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.

I've always been something of a nut when it comes to the space program.

But even though I've read all the books and seen all the documentaries and watched all the movies,

I was still surprised to learn something new with the movie Hidden Figures.

This was a 2016 film based on a book of the same name, and it told the true story about black

female mathematicians who worked at NASA during the hottest period of the space race.

They were computers in the original sense of the world. People who computed

things, complex things like flight trajectories and reentry methods and landing coordinates.

They were even assigned to check and correct the calculations spit out by NASA's big IBM

mainframes. So their work was essential to the American space effort. But this being the

60s, these women were segregated away from the other scientists, meaning that their work was

largely forgotten until the book and the movie came out. This got me thinking, are there any

forgotten figures in music? I'm talking about women who did awesome and important things, but have largely

been ignored by the traditional history of rock. You know, I'm talking people beyond Deborah

Harry, Janice Joplin, Demi Nix, Chrissy Hyde and Courtney Love. Well, yeah, turns out there was,

and we do need to know about these women. Let's do that now. This is the ongoing history of

new music podcast with Alan Cross. Hello again. I'm Alan Cross and this episode is all about

hidden figures of rock. Women who are important to the development of our music, who should receive more recognition.

They did some amazing things, but were never really given the proper credit and acclaim that

they deserved. Or maybe if they did get some attention, it was completely inadequate compared

to their contributions. You may have heard of some of these names, or maybe not. And we're going to be

...