The Ongoing History of New Music, episode 1012: Connections 2
Historians love to investigate causes and effects, It’s possible for a teeny-tiny seemingly inconsequential thing to set off a cascading series of events, and before you know it, the universe has changed forever.
Let me give you an example. A bunch of inept anarchists in Sarajevo were out to make a statement about the liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina under occupation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
When the archduke Franz Ferdinand visited Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, two guys were set to toss a bomb at his six-vehicle motorcade, but they chickened out. Then a guy named Nedeljko Cabrinovic threw a second bomb, but it bounced off the back of one of the cars.
The archduke, his wife, and the governor of Bosnia sped off away from the badly-time bomb toss. However, the the governor suggested that they take a slightly different route to their destinate, The driver, Leopold Lojka, got confused and turned right instead of left into a very narrow street. This was one of the biggest mistakes in the history of the planet.
When he tried to back up, the car stalled—and it stalled right in front of another member of the anarchist group named Gavril Princip. Up until that second, he’d been discouraged that the assassination plot had failed and had allegedly slinked off to Schiller’s Delicatessen to get a sandwich and sulk about the afternoon’s failures. (That’s not true, by the way. It just makes for a better story.)
Anyway, with Princip’s target sitting directly in front of him and completely helpless, Princip pulled out his pistol and fired two shots. One hit the archduke’s wife, killing her instantly. The other hit Ferdinand in the jugular. He died within half an hour.
This created a series of crises involving a web of alliances across Europe and within a few months, the Great War had begun, resulting in the deaths of 20 million people and injured 21 million more. It led to the Treaty of Versailles, the humiliation of Germany, the rise of Adolf Hitler, the carnage of World War II, the spread of communism, the arms race, the Cold War, and the world order as we know it today.
If Leopold hadn’t hung that right instead of a left—or if you like the myth of Princip going for a sandwich—how would the 20th century have been different? It boggles the mind.
Why am I recounting this? Because there are ways we can make connections like this in the world of rock. Here: let me show you.
Songs heard on this show:
- Stereo MC’s, Connected
- Foo Fighters, I’ll Stick Around
- Tool, The Pot
- Fall Out Boy, Sugar We’re Going Down
- Oasis, I Am the Walrus
- Primal Scream, Rocks
- The Cult, Fire Woman
And here’s this week’s playlist from Eric Wilhite.
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.
