How music becomes legend, and the stories hiding inside every beat.

Long before we named it music, something inside us was already listening. Long before orchestras or amplifiers, before radios or records, before even the first instrument dared to vibrate. Cono slips between eras and instincts into Dr. Aditi Subramanian’s luminous essay on the evolution of music, reminding us that rhythm once lived in the body alone—a pulse in the dark, a survival chant in the bones, an ancient signal whispering us into harmony.
From that primordial heartbeat, the story unwinds through the lives of those who lived it loudest—into the hands of those who transformed instinct into expression. Musician and producer Mark Holden journeys from frozen Winnipeg nights to European studios lit by malfunctioning heaters and impossible dreams. He chases sound across continents, into rehearsal rooms, onto stages, and finally into digital worlds where silence first learned to shimmer.

Then the dial turns to three stewards of Vancouver’s musical past—Don Shafer, Frank Gigliotti, and Dave Chesney— gathering like storytellers around a radio-shaped fire. They recall an era when songs arrived as emissaries, carried into stations with care, fought for by believers, shaped by hands, breath, and tape. A time when Muddy Waters could fill a room with just one note, and Stevie Ray Vaughan could rearrange your heartbeat in an instant. An era rises and falls in the space between two guitar notes. Conovision: where music remembers the stories, even when we forget the words.

Episode References:

• The Evolutionary Roots of Music | Psychology Today Canada
• Mark Holden | LinkedIn
• Dave Chesney | LinkedIn
• Frank Gigliotti | LinkedIn
• Don Shafer | LinkedIn

Chapters:

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (01:18) - The Evolutionary Roots of Music
• (06:32) - Enter Mark Holden
• (07:48) - Learning the Studio and Early Lessons
• (10:46) - Forming Boulevard and Creative Vision
• (11:58) - The Music Business
• (13:49) - Boulevard’s Breakthrough
• (19:39) - The Call That Changed Everything
• (21:46) - Lessons in Letting Go
• (23:03) - The Birth of Digital Sound
• (26:16) - Entering the Tech World
• (27:49) - Instinct, Fear, and Reading the Room
• (30:07) - Enter Don Shafer, Dave Chesney, and Frank Gigliotti
• (31:02) - Bringing New Music to Radio
• (35:04) - Breaking Artists: Canadian vs. International Bands
• (41:07) - Top Bands and Performances
• (48:48) - CFOX and Town Pump
• (50:13) - How the Music Business Has Changed
• (59:20) - Muddy Waters and Willie Nelson
• (01:03:39) - Conclusion