It’s an established fact that music comes in many different types of cycles. A sound and style will be big for a while, reach a peak with the public, and then slowly fade out. But once established, it’s unusual for a sound to completely disappear, never to be heard from again.

The only genre I can think of is—maybe alt-rock-style rockabilly? It was big in the very early 80s with bands like The Stray Cats. But then it just kinda went away. There’s never been a rockabilly revival—at least in the sense and style and scope of what we heard way back then when it was huge for about 18 months.

Instead, after enjoying a time at the forefront of music, many of the cycle-prone rock sounds recede into the shadows, never really going away. They lie in wait until someone comes along—often a generation or two later—to rediscover and reactivate it.

When that happens, it’s usually given a sonic update and if the timing is right, the sound enjoys a new period in the sun before the cycle repeats yet again.

The longer you live and the more music you become familiar with, the more you begin to see these cycles play themselves out, sometimes over and over again. We see it every decade.

The 2010s were no different. We saw a series of revivals, rediscoveries, and comebacks, all based on the musical DNA of what had come before. Let’s examine that. This is the history of the 2010s, part 4.

Songs heard on this show:

• • Tool, Fear Inoculum
  • Tame Impala, Elephant
  • Besnard Lakes, People of the Sticks
  • The World is a Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die
  • Radiohead, Burn the Witch
  • The Struts, Body Talks
  • PUP, Kids
  • DC Fontaines, Boys in the Better Land
  • The Interrupters, She’s Kerosene

• Of course, Eric Wilhite has a playlist for us.

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

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© 2023 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Next to spring, fall is the most interesting time for new releases. Not only is this New Music Friday material out now but some of it also sets up the kind of material we’re going to get this winter.

Singles

1. AWOLNATION, Candy Pop (Eleven Seven Label Group)

Okay, so I missed this one last week so I need to make good. AWOLNATION has released this new single (and its accompanying short film) as the third part of a trilogy. Frontman Aaron Bruno describes everything as “a story about escaping from never-ending technological advancements and constant connectivity and scrutiny…The adventure of a lifetime can come from ‘tuning out.” An EP with the trilogy and more will be available on November 10,

2. Black Pumas, Mrs. Postman (ATO Records/Cadence Music Group)

Black Pumas have already been nominated for seven Grammy awards, so the anticipation for this sophomore record is pretty intense. With Chronicles of a Diamond due on October 27, Eric Burton and Andrian Quesada (along with keyboards JaRon Marshall) want to take their view of rock and soul a little further. The first advance single, More Than a Love Song, already managed some chart success, so let’s see where this piano-based song takes them.

3. Sum 41, Landmines (Rise Records)

When I spoke to Deryck Whibley earlier this year, he told me that the new Sum 41 album could very well be a double record and that all he had to do was finish the vocals. The first single from that record is now here. Deryck is still recovering from a bout of pneumonia that landed him in the hospital, but the band is still scheduled to play the When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas on October 21 and 22.

4. Depeche Mode, My Favourite Stranger (Columbia)

Depeche Mode will tour the Memento Mori album deep into the fall. This is now the fourth single form the album and was co-written with Richard Butler of Psychedelic Furs. It comes with another enigmatic video shot by Anton Corbijn. Who’s the guy in the hat? And what does he want?

Albums

1. Art Bergman, ShadowWalk (weewerk)

Art Bergman, one of Canada’s most beloved indie cult artists, has dedicated this album to Sherri, his late wife of 31 years. The album “capture the darkness, grief and desolation that comes from such a soul-crushing loss, while also offering genuine hope that life will go on.” It might make for gut-wrenching listening.

2. Bakar, Halo (Black Butter)

All right, all right. I missed this one, too. British singer Bakar is just about ready with a highly-anticipated (and inevitably difficult) second album entitled Halo. He describes it as a song “fit for the indie sleaze generation.” Maybe this has something to do about most of the record being recorded in AirBnB’s and hotels between London and LA while he was in tour.

3. Black Stone Cherry, Screamin’ at the Sky (Mascot Records/Mascot Label Group)

This Kentucky band has been enjoying some decent success with the first single from this album (Out of Pocket was released in January) and now finally have a full album for fans. The video for Nervous was shot in an old piano factory that had been turned into a production studio filled with old TV and movie sets.

