10 mind-blowing facts about music: 2025 edition (*abbreviated)
Confession: I am a hoarder. My entire existence is built on finding interesting and obscure facts about music. It really is a 24-7 thing. Most of what I find ends
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Ongoing History Daily: The world’s weirdest orchestra
I recently learned about a very strange orchestra that made its debut in London in the summer of 1914. It was led by Tove Jansson and consisted of a weird
Read MoreOngoing History Daily: A selection of weird musical genres
One of the cool things about streaming music services is all the data that can be harvested from the people who use them. For example, Spotify is always trying to
Read MoreOngoing History Daily: The weirdest tour ever? The ZZ Top Texas World Tour
Acts have been trying to create spectacular stage shows for decades. Gotta give the people their money’s worth, you know? This has resulted in massive productions from bands like U2,
Read MoreOngoing History Daily: What’s that sound that Tool song?
Tool is a band that takes a years and years to record new albums. A bit part of that is their insistence on experimenting with sounds and arrangements—and sometimes those
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Just in time for the weekend: Some fun weird covers
[These ten covers were all released as singles. Good idea? Bad? A contribution from Adam Morrison. – AC] Some of the most interesting cover songs are ones where an artist
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Silly merch alert: Rainwater from a Taylor Swift concert
There’s a new silly piece of music memorabilia available for sale this morning: containers of rain that fell during Taylor Swift’s outdoor concert in Foxborough, Massachusetts this past Saturday (May
Read MoreOngoing History Daily: The MGMT attitude problem
When MGMT released their Oracular Spectacular album in 2008, they had no idea that it was going to be such a big hit. In fact, they now insist that the
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The Ongoing History of New Music, episode 968: 60 mind-blowing things about music in 60 minutes, 2022 edition
It’s that time again. Another year is nearly at an end and once again we’ve been subjected to the whims of the universe and human stupidity and capriciousness. It got
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Weekly survey: Who is/was the biggest weirdo in music?
Sometimes creativity and eccentricity go hand-in-hand, something that’s often apparent with music types. While some may feign being weird as part of an image or persona, there are those who
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Weekly survey: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen at a gig?
Earlier this month, a metal band called Smack’d Up played a Christmas charity gig in Sacramento, California. Unable to get the crowd into the show, the vocalist started throwing all
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