Ongoing History of New Music

This is a show all about fake names…sure we could spend an hour talking about how people like Courtney Love and Elton John and Madonna use fake names on hotel registers…or we could go into how Bono’s real name is “Paul Hewson” and Deadmau5 has “Joel Zimmerman” on his driver’s license and that lorde is really Ella Yelich O’Connor… We could talk about how singers and bands sometimes perform gigs und...

Here at the Ongoing History of New Music, we get questions....a LOT of questions. So many that it's often difficult to answer all of them. But we do.  And what we've gathered in this edition of the Podcast are some of the most asked ones we get. So if you've often had these particular questions, here are the answers! But if you still have a question, please send it along and we will get the answer...

If you've ever wanted to be a musician, chances are you dreamed of going on tour. The romance of the road and everything that comes along with it.  But it's not as easy as you think. Not everyone is U2 and charters their own plane to get from gig to gig. Chances are you're going to be using a tour bus....or more likely....in a van. It is such a grind that kills many a band. There are the hassles,...

In the beginning—and I’m talking about, say, 1955—it was easy to categorize popular music…there was rock, pop, country and r&b…it was nice and simple…pretty much all mainstream music you heard could be dumped into one of these four buckets… But even back then you could get more granular…you could slice certain genres into thinner slices to include big band, Dixieland, Ska and hillbilly…and jazz…an...

You may have noticed that the most of the biggest rock acts in the world aren’t that young…Green Day?...middle 40s… Dave Grohl?...creeping up on the half-century mark… Trent Reznor?...as we sit here right now, he’s 52…Pearl Jam: early-to-mid 50s… Average age of U2?...upper 50s…Springsteen?...68…Paul McCartney?...75…and The Rolling Stones?…do you have to ask?... I am not ragging on old rockers…this...

This is the second part of out examination of the Alt-Rock scene and this time we go from mid 80's right up to today. Goth has always had a bad rap so we're going to try to clear everything up with our deep dive.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we go back into the Ongoing History archives to talk about Fashion. This is a request for Amy in Cambridge who asked "have you ever done a show that talks about how fashion was influenced by and through Alt Rock?"Why yes we have and here it is! From Mods, to Grunge, Goth, Punk and a whole lot more. Enjoy and thanks for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are some bands that you can take at face value, what you see is what you get. Then there are others which have backstories that go on for ever and ever. Pearl Jam is one U2 Green Day. Nirvana and also Muse. Muse is an interesting case because we here in North America, we're a little slow to catch on to what they were doing. They'd already been massive stars in the U.K., Europe and Japan befo...

We all know that Canada has created some of the biggest selling musicians in the world. I mean think about it... Celine, Alanis, Shania, Nickelback, Drake, Bieber, The Weekend....you get the idea. I mean by capita...does any other country really come close? But what about those behind the scenes like record producers? Canadian's shaped some of the most important and influential bands and artists i...

They only exhisted for barely 4 years and released just 4 albums but without them would there be a Smashing Pumpkins? Nine Inch Nails? Marilyn Manson? White Zombie? This is a program in the "what's the big deal series?". An occasional look at why todays music sounds like it does and this time it's one of the most influcential bands of the 80's We ask: "What's The Big Deal About Bauhaus?!?" Learn m...

The problem with so many interviews is that they can come across as interrogations…” I have a list of questions I must get through in the allotted time so let’s begin”… Depending on the circumstances, that’s sometimes the route you have to take…but there’s nothing more human than sitting down for a simple chat…if you can get some people in a room and just get them talking, then everyone forgets th...

Recently, I had a chance to sit down with Ian Thornley to talk about his career in our ongoing series of “in their own words” shows And this time we cover everything…and I mean everything…. This is Ian Thornley, in his own words, part 1… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the most robust creatures on the planet is the cockroach…gross things, but you have to admire ability to survive…I mean, they’ve been around for 280 million years… Not only can a cockroach hold its breath for 40 minutes, live for a month without food and run up to three miles per hour, but one can live for up to a week without its head…I repeat: without its head! Impressive, but there’s a t...

This episode begins shortly after 9 am on the Saturday I turned 6…for reasons that will forever remain mysterious, the present from my grandmother was a Lloyds portable transistor radio…model tr-62…made in Taiwan…built with 6 transistors… This thing revealed a wider world to me…I grew up in a small town with three tv stations (one of which was in French) and the only radio I heard was what mom and...

In the olden days of newspapers—and I’m talking decades ago—there was a specific way printing photographs…photos were given to the printer who copied the picture using a special camera that converted everything to something known as “half-tone” so it could be put in the paper… If you looked closely at the resulting picture, you’d see that it was made up of a pattern of dots…each one was a differen...

When it comes to music, it’s so easy to get lost in the weeds…to become distracted by all the minutiae and trivia… There’s nothing wrong with that, of course…it’s the study of exactly this kind of granular stuff that pays my salary…however, there is a “can’t see the forest for the trees” angle to all this… Sometimes, we need to stand way back—and I mean way back—before some vital things come into...

Back in the day...when singles were released on vinyl...you needed to put a song on either side of the record. Sometimes it was another version of the same song, or just the same song again, or maybe a live version...or maybe something completely different. A song that the band didn't know what to do with. Something special...something unique. What I've gathered here are 9 great B-Sides. Some are...

People often ask me where I come up with ideas for this program…my answer is always the same… you know that feeling when it’s Sunday night and you promise yourself you’ll start on that assignment that’s due the next morning as soon as “the Simpsons” is over?... Yeah, that’s me…every week…and after more than 700 of these one-hour assignments stretching back to 1993, I hit a wall…total writer’s bloc...

It is a fact of life that there are periods where everything old is new again…if you look at Broadway, for example, old productions are always being brought back… Take “West Side Story,” for example…it first premiered in 1957 and was brought back in 1960, 1964, 1980, 2009, and 2020…that’s five revivals…the Gershwin musical “Porgy and Bess” has been brought back seventimes… Movies are always being...

Take a look in your closet…are you the kind of person who won’t throw out anything because you’re sure it’ll come back into style one day?... I am…long after this stuff have ceased sparking joy, it’s still hanging in my closet…I have these sport coats and suits that I paid good money for…and even though I haven’t worn any of them for years, I can’t bring myself to throw them out… “yeah, they look...

We hear this phrase all the time: “once in a generation”…fine, but how long is a generation?...according to Wikipedia, it’s about 30 years, which is the time it takes children to be born, grow up, become adults and then start to have children of their own… The international society of genetic genealogy sets the length of a generation between 29 and 31 years… But that’s if we’re talking about the c...

Certain types of music have been around forever…jazz, for example, has been with us for over a hundred years…classical music goes back at least six hundred years…and then there’s religious music which can date back a thousand years or even more… If you study this sort of thing—it’s a form of ethnomusicology—you’ll see that revivals happen all the time all over the world with all kinds of different...

We begin this episode with Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, verses 1-3…ish: “to everything there is a season, a time to every purpose under the heaven…a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted…a time to rock, a time to dance, a time to head bang, and time to chill”... Okay, I don’t think that last part is in any edition of the standard bible…I might...

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/a...

There are some bands that are very consistent with their sound—and fans love them for it…no two records are never exactlythe same, but whenever a new album is announced, we have a pretty good idea of what to expect… And when we get into the album, there’s a sonic linearity to the songs…nothing wrong with that… Then there are bands who like to take chances, take risks, from record to record…the las...