4. Taproot, SC/SSRS (THC Music/Amplified Distribution)

If you remember the nu-metal era of the late 90s, Taproot was a band from Michigan that was always hanging in the shadows of Limp Bizkit and Korn. Just when it seemed that they were going to break through, the whole scene seemed to evaporate in a puff of testosterone. Taproot stayed together, however, but haven’t released an album since 2012. Is nu-metal back? We’ll see.

5. Wilco, Cousin (dBpm Records/Sony Music)

This is the thirteenth album over the Jeff Tweedy and company have been in business and early reviews point out that there’s a slight change in attitude and approach, although it has to be said that this is still very definitely a Wilco record. The record is slower than most with little that can be described as being anything more than mid-tempo. It’s helped along by Welsh producer Cate Le Bon who has a reputation of being someone experimental.

 

 

© 2023 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Back when Pearl Jam was at their height, they had the clout to do anything they wanted. Anything.

On September 26, 2000, the band released 25 double CD live albums—what they referred to as “official bootlegs”—featuring performances from virtually every show they played on European tour in support of their Binaural album. Of those 25, five immediately made the top 200 album chart. This was the first time any act ever saw more than two new albums show up on the chart in the same week.

Two other sets just missed the cut. Had they made the charts that week, Pearl Jam would have joined The Beatles, The Monkees, and U2 as the only acts to that point with seven albums on the charts at the same time.

This was decades before Taylor Swift came along.

© 2023 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Looking for a driving song? This one from Liverpool’s It’s Immaterial (especially in this 12-inch iteration) fits the bill. It began with a full-on country-and-western vibe recorded with the Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison, but the band didn’t like it. They returned to England to re-record it while Harrison took his name off the project.

The song’s full title is Driving Away from Home (Jim’s Tune). The “Jim” is Jim Lieber, a harmonica player in a blues band the group saw while in Milwaukee. He’s the guy we hear on the recording.

 

© 2023 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

A question from new parents: “Should I expose my baby to live music?” The answer is “yes.”

A recent study at the University of Toronto revealed that infants have longer attention spans when experiencing live music. Sure, you might want to give them an iPad to stare at, but that apparently doesn’t work as well as live music. Videos don’t captivate them a whole lot but live music elicits physiological changes like a synchronization of heart rate to the music.

The final conclusion? “Findings suggest that performer–audience interactions and social context play an important role in facilitating attention and coordinating emotional responses to musical performances early in life.”

The big caveat? Volume. The live music cannot be too loud for those delicate little ears.

© 2023 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

A poll released Thursday suggests nearly two-thirds of Albertans oppose the provincial government’s moratorium on approvals for new renewable energy projects.

“This poll clearly demonstrates that a strong majority of Alberta residents do not support the Alberta government’s ill-conceived ban on new renewable energy projects,” said Angela McIntyre, director of the Calgary Climate Hub, which commissioned the poll from Leger.

In late August, the United Conservative Party government brought in a six-month pause for new wind and solar power projects to receive approval from the Alberta Utilities Commission.

The province’s renewables industry has been booming and the government said the pause was necessary to ensure land-use and reclamation concerns were taken into account as it grows.

It also said the pause was requested by Rural Municipalities Alberta, which represents counties and municipal districts. That group has said it didn’t ask for a pause, although it supports one.

The online poll surveyed 1,000 Albertans between Aug. 25 and 27.

It offered four choices — whether they thought the pause was definitely needed, probably needed, definitely not needed or probably not needed. It found 65 per cent of respondents chose one of the last two options.

The figure was slightly higher in Edmonton and Calgary and slightly lower in rural areas — although 57 per cent of those outside the two big cities still agreed the pause wasn’t needed.

Responses were almost uniform across most demographic groups, income and education levels. College-educated respondents were more in favour of the pause than high school or university graduates, with 42 per cent saying the pause was at least probably needed.

The polling industry’s professional body, the Canadian Research Insights Council, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

The pause has been widely criticized as unnecessary and a stumbling block that threatens billions of dollars of investment in what has been a booming industry for Alberta.

