The Album Concept Hour

When you think of The Who, you probably first think of all the mega-hit radio staples, like "Who Are You," "Baba O'Riley," "Behind Blue Eyes," or "We Won't Get Fooled Again." But before they inspired infinite classic rock acts with the 1971 album "Who's Next," they had their psychedelic phase... which is capped off by the previous album... the seminal rock opera "Tommy," released in 1969. For anyo...

Female empowerment in music, for a long time, was a facade in the male dominated record industry. Sure you had big names like Janis Joplin, Nina Simone, and Joni Mitchell that have an ongoing legacy, but it was always an uphill struggle to be taken seriously, even for them. It wasn't until the 80s that women in music really started to break out of society's prescribed mold, adopting wild punk rock...

1975 was a big year for Elton John. He was coming off the heels of his massive hit record "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," he had a thriving record label, he had made a small fortune of $8 million on his new record deal with MCA, he was asked by Pete Townshend (of The Who) to be the pinball wizard in their 1975 film adaptation of their rock-opera, "Tommy," and he obliged; besides the mostly negative c...

It's the 30th episode of The Album Concept Hour! In order to commemorate it correctly, we're doing an episode about 30 Seconds to Mar's 3rd album, "This Is War." Coming off the heels of their successful sophomore release "A Beautiful Lie," which pulled people in with it's high-budget music videos/short films, brothers/bandmates Shannon and Jared Leto were poised to make another hit record. Jared L...

It's the end of the week of Pink Floyd, and we've covered the entirety of "The Wall." We've listened to it be built, brick by brick, and we've listened to it crumble. But now we come to how the concept of "The Wall" came to be in the first place. Sure, we've talked about the major themes and how Pink, the character, is an amalgamation of both Roger Waters and Syd Barrett's lives, but what about Pi...

It's the season 2 premiere and beginning of our "Week of Pink Floyd"!!! In this episode, we cover the first half of the mac daddy of concept albums. This one is so conceptual, in fact, it's a full on rock opera. Hailed by most as a masterpiece, and by some as overplayed, "The Wall" is a journey of the soul for Pink, our protagonist. Beginning with the death of his father in the war, and continuing...

[GUEST PICK] Imagine you're driving down the road in a dark forest... relaxing to some local radio... lightning is going off in the distance... you hear ghouls in the woods right behind the trees... and your radio station starts to play some suspiciously spooky tunes... and you start to wonder... am I dreaming... or is this a nightmare...? In this SEASON ONE FINALE, we get a chance to interview Sa...

[JON's PICK] When you think of mid-90s hip hop, a few things probably come to mind... "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio, Wu Tang's "36 Chambers" (along with their numerous projects), various Beastie Boys hits, "Waterfalls" by TLC, A Tribe Called Quest... "Jock Jams"... and Fugee's sophomore album, "The Score." From "Ready or Not" to "Fu-Gee-La" to their Grammy winning cover of "Killing Me Softly With...

[GROUP PICK] From "Working Man" to Ayn Rand, Rush runs the gambit on expressing a variety of philosophies in it's music. If you know anything about Ayn Rand's philosophy, objectivism, you know it's pure selfishness (literally) and very anti...anything remotely socialist or communist (as in, took part in the second red scare... yikes). But if you know anything about Rush, you know they are champion...

For this special episode of The Album Concept Hour, we are using out platform to bring attention to police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement. After watching George Floyd get choked by an officer for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, while fellow officers watched without intervening, the world erupted in protest. There are hundreds if not thousands of videos like this that have been going up si...

[GROUP PICK] We've covered a variety of concept albums in this podcast ranging from deeply personal stories, to epic fantasy tales... From bands that began as a concept to bands that eventually became a concept... But in the world of music, there is one concept that goes above and beyond the rest: Gorillaz. In March 2001, they debuted their first single "Clint Eastwood," with a music video to acco...

[BRAD's PICK] "Adult swim... all kids out of the pool!!!" To anyone growing up in the late 90s/early 00s that had access to cable, this quote represented freedom... It meant that in a few short minutes, your beloved Cartoon Network was going to turn into a raunchy and disgusting wonderland of absurd comedy and uncut anime. This was still in the age of dial up internet, so there was no streaming, s...

