It may not seem like it, but everything in this universe is connected in all kinds of unseen ways.

Humans have always known that chaos is a capricious and fickle thing, something that can show up when you least expect it…i find this aspect of history fascinating.

There’s the butterfly effect, the concept that a butterfly flapping its wings in China will set off a complex domino effect in the atmosphere that somehow results in a low-pressure wave blasting from Africa across the Atlantic causing a hurricane in the Caribbean.

That doesn’t really happen…it was a metaphor created by a meteorologist and mathematician named Edward Norton Lorenz in 1963 when he discovered that a miniscule change in atmospheric conditions ---he ascribed a value as tiny as 0.000127—could make an enormous difference down the road …this shows why it’s so hard to forecast the weather…a little difference can add complexity and instability to a system.

Remember that “treehouse of horror” episode from “The Simpsons” where homer accidentally turns a toaster into a time machine? ...he travels into the past where he manages to screw up the future multiple times by making the tiniest mistake.

This is based on a 1952 short story by Ray Bradbury entitled “A Sound of Thunder” …a man named Eckels goes back in time and kills a dinosaur…when it returns to the present, everything is different.

We hear about “black swan” events, a random thing that no one expects or could have predicted, yet it happens…and suddenly, everything changes.

Covid-19 was an example of that…whatever spawned the virus—bats, infected animals in a wet market, a lab leak—started as something very, very small but ended up changing the lives of virtually everyone on the planet.

We can also apply this sort of investigation to the world of music…if you pick a topic or thing, you can often trace it back to something that illustrates the wonderful and awful randomness of the universe.

This is another episode that I call “connections”.

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Tell me if this sounds familiar…you’re sitting around with a bunch of friends talking about music when someone says “what’s that song with the thing at the beginning and the boom-boom sound effects?....it’s got that guitar—or maybe it it’s not… you know the one!”…and then the friend gets frustrated when he gets a bunch of blank stares.

If you’ve ever worked in a record store, you know the stare because you’ve done it with the customer who wants you to identify the artist, song, and album from her little acapella performance…and then she gets mad when you come up blank.

Same thing happens with me and with all people who work in radio….a couple of times a week, I’ll get an email like this: “i’m hoping you can help me find a song”…uh-oh…“I think it’s from the 80s but maybe not…there are some beats on a bassline with a melody that goes “oooooooeeeooo” or something…the video has a bunch of dancers in it…do you the song?”…uh, no…i don’t.

Some attach audio files of them plunking out notes on an instrument—and there have been at least a couple of people whistling.

But here’s the weird thing…sometimes—just enough times—you actually get it right…it’s like a tiny explosion in your head as your personal database throws up the correct answer…when that happens, it feels so good!...you solved a mystery and made someone happy in the process…i love that feeling.

Things have changed in this century, of course…tracking down a mysterious song is easier than ever thanks to listening apps like Shazam and Soundhound…or you can enter some lyrics into a site like lyricfind.com.

Even throwing a bunch of random words into the google search bar can get you started…I’ve found crowdsourcing a song identification problem through certain websites (reddit, for example) can sometimes be helpful.

But even with all this technology and the ability to tap into the minds of music fans around the planet, some songs just don’t want to the identified…and this has become a serious game for music fans… “challenge accepted,” as they say.

These mysterious songs that are missing from the musical record are part of a category that’s been dubbed “Lostwave”…and this is their story.

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There’s a scene in the 2000 movie “High Fidelity” that introduced a lot of people to the name Belle and Sebastian.

Rob, the owner of a record store, and his employee, Dick, are enjoying a new arrival.

Then Barry, another employee played by Jack Black, bursts through the door.

This goes on for a while before Rob has enough and rips the cassette out of the machine.

I have a couple of issues with that scene…first, I have a hard time believing that an obnoxious snobby indie record store clerk would love “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves that much…way too commercial, way too overplayed.

Second, there is nothing wrong with Belle and Sebastian—although I will admit they’re not for everyone.

They are part of a genre called “Twee Pop”…you may never have heard the term before, but its influence is everywhere these days…and it has a long history when it comes to alt-rock and indie rock…it’s certainly something we should take a look at…so let’s do that, shall we?

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I do not dance…I’m too awkward and too self-aware of my awkwardness…I know we’re all supposed to dance like no one is looking, but when it comes to me, people will look, point, and judge…

My wife realizes this…since we were married decades okay, she’s had to be content with the fact that she got that dance at the wedding and that’s pretty much it…and that’s because she’s not into dancing, either…

I can feel the judgment stop it…

This doesn’t mean that music doesn’t move me…I’ve got that involuntary need to move when the music is great…and I don’t mean tapping a toe or nodding my head, although that’s where it starts…

Put it this way: I’ve done my time in the pit…I’ve been elbowed, kneed, kicked, head-butted, burn with cigarettes and joints, and doused with water (at least I hope it was water)…no problem because that’s all part of the pit experience…the only thing I haven’t done is stage dove or crowd-surfed…I’m not sure why…

But here’s a question: why is there a pit in the first place?...who came up with this idea?...how did it spread?...and is it the same everywhere?...

