Ongoing History of New Music

Pearl Jam is one of the most-documented bands of the last 30 years…even before the internet came along, fans were obsessive about cataloguing everything the band did…tour schedules, setlists, bootleg recordings, news stories…Pearl Jam encouraged this, too…a big part of their long-lasting appeal has been this relationship—this covenant—they’ve had with their fans about collecting and archiving stuff…The band understands this because they’re collectors, too…all you have to do is look at the 20th anniversary box set for the “Ten” album that came out in 2009…it came with things like a replica of Eddie’s notebook at a cassette designed to be just like the one Eddie used to audition for the band back in 1990…The band’s stories have been told many times, but you get the sense that the history of Pearl Jam is so deep that there still must be more to learn about theme…imagine what it might be like for a fan to dig through all kinds of Pearl Jam emphera to see what unusual things can be found there…That’s been done…and i’m here to report back… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before we go any further with our history of alt-rock, a lesson in cosmology is in order...sometime around 16 billion years ago, there was this infinitely dense and infinitely tiny thing called a “singularity”...don’t ask where it came from or who made it...that’s just asking for trouble...The best anyone can tell is that one day–well, there weren’t “days” back then because time didn’t exist (again, let’s not go there)–this thing just exploded...astronomers call this “the big bang”...This explosion moved outward in all directions, stretching space (well, creating space–but that makes the brain hurt)....then started to cool, got lumpy and clumpy and eventually coalesced into stars, planets, people and goats...Everything we see and perceive is the result of that big bang...sorry, creationists...the world isn’t flat, either...and don’t send me emails...Now it’s time for a wild but very apt analogy...if we look at the punk rock of the middle 1970s, we can think of it as a musical big bang...the ideas and attitudes it generated spread out in all directions and eventually began to coalesce into new ideas and attitudes...they were all made up of the same basic elements, but they combined to form totally new life forms...and there were probably goats involved somewhere, too...This is the story of some of those new life forms...it’s chapter seven of the complete history of alt-rock... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nirvana is one of those bands where it seems we know everything…when they broke through with the “Nevermind” album in 1991 and 1992, there was a rush to learn everything we could about them…and then we Kurt died—which happened roughly at the same time the internet began to be a thing with the general public—that interest exploded…Now, in the decades since nirvana ceased to exist, study of the band, its history, its individual members and its influence can best be described as scholarship…that’s how deep we are into the band…so what’s there left to learn, really…While, you might be surprised…here are ten unusual and little known things about one of the best documented bands in the history of rock… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a group of young French film makers decided to mess things up...they insisted on more artistic control and less meddling by the studios......this free-form attitude, they said, was necessary to advance the art of film.....                         It worked...lots of praise and success.....and in the process, their movement acquired a name: “nouvelle vague”.....film historians now say that this style and attitude was one of the most important developments in the history of motion pictures.....Punk rock was dying...it had burned itself out after just a couple of years...but its legacy was still valid: that a free-form attitude towards music was the only way to advance the art of rock’n’roll..... It was “nouvelle vague” all over again.....only this time, they used the English translation....they called it “new wave”...This is chapter six of the complete history of alt-rock... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of "Driven By Her," presented by our friends at Porsche Canada, Alan Cross and Ongoing History of New Music explore a subject that has fascinated Alan since he saw Karen Carpenter play a drum solo in the band's first television special in 1976. Turns out Karen considered herself a drummer who could sing and she had to fight to prove her legitimacy and talent to the rest of the world, especially in the male-dominated music industry. But if there was one woman who could play this well, there had to be others? were there more?During the mid-70s the answer was "not really" but there were a few and in the decades that followed, more and more appeared, and today, female drummers are everywhere comprising a worldwide sisterhood some have called "chicks with sticks".They were drummers, driven by that one thing that they needed more than anything else in the world. The one thing they were truly passionate about... in all cases it was the one thing that made them feel truly free. It's what drove them to singularly focus on crafting their unique talent and chase their dreams down whatever road it led them. But the road wasn't easy... there were a lot of roadblocks, plenty of skepticism, and loads and loads of sexism... Barriers that needed to be broken, attitudes that needed to change abilities that needed to be proven time and time again... This is the story of women with rhythm who changed the way we look at music. In partnership with Porsche Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I started thinking about “firsts” the other day, so I started looking things up…the first McDonald’s was in san Bernardino, California…the first guy to literally walk around the world on foot was Dave Kunist…it took him four years to walk 14,452 miles …the first person to be killed in an automobile accident was Bridget Driscoll of Surrey, England…in 1896, she was hit by a car traveling at 4 miles per hour…the first porn film?...”Bedtime