Ongoing History of New Music

It is almost impossible for anyone from a lightweight boy band to transition to serious, respected artist…it can be done—we can look at Justin Timberlake and, um…well, we can look at Justin Timberlake….And as tough as that is, it’s even more difficult to move from being pigeonholed as a novelty act to one that carries gravitas and serious artistic merit…yet that’s what the beastie boys managed to do…No one took them seriously for the first eight years of their career…they were spoiled, snotty frat boys writing goofy songs and making funny videos… “Licensed to Ill” was a parody of hip hop…a good one, but a still a parody…let’s not forget that “Rolling Stone” described the album as “three idiots make a masterpiece”…But then something changed…The Beastie Boys grew up…they grew as artists…they grew as businessmen…they grew as humans…They took risks…they experimented…they branched out…they sought to make a difference—not just in music but in the world…and by the time it all came to an end with the death of Adam Yauch in the spring of 2012, The Beastie Boys had cemented a reputation as one the most important bands of not one but at least two generations…This is remembering The Beastie Boys, part 2. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The British music scene has always operated at warp speed...songs and bands and sounds have always come and gone very quickly, even before the age of the internet...This is what happens when you have a lot of people crammed onto an island linked together by a huge and obsequious national broadcasting network and goaded by a hyper-competitive music press...But every once in a while–maybe once a decade–something sticks...a movement takes root, grows organically and then suddenly explodes to the point where everyone is talking about it...it even goes international with its songs and sounds and fashion and politics..In the 60s, it was the British invasion, led by the Beatles and the Stones...in the 70s, it was the British spin on punk rock with the Pistols and the Clash...the 80s began with all those telegenic British bands on MTV which set off the music video revolution...and in the 90s–well, that’s where it gets a bit complicated...Not complicated in a bad way...i mean in an interesting way...it was an explosion of pride in British-ness that we hadn’t really seen since February 7, 1964, when Pan Am flight 101 from London landed at JFK airport in New York carrying a band called the Beatles...This is chapter 12 of the complete history of alt-rock–and it’s all about the thing they called “Britpop”... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For an entire generation of music fans—two generations, really—The Beastie Boys were always there…and now that they’re no longer with us, there are a lot of people who feel like there’s a void in music…But we’ll always remember their contributions…and there were a lot…this is part one of “Remembering The Beastie Boys”… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the great indirect heroes of modern rock’n’roll was born on March 21, 1865...his name was brigadier general George Owen Squier....he was an Army officer with a PhD in electrical science and a thing for music....he invented a technology to designed to compete with a new thing called “radio”....Wireless radio, he figured, was useless...it was prone to static and fade-outs and just didn’t sound very good...his idea was to run wires into homes and businesses, just like we have with cable TV today or as they were beginning to do with telephones back then...he called the concept “wired radio”....Just before he died in 1934, he came up with a new name for his invention.....playing with the words “music” and “Kodak,” he came up with “Muzak”...The whole thing with “wired radio” didn’t take off with consumers, but businesses were into it...closed circuit music, specifically tailored to their environment, 24 hours a day without interruption or static?...that’s brilliant....and shopping malls and elevators haven’t been the same since....Muzak became the world’s biggest supplier of elevator music...So where am I going with this...great question...By the 70s, Muzak corporation was earning more than $400 million a year by distributing this type of music all over the world from its headquarters in Seattle.....it was used for crowd control, a management tool and something to fill the empty silence of a department store or dentist’s office...And for a time, the Muzak executives thought this was a good unofficial slogan: “boring work is made less boring by boring music”....you bored yet?...Fifty-two years after the George Squire died, a new type of music started coming from the back room of Muzak headquarters in Seattle......but it wasn’t exactly elevator music....The music came from the shipping room where a Muzak employee named Bruce Pavitt spent his coffee breaks running a new independent record label devoted to the local music scene.....in fact, Muzak’s payroll supported at least half a dozen local musicians......and while no one could have possibly known what where this was going to lead, the decidedly non-muzak music these people were into would eventually change the world of rock’n’roll forever.....This is the complete history of alt-rock, chapter 11... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're digging back into the original Ongoing History vault and have found this requested show on lost albums.Sometimes an artist will work on, and almost finish an album. But for whatever reason...creative concerns, fear it is too "out there", misplaced master tapes...the album never sees the light of day.Why is that? How many times has it happened in alt-rock? And to who?Well...we're glad you asked. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Once upon a time, all music was made mechanically...something had to be hit with a hand or a stick...or strummed or plucked...or air had to be forced over a reed or through a valve...Then along came electricity...it took a while, but electricity was tamed so that it could not only power new forms of musical instruments, but the energy itself could be made musical...By the beginning of the 1980s, the people of planet earth were most pleased at what they had accomplished...but in the background, some people knew that there was still more work to be done....They began asking “what if anything could be made into music?”