Minister of Affordability and Utilities Nathan Neudorf has said no projects are being cancelled and only 13 projects before the Alberta Utilities Commission are directly affected by the pause.

But a clean energy think tank said that doesn’t include all the projects currently at some point in the regulatory process or proposal stage.

The Pembina Institute said the pause is affecting 118 projects worth $33 billion of investment. It said those projects would create enough jobs to keep 24,000 people working for a year and represent what could be $263 million in local taxes and leases for landowners in 27 municipalities.

The poll follows a previous Leger survey that suggested 57 per cent of Albertans were at least somewhat in favour of some kind of national cap on carbon emissions from the oil and gas sector.

© 2023 The Canadian Press

After an emergency room in a Manitoba community closed down this month, residents were left wondering how they could get the healthcare they needed.

The health centre in Carberry, Man., shut off its emergency services at the start of September. It had, for a time, been the go-to ER department for community residents as well those from the municipality of Glenboro.

With nowhere to go to receive emergency care, some residents are forced to go to other major urban centres. It’s an issue made worse by the fact that Carberry doesn’t have a dedicated doctor. The community is left to rely on nurse practitioners for all its needs.

Former mayor Stuart Olmstead said he’s had to drive down to Winnipeg to see his doctor, about a two-hour drive one way.

“Carberry does not have doctors on staff at the present, (and) our emergency department is closed,” said Olmstead. “Those that have immediate or long-term medical issues, or just need checkups like myself, may have to go out of the area to receive (care).”

While the drive down to the city is not one that bothers him, Olmstead said he acknowledged the concerns that others brought to him in his time in office.

“Any small town that doesn’t have healthcare available on an emergency basis, or just a regular basis, puts a large crimp in its economic reach,” said Olmstead.

Carberry’s hospital was built back in 1999. According to the former mayor, 10 per cent of the building’s cost had to be fronted by the town. Without a doctor, Olmstead said it’s created a situation that’s pitting municipalities against each other to attract the staff needed to fill in gaps in the healthcare system.

It’s an issue that current mayor Ray Muirhead said is top of mind, as the town actively works to recruit and retain more staff.

“It has a major impact on our community… we have an aging population in Carberry which requires people to see a doctor,” said Muirhead. “And we are without a doctor right now.”

Health care in Carberry and neighbouring communities falls under the jurisdiction of Prairie Mountain Health. According to them, a recruitment process is currently underway to fill in physician vacancies in the town.

In a statement to Global News on Sept. 26, the agency said that “once we have physician resources in place in Carberry, the emergency department will reopen.”

“A number of communities in Prairie Mountain Health experience temporary suspensions of emergency department services on an ongoing basis, due to staffing shortages,” reads part of the statement.

“This suspension of services may last one or two days or extend for longer periods (as is the case in Carberry) until the staffing situation stabilizes.”

The need for a long-term solution

According to life-long Carberry resident Brian Ramsey, health care across the community has been on a steady decline. Having worked as a paramedic for 30 years, he saw the issue as being one that requires a long-term solution.

He further added that the impact of the emergency rooms closing would be felt across the region, even outside of his own town. With highways just by the town, and Carberry situated near industrial areas, Ramsey said it’s troublesome not to have an ER to go to when it comes to responding to an emergency.

“When the hospital first opened, they actually delivered babies here,” said Ramsey. “We had an ER department that was open seven days a week. Slowly over the decades, we’ve seen those services pulled away, to the point now our ER is closed indefinitely because of a lack of doctors.”

Ramsey retired in 2019. Before that, he said his responsibilities included calling ahead to see which emergency rooms were open and where. From his own experience, he noted that it would make a lot of difference to a patient’s health if they received care faster, instead of travelling to another community to use their ER department.

With the provincial election fast approaching, Ramsey said there needs to be a long-term solution rather than just a band-aid put over the ongoing problem.

“This has been going on for decades, this slow decline,” said Ramsey. “This (did) not happen overnight and it’s not going to be fixed overnight. Whoever’s in power, we want to see them work together with the Opposition and have a long-term health plan that’s going to restore our services and our community.”

