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Ongoing History of New Music
The 100 Greatest Rock Moments of the Millennium So Far - Part 5: (60-51)
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Alan Cross
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 With President's Day savings at the Home Depot, you can get up to 35% off select appliances like LG. Plus save up to an extra $450 on select appliances. And with customizable kitchen packages, we make it easy to shop and swap for the features you want like the three door French door refrigerator with slow melting round craft ice. Shop President's Day savings and get up to 35% off select appliances like LG. America's most reliable line of appliances the Home Depot How Doers Get More Done America's most reliable line of appliances per independent study. See Store Online for details. Minimum purchase required. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. During tax season, your personal info travels to a lot of places between payroll, your tax consultant, and the IRS. If your W2 gets exposed, that's just the ticket for identity thieves. That's why Lifelock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Don't let identity thieves take you for a ride. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply people love lists. I think we can agree on that. Magazines, broadcasters and websites are always publishing them. The ones that seem to get the most attention are those that rank a specific thing from worst to best. And let's be honest, most of these lists are designed to court controversy, to create arguments, and to get people talking about how things got ordered and why or why not someone or something should be at number one. I get it. But not all lists are created equal. Some are just supposed to keep track of something. What to buy at the grocery store, errands that need to be done, things that you need to pack for a trip. Then there's middle ground. Lists that keep track of something while attempting to slot them in some kind of order of importance, influence, or impact. Such lists will result in arguments and debate over how things were ranked, which is fine. But the primary purpose of such a list is an attempt to remember what happened and what was more important to remember over something else. We're already 25% of the way through the 21st century, and with the pace of life and the news cycle, it's harder and harder to keep up with what happened this week, let alone the last quarter century. And that's why every once in a while, it's important to stop take a breath, look around, and try to remember what happened. And once we account for that, we can get a better idea of why we've ended up where we are, the advances we've seen, the mistakes we've made, and the happy and unhappy accidents that have occurred. And maybe, just maybe, if we know all this and review everything from time to time, we can figure out where we're going. This is part of one of those lists. It's chapter five of the 100 Greatest Rock Moments of the Millennium so far. This is the ongoing History of New Music Podcast with Alan Cross Hi again, I'm Alan Cross, and welcome to the fifth installment of our look at the 100 greatest moments, events, things, and people who, in retrospect, have changed and guided the course of music history over the last 25 years. Keep in mind that this is my list based on my experience being immersed in the music industry for decades. If you were to make your own list, it might look quite different, because while interpreting history is supposed to be a fairly objective discipline, it can also be extremely subjective. So in other words, your view of history may not be the same as mine. Regardless, though, we should discuss things this time we'll look at items 60 to 51, and at number 60 I have the rise of podcasting this is something that would have never been born had it not been for the invention of the MP3 in the late 1980s. We also have to consider the public adoption of the Internet in the 90s, experiments by radio when it came to things like streaming and on demand audio, and the introduction of personal audio devices like the iPod. In 2000, a software developer named Dave Weiner came up with a way to attach audio files to a format for sharing online content called Real Simple Syndication, or RSS for short. Basically, this allows users to receive some kind of content directly without having to visit a website. In 2004, a journalist named Ben Hammersley wrote an article for the Guardian newspaper in the UK in which he used the word podcasting. He combined Apple's ipod with broadcasting. Podcasts weren't limited to ipods, of course, but at the time Apple was really pushing the format. By 2005, the number of podcasts was growing by the day, and when Apple added podcast support to itunes, things really blew up, especially as the software and the gear required to create a podcast got more powerful, easier to use, and cheaper. It wasn't long before virtually everyone could become a podcaster. Use cases skyrocketed. There was a niche for everyone interested in dissecting every episode of the Sopranos want the latest in gossip, Fascinated by the wild world of knitting. And if you're into music, whoa. Whatever you were into, there was a podcast or 50 or 500 or 5,000 for you. Things continued to boom through the 2010s, thanks to smartphones, platforms like Spotify and YouTube jumping on board, and the recognition by corporations and companies that podcasts are in fact, a very useful and powerful communications tool. The pandemic helped a lot of people listened to not just podcasts during the lockdown, but also fired up their own. New forms of monetization were introduced and the technology just kept getting better, easier to use and cheaper. Today, podcasting has gone a long way towards democratizing media. Anyone with a microphone, a laptop and an Internet connection can be a podcaster. And today it's a multi billion dollar business. It has joined the big boys of radio, TV and movies. Now, I don't exactly agree with a lot of the sentiments in this song by Cruisebox, but it's still one of the very, very few songs written about podcasts, which is strange because I thought there'd be more by now. The FCC to stick it kick it number 60 on the list of the 100 greatest rock moments of the millennium so far. The rise of podcasting. For item 59, it's a happy accident that turned into one of the great anthems of the century. On January 29, 2002, the White Stripes were sound checking for a gig at the Corner Hotel in Melbourne, Australia. Jack White came up with a seven note riff which he thought sounded cool. So he played it over and over and over again. He later played it to Ben Swank, who worked at Third Man Records, the Stripes label. Nah, he said, you can do better and the rhythm isn't even that good. So Jack put it aside, hoping, and this is true, that one day he would be asked to do a James Bond theme, and maybe this riff could be incorporated somehow. But then he gave his head a shake. No one's ever gonna let me do a Bond theme. I might as well just find a way to use this for a White Stripe song. So he did. A year later, the White Stripes were in England working at a primitive analog studio called Toe Rag. By this time, the riff had grown into what Jack had called a little experiment. It was kind of cool, but it didn't have a chorus. He didn't even have a complete set of lyrics. In fact, all that existed was a working title. Eventually, though, he came up with something. The placeholder title stuck. The song was completed, added to the Elephant album and released as a single. It blew up on radio. The video gained all kinds of traction. Critics went nuts over the song. It then won a Grammy for Best Rock Song and was also nominated for Best Rock Performance. And since then, it's not only become recognized as the White Stripes most popular song, but it's also become one of the biggest sports anthems on the planet. Plus, it's been adopted by political movements around the world, ranging from a UK general election to protests in Israel. And if you haven't figured it out by now, the song is Seven Nation army, number 59 on our list. Jack White stumbles on the riff for Seven Nation army during a sound check in Australia. Number 58 is a sad milestone. It's the closing of CBGB, the infamous club that was ground zero for all things punk. The final night was October 15, 2006. The club, at 315Bowery at Bleecker in Lower Manhattan, descended from an establishment founded in 1969 by a burly ex Marine named Hilly Crystal. He'd had experience managing a few other places before opening Hilly's on the Bowery in late 1969, and it did not do well. On December 10, 1973, he tried again with a new 350 person capacity club at the famous address below a flophouse. He called it CBGB and umfug, which spells out its musical policy country, bluegrass, blues and other music for uplifting Gorman Dysers. That policy didn't last for very long, thanks to a near disaster. Not too far away, the Mercer Arts Center, a venue where the cities artsy, avant garde and weird performed, fell down. And I mean literally fell down. The building collapsed on August 3, 1973. This created a problem for all those artsy, avant garde and weird people. Where were they going to play and hang out? These Mercer refugees began migrating to cbgb, where a new band called Television had started playing a regular Sunday night residency. By the summer of 1974, Hilly's Bar, now known just as CBGB to everyone, was hosting not just Television, but the Ramones, Patti Smith, Suicide Blondie, Talking Heads, the Heartbreakers, and a bunch of other groups. CBGB became ground zero for an emerging form of music called punk, and from there the gospel spread worldwide. The place became famous and sold a million T shirts. But in the 