Ongoing History of New Music – Details, episodes & analysis

I’ve always been something of a nut when it comes to the space program…but even though I’ve read all the books, seen all the documentaries, and watched all the movies, I was still surprised to learn something new with the movie “Hidden Figures”… This was a 2016 film based on a book of the same name…it told the true story about black female mathematicians who worked at nasa during the hottest period of the space race… They were “computers” in the original sense of the word: people who computer things complex things like flight trajectories, re-entry methods, and landing coordinates…they were even assigned to check and correct the calculations spit out by NASA’s big ibm mainframes…their work was essential to the American space effort… But this being the 60s, these women were segregated away from the other scientists, meaning that their work was largely forgotten until the movie and book came out… This got me thinking…are there any forgotten figures in music?...I’m talking about women who did awesome and important things but have largely been ignored by the traditional history of rock?...I’m talking about people beyond Deborah Harry, Janis Joplin, Stevie Nicks, Chrissie Hynde, and Courtney Love… Well, yes…yes, there was…and we need to know about them…let’s do that now… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here’s one of the most misunderstood and misused words in the English language: “psychedelic” … The word first came into use in 1956 when a psychiatrist named Humphrey Osmond was studying a new class of pharmaceuticals that had potential when it came to treating certain mental disorders… A chemical known as lysergic acid diethylamide—LSD, for short—had been extracted by a Swiss scientist named Albert Hoffman from a fungus called “ergot”…from 1943 on, medical professionals tried to figure out what it could be used for…it was even marketed commercially for a while under the brand name “delysid”… Then the CIA got involved, thinking that LSD could be used for things like interrogation, chemical warfare and mind control…but that’s a whole other story... Because the chemical resulted in people entering an altered state of perception, some started using it recreationally… artists discovered its properties and started taking acid trip, looking for inspiration and new creative roads… Then other psychedelics went mainstream, including mescaline (which comes from the peyote plant) and psylocybin (which you get from certain mushrooms) before just about all of these drugs were made illegal… Meanwhile, “psychedelic”—which means “soul-revealing” in Greek—became an adjective…it describes anything that could be described as mind expanding, anything that alters the way we perceive reality… Naturally, this quickly extended to music…psych became a thing in the 60s—that sound, feel, vibe, attitude continues today with alt-rock… This is a quick history of psych in the world of alternative music…   Songs used in this episode: Kula Skaker - Tattva The Soft Boys - Give It To The Soft Boys Teardrop Explodes - Sleeping Gas Echo and the Bunnymen - Bring on the Dancing Horses Siousxie and the Banshees - Dear Prudence Spaceman 3 - Revolution The Bangles - Hero Takes A Fall My Bloody Valentine - Soon The Verve - Slide Away Tame Impala - Elephant Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1931, a larger than life prospector, in search of Slumach’s legendary lost gold mine goes missing in the wilderness of British Columbia. In this episode, we retrace the epic search and rescue efforts that went into looking for the missing prospector as well potential clues left behind at his campsite, that point to an even bigger mystery of what happened to Volcanic Brown? Host:  Kru Williams Guest: Adam Palmer Facebook - @HISTORYCanada  Instagram - @deadmanscurse Instagram - @Historyca Instagram - @kru_williams Twitter - @HistoryTVCanada  Curiouscast website: https://curiouscast.ca/ Great Pacific Media Website: https://greatpacifictv.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, it’s that time again...another year is almost at an end—and once again, we have been subjected to the whims of the universe and human stupidity through 2022... It got better with covid but then we have the war in Ukraine...politics are more polarized than ever no matter where you go...social media is still making us stupider...and try as he might to leave the planet, Elon Musk is still here... When it comes to the world of music, we lost Taylor Hawkins, Andy Fletcher of Depeche Mode, Paul Ryder of The Happy Mondays, Mark Lanegan, Dallas Good of The Sadies, Meat Loaf, Ronnie Hawkins, Coolio, Olivia Newton-John, and Ronnie Spector, among others... It’s still hard to make a living from streaming, artists are getting burned out on the road, and inflation is killing everyone... That’s a lot to deal with...here’s hoping that 2023 will be better...we gotta think that because otherwise, we’d go crazy... This is also the time of year I try to clean up the home office where I do all my “ongoing history” research and writing and production...I’m always looking for interesting and cool stuff to talk about when it comes to anything related to music...when I have enough material on a particular subject, I can write a new episode... But there’s also a lot of orphaned material—research that has gone unused because I couldn’t find a place for it for whatever reason...it would be a shame for all this knowledge and trivia and factoids to go to waste, so it’s time for the annual purge... So watch out...a lot of information is about to dumped on your...this is the 2022 edition of 60 mind-blowing facts about music... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It was a classic battle between good and evil and it gave us one of the greatest toys of all time. Today, we journey back to revisit the history of the iconic Transformers. From their early days in Japan to dominating TVs and toy shelves in North America, this is another defining 1980s toys franchise that was also a masterclass in marketing. So hit play and let's roll out! Support the show and get bonus audio content at Patreon.com/80s Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Joe Strummer died on December 22, 2002, no one could believe it...first of all, the guy was only 50...second, this was a guy who ran marathons...third, he’d been strict vegetarian since 1971...  