What do you remember from history class back in school?... Maybe a few dates and events…maybe the names some important people…and probably how dull a lot of history classes were.

 I remember being inundated with a bunch of facts—which was fine (i guess), but it didn’t really make history come alive, you know? ...and it didn’t have to be this way. 

History is more than this country going to war with that one, who married who to create what royal alliance, and which explorers went where to inflict harm on what indigenous people…there are many other branches of historical study.

There’s social history, economic history, the history of science and technology, technology—and (my favourite) stupid history…these are stories of how civilization changed because of stupid people and stupid things…and if we were taught stupid history alongside all the record stuff, those classes would have been a whole lot more fun.

For example, in 1545, winemakers in Saint-Julien, France, were in a panic because their vines were being eaten by weevils…these vineyard owners were so upset that they brought legal action against the bugs.

This was all very formal…documents were drawn up and the weevils were appointed a defense lawyer by the court…there was a trial with a judge and when it was all over, the weevils were found guilty of, well, being weevils and eating grapevines.

Almost a year later, the presiding judge issued a proclamation demanding that the weevils cease and desist with their ravaging of the vineyards…dumb, right?...but believe it or not, the weevils listened…the infestation stopped almost overnight.

There was not any kind of weevil problem for 40 years…and when they showed up again in 1587, the vineyards again took the bugs to court… the result of that case is lost to time…i love it…that is wonderful stupid history.

Music has its own stories like this…yes, there are things that require serious sober study…but then there’s also the stuff that makes you think “that really didn’t happen—did it?”.

 Oh, yes it did…this is another round of stupid history, the music version.

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There are plenty of thankless jobs out there…think about the people who have to work outside in all kinds of weather…line workers for power companies…garbage collectors… construction workers.

Same goes for prison officers, nurses, teachers, and first responders of all types…i could go on, but you get the idea…so much needs to go on behind the scenes for us to be able to live our lives. 

There are dirty jobs but someone’s gotta do it…for the most part, they do their jobs so well that we don’t even think about them…but if not for these people, society wouldn’t function. 

Now let’s look at the music industry…the performers get all the glory, but we’d know nothing of them if it wasn’t for the massive support they get from people in the background. 

That includes support staff at record labels and management companies,  publicists, assistants, and thousands of other positions that helps make the music happen. 

One of the most important positions is paradoxically both visible and invisible…if they do their jobs well, they’re ghosts…but if they don’t, things don’t go so well…in fact, they may not go as well. 

I’m talking about roadies, members of the road crew, the people who enlist in the army that’s necessary to put an act on tour…without their expertise, long hours, and willingness make sure everything always goes smooth, there would be no live experience. 

They say that if there ain’t no audience, there ain’t no show…but if there ain’t no road crew, then their ain’t nothing at all.

This is a history of the men and women who make live shows happen…it’s the story of roadies.

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At its best, rock is a transcendent experience, something that takes us somewhere away from the ordinary, the normal, and the safe…there’s a huge fantasy element to it…done right, rock removes us from this universe and transports us someplace completely different where anything could happen—at least for a little while.

Sometimes the music alone is enough to take us there…but there’s so much more that can be done to enhance the experience.

Costuming, for one…make-up and wild hair make a nice addition…how about going hard on the visuals and theatrics?...sure!...why not?...can’t hurt…how about dropping in some sci-fi…good…what about sex and horror and shock and the occult and then really, really exaggerate everything?... Bring it on. 

And you know what else might be fun?...a big dollop of sexual ambiguity…that’ll freak people out.

What I’ve just described is a lot of today’s music…the rock era has been around long enough and has gone through so many bouts of extremism that it seems like there’s we can’t be shocked by anything a rock star does anymore.

But there was a time in the very late 60s and early 70s when a specific group of artists were very shocking…they did and said things that were so outrageous and wild that they kinda knocked the planet around on its axis a little bit.

They also set in motion some knock-on effects that changed everything about rock…and then they became extinct…but the influence and fallout from that four or five-year period is still being seen and felt today…you just have to know where to look.

This is the surprising history of glam rock…it still lives and it can still make things very interesting.

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This is the fifth edition of an occasional series called “The Rock Explainer.” The idea is to explore the strange, unexplained, and traditional aspects of rock culture that don’t get enough attention and analysis…

In many cases, we just accept these things and don’t question them as much as we should…but if we stop for just a second and cock a quizzical eyebrow and actually ask the question, then it’s possible to review new things about music that you might never have imagined…

Where do accents go when people sing?...why do artists sing the melody lines when they perform live?... How come we hear lyrics wrong?...let’s answer those questions and more.

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The mp3 had a spectacular rise…the tech was everywhere…it brought music and the industry into the digital era. But like almost everything in this universe, it has a finite lifespan…it’s still with us and in many ways is still ubiquitous in some circles, but things have changed.

And yes, it did kill the music industry—at least the old one that insisted on selling fans their music on pieces of plastic

I’m going to try to tell the story of how mp3 technology came into our lives—and how it is slowly leaving it. It’s a story with all kinds of twists and turns…there are heroes and villains…there are casualties and survivors…and one thing is for sure: music has been forever changed in a billion different ways.

This is the rise and fall of the mp3.

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Ever been to a concert and wondered "How do they make all of this work?". "How have I not gone deaf?" or "Why does the dude on stage wearing what looks like a pair of ear-buds?"

Well we're here to answer those questions and more as we delve deep into the history of concert sound...

