Ongoing History of New Music

Maybe this isn't a topic you thought about in New Rock, but it's time for us to take a look at New Rock Hair. Seriously... We've dug back into the archives and found this one from 2006 where we have a dive into the hairstyles of New Rock. Dreadlocks, Mullet's, Punk, Bowie...and of course Robert Smith among others. This is a good one! Trust us...   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone....

Let’s make a list of all the things we did not have on January 1, 2000…ready?...iTunes, iPods, iPhones…YouTube, Facebook, Twitter…Snapchat, Spotify, smartphones… There was no Netflix (at least as we know it now)…no MySpace…no Instagram Well, what didwe have?...dial-up modems…Windows 98 (if you were lucky) or Windows 95 (if you weren’t)…Apple?...still mostly a corporate basket case…even Google was...

Crime Beat” is a new investigative podcast series hosted by Crime Reporter Nancy Hixt. She's been covering cases for over the past 20 years and knows her hometown by the crime scenes she's been to. Journey deep inside some of Canada’s most high-profile criminal cases. Each bi-weekly episode will take you inside the story to give you details you didn't hear on the news.   Here’s a sneak peek from e...

Music is always evolving, mutating, and modifying itself…enough people may agree on a certain direction for a new sound to become a new sub-genre…and in time, sub-sub-genres may spring from that offshoot, multiplying things even more… Think about it…in the 50s, you had rock, pop, country, and R&B…most everything that was released back then could be classified under one of those four headings…today...

They've been around since the early 80's and still recording and touring. It's really incredible considering how self-destructive Depeche Mode has been over that time.  Really....it is amazing what has happened to them over the years. And that includes the time Dave Gahan was essentially dead. Well we had a request recently wondering "If we've ever done a profile of Depeche Mode". And while we hav...

In times of crisis, we start to look for a leader, someone who can get us out of trouble…this is a trope of every comic book universe movie and half all the action-adventure stuff… But it’s true…when things are bad, we first look to people with experience, with knowledge, with strength to lead us away from whatever is wrong… There was a lot of this sort of talk among rock fans at the end of the 90...

At the end of the 90s, rock music was deep in the doldrums…fans were genuinely worried for its future…and it did look bleak, especially in contrast to how exciting things had been earlier in the decade… But in ’98 and ’99, rock was under assault on three sides…pop music was king and the whole world had gone crazy for those sounds…then there was rap and hip-hop, which kept getting more popular and...

How long should we wait before we write the history of a decade?...we can write things down as they happen, but that’s only the first draft…time has to pass before we can wrap our heads around exactly what happened, what it all meant, and the lasting effects of those ten years… Something that may have appeared to be insignificant at the time turned out to be a really big deal…it was only after man...

There are people who still believe that the resurrection of vinyl is a fad, a passing trend, something of which people will tire and we’ll all move on… This, frankly, is insanity…total insanity… Vinyl LP sales have been going up by double digits year-over-year since 2008…and that’s just new releases…these figures don’t include the sales of used records in record shops, at record sales, or online t...

When you’re in a band and things begin to take off, life starts to move pretty fast…days start to blur as you move from gig to the studio, from the studio to the van, and back from gig to gig… Unless you have someone document what’s happening, you run the risk of forgetting a lot of what you go through—both the good stuff and the bad… One way to combat that is through talk therapy—or at least my v...

“Russia Rising” is a new investigative podcast series hosted by Jeff Semple, the former Europe Bureau Chief for Global News. This series hopes to unravel the giant mystery behind Putin’s Russia with the help of those who know her best - Russian Trolls, Hackers, Putin Supporters, and even a former Russian K.G.B. agent.  Join Jeff on the journey to unravel how Russia has gone from tenuous ally, to a...

When you’re in a band, you want to make sure the public record is correct…but you’re often at the mercy of someone else when it comes to creating that record… First, there’s your publicist and anyone at your record label dealing with marketing…they issue bios and press releases where the writer seems to have been paid by the word…they’re paid to fill a page or two in 10-point font, so they revert...

