Ongoing History of New Music

The Ongoing History of New Music, episode 839: 60 Mind-blowing facts about music in 60 minutes (2018 edition)

Alan Cross 0 Comments

One of the occupational hazards of my job is that I inevitably and constantly run across all kinds of facts, bits of data and pieces of knowledge that don’t have any immediate and practically applications.

For example, L ran across this strange piece of royal etiquette: The British Royals are forbidden to play Monopoly. As in the board came. I have no idea why, but this is apparently a hard and fast rule.

I have more.

If you have a cat, you know all about hairballs. The technical term of one of those is a bezoar.

Still with animals, there’s a psychological disorder called boanthropy. This is when a person believes they are a cow–yes, you read that correctly–and tries to live their lives accordingly. I don’t want to think what that means.

Any guesses about the most popular item sold at Walmart? Bananas. Seriously.

Astronauts cannot burp in space. That’s because the lack of gravity causes all the gases in the stomach to be mixed with all the solids and liquids instead of separating out like they do on Earth. If you tried to burpl everything would come out at the same time.

So where do gastric gases go? Out the other end. 

And before you ask, no, you cannot use those expulsions from your fundament to propel yourself through the International Space Station. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield reports that the thrust generation isn’t enough to produce the required Newtonian shift in vector.

I have more, but I think you get the idea.

This brings to me the topic of this program. When researching Ongoing History episodes and by blog, I’m always finding pieces of triva that are, if not useless, very close to being so. But much of this stuff is just too fascinating, too fun, to weird to ignore. 

So once a year, it has become my habit to conduct a big data dump of this information. What you do with what I’m about to impart is completely up to you. Godspeed.

This is the annual show called “60 Mind-Blowing Facts About Music in 60 Minutes.”

The facts contain herein give me an excuse to play these songs.

  • Killers, Spaceman
  • Dandy Warhols, Bohemian Like You
  • Outkast, Hey Ya!
  • Muse, Supermassive Black Hole
  • Bob Marley, Three Little Birds
  • RHCP, Give It Away
  • New Order, Run
  • Metallica, Enter Sandman
  • Cranberries, Dreams

If you need a playlist to go with the show, Eric Wilhite has created this.

The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on the following stations:

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.

If you ever miss a show, you can always get the podcast edition available through iTunes, Spotify or wherever you get your on-demand audio.

Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

Alan Cross has 38031 posts and counting. See all posts by Alan Cross

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