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Maybe it was the first time you saw your favourite musical. Maybe they played a set list that you thought was perfection. Maybe you were front and centre and the singer crowd surfed right over your head!

So sure...an absolutely legendary gig!

But what about those gigs that redefined alt-rock? Those concerts or shows that stand out as legendary for what came after them? The bands they inspired or the lasting legacy of that show on the audience?

Well we're going take a look at 8 of them and try to explain why they are so legendary in the history of alt-rock

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People who study such things say that the human brain—this folded lump of mostly fat—has a pretty good hard drive…the average adult brain has a capacity of about 2.5 petabytes…put another way, that’s 2.5 million gigs…that’s a lot.

We’re talking personal memories, facts, academic education, learned behaviors, and muscle memory…there are also special places where things like musical memories and lyrics are stored.

Some memories remain rock solid, barring some kind of injury or illness…but because we’re always experiencing new things, we forget other stuff as new experiences crowd out the old stuff.

As a result, things fade…significant details about something can start to fade away within days—even hours or minutes, depending on circumstances surrounding that memory…some will become corrupted—which is why eyewitness accounts are often considered unreliable in court…and it’s not like we can download a backup of our memories—at least not yet.

This is why it’s a good idea to a little maintenance on the hard drives in our head…and that can be as simple as doing a refresh…how?...but stopping for a little history…a quick study on where we’ve been, what we’ve done, and what’s happened to us…think of it as pressing “F4” on a keyboard a bunch of times.

John Lennon said “life is what happens when you’re making other plans” …and the more time goes by, the more plans we might have made…inevitably, we forget some of life.

And that’s why if we want to know why things are the way they are—and where things may go in the future—we have to hit “F4” every once in a while.

This is such a program…it’s part ten of the 100 greatest rock moments of the millennium so far…how many of these things do you remember?...and have you even thought of them in this way?...let’s find out with moments 10 through number 1.

Songs in this episode:

The Strokes - Someday

Linkin Park - One Step Closer

Metallica - St. Anger

U2 - Vertigo

BoyWithYuke - Toxic

The Tragically Hip - Ahead By A Century (live)

Sum 41 - Over My Head (live)

Pocket Gods - Who Do I Have To Sleep With To Get On This Spotify Playlist?

U2 - Where The Streets Have No Name

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We’ve been talking about life beyond earth for decades…and one of the best places to look (for starters) are the moons of Jupiter and Saturn…wouldn’t it be cool if we could land a probe on one of them to have a little look around? ...but that won’t happen for decades, right?

Wrong…it already happened…in 2005, the Huygens probe descended to the surface of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn…it was a monumental achievement in space exploration.

Oh…forgot that that one, huh? ...okay, let’s try another.

Anyone remember when an entire country went bankrupt? ...you would if you were from Iceland…in 2008, the entire Icelandic banking system collapsed forcing the nation to declare bankruptcy…but Iceland recovered by actually holding bankers accountable and initiating a series of financial reforms that are worth studying by other countries.

Don’t remember, huh?... One more.

What about the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010…it was the largest marine oil spill in history and cause an incredible amount of environmental and economic damage…they even made a movie about it along with a bunch of documentaries.

My point is that news and world events come at us so fast and from so many angles, they occupy all our attention for a hot minute…but then we either become overwhelmed, bored, or distracted by something else…we move on and forget—or bury the information deep.

I sometimes think we’re approaching the human limit of being able to process all the information that comes at us every second…and if we can’t do that, we can’t learn any lessons from the past, we can’t understand why we are where we are now, and we can’t even predict where we might go in the future.

That’s why it’s important for us to stop, look back and to see what happened…this is chapter 9 of “the 100 greatest rock moments of the 21st century—so far” .

Songs in this episode:

Moby - Porcelain

Chris Cornell - Nothing Compares To You

Linkin Park - In The End

The White Stripes - Blue Orchid

Thea Gilmore - Mainstream

U2 - Until The End Of The World (live)

Jack White - Lazaretto

Eagles of Death Metal - I Love You All The Time

Man With No Name - Teleport

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How many times have you been told to “live in the moment?”…it usually comes with statements like “the past can’t be changed, the future is unknown, so all you can do is experience the present to the fullest extent of your being”.

In other words, be more like a dog…i’m always watching my bull terriers go about their day…they don’t worry about the past and have little concept of the future…it’s all about eating, sleeping, doing their business outside, playing, and demanding affection…and when they engage in any of those things, they are all-in.

A lovely idea, but humans don’t work that way…heaven forbid that we get lost in our thoughts—or worse, get bored—standing in line at the checkout…let’s avoid those awkward moments with ourselves and not have to be in that moment.

But maybe whipping out the phone at every available second is a defense mechanism…we live in a world with so much change that we need constant distraction from how quickly things are moving… doom-scrolling isn’t healthy, but it is a way to say “stop the world, i want to get off” for a few minutes.

But reality is that time is a linear thing that goes only in one direction…and if you don’t live in the moment at least sometimes, you’ll miss everything that’s happening, that has happened, and that will happen.

That’s the purpose behind this ten-part series…it’s a recap of the 100 most important things that have happened in rock this millennium so far…we’re up to chapter eight…how many of these items have you missed or forgotten about because you haven’t been living the moment?

Songs in this episode:

Oasis - Aquiesce

Tim Hawkins - YouTube

Sparks - iPhone

Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Californication (live)

Radiohead - Bodysnatchers

The Ramones - Blitzkreig Bop

The Clash - London Calling

The Beatles - Tomorrow Never Knows

U2 - I Will Follow (live)

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