And fourth, it was Joe Strummer, one of the toughest and most uncompromising musicians in the history of not just punk, not just alternative, but rock period, full stop...  Yet it happened in his kitchen in Somerset, England, just after he finished walking the dog...cause of death?...heart attack, caused by an undiagnosed defect in his heart that had been there all along...sudden heart failure...he immediately lost consciousness and never woke up... To be specific, he suffered from an “intra-mural coronary artery”...this is when one of the main vessels supplying blood to the heart ends up growing inside the heart muscle as the person grows older...it is an exceedingly rare condition with fewer than 100 fatal cases recorded worldwide in the last 50 years... That’s what took Joe from us?...what are the odds?...I guess I just told you... But even though Joe has been gone for 20 years, he’s still remembered and still revered as an iconic figure—and someone whose work has been discovered by generations since he died... To help that along—and to commemorate 20 years since his passing—I’ve come up with something I call “20 short stories about Joe Strummer”... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rock’n’roll is built on the electric guitar...well, mostly...and not really in the beginning...in fact, the electric guitar as we know it, didn’t have much to do with the birth of rock at all... The earliest rock evolved out of rhythm & blues combos...by the early 50s, many of them featured some kind of electric guitars...but the honk and rhythm came from saxophones and pianos which were slowly pounded into matchsticks... The piano contributed bits of jazz, boogie-woogie, barrelhouse, and juke-joint energy...and even through the 1950s, the construct known as the “guitar hero” was largely absent from the world of rock’n’roll—outside of chuck berry, of course...  Instead, the early pioneers were piano heroes...Little Richard...Jerry Lee Lewis...Fats Domino...Ray Charles...Huey “piano” Smith...  But when guitars got louder, started sounding dirtier, and began to wail more powerfully, the number of rock’n’roll piano heroes were outgunned and began to recede into the background...not entirely, though... Again, I’m talking just about pianos...none of this fancy synthesizer stuff... Elton John, Billy Joel, and Carole King have had massive careers based largely on piano songs...the Beatles—especially Paul McCartney—served the cause...Freddie Mercury of Queen wrote much of their greatest songs on piano... There are others...Leon Russell, Mike Garson (who played with Bowie for years), Chuck Liddell (a favourite of the Rolling Stones), Dr. John, Billy Preston, Stevie Wonder, Ray Manzarek of The Doors, Rick Wakeman of Yes, Keith Emerson of Emerson Lake and Palmer... But you notice what’s missing from that list?...any piano heroes from the world of alt-rock...does even such a thing exist?...actually, yes...they’re a bit hard to spot, but they’re out there...here—let me show you... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From 1964 to 1966, The Beatles played only a handful of shows in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. Each show was pandemonium but the story of the Beatles in Canada goes far beyond that. From their first visit to Canada in Winnipeg, to the famous Bed-In in Montreal in 1969. Support: patreon.com/canadaehx Donate: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/craigU Donate: canadaehx.com (Click Donate) E-mail: craig@canadaehx.com Twitter: twitter.com/craigbaird Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cdnhistoryehx YouTube: youtube.com/c/canadianhistoryehx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Being a music fan was much different in the era before the internet...news traveled slowly often passed through many filters—so many filters, in fact, that a tremendous amount of information was either stripped out or drastically altered by the time it reached us... This was never more true in cases when something awful happened—like, say, someone dying...think back to all the confusion and speculation and conspiracy theories that popped up in the wake of Kurt Cobain’s death... Three years later, we encountered something similar...it was another suicide—maybe...and for much of the world, this death was treated as a tabloid story because of some speculative and some very lurid details involving the three key elements: sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll.. But for others, especially in Australia, this death was a very big deal and extremely traumatizing...it had such an impact that a quarter of century later, fans are still talking about what may (or may not) have happened in a luxury hotel suite in Sydney on November 22, 1997...  This is the story of inxs and the death of Michael Hutchence... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the old days before the internet, musicians had an aura of mystique about them...we only knew what they wanted us to know or what music writers could ferret out...it was an era of secrets and information that was kept quiet... Now, though, things are different...because of social media and our always-on culture, information is everywhere...artists have never given up as much personal information as they do today...too much information, sometimes...  We don’t want our heroes to be life size...the reason we admire them in the first place is because they seem to operate on a plane higher than us...they’ve got a special talent that affects us not just emotionally but occasionally, spiritually...  What, then, do we make of things when we hear our favourite artist is human and fallible like the rest of us and suffer from health problems?...I’ve seen two reactions...  One is a disbelief that they’re mortal...don’t they have some kind of superpowers that keep them free from sickness and disease?...we might have a hard time accepting that...  The second reaction is that such challenges humanize them... You know: “hey, they’re like the rest of us...I can relate”...perhaps this knowledge intensifies our relationship with that person...  And if the artist is open and honest about their condition, it can be inspiring...maybe even by talking about what they’re facing, they can help other people with the same challenges keep moving forward...this, I think, is the real value in the personal health information they share...  Here is part two of a program featuring musicians who have had to deal with disease... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices