Over the last decade, there has been some very, very long overdue attempts at reconciliation with the First Nations and Indigenous Peoples of North America…there’s still a long, long way to go, but at least the process as begun…The treatment

Lost Canadian Bands 3

1 Nov 27th, 2019 20m 10s

There are a lot of things wrong with Facebook—don’t get me started—but there’s no denying that it can be addictive…The best thing for me is finding out where people from my life have ended up…high school, university, my home town, other place

Catching Up With Twenty One Pilots

1 May 22nd, 2019 25m 6s

Not all bands hit it out of the park right away…they need a few albums and a couple of long tours before things start to fall into place…Take the Red Hot Chili Peppers, for example…their career really didn’t start to blossom until their fourt

The Rise and Fall and Rise of Blink 182 Part 1

Jan 31st, 2017 32m 47s

After grunge blew up in the early 1990s, the walls between mainstream rock and the alternative universe crumbled completely…what other music had been hiding in the plain sight?...There was goth and industrial and various forms of electronica…

Mumford and Sons

1 Jun 24th, 2019 26m 24s

This time we take a deep dive into the history of Mumford and Sons...the earliest and mostly unknown aspects of their career. If you're a superman...you might already know some of this. Or maybe not!Lots to digest in this episode.Learn m

The Tribes of Alt-Rock

May 30th, 2017 24m 45s

One of the most useful things about music is that it can be used to tell the world who you are…we’ve all done it…it is a symbol of our individuality and belief in personal freedom…it proclaims our identity to the world…Once you start doing th

Big Bands from Small Towns

Mar 29th, 2017 27m 5s

Let me say from the outset that I have nothing against small towns…I grew up in one myself…population: 2000…it was in the middle of the Canadian prairies…the nearest big city was Winnipeg…after that, you had to go at least 500 miles before you

Rock And Roll Myths

Mar 15th, 2017 29m 42s

Myths and legends come in all sizes…Atlantis…that’s a big one that we can’t seem to wrap our heads around…but maybe homer was just yanking our chain…“feed a cold, starve a fever”…turns out that’s wrong…depriving yourself of calories may make

The Rise and Fall and Rise of Blink 182 Part 3

Feb 17th, 2017 27m 37s

Some years ago, I had a conversation with Don Letts, the DJ, filmmaker and confidant of The Clash…and he said something that stuck with me: “the average lifespan of a band is seven years…that’s enough for them to form, get big, become stars, de

The Rise and Fall and Rise of Blink 182 Part 2

Feb 10th, 2017 23m 24s

It’s rare that a band has a career with two acts…it’s not impossible…the survivors of Joy Division managed to do quite well as new order…the Barenaked Ladies were once written off before roaring back to life…and how many times has Black Sabbath

A History of Anonymous Bands

1 day ago 35m 22s

Usually, the whole idea of being famous is to be, well, famous…you’re known by everyone…your face is everywhere…you’re a celebrity…and you get invited to the best parties, you get endorsements, you get free stuff…Sure, there’s a trade-off…your

Bonus

Uncharted: The Ever-Popular Kurt-Cobain-Was-Murdered Conspiracy

9 days ago 55m 33s

When something bad happens, we want to know why…the weirder and badder the event, the more we need to know…It can’t possibly be random…someone needs to be responsible and held accountable…someone needs to be blamed…and there had better not be

Connections 2

9 days ago 33m 14s

Historians love to investigate causes and effects…it’s possible for a teeny-tiny seemingly inconsequential thing to set off a cascading series of events…and before you know it, the universe has changed forever…Let me give you an example…a bunc

Lo-Fi: A History

16 days ago 31m 28s

For the first 60 years of the recorded music industry, things sounded awful…the quality of the recordings people had to put up with were terrible…the old 78 rpm records played on gramophones were no match when it came to hearing music live…we j

Bonus

Introducing... Crime Beat | Out of the dark

20 days ago 39m 4s

In the summer of 2006, a young Calgary woman was on top of the world. She had a supportive family, amazing friends and a great job. But life as she knew it came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the night on August 6, 2006. In this episode, Gl

Songs Based On Real Events

22 days ago 24m 44s

Streaming is a very cool way to access tens of millions of songs with a few pokes on your phone…the idea of being able to listen to virtually any song from any era of human history with such ease is something akin to magic…The downside of stre

Alexisonfire: In Their Own Words

30 days ago 50m 30s

A band is like a plant…stay with me on this…like a plant, a band grows from seeds to maturity, bursts for with new seeds and then eventually withers and dies…it’s the cycle of life, you know?...But like plants (or animals or any other living t

Rock Explainer 4

Mar 13th, 2024 35m 23s

A boy cannot become a man in the Satere-Mawe tribe of the Amazon Rain Forest until he can stand being stung by a swarm of Bullet ants…they’re called that because it’s said their sting is as painful as being hit by an actual bullet…if the kid ca

The History and Future of AI in Music

Mar 6th, 2024 42m 20s

The biggest tech story of recent years has been the rise of artificial intelligence…the subject of ai is everywhere… it’s been “AI this” and “AI that”…The Wikipedia article on ChatGPT, the company that really got things rolling in this area, w

Another Look At Bootlegging: Part 2

Feb 28th, 2024 35m 44s

Once upon a time, I was deep into collecting bootleg recordings of my favourite bands…and this obsession came from a really good place…at least I thought so…I’d already bought all the albums and singles, collected a bunch of memorabilia, snapp

Uncharted "Sneak Peak" - Episode 9: The Disappearance of Richey Edwards

Feb 23rd, 2024 29m 53s

Hey It's Alan...and I want to introduce you to my brand new, one-of-a-kind true crime podcast called Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry. On this podcast I take you inside unbelievable stories of murder, plane crashes, court batt

Another Look At Bootlegging: Part 1

Feb 21st, 2024 30m 11s

On December 24, 1877, Thomas Edison filed a patent for a new invention he referred to as a “talking machine”…for the first time ever, audio could be captured, played back, stored, shared, and analyzed…When asked what the point of his machine w

Rock Firsts By Black Artists

Feb 14th, 2024 34m 5s

We would not be sitting here talking about rock music if it weren’t for people of African descent…if you start in the present and begin to trace things backward to important innovations and accomplishments, nine times out of ten, you’ll end up

UFOs, UAPs, and Rock

Feb 7th, 2024 28m 12s

I really, really want to believe…there are trillions of galaxies in the observable universe, each containing billions of stars…there’s gotta be something out there…we can’t be alone…Organisms floating in the acid clouds of Venus…remains of bac