...others still mused “what if we could take existing music, chop it up and reassemble it into something brand new?”...Some used the old ways, chopping up these sounds mechanically using proven machinery like turntables and tape machines...but others learned to use new inventions called “computers” and “samplers”...And so it came to pass that all through the 80s, people began to experiment with electricity and the new machines...and by the time the decade ended, there was plenty of new and interesting music to go around...music was being made by machines, orchestrated by computers and programmed by punks...and things would never be the same again. This is the complete history of alt-rock, chapter 10... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Women helped changed the face of ROCK as hair metal from the 80’s gave way to brand new sounds and VERY different attitudes in the 90's. On this episode of "Driven by Her" presented by our friends at Porsche Canada we're showcasing amazing, driven women like Alanis Morrissette, Ani DiFranco, and Bikini Kill. They carved their own path and created the seismic shift in music that came with Generation X because the 90's couldn't have rocked at the level they did without their influence along with the other women who helped define a generation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Okay, stay with us as this could get a bit confusing.Since the Ongoing History takes the summer months off to write and research new shows, we dig into the vault to post older episodes that first aired on radio from 1993 onward.Some still sound relevant, and others...not so much.This episode is "Radio episode 601" (aired in 2009-ish) but "Podcast Episode 345.So if some of the content seems a bit "dated" this could be the reason.But we feel the material is still relevant.Enjoy and please continue to send in your questions to Alan so we can keep doing episodes like this one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It had taken a few years, but by the middle 1980s, the underground music scene in north America had reached some kind of a tipping point...enough people had discovered punk, new wave and all the sub-genres associated with both so that things started to become really interesting...Campus radio stations began to have more clout...the more support they gave to these non-mainstream bands, the more they were appreciated and the more power they wielded...And as these stations began to communicate with each other through publications and charts and conventions, their influence and reach grew even more...turns out that a surprising number of people were really tired of whatever the mainstream rock industry was pumping out...each day, the “alternative” scene–that’s what we were calling it by the mid-80s–attracted more fans who were only too happy to evangelize the epiphanies that led to their conversion...Yes, college radio helped...so did all the bands willing to tour alt-friendly clubs...and so did independent record stores which set themselves apart from the big chains by stocking more of the weird stuff....But we can’t forget the roll of MTV and any channel or show that played videos from all those weird, new telegenic bands from the UK...If you spent any time at all watching music videos in the middle 80s, it was obvious that as interesting as the growing alt-rock scene was in north America, there was something just as interesting happening on that cold, rainy rock in the north Atlantic...and it was all happening so fast...This is the complete history of alt-rock, chapter nine...   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When punk rock first appeared in the middle 1970s, the major record companies in north America really didn’t care...they were happily making millions and millions of dollars from big rock bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles.....And there was millions more coming in from disco...which was sweeping the world....it was like a plague–but a profitable one...so why would they bother with this weird stuff bubbling up from tiny, scary clubs on both sides of the Atlantic?...they were too busy going to big stadium shows and getting down at Studio 54...But this new music wouldn’t go away...so when Led Zeppelin broke up and the Stones and The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac disappeared up their own buts and the disco bubble finally burst the record execs tried to tame it......marketing the gentler and less intense bands under the umbrella of something they called “New Wave”.Oh, they tried with punk, but they got it really, really wrong...you gotta wonder what was going through that executive’s head when The Ramones were picked to open shows for toto....No, seriously...The Ramones were the opening act for Toto on one tour...I swear I didn’t make that up...it happened in Lake Charles, Louisiana...January 26, 1979...they were also paired up with Foreigner and Blue Oyster Cult...But we have to be fair....the general public just didn’t get punk....when The Sex pistols appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in the fall of 1977, it was one of their poorest-selling issues, ever....mind you, the headline read “rock is sick and living in London”...the story began with a quote from Isaiah 3:24: “instead of perfume, there will be rottenness”....After that, most Rolling Stone writers were instructed to stop writing about this music...it was bad for business...really bad...But there were people who got it....and frankly, fans of non-mainstream music were quite happy to be left alone...they were into this new music precisely because they hated the mainstream...and over the next dozen years, the musical underground was allowed left to gestate undisturbed......it slowly mutated and evolved into something very unique---very powerful...this is the complete history of alt-rock, chapter 8... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices