This is a program about the hidden audio that lurks in your music collection. You don’t know about it…you didn’t ask for it…you maybe didn’t even want it…but it’s there…and it needs to be exposed…

And it’s more than just hidden songs, too…there’s all kinds of weirdness tucked away—if you know where to look…and when I say “weird”, I mean “super weird”

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Once upon a time, musical instruments were divided into two groups: those appropriate for women to play and everything else... 

That first group was very small...playing the piano was considered feminine...the violin?...yes, providing it was done gently and with ladylike comportment...and then—well, that’s about it...

Drums?...forget it...too physical and sweaty...brass instruments were out...in fact, so were all wind instruments, not even the flute...however, the acoustic guitar was okay...it wasn’t very loud and produced tones delicate enough to be appropriate for a young lady to play... 

This, of course, was silly...women had been doing amazing things with guitars stretching back to the invention of what became the modern acoustic guitar back in the early 1800s..and we can go back through the stringed instruments in history: the lute, the kithara, the chartar, the tanbur, the oud, the mandolin, the cittern, and so on...women played all of them—although we know almost nothing about them...

That’s the way it was for decades...and let’s not even talk about the electric guitar...even as late as the 1980s, there was this sexist attitude that girls just couldn’t play like the boys...they did not know how to rock out with a Les Paul or a strat or whatever...

In 2003, Rolling Stone published a list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time...you know how many women were on that list?...two...two!

Today we know that’s crazy...there are plenty of excellent guitars with double-x chromosomes...and thanks to them, people are exploring the history of the guitar heroine, women advanced the cause of the six-string, public preconceptions be damned...

This is a look back at the women who made the guitar sing...

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There was a time in this country when Canadians didn’t really care about Canadian music...no, wait...let’s start over...

There was a time in this country when Canadians didn’t like Canadian music and did whatever they could to ignore it and pretend it didn’t exist...yeah, that’s more accurate...

There was one exception to this rule: if a Canadian artist received some kind of validation from outside the country—preferably the united states—then suddenly, they were worth paying attention to at home...

It was a mix of insecurity and what I believe are Canada’s two unofficial mottos...the first is “why can’t you be happy with what you have?”...the other is “who do you think you are?...you think you’re better than everyone else?”...

That’s harsh, but it’s true...and for years, ambitious, talented Canadian musicians flowed south to seek their fortune in America...Paul Anka...Neil Young...Joni Mitchell...

And yes, there were those who remained in Canada—Gordon Lightfoot is one...The Guess Who is another—but they really weren’t fully accepted at home until they had a hit in America...suddenly, the attitude swung 180 degrees?... “them?...oh, yeah they’re one of us!”...

This is the way it was for several decades—a frustrating situation for countless musicians...

But then things started to warm up a bit in the 1980s...and by the time the 90s arrived, attitudes towards homegrown talent had swung in the other direction...not only were Canadian music fans loving Canadian bands, Canadian music being heard all over the world...wait—let’s try that again, too...Canadian music was in demand all over the world...

Some have called this the great Can-Rock revolution of the 1990s...and it changed everything...here’s how it all started...

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If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years dealing with musicians, there are artists and then there are artistes...here’s how I tell them apart...Artists make art, but they also have other interests, pursuits and abilities...Bono is an example of an artist...he’s the front man of U2 but is also involved in politics, activism, tech, and a load of other things...and everything he does is done with an artistic flair and the soul of a performer...

Artistes also make art...but it’s all they do...in fact, it’s all they can do...they live to create art and are often not very good at anything else...in fact—to put a fine point on it—they may be hopeless at life in general...

That’s not a judgment or a criticism...it’s just how their brains are wired...they are on this earth with an almost supernatural ability to do nothing but create beauty through art...

But this power comes with pitfalls......they might have trouble with day to day tasks like handling money, shopping for groceries, keeping a schedule, or being able to deal with everyday social situations...

They may suffer from depression, anxiety, bi-polar disorder...they may be on the autism spectrum...and they may be prone to addictions: alcohol, drugs, sex...and if they managed to become well-known for their art, the insane pressure, crazy schedules, hedonistic lifestyle, and living in a bubble of fame can exacerbate things until—well, until things get very, very bad...

I’ve met a few such artistes in my life—and in my experience, there is no better example than John Frusciante, who, of course, is best known for his work in the Red Hot Chili Peppers...

His life, both in and out of the band—and he’s joined three times and quit twice—has been very long and strange...this is part two of that journey....

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And if I’m sitting with my taxonomy flowchart, this is where I write the name “John Frusciante,” the occasional guitarist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers...

And I use the word “occasional” deliberately because he’s been in and out of the band a number of times over the last 30 years...as I write this, he’s “in”—but who knows for how long...

And I’m classifying him as periplaneta americana because despite everything he’s been through, he’s still alive...I mean, he’s live a hard life...drugs, various health problems both of the physical and mental variety—even dabbling in the occult...yet through it all, he’s been able to help the Chili Peppers create the best music of their career...

This is the long, strange trip of John Frusciante...

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The most powerful and strangest lump of organic material in the known universe is sitting inside your skull...the human brain weighs about three pounds—call it about 1400 grams if you’re feeling metric—and contains about 10 billion neurons...a piece the size of a grain of sand contains 100,000 neurons and over a billion synapses...

At the same time, it uses only about 10 watts to function...that’s ten times better than your laptop...and one brain (we think) is equivalent to at least 100,000 laptops when it comes to computing power...

 Even then, it can do things no computer can do, no matter how big...that thing in your head could have a storage capacity of perhaps up to 2.5 petabytes, although no one knows for sure yet...in fact, the capacity of the brain might be unlimited...not bad for something that’s 60% fat...

