Andrew Hickey’s History of Rock Music in 500 Songs podcast (& books) — discuss!

Take a load off Andy.

Hes back down to 2 hours with the new episode. So maybe he is lightening his load. Not listened to it yet and probably should get the patreon and not miss any of his output.

I don’t think it’s necessarily that he’s purposely lightening his load. He did say that the Dead, Velvets, and “All You Need Is Love” episodes are outliers, and listening to the Band episode you can see why: there’s a bunch of mentions of people who figured prominently earlier in the series (George Goldner and Morris Levy, among others), and the Velvets and especially the Dead episodes simply couldn’t be tied into the story in the same way. One of the things I admire most about his approach is his keen understanding of how and why details and accounts are important to the story — the Dead episode had to be nearly five hours, but those hours weren’t taken up by minutiae at the periphery. And did we really need all that time on La Monte Young in the Velvets episode, or Dexter Gordon in the “Eight Miles High” episode (which, at 90 minutes, is quaintly introduced with, “This is going to be an absurdly long episode”)? Yes. Yes we did.

(Also, we’re up to five Sun Ra mentions in the series, starting all the way back at episode 7.)

He said in the Rick Rubin interview – which is a great listen – that he very much viewed the Dead one as experimenting with the form in contrast to what he called the "meat and potatoes" approach of the typical episode.

He mentioned in the recent Q&A that there would be other big long shaggy ones coming up, and I am here for it. Even the new Band episode begins with John Ruskin. I love that.

The Band episode was the first major one where I felt like I didn’t learn anything significant or get a perspective that I hadn’t heard before. Maybe I’m too steeped in Dylan & The Hawks lore .. altho I’m probably a bigger Beatles nut TBH and have been illuminated by every Beatles episode. I wonder if Hickey just isn’t as much of a Dylan / Band fan and as such didn’t put as much effort into building a bigger story around the scene; I would have thought that this story, as the real locus of the Cult of Authenticity in Rock, would have been ripe for a new perspective or a takedown even, but it was about the most straightforward retelling of the Rolling Stone version of events as you could get. Ah well.

Fantastic new episode on Aretha's "I Say a Little Prayer," which includes much material on Burt Bacharach. After the featured song is covered there's still one hour of interesting stuff to come.

HIckey breaking down the time counting on "I Say a Little Prayer" is a wonder

The end of the Janis episode makes Jerry look like such a dick

Man I just love this podcast so much. I'm still in the early episodes - just finished the first Elvis one - but there's something about Hickey's almost-effaced narrative voice that radiates human decency; he somehow conveys a deep sense of humility and care for what he says and how he says it without ever revealing anything personal about himself (other than one brief digression about liking the Marx Brothers).

xp that last few minutes was fucking enraging

He reveals that he’s fat in this new episode, but it’s relevant to the story

I met him ten years ago this month, AMA (AIWNR)

Janis ep was ace. The last line was devastating.

it was posted on the active beatles thread and probably those who read that also read this but anyway his write-up on the "new" "song" is tremendous
https://www.patreon.com/posts/92258652

that hickey write-up was so good it actually got me to listen to the song! in general i agree with his thoughts, and in particular... so much of the beatles' work _is_ making silk purses out of, if not sow's ears, than something less than a silk purse. particularly when it comes to lennon's work! i once heard this mix of "instant karma", i can't find it now, that's just the raw backing track and lead vocals. i love it! it sounds fucking terrible! and that's on top of the, ahem, heavy debt the song owes to "magical mystery tour". so much of john's work in particular just doesn't _work_ in its raw form. hickey mentions "watching rainbows" and i think that's another good example - it's not a finished song, it's kind of an improvised jam. (depending on what one's standards are you _could_ in fact have harrison on the song, since it uses a pretty basic two-chord structure as on "i got a feeling".) hell, imagine turning something like "los paranoias" into a proper song. i bet you could. a lot of john's best songs have been studio patch jobs since, well... i was gonna say "since it was technically possible" but "strawberry fields forever" was actually a pioneering use of technology.

but it's not like it was only john's songs that were messed around with that way. the "anthology 3" version of "i me mine" demonstrates clearly that the final version was extended in much the same way that "now and then" was.

i know there's a blog full of "'70s versions of Beatles album", part of the whole "albums that never were" thing... i haven't listened, i don't know if they're any good, but god, even if they're not, you probably _could_ make a fair forgery of the beatles out of the solo albums the four of them did, right? (is that blog still up? anybody know what i'm talking about and/or have a link to the site for that? i can't remember and i feel like trying to find it again would be a chore.)

i also think "homeopathic amounts of george harrison" is a great turn of phrase. it made me laugh.

https://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/

Still around, slower pace but always intriguing, and he recently upgraded most of the What If the Beatles Never Broke Up comps

thanks hideous lump! <3

I always thought that a really really good Beatles tribute act could get deep into 1968-69 mode and start working up the post-breakup solo songs, arranging them in a reasonable facsimile of how the band would have really played them, even rewriting some of the more pointed/bitter tunes or combining half-baked ideas the way the Beatles would have done, to make 3-4 killer fake Beatles albums in this vein.

The failings of the ATNW approach — unavoidable! Not a criticism of his stellar work — are a) the vast sonic differences between the solo Beatles’ records, and b) the lack of a collaborative writing/editing/arranging process. You can never make a solo Beatles track sound like a Beatles cut without George’s bg vox or Paul’s bass playing & arranging skills (etc), or — this is the key element — the intensely competitive collaboration between partic J&P that fuelled their records.

Obv you could never really duplicate what might have been, but I think it’d be fun to try to get super close.

there is often a "who missed who more" discussion about lennon and mccartney solo and i'd argue john needed paul (and george martin, and ringo) to elevate his work more than paul needed john to edit his. songs like tomorrow never knows, walrus, come together are basically drab one-chord things if you're just playing them on a guitar without tape loops, strings, wild bass and drums, etc. lennon solo replaces a lot of that with sax solos.

What

I always thought that a _really really good_ Beatles tribute act could get deep into 1968-69 mode and start working up the post-breakup solo songs, arranging them in a reasonable facsimile of how the band would have really played them,

Ha, they've done a mid 60s-Beatles version of Now and Then already. Not one of their most successful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABa_RH1ygC8

There was an anecdote near the end of the Janis Joplin episode where there was a concert featuring the Grateful Dead and other contemporaries and when the news of her death got out, they just played on like nothing happened and even chastised a journalist who was crying backstage for ruining the vibe. Hippies were weird...or was death that common in the scene by 1970 that it was just taken for granted.

the dead always seemed vaguely sociopathic to me

Not sure about Hickey’s psychoanalytical theory that McCartney crafted ‘Now and Then’ “…to be the message to himself he wanted to hear” … Hickey might be over-thinking it. I suspect Paul’s main aim was give the fans what he thought they most want to see and hear: the sense that the Beatles are back together and that they always loved each other.

This would be a good project for Apple Jam, who do this kind of thing (see their versions of White Album era outtakes for example🕸)

Not one of their most successful

Indeed - completely fluffed the Turnham Green reference!

"Black Saint and the Dinner Lady" - did anyone else hear this in the Van episode or am I going mad? Seems weird for someone so fastidious and scrupulous about his content.

Errata

At one point I, ridiculously, misspeak the name of Charles Mingus’ classic album. Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is not about dinner ladies. Also, I say Warren Smith Jr is on “Slim Slow Slider” when I meant to say Richard Davis (Smith is credited in some sources, but I only hear acoustic guitar, bass, and soprano sax on the finished track).

https://500songs.com/podcast/episode-170-astral-weeks-by-van-morrison/

Well, there it is. At least I'm not mad. I went back and listened a few times and it sounded re-recorded or glitched. Weird. Anyway, good episode.

one thing that seems to be a consistent pattern (i'm still in the 50s) is that the blues + country origin story of rock n' roll is overstated and the influence of jazz has been understated in my previous understanding

haven't listened to the early episodes in a while but can say that country tries to mimic boogie woogie jazz and you get hillbillie boogie which is like a less amped r'n'r about 10 years earlier.

he gets into some of that jazz/country crossover and also western swing

previous post brought on my the james brown please please please episode where apparently james kind of disliked the blues but was a big count basie and louis jordan fan

(louis jordan tends to pop up a lot as an influence on the podcast)

fascinating patreon episode about Larry Norman. Pretty wide-ranging from his 60s music to his surprising influence on all sort of things

Love this example of a rock n roll momentum coming together from jazz and hillbilly. Not really representative of Bob Wills style overall, but certainly shows how swing rhythms would develop into r’n’r.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxVM9_ANbjg

3.5 hour Hey Jude episode just dropped

2.5 hours devoted solely to the coda

lol

Gotta say that Andrew's take on how the Hey Jude coda Na Na Na Na-Na-Na Na is the culmination of India and the TM mantra is genius.

After listening here and there I started from the beginning and have been listening one a day for a couple months. Louis Jordan mentioned a lot of course but everyone wants to dance

Listening from the beginning is really the way to go, I think - at least for people like me who really don't know much about the early history of rock, there's so much foundational stuff here. The episode on Sh-Boom was essential listening for me, and I might never have heard it just skipping around.

Maybe a New Year’s project for us!

I remember a comment on Popular proposing that the coda was Paul's old and new loves colliding - a taste for the avant-garde perhaps betraying awareness of the minimalists, but with the 'jude jude jude yeyeah!' interjections the Little Richard grounding in him breaking through - and I haven't been able to hear it any other way since

Wow, interesting perspective. Even when I think I wanna hate Paul for whatever reason his Little Richard always wins me back. Shut up!

Also that's including when it came on the radio while I was undergoing serious eye surgery

if it's your thing and you're going to commit (totally worth it IMO), then agree that listening from the beginning is best way. so much rich material.

The fact that he follows the canon pretty obediently does mean subject matter has gotten less interesting to me as he goes on, more excited for the bonus eps than the actual ones these days.

how long are the bonus episodes generally? been thinking of subscribing but i don't know if i have the time to listen to another 3-hour podcast in addition to the main feed

Bonus episodes are 10 to ~45 minutes with most of them on the shorter side.