For The Bride,” 1895…We can get weirder…the first thing ever sold on ebay was a broken laser pointer for $14…the first video on YouTube is still up there…it’s called “Me At The Zoo”…the first person with a Facebook account outside the company who wasn’t a friend of Mark Zuckerberg was a guy from India named Sachine Kumar…The more I looked at famous firsts, the more I started wondering about firsts in music….Who was the first person to perform on a guitar run through an amplifier?...the first song downloaded from iTunes?...who was the first to drop an intentional f-bomb on record?...what was the first song to fade out instead of having a definite ending?...You see where I’m going with this, right?...I started compiling a list of “firsts” in music—and then I set out to find some answers…which I did…prepare yourself…this could be the first time you hear about this stuff… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every once in a while, humankind has one of those pivotal years where everything changes...325 AD and the council of Nicea...1215 and the signing of the Magna Carta...the discoveries of 1492..The revolutions of 1789...1919 and the Treaty of Versailles...the great stock market crash of 1929...the dark days of World War II in 1942...the unrest of 1968...the fall of the iron curtain in 1989...In there somewhere is 1977...okay, so to say it was as important to world history as some of these other years might be stretching it...but still, a lot happened...On January 3, a new company called “Apple Computer” was incorporated and the Apple ii went on sale that June...in October, Atari released the ground-breaking 2600 video game console...and in November, boffins running a computer network called Arpanet successfully test something called “tcp/ip” which lay the foundation for the internet...As for music, most of the planet took notice when Elvis Presley died that summer...a big story, yes–but it’s not the music story that I’m thinking of...for that, we have to go to England where a perfectly good royal celebration was sullied by four clots called The Sex Pistols...and for that, we should be very grateful...This is the complete history of alt-rock, chapter 5... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nerd…noun…a foolish or contemptible person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious…definition 2: a single-minded expert in a particular technical field...example: a computer nerd…It’s an old word, too…the, er, nerds at google have a thing called “the ngram viewer” which scans the text of books going back to 1500…in other words, pretty much right back to the inventing of the printing press…According to these nerds, “nerd” (the word) shows up for the first time in an book called “a true discourse of the assault committed upon the most noble Prince, Prince William of Orange, County of Nassau, Marquesse De La Ver & C,” by John Jarequi Spaniarde: with the true copies of the writings, examinations, and letters for sundry offenders in that vile and diuelifh (i have no idea what that word is) attempt”…I can’t tell you what “nerd” referred to in that book because it’s written in old Spanish and i couldn’t be bothered to find a translation…I’d need a real etymological nerd for that…The word fell into disuse after about 1725 returning into the popular lexicon thanks to Dr. Suess in 1950…to him, a “nerd” was some kind of creature found in a zoo…But the following year, Newsweek magazine reported that “nerd” was being used in Detroit to describe an awkward sort of dude who wasn’t very cool…it kind of lingered in the slang world for the rest of the 50s and into the 60s before it really took off in 1974 with the TV series “Happy Days”…Fonzie was always calling Richie and Potsie “nerds” for being uncool dorks…so props to Henry Winkler…By the end of the 70s—and coinciding with the rise of the culture around the personal computer, consumer technology and “Star Wars” and other science fiction pursuits—the use of “nerd” became even more widespread…remember the “Revenge of the Nerds” movies in the 80s?...But now in our technological society, being called a nerd is a compliment…people aspire to be like Bill Gates and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg…look at shows like “The Big Bang Theory” and “Silicon Valley”…we’re actually celebrating nerddom…people want to be nerds ‘cause—well, it’s kinda cool…the geeks have truly inherited the earth…This brings me to music…nerdishness is now so widespread that nerds even have their own genre of music…and as you might guess, it falls squarely in the world of alternative music…This, then, is a short history of what we unreservedly, unashamedly and unironically call “nerd rock”… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the middle 1970s, Britain was a mess...like the rest of the west, the country was blindsided by the Arab oil embargo...it was a recession that just wouldn’t end...And to make matters worse, everyone seemed to be going on strike; from coal miners to gravediggers...unemployment was high, especially amongst young people...The once mighty British Empire was in big trouble...there was a sense that it was all over...done...there was no future...Complicating this was the class system...those at the top (including the Monarchy) kept on doing whatever they wanted to do while everyone else–well, let them eat cake, essentially...(I know I’m getting my countries and monarchies mixed up, but you get the point)...Something had to blow, especially with the young...and when it did, it blew up real good...This is the complete history of alt-rock, chapter 4... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A few years back, the Ongoing History took a "break".It's a long and somewhat complicated story, but we eventually picked up where we left off. This episode is the start of OGH v2.0 and a catch up from Alan's "Walk about" in the 3 years between the original radio episodes 691 and 692 of which this Podcast is based on. So please don't be confused if the radio episodes and podcast episode numbers don't add up. We're just digging into our vault to see what we can find and share.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices