parsons Project, Yes, Genesis, Electric Light O...

Have we got a fun one for you this week! Thanks to a suggestion by one of our regular listeners, Bill Lemmond, we are delving into the massive catalog of Novelty Songs and Parody Songs! And when you mention Parody Songs, obviously the first name that comes to mind is Weird Al Yankovic. But this topic offers so much more beyond Weird Al. We talk about "great" songs by Dickie Goodman, the king of no...

This week Rob, Steph and Alan have the great pleasure of interviewing Evan Sult and Paige Brubeck, who together make up the rock duo Sleepy Kitty. We talk at length about their new BLESSING/CURSE, their philosophy of art, their influences, adding new players to their live shows, Paige's love of musicals, Evan's time in Harvey Danger . . . and, of course, kitties.  To learn more about Sleepy Kitty...

WE'RE BACK! After a week off for Dragon Con (which Alan and Rob were attending), the Modern Musicology team is back with a new episode celebrating the 50th anniversary of the birth of HIP-HOP! 50 years ago, Cindy Campbell threw a party in the rec room of her family’s Bronx apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue and charged admission (.25 for ladies, 50 for fellas) to raise money to buy back-to...

This week we celebrate the (belated) 50th Anniversary of arguably the greatest rock album ever recorded, Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. We're joined by DJ, journalist, and self-professed Floydian Widgett Walls of  NeedCoffee.com to discuss the history and impact of this groundbreaking album, its importance, and its legacy. It's the fourth biggest-selling album ever and has spent 981 weeks (a...

Rob and Alan geek out on one of their favorite topics: music books! Both are avid readers of books of all types about music -- biographies, analyses, histories, what have you. The discussion goes from recent reads of books by John Robb, Richard Evans, Nick Hornby, Nick Griffiths, Jann Wenner, Susan Rogers, and more, and then we get into some of our older faves by Sheila E, Stewart Copeland, Maceo...

We continue on our journey through 1988 with the albums released in the second half of the year (June through December). We hit the highlights in rock (Bon Jovi, Pat Benatar, Crowded House, Nick Cave), rap (NWA, Public Enemy, Fat Boys, Stetsasonic), metal (Metallica, Slayer, Helloween, Anthrax), alt and industrial (Skinny Puppy, Ministry, Sonic Youth), pop (Pet Shop Boys, The Bangles, Paula Abdul,...

The Modern Musicologists (Anthony, Rob, Stephanie and Alan) take a look at the albums that were released in the first half of 1988! We hit the highlights in rock (Robert Plant, Cinderella, Van Halen), rap (Boogie Down Productions, DJ Jazzy Jeff & Fresh Prince, Run DMC), metal (Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Queensryche), R&B (Prince, Sade, Ziggy Marley), and major debuts from Living Colour, Tr...

This week we celebrate the anniversary of one of the most important and iconic phenomena of the modern music era: MTV. MTV began life on August 1, 1980 and within a few years changed the entire cultural landscape, from music and fashion to advertising to television. In this show we relive the glory days of MTV (you know, when they played music) and talk about our favorite videos and video artists,...

This week your hosts Rob and Alan, joined by our good buddy JM Tuffley, do the jitterbug as we take a peek at the new Wham! documentary on Netflix. Described by Decider as "a buddy film disguised as a music documentary, Wham! tells the story of how Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael met, became besties, formed a band, and achieved massive worldwide fame -- as well as some of the personal struggles...

This week the MM gang (Stephanie Seymour, Anthony Williams and R. Alan Siler) is joined by Matt Alschbach of The Rock and Metal Profs Podcast to talk all things hard rock and heavy metal! We talk about where our love of metal began (for Alan and Matt it was two different shows on the same tour in 1979), the albums that mean the most to us, the uselessness of metal sub-genres, Steph's legit hardcor...

This week we're honored to be joined by Tommy Stinson, former member of The Replacements, Soul Asylum, Guns N' Roses, and Bash & Pop, to talk about his new album with Chip Roberts, Wronger. We talk about Tommy's songwriting process, writing songs so good they make your butt pucker, creating music in the digital / social media age, Prince and the Minneapolis music scene, his current tour, recen...

What Makes a Great Singer? That's the question that we explore this week! This episode is a recording from a live we did on our Facebook Page and YouTube Channel on Sunday, July 2, 2023. We talk about what we listen for in a great singer, what part charisma and performance play in it, how genre matters, etc. And we talk about some of the iconic voices in pop music -- from country and metal to soul...