Every once in a while we will pull a show from the vast Ongoing History of New Music Archives that is a bit of a time capsule. It captures a moment in time that seems somewhat forgotten...distant...calmer... This show takes us back to October of 2006 when we aired our 500th original episode of the Ongoing History. A lot had happened in the world of Alt-Rock up to that point in time...and a lot has...

Chances are, at some point in your life you are going to lose your job. If you're lucky it will be a layoff situation and you'll get some sort of severance or package. But it's possible that something happens that gets you fired. Sacked, canned, blown out, axed, dismissed with cause...and involuntarily discharged from your duties.  You then find yourself unemployed. Between Jobs, on the dole, on t...

One of my favourite movie lines of all time comes from a 1982 Peter O’Toole film called “My Favorite Year”… O’Toole plays a movie idol named Alan Swann who is reduced to appearing on a variety tv show of the 1950s… a junior writer named Benji Stone is put in charge of babysitting Swann… “just keep him out of trouble,” his bosses say… Naturally, it doesn’t go well and they have a fight when Swann g...

This is the second part of our "In Their Own Words" conversation with all four members of the Kings of Leon: Caleb, Nathan, Jared, and Matthew Folllowill. It's the conclusion of ours in depth and honest interview with the band that told their story from their very early days, and up to the summer of 2009. This is Kings of Leon...in their own words part 2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit meg...

Back in 2009, we sat down with all four member of the Kings of Leon: Caleb, Nathan, Jared, and Matthew Folllowill. What followed was a very in depth and honest interview that told their story from their very early days and up to the summer of 2009. This was the first in a now ongoing series of inviting bands and musicians to tell us their story...in their own words. This is Kings of Leon...in thei...

I'm a normally pretty reserved person, but like anyone else there are some things that really, really bug me: drivers who don't use their turn signal, people who use the word "irregardless", anti-vaxers, creationists, email with no subject line, high-end restaurants that charge for bread and tap water. That sort thing.   As it turns out, there are a bunch of things about music that really annoy me...

One of the occupational hazards of my job is I run across all kinds of facts, bits of data, and pieces of knowledge that don’t have any immediate practical application… For example, I ran across this piece of royal etiquette…the British royals are forbidden to play “monopoly”—as in the board game… I have no idea why, but this is apparently a hard and fast rule… If you have a cat, you know all abou...

Once upon a time, not that long ago and in a land not that far away, musicians—not all, but some—could become very, very rich… Their riches came by selling pieces of plastic to those who enjoyed their music…those pieces of plastic were very, very precious because they were this was the only way musicians could distribute recordings of their art and their supply and their price was strictly regulat...

When you sign your first record deal, it’s usually for around seven albums…theoretically; this is to protect both sides… First, it offers the artist a degree of security…it gives the artist a few records to develop and mature so if they don’t score big with the first album, they’ll a little longer to establish their career and reputation… Second, the label has a chance to see if their investment i...

When you think about it, it’s quite an accomplishment to become a one-hit-wonder...sure, your career is essentially over after one song–but hey, at least you made it that far...think about all the bands who have worked for years and years and years and never managed to enjoy even the briefest taste of success... Still, no one likes that label...it’s demoralizing, knowing that you’ve gone down in h...

When I say the word "Shrine"...what comes to mind? Lords? A temple in the Himalaya’s? Something secular...like a war memorial? They could be something makeshift like flowers placed on the side of the road where someone died.  Shrines appear in pop culture too. Any place that has been deemed important because of its history or associations...can be considered a shrine. It's a place people visit so...

Is it just me or has there been an uptick in the number of one-hit-wonders over the past couple of years?...think about all the hot bands who have had just one good album–or even just one good song–before they’re forgotten... In the old days, a group developed and evolved over a series of albums...three, four, five, six records, even...it was slow and look a lot of patience and a lot of fighting t...

Here's the thing. As a musician you can spend thousands and thousands of hours, days, weeks working to be a success. You know, make enough money to pay the bills, have a living, and make a career...provide for yourself and the family. And maybe if you work hard enough, catch the right breaks, make the right moves...you will make that happen. You'll be successful and it will all seem worth it. Othe...