Corey Morrissette: Part Two — Hoser Rock Hour and the Vocal Showdown You Have to Hear

Corey Morrissette is back with Sean and Todd for Part Two, and we're coming in hot. We pick up with a conversation about the radio industry — specifically how corporate ownership reshaped music selection and stripped DJs of the autonomy they once had to break new artists and take real risks. We talk about what it used to mean to hear a song on the radio for the first time, and how that experience has largely been replaced by pre-determined playlists built for engagement metrics rather than music discovery.

On a more hopeful note, Corey shares his plans to host a show called Hoser Rock Hour on a community cooperative radio station — and honestly, the concept is exactly what radio needs more of. We also get into album-oriented rock stations and how AOR formats used to be the ones deciding which songs became singles, not the labels. It's a fascinating piece of music industry history that doesn't get talked about enough.

From there we get into concert war stories, and this is where things really get going. We talk about seeing the Headpins live, with Darby Mills commanding a stage the way very few performers can. We swap memories of Pantera opening for Skid Row in Montreal — a lineup that, on paper, sounds almost too good to be true — and we get into the Killer Dwarfs, including a wild story about a vocal showdown between Sebastian Bach and Russell Dwarf that you genuinely have to hear to believe. These are the kinds of nights that remind you why live music matters.

Then we take on one of rock's great what-ifs: was there actually a rivalry between Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen? Two of the greatest guitarists of their generation, both rising at exactly the same time — it's the kind of question that sounds like it should have a dramatic answer. The reality might surprise you.

Things take a genuinely unexpected turn when we get into Mary Shelley's writing group — yes, that Mary Shelley — and the remarkable fact that the circle of writers who gave us Frankenstein and Dracula were all in the same room, cooking up horror together. Corey also recommends Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein film, which he found to be a faithful and beautifully crafted adaptation. It's one of those historical footnotes that sounds made up but absolutely isn't.

We close things out with a look back at 1994 — one of the most stacked years in modern music history. Green Day, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Nirvana's MTV Unplugged, Oasis, Smashing Pumpkins, R.E.M., Beck — we go through the releases and argue about which ones still hold up. Along the way, Seanorama drops an unexpected piece of history about Leonard Cohen's "Dance Me to the End of Love" that genuinely stopped the conversation cold.

It's been an absolute blast having Corey on for both parts. More to come.

Support the show at patreon.com/seangeekpodcast. You can find Corey and his work, including The Elder Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts.

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