An Evening With Alan Cross

Alan Cross is playing The Carleton on Wednesday, November 4, from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. If you've spent any time listening to Canadian radio over the last few decades, you already know the name. He's a broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker who's spent forty years in broadcasting and music, and he's sat across from some of the biggest names in rock.

He describes himself as a musicologist and a documentarian, and he's best known for The Ongoing History of New Music, a show that's been running for more than 30 years and over 1,000 episodes — he calls it the longest-running music documentary in Canada. That's a lot of ground to cover, and it's the kind of deep dive into music history that's become his trademark.

Beyond the radio, he's written five books, including The Alan Cross Guide to Alternative Rock and the children's book The Science of Song, and he files a national music column for Global News. His career spans radio at CFNY/The Edge and Indie 88, program-director roles at Y108 and Corus Interactive, and the official biographies of several rock bands. He also co-founded the Music Technology Group event series and Major League Mixes, hosted the true crime podcast Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry, and put together The Science of Rock'n'Roll, a museum exhibit that toured science centres across North America. He also runs ajournalofmusicalthings.com.

It's a wide-ranging career that's always come back to the same thing: talking about music and the people who make it. Tickets are C$34.20 (C$30 plus HST), and the show runs from 7:00 to 9:00 pm on Wednesday, November 4, at The Carleton.