These are important anthropological questions…we’re deal with a type of human behavior that’s seen all over the world…I think we need to study this…here a whole hour on the history of moshing…

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I’ve always been something of a nut when it comes to the space program…but even though I’ve read all the books, seen all the documentaries, and watched all the movies, I was still surprised to learn something new with the movie “Hidden Figures”…

This was a 2016 film based on a book of the same name…it told the true story about black female mathematicians who worked at nasa during the hottest period of the space race…

They were “computers” in the original sense of the word: people who computer things complex things like flight trajectories, re-entry methods, and landing coordinates…they were even assigned to check and correct the calculations spit out by NASA’s big ibm mainframes…their work was essential to the American space effort…

But this being the 60s, these women were segregated away from the other scientists, meaning that their work was largely forgotten until the movie and book came out…

This got me thinking…are there any forgotten figures in music?...I’m talking about women who did awesome and important things but have largely been ignored by the traditional history of rock?...I’m talking about people beyond Deborah Harry, Janis Joplin, Stevie Nicks, Chrissie Hynde, and Courtney Love…

Well, yes…yes, there was…and we need to know about them…let’s do that now…

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Here’s one of the most misunderstood and misused words in the English language: “psychedelic” …

The word first came into use in 1956 when a psychiatrist named Humphrey Osmond was studying a new class of pharmaceuticals that had potential when it came to treating certain mental disorders…

A chemical known as lysergic acid diethylamide—LSD, for short—had been extracted by a Swiss scientist named Albert Hoffman from a fungus called “ergot”…from 1943 on, medical professionals tried to figure out what it could be used for…it was even marketed commercially for a while under the brand name “delysid”…

Then the CIA got involved, thinking that LSD could be used for things like interrogation, chemical warfare and mind control…but that’s a whole other story...

Because the chemical resulted in people entering an altered state of perception, some started using it recreationally… artists discovered its properties and started taking acid trip, looking for inspiration and new creative roads…

Then other psychedelics went mainstream, including mescaline (which comes from the peyote plant) and psylocybin (which you get from certain mushrooms) before just about all of these drugs were made illegal…

Meanwhile, “psychedelic”—which means “soul-revealing” in Greek—became an adjective…it describes anything that could be described as mind expanding, anything that alters the way we perceive reality…

Naturally, this quickly extended to music…psych became a thing in the 60s—that sound, feel, vibe, attitude continues today with alt-rock…

This is a quick history of psych in the world of alternative music…

Songs used in this episode:

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Before we begin, I am very aware that there are people listening to this program who have never, ever set foot in a record store…they came of age musical after the Internet changed everything about how we hear about, acquire, and consume music…

But remember this: for over a hundred years, the only way you could hear music on-demand was to own it…you had to purchase a piece of plastic for x dollars and for that price, you could listen to that music an infinite number of times for no additional charge…

You made not just an emotional investment in that music, but a financial one as well…and dammit, you were going to make sure you listened to that piece of plastic until you wrung out a possible bit of enjoyment you could from it…otherwise, you’d have to come to terms with the fact that you wasted your money…

There was another aspect to this emotional investment, too…in order to acquire this music, you had to leave your home, find your way to a record store, and search through all the shelves hoping to find something…if you were looking for something specific and it wasn’t in stock, you had to special-order it, which was a whole new level of emotional investment…

And while you were at the record store, you interacted with records that you didn’t know about…just flipping through the racks looking at albums was an education in itself…maybe you’d go with a couple of friends, fan out across the store and then compare finds…

Maybe you’d meet a stranger and strike up a conversation…and if you were a regular, it’s possible that the person behind the counter became a trusted source for recommendations…or maybe you’d go see an artist play live or for some kind of autograph session…

Record stores are still with us, but there are fewer and fewer of them—certainly way less than the glory days of music shopping from the 60s through to the late 90s…and a lot of legendary stores and chains have disappeared forever…

But while it lasted, it was pretty amazing…this is the story of the record store…

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Hey, it's Alan Cross.

For the next few weeks of the Podcast, we’re diving deep into the Ongoing History of New Music Archives with a series called “The Top 100 Moments in New Rock”.

In this ten-part series, we’re going to look at the 100 most significant events in new rock history...some are obvious–you know, the big stuff that made the news...you can’t ignore those.

But we’re also going to look at the small things that are at the root of some of the big things...it’s a fascinating way to look at history and society and art.

This originally aired 20 years ago in the spring of 2004…and we thought it might be fun to hear where we’ve been, how things used to be, and how much everything has changed since. 

This is Part 10, and the final episode in the series.

We hope you enjoy this look back.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, it's Alan Cross.

For the next few weeks of the Podcast, we’re diving deep into the Ongoing History of New Music Archives with a series called “The Top 100 Moments in New Rock”.

In this ten-part series, we’re going to look at the 100 most significant events in new rock history...some are obvious–you know, the big stuff that made the news...you can’t ignore those.

But we’re also going to look at the small things that are at the root of some of the big things...it’s a fascinating way to look at history and society and art.

This originally aired 20 years ago in the spring of 2004…and we thought it might be fun to hear where we’ve been, how things used to be, and how much everything has changed since. 

This is Part 9 in the series.

We hope you enjoy this look back.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, it's Alan Cross.

For the next few weeks of the Podcast, we’re diving deep into the Ongoing History of New Music Archives with a series called “The Top 100 Moments in New Rock”.

In this ten-part series, we’re going to look at the 100 most significant events in new rock history...some are obvious–you know, the big stuff that made the news...you can’t ignore those.

But we’re also going to look at the small things that are at the root of some of the big things...it’s a fascinating way to look at history and society and art.

This originally aired 20 years ago in the spring of 2004…and we thought it might be fun to hear where we’ve been, how things used to be, and how much everything has changed since. 

This is Part 8 in the series.

We hope you enjoy this look back.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices