Ongoing History of New Music

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Great Alt-Rock One-Hit Wonders of the 90s: Part 1 Nov 04, 2020

Show notes

Artists who manage to have only one hit are often the butt of jokes…getting tagged as a one-hit-wonder can kill your career…but let’s turn this around: how many hits do you have?...

There is so much music out there, so much competition for our attention, that if you managed to break through all the noise just once, that should be considered a giant victory…

And remember, too, that thanks to streaming and the tens and tens of millions of songs available at our fingertips through our smartphones, that today’s artists are not only competing with their contemporaries but with essentially humankind’s entire recorded musical history…

So, yeah…being a one-hit-wonder is a genuine accomplishment…and while you may burn brightly and then quickly fade, it is possible that one song is all you need to set you up with some royalty cheques for the rest of your life…at the very least, you’ll end up as a trivia question…

Some of these acts are gone forever…others have moved on to other things…and others still just keep plugging away, hoping that lightning strikes twist…

Here are the stories of some alt-rock artists who hit it big exactly once…

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The History of Moshing Oct 28, 2020

Show notes

I do not dance…I’m too awkward and too self-aware of my awkwardness…I know we’re all supposed to dance like no one is looking, but when it comes to me, people will look, point, and judge…

My wife realizes this…since we were married decades okay, she’s had to be content with the fact that she got that dance at the wedding and that’s pretty much it…and that’s because she’s not into dancing, either…

I can feel the judgment.... stop it!

This doesn’t mean that music doesn’t move me…I’ve got that involuntary need to move when the music is great…and I don’t mean tapping a toe or nodding my head, although that’s where it starts…

Put it this way: I’ve done my time in the pit…I’ve been elbowed, kneed, kicked, head-butted, burn with cigarettes and joints, and doused with water (at least I hope it was water)…no problem because that’s all part of the pit experience…the only thing I haven’t done is stage dove or crowd-surfed…I’m not sure why…

But here’s a question: why is there a pit in the first place?...who came up with this idea?...how did it spread?...and is it the same everywhere?...

These are important anthropological questions…we’re deal with a type of human behavior that’s seen all over the world…I think we need to study this…here a whole hour on the history of moshing…

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The Great KGB Punk Conspiracy Oct 21, 2020

Show notes

You may be aware of a podcast that came out in the spring of 2020 that sought to get to the bottom of a certain musical mystery…it’s called “wind of change” and it explores the possibility that a metal power ballad was a contributing factor to the fall of the soviet union in the very early 90s…

Stay with me… “Wind of Change” was a global hit for The Scorpions; a metal band out of Hanover in what was then WestGermany…

The Scorpions sing in English…but they also recorded a Russian version under the name “Veter Peremen”…and when the song was released on January 20, 1991, it became a worldwide hit…

Estimates are that it sold 14 million copies…it’s the best-selling single by any German artist…and because it was such a big hit in the USSR, the band presented Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev a gold record…even today, the song is a massive, massive hit among several generations of fans in Eastern Europe…

For years, rumours have swirled about this song…it is said that it was the product of a CIA operation design to destabilize Soviet society with its message of change and revolution…it worked so well that by the end of 1991, the Soviet Union had crumbled…

Did the CIA commission someone to write “Wind of Change,” get The Scorpions to record it, which somehow helped bring about the end of the USSR from within?...I’m not going to cover that here, so you’ll have to listen to the podcast…

But I can tell you that this might not have been the first time rock music was used by a foreign intelligence operation to drive a wedge into a specific society…the popular music of the west—especially the music produced by the USA—was feared by Soviet bloc authorities…but the Soviets also knew that music could also be a weapon against the west…

Here’s another theory…could it be that punk rock was actually KGB plot against the west?...did things also operate in the opposite direction…here’s what we know—or at least think we know…

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Introducing... Crime Beat - Season 3 Oct 20, 2020

Show notes

Ride along with 25 year veteran Crime Reporter Nancy Hixt, from Global News, on her award winning podcast Crime Beat as she takes you through some of Canada’s most high-profile criminal cases. Real People, Real Crimes, Real Journalism. Each episode takes you deep inside cases she has worked to give you detail you didn't hear on the news.

Season 3 is available NOW - LISTEN

Crime Beat is the 2020 winner of the Edward R. Murrow Podcast Award (RTDNA).

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History of Pop Punk: Part 2 Oct 14, 2020

Show notes

Here’s a list of words that shouldn’t go together but do…alone together…how many times did you uses that during the coronavirus pandemic?...deafening silence…I know what that means, but when you think about it, the juxtaposition is strange…

Definitely maybe…good name for a Britpop album, but an odd combination of words…random order…walking dead…original copy…

Here’s another one: pop-punk…you know what I mean by that…but those words should not go together…punk was originally created as an attack pop…

Over the decades, pop and punk merged to create a hybrid that’s responsible for selling hundreds of millions of records and concert tickets…

How did this happen?...that’s what we’re looking at…this is part two of a history of pop-punk…

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History of Pop Punk: Part 1 Oct 07, 2020

Show notes

Before we get to the topic at hand, I’d like to revisit the movie “Forrest Gump,” specifically Forrest’s shrimp boat buddy, Benjamin Buford Blue—but you can just call him Bubba…he knew all the ways one could serve up shrimp…

What Bubba could do for shrimp, other people can do for punk…punk rock comes in as many different varieties of shrimp…there’s hardcore punk, ska-punk, cyberpunk, synthpunk, anarcho-punk, cowpunk, gypsy punk, Christian punk, Celtic punk, art punk, garage punk, glam punk, crust punk, horror punk, street punk, melodic punk, afro-punk, skate punk, Chicano punk, folk funk, trall punk…

There’s punk blues, punk pathetique, punk metal, riot grrrl, queercore, rapcore, straight edge, emo, and oi…

And then we can get into all sorts of subgenres…hardcore punk includes bent edge, deathcore, pornogrind, screamo, powerviolence, positive hardcore, nard core, nintendocore…and that’s about all I know about that…

Most of these punk derivatives are pretty niche and none of them have a hope in hell of growing beyond a cult following…but a few have blown up into worldwide phenomenon’s—including a version that I haven’t mentioned, which remains one of the most popular forms of punk rock of all time…

This is the history of pop-punk, part 1…

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Where Are They Now? Part 4 Sep 30, 2020

Show notes

At some point, you may end up being invited to your high school reunion—and you’re probably going to go because you wanna see what happened to all those people…

Where’s the jock that made your life miserable?...the girl or the guy who snubbed you for that date and broke your heart…the shy, nerdy guy who was really smart…who did well?...who got what was coming to them…

But—oh, wait: people at the reunion are going to be thinking the same about you…how’s your hair and your waistline and your complexion?...dammit!...what am I gonna wear?...what am I gonna say to these people?...and so the anxiety sets in…

But you’ll still end up going…why?...because we’ve all got the “where-are-they-now” gene…it’s only natural to be curious about the whereabouts of people we were close to (or at least in close proximity to) during an important time in our lives…

Connecting people this way was one of the first projects for the internet…classmates.com went online way back in 1995…its sole purpose was the find anyone you might have gone to school with from kindergarten to university…

This was also the purpose of a site called “Friendster” back in 2002…then came MySpace in 2003…anyone remember “hi 5?”...it showed up in 2004…then finally, Facebook in 2005…

You know what we need?...a site that links together all the artists and musicians we once knew—a proper one-stop-shop where-are-they-now resource for music…

As far as I can tell, such a site doesn’t exist so we have to piece together things ourselves….so let’s try to do that again…this is another look at lost Canadian alt-rock bands of the 90s and beyond…

Damn…would someone get on that idea?...it would make doing a show like this a lot easier…

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Musicians Who Lost It: Part 2 Sep 23, 2020

Show notes

Sometimes, life becomes too much…things get too weird, there’s too much pressure, too many decisions, too many wrong choices….the uncertainty builds—and then you just kinda lose it…

We lose the plot, go off the rails, hit the ditch, blow a gasket, and generally freak out…sometimes, these incidents are fueled by drugs, alcohol and mental illness…other times, it’s the body and brain’s way of saying “thanks, but I’ve had enough for now…I’m going to go over here and have me a little breakdown right now”…

Creative types can be especially vulnerable to these problems…maybe because they’re wired differently…or they’ve developed some bad, self-destructive habits tolerated or even encouraged by those around them…or because they can live in a bubble, they don’t exactly know “normal” is to the average person…

The results can be scary…and if we don’t know the backstory to these breakdowns and freak-outs, it’s very hard to help these people in their time of need…but the more we understand how and why people find themselves in these situations, the more we can help…and maybe, the more we can learn to cope with life ourselves…

This is musicians who lost it, part 2…

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Musicians Who Lost It: Part 1 Sep 16, 2020

Show notes

There’s something about creative types that make them different than the rest of us…if you’ve ever spent any kind of time with any kind of artist, you’ll what I mean…they’re just different, you know?...

That’s not any kind of judgment…it’s just an honest observation…they look at the universe differently, feel things in ways we don’t, and interpret life in interesting ways…that’s what makes them artists—and it’s why they’re so important to the rest of us…

Sometimes, though, some of them will lose the plot…they’re so wrapped up in their bubbles that they start behaving…weird—even for them…

Maybe it’s a mental health issue…maybe it has to do with drugs or alcohol…maybe they’ve just fallen in with a bad crowd, the kind that encourages bad, self-destructive behaviour…

Some are able to rebound, straighten out and otherwise save themselves and those around them from any further grief…other times, well….

These are stories of musicians who lost it…

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New Rock Secrets Sep 09, 2020

Show notes

This show is going to blow the lid off some secrets and mysteries in new rock. Admittedly some you may have already have heard rumours about, but others....well this may be the first time you are ever hearing about them.

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