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 just didn’t have the technology to capture audio so that when we listened back, it sounded real…

That began to change in the late 1940s with the introduction of vinyl records: the 33 1/3 rpm vinyl album and the 7-inch 45 rpm single…it changed further with the switch to magnetic recording tape in the early 1950s…

New microphones, better tape machines, and further understanding of acoustics when it came to building recording studios…then came better turntables, amplifiers, and speakers…recorded audio started to sound more and more like the real thing…

In the middle 50s, people started to hear about something called “high-fidelity”…it was a marketing term invented by the audio industry to describe equipment capable of producing music properly…

Once stereo recordings came along in the late 50s, music fans went wild and started buying hi-fi gear for their homes…then their cars…and then for going mobile…

It was an endless pursuit for perfect sound, music that was loud, clean, clear, and accurate…meanwhile, recording studios were constantly in a state of retrofitting and refurbishment because artists demanded the best for their music…

That was the 1970s…in the 1980s, there was a reaction, a backlash, an artistic regression, after the introduction of the compact disc…for some, this music was too perfect, too shiny, too unreal…

They felt it contained none of the imperfections that made it human…beauty, they thought, was in the mistakes…that’s what made music authentic…audio quality mattered less than being able to listen to music that obviously came from the heart…

These music fans even had a name for this approach…if the best-sounding audio was high-fidelity, then what they wanted was the opposite: low-fidelity…and that aesthetic continues today…this is the history of Lo-Fi music…

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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, Global News senior crime reporter Nancy Hixt shares details of a violent attack- a story that’s every woman’s worst fear.

www.calgarycrimestoppers.org - reference case # 06274598

https://newsroom.calgary.ca/sexual-assault-case-from-2006-has-new-lead/

Contact:

Instagram: @nancy.hixt

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NancyHixtCrimeBeat/

Email: [email protected]

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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 streaming is that it doesn’t provide any context to what we’re hearing…a continuous stream of music tells us nothing about the artist or the song…it’s just music, standing alone with nothing to anchor it to anything…

It was different in the old days…if you bought an album, dammit, that was an investment…you paid money for it, which created a fiscal relationship with the artist…that meant you were more likely to stick with an album and get deeper into the artist and the songs…otherwise, you had this nagging feeling you had wasted your money…

Context means so much to the enjoyment of music—which is probably a reason you’re listening to me right now…you want more than the notes that make up a song…

Yeah, sometimes a song is just a song…you know, it’s got a good beat, you can dance to it and maybe sing along…it doesn’t really mean anything more than that…

But some songs are very deep…they actually form some part of a historical record…they tell the story of real people, real events and the things that came after…

That’s where we’re going with this show: everything we’re about to hear is based on fact, on history, on actual events…and you may be shocked by the truth beyond songs that you’ve been digging all your life…this isn’t anything you’re gonna get from a stream…trust me…

Songs in this episode:

The Clash - White Riot

Boomtown Rats - I Don't Like Monday's

U2 - Sunday Bloody Sunday

REM - What's the Frequency Kenneth?

Pearl Jam - Jeremy

Nirvana - Polly

The Tragically Hip - Wheat Kings

Filter - Hey Man, Nice Shot!

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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 thing), the lifespan of bands varies greatly…you could last as long as rehearsal—kinda like, what, a dandelion?…or you might find yourself on some kind of 50-year-anniversary tour—the equivalent of a bristlecone pine tree that can live as long as 5,000 years…

Okay, I think we’ve tortured this metaphor long enough…

Then we have bands that form, rise to a peak, hit something of a downhill slope, and break-up, only to reform again for—well, there could be any number of reasons…and this leads into completely new second act…and thus things begin again—and maybe even under better circumstances than anyone thought possible…

Let’s do a case study…let’s have a specific band deconstruct their journey from formation to breakup to reunion…this is the history of Alexisonfire—in their own words…

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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 can handle it without shedding a single tear, then he is officially a man…I can’t explain it…and I’ll bet that no one in this tribe can, either…it’s just always been their thing, something that has always been done…

Let’s try something more modern…have you ever noticed that any depiction of an iPhone or iPad, the time on the device used to be 9:42 am?...now, it’s 9:41…why?...

