Hey, it's Alan, and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing

history of new music early and ad-free on Amazon music, included with Prime.

Hi, this is Alan Cross.

Welcome to the ongoing History of New Music podcast, our weekly exploration of the stories

and the characters that made modern music what it is today.

We want to make this podcast one of your favorites. So if you

love the show, do me a favor. Tell a friend about it. Or rate it on iTunes if that's your thing.

We'd really love it if you'd do that. Or you can just drop me an email with your thoughts to

Alan at Alancross.ca. Maybe you want more information on something you hear. Or maybe you have an

idea for a topic for a future episode, whatever.

I guarantee your response, Alan and Alancross.ca.

Whether you're listening one at a time or binging on a bunch of podcasts all at once,

we're glad to have you here.

All right, let's talk music, shall we?

People often ask me where I come up with the ideas for this program, and my answer is always the same.

You know that feeling when it's Sunday night and you promise yourself, you'll start on that assignment that's due the next morning as soon as the Simpsons is over,

and then you later amend that to when Family Guy is over?

Yeah, well, that's me. Every single week. And after doing more than 700 of these one-hour

assignments stretching back to 1993, I finally hit a wall, total writer's block. And I started to panic.

I mean, there are hard deadlines. I have a contract. I'm expected to deliver another new show.

There are radio stations all over the place that need new programming from me. What the hell am I going to talk about this time when I got nothing to talk about? I mean, this is the 740. Wait a second. This is show number 747. That's the same as the airliner. What about stories of alt rock and airplanes?

Okay, so I started to go back through all my files, and sure enough, there's tons of stuff on the subject.

...