The Very First Episode of the Ongoing History of New Music

I vividly remember sitting down to write the first-ever episode of “The Ongoing History of New Music”...I was in my living room with a blank yellow note pad...and I was terrified...

To be brutally honest, I did not want this gig...but the powers-that-be decreed that this was my new job...if didn’t want to do it, that would have been cool...I was told I’d receive a manila envelope containing a modest severance package...

That wouldn’t work...I’d just gotten married and I’d just bought a house with a 12 ½ per cent mortgage...and I’d done radio all my adult life, so I didn’t really have a lot of skills for any other line of work...

So I told the bosses that “okay, I’ll do it”...what other choice did I have?...

So there I am, sitting looking at this blank yellow note pad this was before the internet and before anyone started writing books on the history of alternative music... ...where to start?...how to organize everything?...and how could I come up with something every single week?...

What’s that quote from the ancient Chinese philosopher, Laozi?... “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”...so I just started scribbling notes...

A few days later, I had a script for the first episode of “The Ongoing History of New Music”...I decided that the best way to begin was to make a pilot, a show that laid out what the program would be...I was a total guess...I had no idea...none...

I figured I’d do the show for a couple of years and then move on...people would get tired of it, it would outlive its usefulness, or I’d just end up getting fired—for real, this time...

But here we are, 30 years later, and I’m still doing “Ongoing History” shows...and as I sit here, it’s February 2023, we’re about 30-ish episodes from Ongoing History show number one thousand...that’ll happen sometime in November...

Things have changed a lot since I wrote and recorded that first episode, things that we’ll get into when we get to show number one thousand...but for now, to mark 30 years since the first episode aired, we’ve pulled the recording from the archive and are making it available for the first time as a Podcast...God, the concept of Podcasts was still years away when we started this...

So just for fun, let’s take a listen to that very first program, broadcast on February 28, 1993...I hope this isn’t too cringey...

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