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Hey, it's Alan and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing history of new music. Early and ad free on Amazon Music included with Prime.
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Ever hear of Jeremy Bentham? He was an Englishman, a political philosopher who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. And he was by all measures a radical. He was against slavery when it was still very much a thing for the British Empire. He promoted animal welfare. He believed that everyone over a certain age, men and women, should be able to vote. He was against the death penalty. He wanted homosexuality decriminalized, something that didn't happen until 1967. And he advocated for no fault divorce. These are all now the foundations of liberal democracy. These concepts were not just years, but quite literally centuries ahead of his time. And none of these changes came into effect until many, many, many, many years after after he died. So Jeremy Bentham was far, far ahead of his time. Ada Lovelace was another one. She is widely recognized as the first ever computer programmer. Now, computers didn't exist when she lived in the early 19th century. Heck, there wasn't even electricity yet. But her notes laid the groundwork for the world of mechanical and electrical thinking machines. And then, of course, there was Leonardo da Vinci. In the 15th and 16th centuries, he designed concepts for the first parachute, the helicopter and the tank. He explored human anatomy, astronomy, art, cartography, botany, even paleontology. This was centuries before anyone knew that dinosaurs existed. These people, along with inventor Nikola Tesla, author Jules Verne, and Terry Pratchett, an author who predicted the rise of fake news and disinformation on the Internet and eventually got their due. But only after they died. Their stories got me thinking. What Musicians were so far ahead of their time that they never got credit for their accomplishments. Or how about musicians who still aren't getting the recognition they deserve for pushing the envelope in the world of rock? That's just wrong. It's time to fix that. This program is about musicians who should have been famous for altering the course of music, but got no respect at the time. They just peaked too early. This is the ongoing History of New Music podcast with Alan Cross. Hi again, I'm Alan Cross and this program is all about giving credit where credit is due, specifically to musicians who were so far ahead of their time that the public and the industry just didn't get it. And as a result, they were ignored or shunned, unrewarded or otherwise omitted from music history. Most of these names might be new to you, but that's not your fault. The music world just dropped the ball on these people. And that's wrong. They just happened to offer something when we weren't quite ready for it. In other words, they peaked too soon. And let me show you what I mean. If you're at all familiar with the early rock scene in France, and I'm talking about the late 1950s and into the 1960s, you may know that this music was referred to as Yi Yi. Frances Hardy was a well known Yiyi singer. She was known primarily for singing sentimental and melancholy ballads. Over 50 years, she released over 30 studio albums and once competed in the Eurovision Song Contest. And she's considered a national treasure in France and has friends worldwide because she also sang in English and German and Italian. Hardy remains one of the best selling singers in French history. She was also an actor. She was involved in the world of fashion and photography and she even became a professional astrologer. But wait, back to music. She has also been called la grandmaire du grunge. Grunge didn't become a thing until at the earliest, the late 1980s. But if we examine Francois Hardy's music and travel back to 1964, we have songs like this. You remove the string section, concentrate on the low tuned distorted guitar and the raw drums, and you'll see what I mean. Yeah. 1964. Francois Hardy, whom the people of France called the grandmother of grunge. She died on June 11, 2024. I wonder what she thought of the American grunge scene of the 1990s. We'll come back to another sadly ignored female grunge pioneer in a little bit. Next is an easy one, because almost everyone acknowledges that the Velvet Underground was probably the first alternative rock band they were formed in New york City in 1964 by Lou Reed, John Cale, Stirling Morrison and Mo Tucker. German singer Nico was later grafted onto the lineup for one album by Andy Warhol, their manager and producer. And there have been many, many books written about them. But I can offer these highlights. First of all, their name. It was taken from a trashy paperback novel written about the BDSM lifestyle that somebody found literally in the gutter someplace. They had a female drummer, something that was unheard of in the middle 1960s. They were part of Andy Warhol's freaky New York crowd, and he encouraged them to continue to improvise and experiment, regardless of what everyone else was doing. That was all fine, but in the nine years the band was together, the Velvet Underground had pretty much zero commercial success. They sold very few records, their gigs were sparsely attended, and even in the era of underground FM radio, almost