We need to go back to when Steve Jobs’ unveiled the iPhone in 2007… the first image of the iPhone appeared behind jobs at 9:42 am…and for a while, that was the time shown in all ads…but when the iPad came out, the reveal happed at 9:41 am…from then on, it became a rule that time displayed must be at 9:41…

The Apple Watch is an exception…the standard advertisement display time is 10:09 am…not one is sure why, although that’s the old Timex watch commercials always had the time as 1:51…10:09 is the mirror image of that…

Now think about your car on the driver’s side…if your car is a standard, the pedals from left to right go clutch, brake and accelerator…if it’s an automatic, it’s brake then the accelerator…and that’s the way it is in every car made in the world today…doesn’t matter which side the steering wheel is on…the pedals are always laid out the same from left to right….

But in the early days of the automobile, it wasn’t always this way…sometimes the accelerator was in the middle…sometimes it was on the left…sometimes it was on the steering wheel…

The first car with the pedal layout we have today was probably a 1912 Cadillac…that spread throughout the company and then on through Chevrolet and other gm cars…from there, everyone eventually adopted that arrangement….

And since we’re in the car, let me explain your automatic transmission lever…it goes park, reverse, neutral, drive, and low…R,R,N,D,L…that order was laid out in “U.S. department of transportation standard no. 102” which stated the order of gears on automatic transmissions must always be park-reverse-neutral-drive-low…and since America called the shots with the auto industry back then, this law became our universal standard…

There are so many things in this world that we just accept without bothering to look for an explanation…they’re there, it’s everywhere, it’s a simple truth of life…but why?...

The world of music is filled with things, too… for example, why do we call a certain genre of music “heavy metal?”…who came up with the idea for paying to see a concert?...why would anyone use a toilet plunger together with a trumpet or a beer bottle on a guitar?...why is there music on the phone when we’re put on hold?...

Let’s figure this all out…welcome to another edition of “the rock explainer”…

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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, was the most popular Wikipedia article in all of 2023…50 million visits…

That made it more popular than even Christian Ronaldo, the world’s most famous athlete…that’s more than “Barbie” or “Oppenheimer” put together…

This tech is being adopted everywhere, mostly for good…just look at the medical field….

Ai is being used to sort through chains of molecules to come up with the next generation of breakthrough drugs, including those that will work on antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the misfolded proteins behind Alzheimer’s…ai is being trained to quickly find things in scans and x-rays that a human technician might miss…

AI can be used to make better decisions in real time…for example, it can learn traffic and pedestrian patterns and synchronize lights for more efficient movement of everyone…

AI should even have an impact on fighting climate change by creating better models…and when it comes to world hunger, ai can analyze zillions of data points to help determine what crops, seeds, fertilizers, soil, and so on for maximum efficiency in any area of the world…

AI is growing at an exponential rate…it’s predicted that the industry will grow by 250% over the next five years… by 2031, the market for generative ai will be at least one trillion U.S. dollars…

But yes, AI can also be used for evil…deep fakes and fake news, copyright infringement and forgery, cybersecurity breaches, manipulation of financial markets… AI is inevitably going to replace humans in a lot of different jobs…there’s a lot to be concerned about…

If you’re listening to me, you’ve probably wondered about artificial intelligence and music…that’s good because there’s going to be an impact…best we know where this intersection of music and tech came from so that we can maybe figure out where it’s going….