2000s, things got difficult. Rent skyrocketed from $9,000 a month to $55,000. There was no way for CBGB to survive. Hilly first thought about packing everything up, right down to the urinals and moving it to Las Vegas. But that never happened. CBGB had to close its doors, and its Last night was October 15, 2006, and Patti Smith, appropriately, had the last words. My hand is aching as a drink and breathe Memory falls like cream in my bones Moving. The final night at CBGB, October 15, 2006. Number 58 on this list of the most important rock moments of the millennium. So far, at 57, I've put the failure to stage a 50th anniversary Woodstock eventually. Now, putting on a Woodstock event was never easy. Back in 1969, the location bounced around before landing on Maxie Asghar's farm. And of course, we've all heard the history and myths and legends around that one, with the rain and the mud and the drugs and the hippies and so on. That land was not available for the 25th anniversary show in 1994, so it was held in nearby Socrates, New York. I was at that one, and there was more rain and more mud and a lot of misery. Plus, there were fan complaints about being gouged for things like food and water. The 30th anniversary event was at an Air Force base in Rome, New York. This was a disaster, with fires, vandalism and sexual assaults. It was so bad that several documentaries were made about all the things that went wrong. In all three cases, the head promoter was Michael Lang, and when it came time for a 50th anniversary show, he was game. But there were problems from the very beginning. The festival did have an investor, the Dentsu Aegis Network. But then they got cold feet and pulled out just a few months before things were supposed to get started. They were worried about liability issues and Lang's ability to guarantee that Woodstock 50 would be safe. Unlike Woodstock 99, when Dentsu pulled out, there was a mad dash to find a replacement financier. Never happened. Meanwhile, Michael Lang and his partners were fighting over planning control and how the money should be allocated. Original plans had the show set for Watkins Glen International Speedway, but then the venue nixed that over various concerns. No new venues were willing to step up either. Once the chaos surrounding Woodstock 50 became obvious, artists who had signed up for the festival started dropping out. They wanted no part of any event that had the potential as being as unsafe and as weird as woodstock99 had been. And with so many problems and with so many unsolvable logistical issues, Woodstock 50 was finally canceled on July 19, just a couple of weeks before the 50th anniversary. Then the pandemic hit, and on January 8, 2022, Michael Lang died of Non Hodgkin's lymphoma. Without him as the spiritual center of Woodstock, everything collapsed, probably forever. We can only imagine what that weekend might have been like. 80 artists had originally signed up, including Santana, Dead and Company, the Killers, Jay Z, Imagine Dragons, Cage the Elephant, Miley Cyrus, Vampire Weeknd, and more. One of the first bands to bail when it became obvious that there would be trouble was these guys. The Black Keys. I got a lot that keeps me waiting I'm a lonely boy the Black Keys. Once part of the lineup for Woodstock 50, the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, that did not happen. It's number 57 on our rock Moments list. Coming up, another example of how cheap technology altered the course of music. A concept album that turned into a monster. A silly Christmas stunt that was actually quite cool. And speaking of cool, the first ever pro rock concert in Antarctica. Get the Angel REEF special at McDonald's. Now, let's break it down. My favorite barbecue sauce, American cheese, crispy bacon, pickles, onions, and a sesame seed bun, of course. And don't forget the fries and the drinks. Sound good? Ba da ba ba ba. I participate in restaurants for a limited time. This is an ad from BetterHelp Online Therapy. We always hear about the red flags to avoid in relationships. But it's just as important to focus on the green flags. If you're not quite sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify those qualities so you can embody the green flag energy and find it in others. BetterHelp offers therapy 100% online, and sign up only takes a few minutes. Visit betterhelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com this is Chapter 5 of our 100 Greatest Moments in Rock in the 21st Century. So far, and when compiling this list, I looked for notable concert events. And I'd completely forgotten about Metallica's quest to be the first act to play a concert on all seven continents over the course of one year. The toughest of these continents was, of course, Antarctica. But on December 8, 2011, Metallica made it happen. They're one of the few artists with the money and the ability to do something like this. They also enlisted Coke Zero to act as a sponsor. The gig took place at Carlini Station, an Argentine base on King George island, on that arm of Antarctica that sticks out towards Argentina. Maximum population about 80. It's also located next to a colony of 16,000 penguins. In December, the Antarctic summer, the average daily temperature is about zero Celsius Metallica first flew into southern Argentina and then flew to Marambio Base in Antarctica and then sailing to Carlini. A special dome was constructed and the band played a short set for some contest winners, scientists, the penguins, and about 650 sea lions. They did it without a PA too, because they were worried about what loud metal might do to the environment. And most everybody listened through headphones too. The set consisted of 10 songs of hits from their career. Everything was streamed live. And this is how it ended. Come on. Number 56 on our list of the 100 greatest moments in rock in the 21st century so far, Metallica's concert in Antarctica in 2011, making them the first and only band, I think, to perform on all seven continents. In the course of 12 months, I've got the release of Green Day's American Idiot album at number 55. This was one of the great career comebacks of the last 40 years. Green Day was all but done by the end of the 1990s, and it appeared they had played out their string. In desperation, their record label released a greatest hits record in hopes of rekindling some interest. And then Green Day went out on tour with Blink 182, a band that was on the ascendant that seemed to work. And work started on a new album entitled Cigarettes and Valentines. But then the master tapes of that album mysteriously disappeared, something for which I've never found a satisfying explanation. Regardless of what really happened, Green Day started from scratch. By this time, Billie Joe Armstrong was apoplectic about how George Bush was running the United States and prosecuting unnecessary wars overseas. He channeled all that into a quasi concept album called American Idiot, and it exploded. Half a dozen singles were taken from the record, and when the dust cleared, it had sold 23 million copies worldwide, second only to their Dookie album, it was also a critical success. It won a couple of Grammys, a Juno, an MTV Europe Music Award, a Brit Award, and more. It also spun off a successful stage musical that toured the world. There was a documentary called Heart Like a Hand Grenade, and if Billie Joe has his way one day there will be a movie. American Idiot was a global event, a cultural touchstone, and one of the last rock albums that we'll ever see sell in these numbers. The release of Green Day's American IDIOT at number 55 on our list, at 54, it's the revenge of Rage against the Machine, or at least their fans enjoying some revenge. You may know that the Brits have been betting on which song will finish at number one on the singles Charts. On the last chart issued before Christmas. This is a tradition that goes back to the 1950s. It's a silly thing really, but the whole country gets wrapped up in the frenzy. But things had gotten stale and predictable in the aughts. The top songs inevitably ended up being something from one of those TV talent shows or some kind of novelty track. There hadn't been a genuine rock song to finish at number one since the reissue of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody in 1991. The pop and novelty streak had to end. So music fans took up the cause. A grassroots campaign began, started by a fan from Essex and a single Facebook page. Could enough Britons be convinced to buy and or download a copy of Rage against the Machine's Killing in the Name to keep another song out of the top spot at Christmas? In this case, the Enemy was a track called the climb by Joe McEldery, a winner on the TV show X Factor. When Rage found out about this, they vowed to play a free show in the UK if the campaign was successful. And that was enough to put it over the top. Killing in the Name ended up beating out the climb by 50,000 downloads. And this was the first time in the history of this weird competition that downloads tipped the scales. And the number of Rage downloads set a record for the most ever seen in a week. As we barreled towards that final chart day, rage appeared on BBC 5, the network's news channel, and they played the song with the correct lyrics, which was a surprise to the Beebe. And then three days later, as specified by tradition, the number one song was dutifully played on the BBC. Rage played their free show and they donated all royalties to homeless charities. You die. I justified the wearing the bag. Take your jolted white, you're justified. Item number 53 on our list is the spread of cheap and powerful home recording gear. For decades, the only way to record music for the world was to rent an expensive recording studio. Oh sure, you could build your own studio at home, but