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.

Once upon a time, not that long ago, all music was expected to sound clean and clear, like this.

Music Let's hear that again.

Let's hear lovely sound. But then again, so was this.

But then again, so was this.

Dirty, Dirty, distorted, filled with harmonics and overtones and various amounts of feedback.

It's a far cry from the first example.

But it's also the greatest effect ever applied to the electric guitar.

And today we're cool with both.

But why?

That sound of a fuzzed-up guitar was once considered undesirable, irritating, excruciating noise.

Today, though, such distortion is almost universally thought to be a thing of beauty

and is very much part of what we love about making and listening to music.

So, how did we get from...

...to... to let's find out

this is the ongoing history of new music podcast with Alan Cross

let's begin with a song that features many different colors of distortion.

And the feeling coming from my bone,

that's my dog.

The white stripes with Seven Nation Army featuring all kinds of different distortion run from a single guitar.

The riff was created by running a K-Hollobody guitar from the early 1960s, equipped with a single pickup into a Digitek whammy pedal, which shifted the notes Jack White played down an entire octave.

...