The Ongoing History of New Music, episode 1002: 60 Mind-Blowing Facts About Music in 60 Minutes (2023 edition)
I’m not gonna lie: I’m addicted to listicles. Not the click-baity ones that have sub-headlines like “And You Won’t Believe #6!” I’m only interested in the ones that offer interesting or weird facts. Usually that means BuzzFeed, Bored Panda, Upworthy, Laughing Squid. You know the kind: “Today i learned” and “I was today years old when I discovered.” That sort of thing/
Here’s one I found the other day: There is a species of moth living in the Amazon jungle that drinks the tears of sleeping birds. It’ll sit on a bird’s neck, stick a long proboscis under the bird’s eyelid, and slurp away the tears. I know! Right?
Here’s another: Until the 1800s, polite people didn’t eat bananas because their shape made them an “immoral fruit.” Importers had to hire women for ads showing them eating bananas to prove that there was nothing wrong with them.
Okay, okay. One more—and I’m sorry if this is going to trigger you. If you take public transit, approximately 15% of the air you breathe contains human skin. All those floating specs you see in the sunlight? Dead skin. Gross, but I love this stuff.
A big part of my job is searching for facts, although most of what I’m looking for involves music. I’ve heard that if you play hip-hop to a wheel of cheese as it’s maturing, the cheese will have a stronger flavor and aroma. As late as 1948, you could win an Olympic medal for music. And if you want to play music for your dog, choose reggae. Scientists have proven that that’s the music they like the most.
Over the last year of researching and writing this program, I ran across all kinds of weird and fun facts. I was able to incorporate most of them into various shows. Others, not so much.
But these orphaned facts need a home. So once every 12 months, I devote a program to clearing out all this information from post-it notes, highlighted passages in books, pages torn from newspapers and magazines, and various files on my computer and throw them all into one episode. What you do with this stuff is up to you. This is the annual show I call “60 Mind-Blowing Facts About Music in 60 Minutes.”
Songs heard on this show:
- The Cramps, Blow Up Your Mind
- A3, Woke Up This Morning
- Beck, Devil’s Haircut
- Pantera, Walk
- Fall Out Boy, We Didn’t Start the Fire
- U2, Vertigo (Live)
- Oasis, Rock’n’Roll Star
- Tool, Schism
- Blur, Song 2
- Slayer, Angel of Death
Here’s Eric Wilhite’s playlist.
The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on the following stations:
- 102.1 The Edge/Toronto – Sunday night at 7pm
- Q107/Toronto – Sunday night at 9pm
- Live 88-5/Ottawa – Saturdays at 9am and Sundays at 6pm.
- 107.5 Dave-FM/Kitchener – Sunday nights at 11pm
- FM96/London – Sunday nights at 8pm
- Power 97/Winnipeg – Sunday nights at 11pm
- Sonic 102.9/Edmonton – Sunday at 8am and 8pm
- The Zone/Victoria – Sunday at 8am and 9pm
- The Fox/Vancouver – Sunday at 11pm
- Surge 105/Halifax – Sunday at 7pm
- WAPS/WKTL The Summit/Arkon, Canton, Cleveland, Youngstown – Mon-Fri at 9pm
- We’re still looking for more affiliates in Calgary, Kamloops, Kelowna, Regina, Saskatoon, Brandon, Windsor, Montreal, Halifax, 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.