[GROUP PICK] "You got the touch... You got the power!!!!... YEAH!...." The year is 1986, the golden age of inspirational movie montage music, and a little television show/toy line for children was about to grow the fuck up. After two seasons and a couple of successful lines of toys, Hasbro and Marvel were ready to take "The Transformers" to the silver screen, and they pulled off quite the project....

[GROUP PICK] In 1969, Black Sabbath helped breathe life into a new form of rock called heavy metal--and in 1991, Sleep did the same thing to heavy metal, ushering in a bigger, jammier, and smokier incarnation called stoner metal. Although metal had reached it's peak in popularity in that time, for a lot of fans it had lost it's luster. Metalheads and stoners went underground, finding refuge in gen...

[JON's PICK] It's 4/20 everybody and you know what that means its time to spark up a doob and put on some... Dixie Chicks? That's right everyone today we're going to be covering their last album, the 5-grammy-winning hit album  "Taking the Long Way." The album has secured it's legacy by being very personal, while also being a response to the political pressures of the time, and being a massiv...

[JOHN'S PICK] The 2000s was a very strange time for anyone that was growing up in it. You were old enough to remember the US economy being in pretty good shape during the 90s with relative peace on the home front, directly followed by the events of 9/11 and a completely new era, full of unending war, vengeful patriotism, increasing distrust of our neighbors, and what seemed at the time to be the w...

[SCOTT's PICK] The year 1988 might just be the climax of heavy metal's popularity. With the help of metal-focused music publications such as Kerrang!, regular music video rotation on MTV (culminating in the creation of the show Headbanger's Ball in 1987), and finally breaking into the pop charts with Bon Jovi's hard rock/glam metal album "Slippery When Wet" in 1986, heavy metal was making itself k...

[GROUP PICK] Paul McCartney is one of those figures in music that has a long legacy and countless connections to other prominent musicians through the decades. Being caught up in the British invasion and Beatlemania, he was one of the first musicians to earn worldwide celebrity (along with his other lads from Liverpool) that was immediate and truly fanatical. He rode this wave of popularity right...

[BRAD's PICK] Hip Hop super-duo Run the Jewels are no strangers to defying conventions in the music industry. Killer Mike had been putting out politically conscious rap in Atlanta for a little over a decade, befriending Big Boi and guesting on a few Outkast tracks, and even one for Jay-Z. All of this and his various random appearances on Adult Swim show that Killer Mike was always a climbing star,...

[JON's PICK] Frank Sinatra is an artist that is very much embedded in the fabric of American Pop music. From his various roles in movies to his iconic crooning voice, Sinatra has made himself into a household name. But his career wasn't without its woes. After the initial Sinatra-mania that occurred during World War II, there was a gradual slump that he fell into for 6 years before making his big...

It's October 1st, 2019, and we don't know it yet, but we're about to record our first bonus episode. We are but babes to the podcast, having only recorded the inaugural introductory episode. The drinks are flowing, the air is hazy, and we are about to embark on a journey to find the theme song to our yet untitled podcast about concept albums, but little do we know of the black magic that awaits us...

[DAVE's PICK] Iron Maiden are the undeniable kings of 80s heavy metal and, in 1988, they were at the peak of that meteoric rise. After the gigantic success of 1984's release "Powerslave" and the subsequent "World Slavery Tour" (their biggest tour ever), and the well received, and slightly experimental, 1986 release "Somewhere in Time," it was time for them to focus all of that experience, talent,...

[SCOTT's PICK] When I was... a young boy... I listened... to lots of emo music... including the Black Parade. My Chemical Romance was the undisputed poster band for the emo scene. Their music's macabre themes were at the forefront, and their style (with their straightened black hair and deep black eyeliner) was extremely influential and widely replicated in the community. MCR ruled the summer of 2...

[GROUP PICK] Sometimes you find your salvation in life from the places you least expect. For Johnny Cash, in 1968, that place was prison. After a slight decline in his music success and struggles with substance abuse, he desperately needed to bounce back. He first had the idea back in 1958, when he notoriously performed at San Quentin prison and finally had a chance to make an official release out...

[JOHN's PICK] If you've ever found yourself back home (wherever you're from) at your folk's or grand-folk's neck of the woods, and you've had one of those moments where you find yourself tripping down memory lane and all-of-a-sudden vividly reliving memories with loved ones past, you will understand the headspace that Mark Kozelek was in when he was writing Sun Kil Moon's sixth studio album 'Benji...