There are several ways you can go about constructing a biographical documentary on an artist.

(1) Gather up all the books and articles written about the artist and use those as your primary sources. This is a tried and true method, but books, magazines and newspapers get dated very quickly.

(2) Go online. Wikipedia is good and getting better, but you’re right to be skeptical about what you read. Information can be biased or incomplete, come from suspect sources and articles can be loaded with the dreaded [citation needed] notation.

The best way to construct a profile on any artist–and the most difficult–is to round up everyone together, but them in a studio and get them to tell their story themselves. But that can be very, very difficult. Beyond touring and recording schedules, everyone in a band has their own lives and may even live in different cities. Getting everyone in the same place is often impossible.

But it can be done. Witness these next three programs featuring all four members of Billy Talent in one place at the same time. And they all did it with one purpose: to tell their story in their own words.



Songs included in this program:

This Is How It Goes

Time-Bomb Ticking Away

Happy (Demo) (As Pezz)

Dudebox (As Pezz)

M&Ms (As Pezz)

Try Honesty (Demo)

Living in the Shadows

According to Eric Wilhite, who has taken on the duty of being the official playlist maker, only four of the above are available on Spotify. The rest were found in the Ongoing History archives.



For the podcast version of the show, subscribe to the Ongoing History feed at iTunes.

The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on the following stations:

We’re still looking for more affiliates in Calgary, Kamloops, Kelowna, Regina, Saskatoon, Brandon, Windsor, Montreal, Charlottetown, Moncton, Fredericton, and St John’s and anywhere else with a transmitter. If you’re in any of those markets and you want the show, lemme know and I’ll see what I can do.