Ongoing History of New Music

Whenever an artist goes into the studio, they hope for the best but expect the worst…you want it the album to sell and turn you into a global superstar with all the rights and privileges thereto…but there is no way to predict how the public will react to what you release… You can throw all the money you want a song, an album, a band and there is zero guarantee that it will be successful…yet people will always try because every once in a while, something remarkable happens… An album is a critical success…it turns into a commercial smash…and every once in a long, long while, it turns into a cultural phenomenon with an impact that lasts years, maybe decades… This is what happened to U2 and “The Joshua Tree”…before the record came out, everyone expected that the band was going to deliver the goods on a very good album…they did that… But then the record went on to sell somewhere beyond 25 million albums and is now considered to be one of the most significant rock releases of all time… This is beyond just lightning in a bottle...how did they do it?...for some of the answers, i turned to one of the people who co-produced the album…that would be Daniel Lanois…this is U2 and The Joshua Tree, thirty years later, part 2… Whenever an artist goes into the studio, they hope for the best but expect the worst…you want it the album to sell and turn you into a global superstar with all the rights and privileges thereto…but there is no way to predict how the public will react to what you release… You can throw all the money you want a song, an album, a band and there is zero guarantee that it will be successful…yet people will always try because every once in a while, something remarkable happens… An album is a critical success…it turns into a commercial smash…and every once in a long, long while, it turns into a cultural phenomenon with an impact that lasts years, maybe decades… This is what happened to U2 and “The Joshua Tree”…before the record came out, everyone expected that the band was going to deliver the goods on a very good album…they did that… But then the record went on to sell somewhere beyond 25 million albums and is now considered to be one of the most significant rock releases of all time… This is beyond just lightning in a bottle...how did they do it?...for some of the answers, i turned to one of the people who co-produced the album…that would be Daniel Lanois…this is U2 and The Joshua Tree, thirty years later, part 2… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On March 9, 1987—a little more than ten years after a bunch of kids met up in a Dublin kitchen—U2 released their fifth album…expectations were running pretty high…after establishing themselves with their first two albums, there was a leap ahead with the “War” album in 1983… But then came “The Unforgettable Fire” in 1984…that represented another leap forward…things seemed more sophisticated, stronger, bigger, better…much of the credit has to go to the new production team of Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, guys who found new ways to bring new things from the band… The partnership worked so well that everyone agreed that they should work together on the next record, too…maybe they could take things even further, built up the band even bigger… The result was “The Joshua Tree”…it has sold somewhere north of 25 million copies, making one of best-selling albums of all time…it became a number one album in two dozen countries…five of the eleven songs were released as singles, several of which sold more than a million copies on their own… The tour in support of the record had to grow from arenas to stadiums…it resulted in a live record called “Live From Paris” and a documentary film called “Rattle and Hum”…and it earned U2 two Grammys: album of the year and group of the year… “The Joshua Tree” set the band up as one of the biggest in the world…and over the coming decade, they would become the biggest band in the world….the album has been studied at all levels of academia…its songs covered thousands of times…the material has even been adopted as hymns for modern church services… And later, in 2014, the album was added to the us library of congress as a recording considered to be “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant” … Wow…that’s a lot stuff to think about when it comes to just one single album…. doesn’t it make you curious about what went into making it?...that’s how I felt…so I thought I’d talk to one of the guys who was there with the band the whole time…let’s get his story on the making of “The Joshua Tree”…. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Even though it was the middle of summer, it was cold and wet,” Rob Baker remembers, “and after a full day in the studio, there was nothing to do but go back to where we were staying and watch the Olympics that were happening in Barcelona…and they were still talking about Canada and what happened with Ben Johnson four years earlier.” The Tragically Hip were in the UK, recording what would be their third full studio album at Battery Studios, a facility protected from the rest of the surrounding grimy north west London neighborhood of Willesden Green by a big metal gate…after recording the last two albums away from home—Up To Here was done in Memphis and Road Apples required to move to New Orleans—a trip to London had seemed like a good idea, a chance to get away from all the distractions back home in Kingston, Ontario. It may have been dreary on the outside, but the building itself was full of history…Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, Black Sabbath, Rod Stewart, The Cure, The Who and dozens more had all made classic albums here.  And when The Hip wrapped up the sessions for the album that would be called “Fully Completely,” they had an idea that they had created something extraordinary.  But what they didn’t know is they were about to enter the imperial phase of their career, a time when almost everything went right…. The album would eventually sell a million copies in Canada alone…and here’s how it happened. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How well do you get along with your siblings?