The Ongoing History of New Music, Episode 802: Remembering Chester Bennington, Part 1

When the news first came down on the afternoon of Thursday, July 20, 2017, maybe your reaction was the same as mine. “Jeebus. Another celebrity death hoax. And it’s gotta be a hoax because it doesn’t make sense.”

But as the minutes ticked by, it was soon obvious that this wasn’t fake news. It was real. But it still didn’t make sense.

By the end of the day, everyone was confirmed. Chester Bennington, vocalist with Linkin Park, was not only dead but dead by his own hand. What? Another one?

This guy was the frontman for a band that has sold somewhere around 100 million records. He was drafted to sing for Stone Temple Pilots, a band he’d idolized as a kid. He was having fun with a couple of side projects, including acting. He had a loving family with six–six!–children.

And even though the news came during a long string of musician deaths, this one was in many ways the most shocking. Totally unexpected. But should it have been?

Let’s see if we can’t sort out what we can. And as we do, we’ll remember Chester Bennington. This is part one of three.

Songs heard on this show:

Linkin Park, Somewhere I Belong

Sead Dowdell and His Friends, God’s Afraid

Grey Daze, “In Time

Xero, Rhinestone

Hybrid Theory, Carousel

Linkin Park, In the End (Demo)

Linkin Park, Crawling’

Linkin Park, One Step Closer

Linkin Park, Papercut (Live)

Linkin Park, Pts.Of.Athtry

Eric Wilhite has created this playlist for us.

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.
• 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.