Highway Hi-Fi Podcast

Almost as long as humans have mastered the ability to record the environment around them, they have desired to record the world that is just beyond them. A perfectly logical endeavour, as all recorded music is somewhat supernatural, especially when cocaine and LSD are involved. Recorded sound is by its very nature taken from another place, a distant place, and thrust into a moment where it doesn’t belong and couldn’t exist without human manipulation...

In this episode we look at how graphic novels are pushing the boundaries of pop music history, bringing new perspectives and fans. Where life imitating art is just as  possible as art imitating life. How like the inked pages themselves, the books color their stories to accentuate their ideas and themes. Lighter, darker, more intense, more fanciful, more realistic, more fantastical. Entire biographies or genres are carefully condensed into imaginative visions...

In this episode we look at how graphic novels are pushing the boundaries of pop music history, bringing new perspectives and fans.

As radio, and eventually television, became a fixture in American homes, a celebrity culture was solidified. With this fascination for the people that we hear and see almost daily, there was a longing to understand them. A striving for connection that lets people feel like they really know who this star is and maybe, one day, that star could know who they really are as well...

As radio, and eventually television, became a fixture in American homes, a celebrity culture was solidified. With this fascination for the people that we hear and see almost daily, there was a longing to understand them. A striving for connection that lets people feel like they really know who this star is and maybe, one day, that star could know who they really are as well...

Night Bus, Late Night Grocery Run, & Pink Motel are microgenres that represent their own experiential sound, where the songs are held together by the atmospheres they invoke rather than a specific set of rules or location in time and space. The music, primarily captured on singles, was created by private press or no name labels with dreams of making it big or at least making a few bucks...

Night Bus, Late Night Grocery Run, & Pink Motel are microgenres that represent their own experiential sound, where the songs are held together by the atmospheres they invoke rather than a specific set of rules or location in time and space. The music, primarily captured on singles, was created by private press or no name labels with dreams of making it big or at least making a few bucks...

There is an unproductive trope of there being a fine line between genius and madman. Constantly, we are encouraged to believe that the works of “artists in asylums” are somehow this perpetual motion machine where mental illness fuels creativity which, in turn, fractures the creator even more creating a cycle toward an inevitable dark end, where we are only left with the work to scrutinize or admire. The truth is a lot less dramatic, but no less sad...

Many of us are captivated by albums that were created while the artists were in mental hospitals. They are rare artifacts that unfortunately end up defining the artist for their careers while giving an undue amount of weight to the condition of their mind rather than the beauty within it. The artistry that comes from the pain and confusion of confinement . . . in a hospital and in one’s mind...

There is a long history of the unjust treatment of women musicians whose contributions were often overlooked, dismissed, or stolen. Sadly, it’s likely to be a long future as well. This is on the top of the extra effort and persistence that it took to establish themselves in a sexist business that is stacked against female creators and performers...