This is the history and future of AI in music…

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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, snapped up the t-shirts, and gone to all the shows…but I wanted more…the only place let to go was unofficial—read: illegal—releases…

Almost everything I accurate was on cd…some were burned discs that I traded for with other hardcore fans…I might go to eBay once in a while…there were a few stores I knew that stocked these discs for special customers…and whenever I went overseas to certain countries were copyright laws were lax—Russia, Indonesia, a few places in the Caribbean—I’d be sure to visit the market stalls to see what they had…I honestly wasn’t trying to rip off or hurt anyone…I just loved these bands so much that I needed to own a copy of everything they did…once, when I talked about my bootlegs on the radio—probably not a smart idea—I got a letter from the head of a recorded industry organization calling me “morally reprehensible” …

But over the years, these hardcopy bootlegs became harder and harder to find, thanks to crackdowns on illegal exploitation of intellectual property, the disappearance of these record stores, and, most importantly, the rise of online file-sharing…by 2008 or so, the physical bootleg market had all but collapsed…I haven’t acquired anything new for my collection for almost a couple of decades now…

But I’ve never lost my fascination for this recordings…where did they come from?...how were they made?...who distributed them?...did they really hurt artists and the industry?...and what kind of legacy did old-school bootlegs leave behind?...

I’ve found some answers to those questions and more…this is another look at bootlegging, part 2…

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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 battles, and even run-ins with the mob! In this podcast you'll hear all about the dark side of world of music.

We're releasing new episodes every two weeks, so search for and follow Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry wherever you get your podcasts. 

I hope you enjoy this sneak peak of Episode 9 "The Disappearance of Richey Edwards"

Episode Link:

https://megaphone.link/CORU6081355392

Show contact info:

X (formerly Twitter): @AlanCross

Website: curiouscast.ca

Email: [email protected]

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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 was, Edison listed some future possibilities….

His phonograph (as he called it) would eventually be used as a method of preserving great speeches….it could also be used for making audio letters, giving dictation, a talking clock, a telephone answering machine, and remote learning…and way down the list was “reproduction of music”…

That original talking machine technology has evolved greatly over the years and the “capture and reproduction of music” has moved way up on Edison’s original list of uses…the recorded music industry is now worth tens and tens of billions of dollars…

But the phonograph also gave birth to a new type of music industry…when it first went on sale, copyright laws weren’t ready…they had been drafted and enforced with the printed word in mind, not with audio recordings…this meant that people began making recordings that weren’t exactly authorized in the proper ways…

This gave birth to another industry, one that worked in the shadows of record labels, music publishers, performing rights organizations, and all the rest of the legitimate record music industry…

What started with secretly recorded Edison phonograph cylinders progressed through reel-to-reel tape recordings, unauthorized vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, and digital files freely traded online…you may have some of these recordings in your collection—and you may not even know it…

The original name of such recordings is “bootlegs”…here are a few things about them that you might wanna know…

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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 exploring something from black culture…

And we can go way, way back—right to 1619 when the first slave ship arrived in north America at the British colony of Virginia carrying about 20 captives…

Over the centuries that followed, the people of Africa, consisting of many different communities, nations, tribes, and cultures, were brought to the west by force creating wounds that have yet to heal… 

But more than just bodies made the trip across the Atlantic…these were human beings with identities, history, traditions—and music…and these songs and rhythms helped sustain them during those brutal times…

There were work songs, protest songs, satirical songs, songs meant to be sung in the fields and streets, songs that were games in themselves…some had regular rhythms while other contained syncopated beats from traditional dance… 

Over the centuries, the music evolved, mutated, and spread…spirituals and gospel…blues and boogie-woogie…ragtime and jazz…rhythm and blues and bebop…and in the early 1950s, this music with its rich history and traditions was incorporated with country, western, hillbilly, r&b, and a few other ingredients to become what we call “rock and roll”…

Along the way, there were many musical firsts, and landmark contributions by black artists that changed everything…without them, what we call “rock” today and so much of its culture would simply not exist…

These people and their accomplishments need to be recognized; commemorated, and celebrated…this is an episode on rock firsts by black artists…

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