no one played their records. No one sounded like the Velvet Underground. When their debut album arrived in 1965, rock and roll was largely about cars and girls and various escapist and fun topics. Not the Velvet Underground. They were from the gritty streets of New York City, where there was crime, weird sex, strange people and drugs. Lots and lots of drugs. They sang about that world, which to the music world at large was considered too extreme at the time. But they did have their fans. Their debut album, the Velvet Underground and Nico sold maybe 30,000 copies between 1965 and 1970. That's the claim, anyway. It peaked at number 199 on the Billboard top 200 album charts. But the right people bought this record in 1982. Producer Brian Eno famously said that everyone who bought One of those 30,000 records started a band. Here is a list of just some of the few who claimed to have been awakened by the Velvet Underground and then incorporated some of whatever they were doing into their music. David Bowie, Roxy Music, the Doors, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, U2, Joy Division, the Pixies, the Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, the Cure, Craftwork REM Simple Minds, the STR and the Psychedelic Furs, whose name is derived from a Velvet Underground song. To illustrate how different they were from the mainstream, let's go back to the spring of 1965. These were the big hits from March of that year, just as the Velvet Underground and Nico hit the stores. We had the Beatles and Eight Days a Week, Nice Pop Song, the Supremes and Stopping the Name of Love, My Girl from the Temptations, Roger Miller and King of the Road, and this Diamond Ring by Gary Lewis and the Playboys. Compare all that lightweight pop to this song about Lou Reed banging smack into his veins. Cause it makes me feel like I'm a man When I put a spike into my vein and I tell you things aren't quite the same When I'm reminded Rushing on my run and I feel a song that's still very intense by today's standards. Now imagine hearing that back in 1965, when the beach Boys were the biggest thing around. The Velvet Underground was at least 10 years ahead of their time, maybe more. We wouldn't hear stuff like this until maybe the punk revolution of the 1970s. And today, the Velvet Underground is considered to be one of the most influential bands of. Of all time. Yet when they were around, nobody cared. The next accidental visionary is a guy from Boston who was a hardcore Velvet Underground fan. He was also someone who, at a time when every male rocker and every male rock fan wore their hair long. But this guy, nope. He wanted to wear his hair short. He was vehemently anti hippie, and he reveled in being different. Jonathan Richman was inspired to get into music because, like I said of the Velvet Underground, he formed a band called the Modern Lovers, which featured future rock stars. Jerry Harrison, who would later become part of the Talking Heads, and David Robinson, the future drummer of the Cars. His stripped down songs helped set the groundwork for punk rock. In fact, we classify his music as proto punk, the stuff that had to happen first before punk rock could be born. The song I like to point to is this one. It was recorded in 1972 and it is every bit as modern power pop as anything by the Strokes or Sloan. The New Pornographers, the Dandy Warhols, Jimmy Eatworld, and even the Go Gos and the Knack and Blondie and the Romantics. Have a listen. It's an ode to the state of Massachusetts. Also, it. It's an ode to a muscle car. And it's an ode to listening to AM radio late at night. This is Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers with roadrunner. So, yeah, 1974. Two for that. It's Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers with Roadrunner. It was years before his influence was acknowledged. And if you remember the movie, There's Something About Mary. Jonathan is the guy with a guitar who shows up in strange places during the film. Here's another group of women who should have been much, much bigger than they were, despite the support that they got from David Bowie. They were called Fanny. Four women who formed a band in Los Angeles in 1972. Now, at that time, the idea of an all female rock band was unheard of. You just didn't do this. I mean, everybody knew that women couldn't rock, right? Oh, sure, they could sing and maybe shake a tambourine while looking pretty, but a rock group featuring nothing but girls? That's crazy. But here's the thing. Fanny was good. Very good. Like I said, Bowie thought they were brilliant. And although commercial success escaped them through four albums before they broke up in 1975, they were tremendously influential on other young women. That includes those who would go on to form the Runaways, Hart, the Go Gos, and the Bangles. Take a listen. This is from 1972. It was released around the same time that Jonathan Richmond song that we heard came out. And the album is entitled Fanny Hill. The song is Blind Alley, which, by the way, was recorded in the Beatles Apple Studios on Bond street in London. That's the oldest woman group called Fanny, showing everyone that women could rock in 1972. Today, Fanny's reputation continues to filter through the music world. And if you're interested in learning more, I highly recommend a 2021 documentary called the Right to Rock. Very good. If you want to hear more stories of musicians and bands who were way ahead of their time, stick around. Plenty more coming up. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Feeling lost? Stressed out? Anxious? Welcome to the club. The 24 hour news cycle and doom scrolling and the constant bombardment of information from all directions affect all of us. Yet we're expected to hold it all together. Something that's easier said than done. Men have this thing, too, that we're supposed to be strong and steady performers and providers. And you know what a lot of us do? We just push it down into that black ball inside of us because, well, that's what guys do. We're tough, right? But that leads to depression and burnout and other, shall we say, unhealthy activities as we try to cope. Here's the truth. It's okay to admit that you're struggling and that you need someone to talk to. Doing something about your mental health takes strength. And once you begin to open up and admit all the burdens that you're carrying around, you can work on being the best you can be for yourself, your loved ones, and everyone around you. Now, trust me on this. Once you start talking about the things stuffed into your black ball, the whole universe begins to open up. BetterHelp is there for you. With more than 35,000 therapists available, BetterHelp is the largest online therapy platform. It has an App store rating of 4.9 out of 5 based on 1.7 million reviews from clients all over the world. It's so easy and convenient too. An online session starts with the click of a button at any time of day or night, so you can fit therapy into your busy schedule, learn how to set boundaries, deal with anxiety, and learn positive coping skills. And you can switch therapists anytime. There should never be any stigma around mental health. You take care of your physical health, right? 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Right now at the Home Depot Shop fall savings and get up to 40% off select appliances like Frigidaire. Get ready for a season of hosting with the Frigidaire Stone Bake Pizza Oven, the only oven that reaches 750 degrees for restaurant quality pizza in as little as two minutes. Start making hosting easier with fall appliance savings today at the Home Depot. Only when using Stone Bake Pizza Mode offer Valley October 2 through October 22 US only C store online for details this is a program about musicians who peaked too soon, giving the music world stuff that it wasn't quite ready for yet. And they've gone down in history as being too far ahead of their time. The next band I want to talk about is Big Star. They were from Memphis and they were headed up by singer Alex Chilton. They became active in 1971 and hung on until 1975, and in the process, they essentially invented the genre that we now call power pop. Everyone from the Cars and Blondie to Sloan and Blink182 were influenced by by Big Star. Now to be fair, Big Star took a lot of cues from the Beatles and the who and the Beach Boys, but their genius was to combine very melodic hooks with very catchy melodies and big guitars. And while the music tended to sound happy, that often covered up lyrics that were on the depressed and melancholy side. There were other power pop bands in the 70s who had hits. There was Badfinger and Todd Rundgren. We had the Raspberries, Cheap Trick, the Knack. But Big Star was there before all of them. But the world wasn't ready for what Big Star was selling. And after three albums, all commercial disappointments, they broke up. But in the years that followed, especially in the 1990s, they were rediscovered by a new generation of alt rock musicians and fans. A cult following built, and in 1993, the group reunited and stayed together until singer Alex Chilton died of a heart attack. Let me illustrate what I'm talking about. A song like this would not sound out of place today, but it was recorded in 1971 and released in April 1972. This is Big Star with 13 and I'll shake you cult favorites Big Star, who should have been much bigger than they were. But acceptance of modern power pop was still a few years into the future when they were around. Hence they were too far ahead of their time. This brings Me to Death, a group that lived in obscurity for decades before being discovered. And what makes them interesting is that they were punk before there was punk, before it was a thing. And there were three black brothers from Detroit. There was Bobby, Julian and David Hackney. They formed death in 1971, and they were originally a funk band under the name Rock Fire Funk Express. But after seeing gigs by Alice Cooper and the who, they decided that they needed to rock things up a bit, and they were very good. In 1975, Columbia Records expressed interest in the band that paid for the recording of seven songs. And while the music was good, the label did not like the band's name and demanded that they find something else. When Death refused, Columbia bailed, saying that a group with that name would have zero commercial success. Two years later, the band was done. Everybody moved to Vermont and switched to singing and recording gospel songs under the name the Fourth Movement, and Death was almost completely forgotten. Meanwhile, though, a 7 inch single for a song called Politicians In My Eyes became a collector's item, exchanging hands for up to $1,000. That music inevitably ended up being digitized and began trading hands as MP3s through the early 21st century. Then one day, Julian Hackney, the son of Bobby Heard, heard his college roommate playing one of those MP3s. That's my dad, he said. One thing led to another and Those old master tapes from 1975 made their way to a label called Drag City Records, who released those seven songs commissioned by Columbia on an album entitled for all the World to See. When people heard this, the reaction was, wow, this is punk. Three black guys from Detroit making punk rock before the music even had a name. The band was enticed to reunite and even performed at one of Joey Ramone's memorial birthday parties. Today, Death is belatedly, well, very belatedly created with helping create the modern punk rock sound. In 1974 and 1975 and for decades afterwards, no one knew anything about Death. Today, though, they're considered visionaries. Here is that once super collectible 7 inch single. There's punk and hardcore and more in this song. And Again, this is 1975. Death and politicians in My Eyes now recognized as an important example of proto punk music, even though it was completely unknown for decades. Where is Death now? Well, David Hackney died of lung cancer in 1982. The other two brothers are still in Vermont and still playing with various groups. And there have been a few reunions along the way. Let's return to the concept of grunge and where it all came from. In 1983, a woman named Tina Bell, along with Tommy Martin, formed a group called Bam Bam in Seattle. They found a bass player and a guy named Scott Ledgerwood, and the Drummer was a 21 year old guy named Matt Cameron. And yes, the same Matt Cameron who would later play with Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. He would soon leave the band, but it's interesting that he was part of Bam Bam at the very beginning of the whole grunge thing. In fact, before the grunge thing began, it's important to point out that the group also employed a young kid as a roadie for a while, and that kid's name was Kurt Cobain. Bamm Bam, led by Tina, was unmistakably grungy in their sound. They had a decent local following, but for some reason, few outside Seattle took them seriously. Tina had an especially rough time. She was a barely five foot black woman fronting a heavy rock band and the amount of racial abuse she endured was sickening. CZ Records, a tiny label that was instrumental in putting out indie records by early grunge bands, including Soundgarden, was interested in Bam Bam, but they made the decision to continue on their own. They did manage to release one record, an EP entitled Villains Also Wear White. They continued for a few more years before the group fell apart after some lineup changes, but still they managed to open gigs for Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains. But nothing was happening for them in Seattle, so Tina and the group made the decision to move to London, thinking that their sound would get a friendlier reception. It did not. In fact, because they didn't fill out the proper paperwork, Bam Bam was immediately deported back to the States. Tina left Bam Bam in 1990 and was not replaced. They continued as an instrumental band. Tina quit music entirely. By the 2000 and tens, she'd fallen on hard times, often finding it hard to find a decent place to live. She volunteered at a local church, but still struggled with depression, which she sought to treat with alcohol. She ended up dying of cirrhosis of the liver in an empty Las Vegas apartment in 2012. Her body wasn't found for a couple of weeks. It wasn't until the late 2010s that Tina and Bamm Bam started getting the credit they deserved in creating the whole grunge aesthetic in Seattle. If Francois Hardy can be called the grandmother of grunge, it's no stretch at all to call Tina Bell the godmother of grunge. Some even refer to her as the Queen of grunge. Here's a sample of what I'm talking about. It's from 1984, a few years before grunge was, well, grunge. It's the title track to the EP Villains. Also Wear White Seattle's Bam Bam, featuring singer Tina Bell. Grunge before it was grunge a few years too early. In retrospect, though, we understand that Tina was just slightly ahead of her time. She peaked too soon. We're going to continue in this vein with two more grungy bands, including one fronted by an extremely familiar name.
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It'S the Smuckers Uncrustables podcast with your host Uncrustables. Okay, today's guest is rough around the edges. Please welcome crust. Thanks for having me. Today's topic he's round with soft pillowy bread. Hey. Filled with delicious PB and J. Are you talking about yourself? And you can take them anywhere. Why'd you invite and we are out of time. Are you really cutting me off. Uncrustables are the best part of the sandwich. Sorry, crust.
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In the 70s, four young women were found dead. For nearly 50 years, their cases went cold. I'm Nancy Hickst, a senior crime reporter for Global News. In the season finale of Crime Beat, I share how investigators uncovered shock shocking evidence of a serial killer and hear exclusive interviews with the killer's family. Listen to the full season of Crime Beat early and ad free on Amazon Music by asking Alexa to play the podcast Crime Beat.
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Let's give more credit where credit is due to musicians who should have been bigger than they were because, you know, they did some good stuff. The problem, though, was that they were a little too far ahead of the rest of the world. That was the case with Mud Honey. They arrived on the Seattle scene in 1988 with a dark, sludgy, tuned down guitar sound before almost anyone else in the region was into that sort of thing. There's more too. One of the co founders, guitarist Marc Arm, was previously in a band called Mr. Epp and the Calculations. They were formed while Mark was attending Bellevue Christian High School. Mr. Epp was actually their math teacher, and the whole thing was treated as a joke. It took three years before the members actually learned how to play any kind of musical instruments. They started playing gigs and did whatever they could to promote themselves. In 1981, Mark wrote a letter to Desperate Times, a local alternative weekly that was more of a fanzine than anything else. To stir things up, the zine invited readers to nominate the worst and most overrated bands in Seattle. Mark took up the mission and wrote I hate Mr. F and the Calculations. Pure grunge. Pure noise. Everyone I knows loves them. I don't know why. This is the first known appearance of the word grunge in print as a description for a certain style of music from the American Pacific Northwest. Now, Mark didn't invent the word, and it had been in use in American slang for years to denote something repulsive. But Mark, apparently as far as we know, was the first to apply it to rock. Mr. Epp and the Calculations broke up after a final show in February 1984. Within weeks, Mark and his buddy Steve Turner formed Green river, another sludgy band who released a few records when they died in 1987. Some survivors, including Mark and Steve, formed Mud Honey, and their name came from a softcore porn film directed by Russ Meyer. They eventually came to the attention of Bruce Pavitt, one of the partners in a tiny, struggling local record label called Sub Pop. He liked them enough to release a Single this was Mudhoney's first single. If this isn't grunge, I don't know what is. Touch Me I'm Sick, Touch Me, I'm Sick, Mud Honey and Touch Me I'm sick from 1988. In another universe, that song is the song that kicked off the whole grunge thing in the Seattle area and the world at large. It did have local impact, but for the rest of the planet, not so much. Sub Pop was perpetually broke, so it didn't have the money or clout to promote their releases. More importantly, music at large wasn't really ready for this sound and attitude. Things were still all about hair metal in 1988. Pop music was still dominant, and any kind of alt rock was still very much in the margins. Besides, Seattle was way off the beaten track in those days, and no one paid attention to what was happening there. But within about two and a half years, grunge took root, thanks to groups like Soundgarden and Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains. Imagine how Mudhoney must have felt to see a sound they pioneer blow up without them. I want to end with David Bowie. For the entire decade of the 1970s, he was a million miles ahead of everyone with his shifting Personas, his new images and his musical explorations. He went from folk to glam to blue eyed soul to electronic to early industrial music to technopop. Bowie saw round corners and predicted the future of rock unlike anyone we've ever seen. The 80s started strong with the let's Dance album, but after that, Bowie kind of ran out of steam. Albums like tonight from 1984 and never let me down from 1987 were disappointments on a number of levels. So Bowie decided to switch gears again in 1988. He saw the way the wind was blowing. Heavy and hard rock was going to move away from hair metal and into something more primal over the next few years. Bowie was into this music at the time and wanted to pursue this sound. Instead of chasing what audiences wanted, he was once again to make music that he liked. The result was a band called Tin Machine, a band formed with guitarists Reeves Gabrels and Tony and Hunt Sayles, sons of comedian Soupy Sales. It was the first time that Bowie had been in a band since sometime in the early 1960s. Tin Machine was experimental and very hard, predating a lot of the music that we would hear with grunge and punk and hardcore in the 1990s. And at first, Tin Machine did well. Their debut album got good reviews and had respectable sales. But they soon ran out of steam. Fans and critics felt that Bowie had stopped being Bowie. There was a second album and a live record and then the band broke up in 1992. Tin Machine is frankly not remembered fondly by many Bowie fans, if at all. But I propose that this isn't a fair assessment. Bowie had correctly ascertained that music was going to get heavier and, and angrier. Tin Machine's problem is that they were doing that two or three years before the world was ready for it. I think Tin Machine requires a reevaluation. If they had arrived in, let's say, 1992 or 1993, I maintain that things would have been very, very different. If you don't know the band, here's a sample. This is a single from their self titled debut album. It's called under the God Fascist Flare is passing you dead. You just did. After Tin Machine broke up in 1992, David Bowie went back to being, well, David Bowie. He had some decent success, but nothing like what we saw in the 70s and early 80s. He did, however, predict pretty much everything that would happen with music with the rise of the Internet. Here's what he said in 1999, just as the Internet was starting to go mainstream.
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I don't think we've even seen the tip of the iceberg. I think the potential of what the Internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable. I think we're actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying.
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It's just a tool though, isn't it?
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No, it's not. No, no. It's an alien life form.
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What do you think? I mean, when you think then about.
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Is there life on Mars? Yes, it's just landed here, but that's.
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It's a simply a different delivery system there. You're arguing about something more profound.
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Oh yeah, I'm talking about the. The actual context and the state of content is going to be so different to anything that we can really envisage at the moment where the interplay between the user and the provider will be so in simpatico. It's going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about.
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Bang on, David. He was also one of the very first artists to have a website. And there's more. He predicted that song catalogs could be used to raise money through sales to third parties. Something that's practically happening every week these days. In that case, he was about 25 years ahead of his time. And just like with his Internet predictions, he made tens of millions of dollars by using his songs as collateral. What's even more remarkable was his timing. He leased his catalog for a period of 10 years, just before the Internet nearly destroyed the recorded music industry. And while everyone else was losing money because of music piracy and dropping CD sales, Bowie laughed all the way to the bank with a payday of $55 million. And at the end of 10 years, he got all his songs back and began to make money via streaming. And by the time he died in 2016, he owned everything. He might have bet wrong with Tin Machine, but he got the Internet right. People always ask me, which bands do you think should have been bigger? And that's a question I've tried to answer with this show. Bad timing and being in the wrong place at the wrong time, even with the right songs are something that we've seen throughout the entire history of rock. There are many, many more such artists, of course, and perhaps we'll revisit this topic sometime in the future. If you want more ongoing history, there are hundreds and hundreds of podcasts featuring shows just like this one. They're all free and can be downloaded everywhere. There's also my other podcast, a true crime thing called Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry. Hope you can check that out. I'm on all the social media networks. There's my website, ajournalofmusicalthings.com and if you have any questions, comments, complaints or criticisms, use AlanLancross.ca and I will get back to you. Technical productions by Rob Johnston. Talk to you next time. I'm alan Cross. Friday, October 17 My name is Mickey Fox. From the producers of Fire Country.
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I'm sheriff of Edgewater.
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A must watch new series on global and streaming on Stack tv.
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Drop the guns. It's all right, Boone.
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I know them. I got it. In this town, fighting crime hits close to home. Sheriff's authority and recognition organized up here. Dale.
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Give it a rest.
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Sheriff country new series Friday, October 17th on Global and stream live and on demand on Stack tv.
Host: Alan Cross (Curiouscast)
Date: October 22, 2025
In this episode, Alan Cross spotlights musicians and bands from the alt-rock universe (and beyond) who were "ahead of their time"—visionaries whose music, styles, and attitudes set the groundwork for future movements, but who, sadly, received little recognition or commercial success in their own era. This deep dive seeks to give overdue credit to artists who "peaked too soon," examining their influence, the reasons for their lack of contemporary success, and how later generations came to revere their trailblazing work.
On Why Bands Go Unnoticed:
Brian Eno (quoted):
On Fanny’s Place in History:
On Tina Bell’s Tragic Fate:
On Bowie’s Internet Predictions (33:37):
| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|------------------------------------------| | 01:08 | Philosophers & visionary parallels | | 03:48 | Introduction: what "peaked too soon" means| | 04:05 | François Hardy, grandmother of grunge | | 06:40 | Velvet Underground: revolutionary background| | 10:00 | Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers | | 12:00 | Fanny: all-female rock pioneers | | 16:12 | Big Star's invention of power pop | | 18:00 | Death: Black proto-punk band | | 22:30 | Tina Bell and Bam Bam's Seattle grunge roots| | 27:01 | Mudhoney, grunge's overlooked founders | | 31:45 | Bowie’s Tin Machine and '90s proto-grunge| | 33:37 | David Bowie's internet predictions |
Alan Cross makes a compelling case for revisiting the legacies of artists whose daring innovation didn’t find an audience in their day, but who laid the foundations for entire musical movements. With anecdotes, music comparisons, and later acclaim, he shows how mainstream recognition often lags behind true innovation—and why it’s so vital for music historians and fans to give credit where it’s due.
If you’ve ever wondered why your favorite band never made it big, or who really paved the way for today’s sounds, this episode is essential listening—and a reminder that sometimes, genius is just mistimed.