—assuming you have any, of course…brothers and sisters can be a pain, especially when you’re always in close quarters…and when you have to work with them, too—gawd, that can be ugly… We’ve talked about musical feuds before… Madonna did not get along with her brother, Christopher Ciccone, especially after he published a memoir about growing up with her…things seem to be okay right now… The Everly brothers, Don and Phil, did not get along…after a speed-fueled breakup in 1973, the talked to each other just once in the following ten years…that was at their father’s funeral… Ray and Dave Davies of The Kinks…that’s a bad one…John vs. Tom Fogerty of Credence Clearwater Revival…Barry and Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees…Chris and Rich Robinson of the Black Crowes…and then there was John and William reed of the Jesus and Mary Chain…they’d even fight onstage in the middle of a show… And I know they weren’t really brothers, but joey and Johnny Ramone didn’t talk to each other for years after Johnny stole and then married joey’s girlfriend… But the most famous sibling rivalry in all of music has to be—has to be—Noel and Liam Gallagher…this is part 2 of “Oasis at war” … Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Siblings can be a pain in the butt…just because you’re related to someone doesn’t mean you’re going to get along…not everyone can be Venus and Serena Williams…here: lemme give you some examples… Ann Landers and Dear Abbey were real people—and they were sisters: Eppie and Pauline Lederer…despite having newspaper columns were famous for dishing out all sorts of relationship advice to readers, they didn’t apply that wisdom to themselves…they spent their lives antagonizing each other… Adolf and Rudolf Dassler were good young Nazis who owned a show company…but Rudolf was a little more into national socialism than Adolf…after World War II, their company split in two…they became Adidas and Puma… There are lot of family feuds in show business… Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine had a legendary ugly relationship… Julia and Eric Roberts… And there have been plenty of intense sibling rivalries in music…Ray and Dave Davies of The Kinks…that one has been going on forever…the weirdness that is the Jackson family…and it hasn’t always been chocolate and unicorns for the Followills in Kings of Leon… But the champion brawlers have to be Liam and noel Gallagher…sure, these guys have always fought with each other—we all know that…but are you aware of the depth and scope of this war?...when it comes to dysfunctional brotherly relationships, it doesn’t get much more intense than this… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's been a lot of talk and the Christian Rock scene....especially in new rock. And many feel the bands don't get their due. They are looked at preachy do-gooders. But that's not always the case. And many bands are crossing over.  So let's have a better look and clear up many misconceptions.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a course in Rock Snobery. To help you understand why some terms exist in music and what they actually mean.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we look at one of the most under appreciated and underrated members of any rock band...the bass player.  These are the most influential bass players in the history of alt-rock.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder—or in the case of music, the ear…what’s pleasant to one person is nothing but noise to someone else… This is where it’s good to have some patience…there are some forms of art whose beauty isn’t obvious at first…you need to stick with it…and after you’ve given it a chance and you’ve decided that it’s not for you, fine… But what about those times where something happens—suddenly or slowly and either on your own or with the prompting of someone else—and you realize that the weird music you’re listening to is actually pretty good?... This is the payoff…yeah, you really had to work for it—but it was worth it…with me so far?.. “beauty” doesn’t mean “perfect”—at least in the technical sense…sometimes imperfection makes something more beautiful…or at least more interesting… Which brings me to the topic of singing voices…this is a very subjective area…how many times have you said “listen to that guy!... I can’t stand his voice!...how did he ever get a record deal?...i mean, listen to him!” But then others hear the same thing and go “wow…that’s really different…really expressive…it’s full of character and emotion…what a bold move giving this dude a chance to real millions of people…i love this guy!”… These are the kind of singers we’re about to review:  guys with some of the most unusual voices in the history of alt-rock… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For a very long time—too long—women were locked in very defined roles when it came to rock’n’roll…girls were expected to look pretty and do little more than sing…okay, maybe shake a tambourine or something…but that was about it… And when it came to singing, “just stick with conventional stuff, dear…don’t get any crazy ideas in your head…this is a woman’s role in rock and you should stick to it…that’s a nice little lady”… But then along came punk rock in the 1970s…punk did many things for rock—including knocking down a lot of heretofore inviolable gender roles…the central tenet of punk was that anyone should have the right to say anything in any matter they want regardless of who they are…that included women and their right to self-expression… The result was fantastic…freed from all the old expectations, women were free to reinvent themselves as musicians in a million different ways…and that led to a wonderful array of female performers… Some of my favourites are the ones who decided to spit in the face of virtually ever rock’n’roll convention—women who (before punk came along and liberated everyone from the tyranny of “the way things ought to be”) developed styles that were different, unique and utterly unlike anything the world had ever heard before… Yes, some of them were an acquired taste and took a little getting used to…but once people figured out what they were trying to do and what they were all about, it was inevitable they became addicted, enchanted, inspired…  We’re going to look at ten of these women…i call them “The Queens of Quirk”… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices