65 min listen
Episode 9: The Medium, The Message, The Music
Episode 9: The Medium, The Message, The Music
ratings:
Length:
71 minutes
Released:
May 5, 2016
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Welcome back Diggers to Episode Nine: The Medium, The Message, The Music. This show will contain familiar elements — storytelling, commentary, and musicology — but it is also a bit of a departure.It takes place mostly in the mid-sixties, but we’re not following a timeline or building a story: it’s more of a mosaic, a think-piece.We think the influence of psychedelic drugs — especially LSD — on rock music is critically important and very much overlooked. It’s a vital part of the overall story. We hope to make that case with this show.We will meet some rockers and there will be lots of musical examples, because that’s how we roll. But we will also meet scholars, inventors, researchers and writers: Marshall McLuhan, Albert Hofmann, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey…and more.We will spend some time on the advances in music technology — better instruments and amps, multi-tracking and effects — and show these advances in the musical media arrive at the same time as advances in the psychedelic media.And the results of that arrival are, well, mind-blowing.We’re going “Further” with this episode, so turn on, tune in, and enjoy!
Released:
May 5, 2016
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (34)
Episode 1: The Precursors: Welcome to Rock N Roll Archaeology! This is a reboot of Episode One: The Precursors, originally released October 15, 2015. We updated and improved it some, and re-released it on November 4, 2020. We begin in Times Square, late summer of 1945. The war is over. First up, the Baby Boom and a newly-discovered demographic, the white American teenager. This new cohort is huge, with unprecedented economic clout. Young, restless and affluent, and they want to get beyond the timid, conformist popular culture of 1950s America. “Race Records” (an outdated term for rhythm and blues records by African American musicians) become hugely popular with white teenagers. Drawn from the well of sorrow that is the Black American experience, this music has the edge and urgency--the authenticity--these kids are seeking. We meet our first hero - the musical genius Ray Charles - and our first anti-hero, the frenetic, fatally flawed DJ Alan Freed. We shine a light on two grassroo by Rock N Roll Archaeology