There is no obvious biological reason for it, but our brains seem to be hardwired for music...there are special areas of the brain devoted just to deal with music...

Maybe this is a result of our ancient ancestors trying to imitate birdsong...it could be related to language...maybe it has something to do with storytelling...details are sometimes easier to remember if they’re put to music...or maybe music developed along with religious rituals and chants...

Because the way music is wired into the brain, it’s a very useful tool when it comes to figuring out how that 10-watt lump of fat in our skulls work...and sometimes we learn things that are completely unexpected and almost always totally wonderful...

Let me show you...here are some mind-blowing facts about music, the brain, and the body...

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Have you ever heard of a woman named Rosalind Franklin?...probably not, but you can draw a line from today’s covid vaccines all the way back to her in the 1950s...she conducted some serious research into the makeup of rna molecules...

Rosalind also did some groundbreaking research into the structure of DNA molecules...without her, Jim Watson and Francis Crick may not have discovered how DNA was constructed...they’d go on to win the Nobel prize in 1962...was Rosalind ever given the credit she deserved?...no...

What about grace hopper?...ring any bells?...back in the 1940s, lieutenant Grace Hopper invented some computer programming techniques used by the army during World War II…this was the basis of Cobol, the compute language still used by business, finance, and administrative software today...

Let’s try Susan Kare...no?...she’s the one who came up with the trash can icon and the command key on mac computers...she was integral to making the mac operating system as user-friendly as possible...

Okay, here’s a name you may know: Hedy Lamar...famous actress from old Hollywood in the 30s and 40s and one-time date of Howard Hughes, right?...but she also worked with a guy named George Antheil to come up with a radio “frequency hopping” technology that made today’s Wi-Fi, cellular phones, Bluetooth, and gps communications possible...in fact, some call Hedy Lamar “the mother of Wi-Fi”...but does she get the appropriate credit for that?...nope...

Those are just a few unsung heroines of technology...their work changed the world...and there are so many more in other fields, too...back in the late 1800s, Nellie Bly became the first investigative female journalist...effa Manley was the first woman to own a sports team...that was back in the 1930s...Beulah Henry was nicknamed “Lady Edison” because she was such a prolific inventor...

And while we all know about Joan of Arc, what about Matilda of Tuscany?...she had a 40-year military career who successfully led troops against the Holy Roman Emperor again and again almost a thousand years ago...these are just a few unsung heroines from history...

There are similar stories from the world of music: women who changed so much but have been given so little credit...let’s see if we can’t do a little bit to fix that...

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If the doomsayers are correct, something monumental–something transformative–is going to happen on December 21, 2012...this is the day the b’ak’tun cycle ends...

The Mayan long count calendar runs out...after 5,125 years, it comes to an end date...what will happen next is up for debate...

It could be the end of the world...Earth may collide with Nibiru, its long-hidden nemesis planet...some say a black hole may swallow us up...a catastrophic shift in the polar magnetic fields...

Others believe we will achieve some kind of spiritual enlightenment, which will usher humankind into a new era of peace...

Or maybe nothing will happen...okay, so maybe we’ll get another bad John Cusack movie on the subject...that’s not good and the prospect is admittedly frightening–but it’s just a movie...

History has shown that humans are really, really bad at predicting the apocalypse with any degree of certainty...

I, however, have another theory...I believe that there may be a fundamental shift on planet earth around the time of December 21, 2012...and it has to do with rock music...

No, no–stay with me on this...I’m not crazy...or at least, I might not be...I hope not...

This is the fifteenth and final chapter of a series I call “the complete history of alt-rock”...

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To fans of any kind of rock, may 18, 1999, seemed like the end of the world...the Backstreet Boys released their new cd called Millennium...on that first day, it sold more than 500,000 copies...by the end of the week, it had sold 1,134,000, a new all-time sales record...

And those are just the u.s. Numbers...add in the rest of the world and the total was much higher...

And it was only going to get twice as bad...just 308 days later, ‘N sync–another blood boy band–set an even scarier record...by the end of its first week in the stores, their No Strings Attached sold 2.4 million copies...

And just 56 days after that, Britney Spears sold half a million copies of Oops!...I Did It Again on day one and 1,319,193 in its first seven days....

When the dust cleared at the end of 2000, it was clear that vacuous pop music had taken over the universe...these CDs weren’t just selling by the tens of millions....they were selling by the hundreds of millions...

In second place was rap and hip-hop, thanks to people like Eminem, Nelly and Dr. Dre...the biggest selling rock records of the year were from Sreed, Santana and a Beatles r compilation that featured songs that were more than 35 years old...

The prognosis wasn’t good...if rock–all rock–wasn’t dead, it was at least very, very ill...and unless somebody did something, it looked like it was all over...

This is chapter 14 of the complete history of alt-rock...

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If you were around in the early 90s, you probably remember it as a time of awesome new music...it seemed that every single day, there was a cool new band, a great new sound, a scene you didn’t know about...

Grunge was king with nirvana and Soundgarden and pearl jam...green day and offspring had brought punk back...Manchester led into Britpop with Oasis and the Stone Roses

Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys, Tool, Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins, all these bands and more grabbed everyone’s attention...hair metal was dead!....classic rock?  Over!....Lollapalooza was the coolest event of the year...

The alternative nation had triumphed!....no more bad, boring, mainstream pop and rock!...

Well, hang on...rock music has always run in a series of cycles that can be traced back to the 1950s...we’ll get into that later, but all I need to say is “what goes up must come down”...and the alt-rock party came down...hard...and it hurt...

This is chapter 13 of the complete history of alt-rock...

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