that was extremely costly and very complicated options were available. Bruce Springsteen recorded his entire Nebraska album throughout 1981 and 1982 on a portable four track cassette unit. But as home computers and especially laptops became more powerful, music making software has become cheaper to use and making music at home has exploded. Indie artists were able to create music on a limited budget and there were no time restrictions, meaning that artists had time to experiment without racking up huge studio bills. Much of this material was found to be heartfelt and authentic, attracting fans to artists who took this approach. And the number of genres related to this new technology multiplied more lo fi, something called bedroom pop, a resurgence in sounds like shoegaze, new flavors of hip hop imperfections and a lack of slickness were welcome in all these genres, and artists found new ways to create new sounds by embracing the limitations of their gear. Indie labels loved this. Without huge studio overheads and production costs, they could afford to take a chance on more indie artists. Even the major labels started to take notice of what could be done in a bedroom or a basement or a garage. Plenty of records began their life on laptops using GarageBand, Logic, Audacity, the free edition of Pro Tools, and a bunch of other digital audio workstation programs. One guy who was all over this was from Ariel's Pink Haunted Graffiti, the project of singer Ariel Rosenberg. He built his fan base going low five with his home recorded albums. This is probably his most popular song. It's from 2010 and it's called Round and Round, an example of the kind of music made possible by the use of cheap home recording equipment. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti with Round and Round from 2010 that technological disruption is number 53 on our list of the top 100 rock moments of the 2000s so far. Two more to go in this episode, and both involve more technological disruption. 1942 Europe soldiers find a boy surviving alone in the woods. They make him a member of Hitler's army, but what no one would know for decades he was Jewish. Could a story so unbelievable be true? I'm Dan Goldberg. I'm from CBC's Personally Toy Soldier, available now wherever you get your podcasts. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's gonna get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Moving to item 52 on this list of the 100 greatest rock moments of the millennium so far, I want to discuss the acceptance of backing tracks in live music environments. Backing tracks can fill in the sound for a band on stage. For example, there are three guys in Muse and to replicate their sounds they need additional help. The three guys play their parts live, but the sound is also augmented by recorded parts. They play along with pre recorded audio. This practice goes back to the 1960s, so it's long been accepted practice, but that's not what we're talking about here. Back in the day, the idea of performing to tape or a hard drive on stage was not only considered cheating, but dishonest and the height of fakery. If you were on stage and people had paid money to go see you, you were supposed to be singing live and playing live, not lip syncing and pretending that you were playing your instruments. Milli Vanilli were hounded out of the music business for doing this. Ashlee Simpson melted down on Saturday Night Live when her pre recorded everything malfunctioned on live tv, exposing the charade, and that was the end of her run. But today, backing tracks and full blown lip synching are everywhere and remarkably few people seem to be bothered by it. Why? Well, my theory is because when an audience pays big money to see a concert, they expect that the tracks sound just as they do on the CD or the record or the stream. It's gotta be perfect studio quality. Artists like it because backing tracks can eliminate the need to have large numbers of musicians to replicate a studio recording. If everything is pre recorded, the audio is consistent from show to show. If the audio is recorded, it can be accurately time coded to synchronize with lighting and other complex stage effects. The performer can dance and bounce around all over the place without sounding out of breath. And that's because the vocals are pre recorded. And if we're dealing with an older performer or perhaps a singer whose voice has deteriorated with age or years of abuse, the audience thinks everything is just fine. Backing tracks are used throughout live music today to varying degrees. Some pop shows are completely tracked. Hip hop artists often rap to pre recorded tracks because it's either cost prohibitive or technically impossible to reproduce the material with live musicians. Many DJs are accused of being laptop jockeys. They prepare most of their mixes in advance and when they appear in front of a crowd, they just hit the space bar play. And there are lots of fights in that world about the ethics of doing that. And if we look hard at some classic rock acts, they have a pro tool set up under the stage that plays back everything or close to everything as they mime on the stage above. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, I guess that's up to you. Some people want to see and hear a perfect spectacle for their concert buck. Others rage against the fakery, the lack of authenticity, and the artificial slickness that has no place in real live rock shows. Whatever the case, backing tracks are not going anywhere and neither is the debate over whether this is what people should get when they pay a lot of money for a concert ticket. When the Foo Fighters step on stage, they are 100% live. Remember when they poked fun at Taylor Swift for using pre recorded bits in her shows? In June 2024, the Foos were playing London Stadium. We like to call our tour the Errors Tour. As in stakes. We've had more than a few eras and even more than a few effing errors. That's because we actually play. Number 52 on our list, the acceptance and rejection of backing tracks in live performances. Time to wrap things up with item number 51. And it's another piece of technology that people either love or hate. Yes, it's Auto tune. Back in 1997, a company called Antares Audio Technologies evolved out of another company that searched for underground deposits of oil. The founder of this company, Andy Hildebrand, realized that his oil searching tech could be used to correct musical pitches, including vocal performances that could be slightly off key. Autotune was initially used to polish minor inconsistencies with vocals in the studio, but then along came Cher and the song believe in 1998, in which the autotune effect was maxed out, resulting in this robotic sound. After that, a bunch of artists jumped into autotune, using the tech to achieve really, really exaggerated effects. Kanye T. Pain, Travis Scott, and many others really went to town with Autotune. Meanwhile, people began to wonder if the recordings they were listening to had an element of fakery to it. Is the singer really that good or are we hearing an artificially enhanced vocal performance? Autotune is used a lot, and I mean a lot in recording these days. Along with the use of other studio tools, we often get songs that are absolutely perfect in every sense. Pitch, tempo, the works. The complaint is that the humanity is being squeezed out of music. Sometimes beauty can be found in flaws and mistakes that makes the music real. Here's an example. In this Nirvana song, Kurt Cobain comes in too early for one of the verses. They could have corrected this in the studio, but the decision was made to leave the error in. Why? Because it sounded real and human, Paulie said. Paulie says her back hurts she's just as bored as me she called me off my guard. Definitely not auto tuned. But the explosion of Auto Tune is so important that it's become number 51 on our list of the 100 greatest rock moments of the millennium so far. Time to review chapter five on this list of the top 100 moments, things, events, People and tech in rock in the 21st century. So far, number 60 is the rise of podcasting. At 59 it's Jack White's accidental discovery of the Seven Nation army riff at a soundcheck in Australia. Then we have the closing of the legendary CBGB. At 58, 57 was the utter failure of the attempt to stage a 50th anniversary Woodstock Festival, and at 56 it's Metallica playing a gig in Antarctica. Then we move to the release of Green Day's American Idiot. At 55, one of the most important rock albums so far. This entry Rage against the Machine getting their British number one at Christmas was 54. The explosion of home recording gear is at 53. Wide acceptance and use of backing tracks in concerts was 52. And at 51 it's the use and impact of autotune software everywhere. We're halfway to number one and next time we'll look at a stage collapse, disaster bots and concert tickets and sadly, a couple of high profile deaths. Meanwhile, you can get all caught up with all the chapters in this series by downloading the podcasts. And feel free to get back to me with what you think of the list so far. Use AlanLancross CA Music News and recommendations every single day at my website ajournalofmusicalthings.com, get the Daily newsletter. It's free and we can also meet up on most of the social media platforms. Back next time with top 100 rock moments 50 through 41 technical productions by Rob Johnston I'm Alan Cross. Daniel Blanchard is no ordinary thief. His heists are ingenious. His escapes defy belief, and when he sees the dazzling diamond CC Star, he'll risk everything to steal it. His exploits set off an intercontinental manhunt. But how long can CC Star stay? Lucky for Daniel. I'm Seren Jones and this is is a most audacious heist. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.