— with files from Global’s Marney Blunt

© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

TORONTO – The Toronto Blue Jays’ offence has gone quiet at the worst possible time.

After back-to-back shutout losses, the team will try to finally put some runs on the scoreboard and move closer to securing a playoff spot tonight against New York.

Chris Bassitt (15-8) is scheduled to start for Toronto in the finale of the three-game series at Rogers Centre. The Yankees will counter with Luke Weaver (3-5).

Toronto still controls its post-season fate with four games left in the regular season. The Blue Jays hold the second of three American League wild-card spots.

Toronto is just a half a game ahead of the Houston Astros and two games ahead of the Seattle Mariners.

The Blue Jays, who were swept in the wild-card round last year, will cap their regular-season schedule with a weekend series against the visiting Tampa Bay Rays.

Toronto’s last playoff victory came in 2016 when the Blue Jays reached the AL Championship Series for a second straight year.

Toronto won the World Series in 1992 and 1993.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 28, 2023.

© 2023 The Canadian Press

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On this episode of What happened to…?, Erica Vella revisits the 2018 Thai cave rescue. She continues her conversation with diver Rick Stanton to learn more about the planning and logistics behind the rescue mission. Find Part 1 here.

In July 2018, Rick Stanton and John Volanthen, two divers from the U.K., found all 12 boys and their soccer coach alive; the team had been trapped for nine days in the Tham Luang cave.

Video captured by Stanton and Volanthen showed the boys in good spirits despite treacherous conditions.

This discovery was a huge first step, but the rescue was far from over and they needed to devise a plan to get the team out of the cave safely.

“We’re going to have to sedate them, make them inert packages, and then we can just swim them out as if they’re a tube full of camping gear or some sort of the other equipment we might take into a cave for exploration,” Stanton said.

The rescue team knew more rain was coming, and they were running out of time.

“Every weather forecast we got said that it would rain in three days’ time, and the next day it said three days’ time. So we always had that three days, but clearly that would not last forever. One day it was going to rain, so that was the biggest pressure. We had to act before the cave was in huge flood again,” Stanton said.

Josh Morris is originally from Utah, but he moved to Thailand in 2000 to teach English. In 2018, he heard about the boys trapped in the Tham Luang cave. He was an experienced rock climber and had his own business, so he lent gear and staff members to help with the search before flying over himself.

He said there was confusion between rescue groups about whether to dive, but the decision came down to one key factor.

“The only real guarantee here is that no diving means the boys will die. And diving means there’s a chance for them to live,” Morris said.

Soon after he arrived, the rescue operations experienced their first loss of life. Petty Officer Saman Gunan was a former navy diver who had been delivering air tanks when he ran out of oxygen himself.

Morris said this was a turning point in the mission and ultimately, they decided to dive.

“His death combined with me arriving at the right time, combined with people being a bit more ready to listen to certain things because there was a death, there were just all of these things kind of came together at the right moment,” he said.

The divers carefully rehearsed their plan, but there were still unavoidable question marks.

“The plan was good, except that it had never, ever been tested, as in a boy or a human sedated under water,” he said. “And that was a complete unknown element.”

Stanton felt the pressure as he worked his way through the cave’s maze of tunnels.

“The route underwater was incredibly complex and you couldn’t see, so all our processing power was really about navigating — no excess thinking capacity to think about emotion. You set off, you knew he was breathing and you were responsible,” he said.

On this episode of What happened to…?, Erica Vella speaks with Stanton about the preparation for the life-saving dive and how a team of people was able to successfully rescue the Wild Boar soccer team from the Tham Luang cave.

© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Toronto Fire says crews had to rescue a person trapped on a 9th floor balcony following a fire at a high-rise building in Scarborough early Thursday.

Fire officials said the fire broke out at a residential building on McLevin Avenue at around 1:30 a.m.

Crews had to use a big ladder to get the person down from the ninth floor balcony, a spokesperson for Toronto Fire said.

That person was then taken to a local hospital with minor injuries.

The spokesperson said the fire was very difficult to put out as there was lots of heavy smoke that made its way through the whole building.

The fire is now out but crews are still monitoring the building.

© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.