The Ongoing History of New Music, Encore Presentation: The Black Keys
It is hard to have a hit record these days. Hell, with all the music out there, it’s nearly impossible to attract any kind of meaningful attention. All the noise and distractions and competition…
If you’re a new band with a debut record, you have anywhere from six to thirteen weeks to make an impression once that first single comes out. If you fail to achieve significant traction with radio and retail and streaming and fans during that short window, you’re in trouble. And if your record label doesn’t make it happen with the second single–well, let’s hope you still have your day job.
It wasn’t always like this. Back in the pre-Internet days, a record label could afford to wait for a band to develop and mature through two, three, four even five albums. Would U2 be as big as they are today if they weren’t allowed to stumble through their first two albums? The Chili Peppers are with us because they were able to find their way through a number of records before breaking through with Bloodsugarsexmagick. And REM released five indie records before they were signed to a major label deal.
That was hard on them. They were on a treadmill of recording and touring and recording and tour with little downtime in between. But they wanted it so bad that they did what was necessary. Hey, it’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock’n’roll, you know?
The same can be said of the Black Keys. A lot of people might think they have maybe three records to their name. Nope. There’s a lot more than that. And unless you’re a hardcore fan, you might not know about some of the stuff they’ve done.
Let’s get caught up with the Black Keys.
Songs included on this show (all by the Black Keys, naturally):
Fever
Leavin’ Trunk
Set You Free
10AM Automatic
Your Touch
I Got Mine
Tighten Up
Lonely Boy
The Weigh of Love
Hard Row (Live)
Eric Wilhite put all of the above in a nice playlist.
Don’t forget that you can get the podcast version of this podcast through iTunes or wherever you get your on-demand audio.
The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on the following stations:
- 102.1 The Edge/Toronto – Sunday night at 7
- Live 88-5/Ottawa
- 107.5 Dave-FM/Kitchener
- FM96/London – Sunday night at 7, Monday night at 11
- The Drive/Kingston
- Power 97/Winnipeg (Sunday nights at 11)
- 98.1 The Bridge/Lethbridge – Saturday night at 6, Sunday morning at 10am
- Rock 97.7/Grand Prairie – Sunday nights at 6.
- 92X/Calgary
- Sonic 102.9/Edmonton
- The Zone/Victoria
- The Fox/Vancouver
- Live 105/Halifax
- NEW! WAPS/WKTL The Summit/Arkon, Canton, Cleveland, Youngstown
We’re still looking for more affiliates in Calgary, Kamloops, Kelowna, Regina, Saskatoon, Brandon, Windsor, Montreal, Charlottetown, Moncton, Fredericton, and St John’s and anywhere else with a transmitter. If you’re in any of those markets and you want the show, lemme know and I’ll see what I can do.
