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

Isolating the percussion in Lay Lady Lay was really cool. It made me realize the drums barely register for me on any pop of that era that's not headed towards hard rock.

I had a similar reaction--I thought the isolated drums, even before the congo-and-cowbell part he was highlighting, sounded great. And I doubt I would have noticed otherwise

I finally finished listening to the Hey Jude and Hickory Wind episodes. I agree with the earlier posts that the Hickory Wind episodes illustrate a need for an editor and I also have the impression he stopped liking the music he’s discussing. His writing has increasingly become overwrought and pretentious. I don’t think the recent episodes are “bad,” far from it—but I’ve become a little less excited for new episodes.

I guess, at this point, I’d prefer listening to him talk about stuff enthusiastically rather than completing this project! Maybe that’s the subscriber episodes?

Did Hickey dismiss Axis Bold As Love and Band Of Gypsys? Seemed to be less than positive about them.
I thought they were widely liked and possibly just a little less superlatively good as material considered his best.
I may need to listen through the episode again.

I've seen people write off Band of Gypsys as a step backwards. Foolishness imo.

My friend Doug Decker recorded that Band of Gypsys stuff. He worked for Wally Heider. Then he did the sound for the Johnny Cash Show. Then he worked for Takoma Records. Just another historical tidbit from your pal Scott. Good day, music fans!

I was surprised to hear him say that Band of Gypsys is generally considered relatively weak. I've always loved it and just assumed other Hendrix fans did too.

I think it's just not considered by everyone to be his greatest work. Seems to have been pretty influential and get a good score not a superlative one.

But Hickey hates men who are violent to women. So may be valorised by that.
Came back to me after I posted this morning.
I got Band of Gypsys this week and it's pretty good. Ordered it a week or so ago cos I found it cheapish.

Good score = rated highly where I'm seeing it reviewed. So contrary to weak.

That is seeing it getting 3.7 or 3.9 out of 5 where his best work is 4.15 or something.
& that is high if 3.5 is a decent scoring. A point less than its getting would be mediocre/weak. It's also getting a lot of people bothering to review it which means it is creating some reaction and a weak l.p. probably wouldn't. A lot of titles only get a handful of responses. That's RYM and a few other places.

It seems to me the reputation of Band of Gypsys got a bump around 1990. Miles Davis said in his 1989 autobiography that he preferred that band to the Experience, and then through the '90s it seemed that BoG was the hipster's choice of a Hendrix album. I think it has some of Jimi's best solos on it. Wikipedia suggests the album was long influential in black music circles. Hickey frames it as a contractual obligation record iirc, but it wasn't just that.

But Hickey hates men who are violent to women. So may be valorised by that.

Interesting. I still need to listen to the episode. I would’ve guessed Hickey would’ve defended Hendrix from the invented accusations and used it as an appropriate opportunity to discuss the use of racial caricatures in American and British media.

It seems to me the reputation of Band of Gypsys got a bump around 1990.

Unless you were in the funk or metal scenes where “Band of Gypsys” was considered canonical far earlier than 1990. Hell, Maggot Brain came out the next year.

He does note the influence of Hendrix on subsequent black music, including Funkadelic, though IIRC he doesn't credit Band of Gypsys for being especially influential in that respect

xp you seem very sure that these were "invented" but it seems there are quite a number of women who reported Jimi being violent towards them.

This is the only story I am referencing. https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/jimi-hendrixs-ex-kathy-etchingham-scuse-me-while-i-defend-my-guy-20140603-39h1n.html

in the episode he acknowledges that she has consistently denied any abuse and takes her at her word, but says that there are multiple reports of abusive behavior towards other women that he was involved with.

this is well established and uncontroversial

presumably the biopic was doing the shitty biopic thing of "well we do have to address this part" and was extra shitty for not consulting the person they used as stand in for representative victim

but if there was racism in his portrayal in the british press which it's hard to imagine there wasn't there must be better angles to tackle it from

and invented accusations really rubs me the wrong way with shades of the freaks on classic rock message boards who are very insistent that john lennon only ever hit a woman once in spite of all evidence

I have to admit I haven't listened to this thing since it entered the canonised by rolling stone era which I would prefer wasn't covered too exhaustively without (less canonised) respite but I can't tell him what to do I'm just a consumer

Hickey is pretty transparent in his hatred of everything RS endorsed in the late 60s fwiw. Especially all the SF bands of the time. Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother & the Holding Company are all damned with faint praise.

Weird

I can never tell when Hickey hates something. I didn't even get the impression he hates the Dead, though I would guess he's not a fan

He doesn't strike me as someone who hates many bands. And I bet in the course of deep diving for a month on a band, you come to appreciate stuff that you thought you never could.

enochroot otm, this is something i really like about Hickey. Listening to the recent "Hey Jude" one and Byrds/Gram Parsons one, I did get the feeling that he probably likes the Beatles substantially more than he likes the Byrds. But in both episodes, he really strikes a fine balance of describing the respective bands and where they stood in the broader rock/pop context of the time--both artistically and within the economics of the industry.

It's really rare to hear anything that sounds like either hagiography or hatchet job on the podcast, and there's also enough insight and ideas and unexpected connections that it avoids the "I'm reading wikipedia into a microphone" trap that some podcasts fall into.

Like you can tell when he thinks the members of a group are kind of dopey--like in the Cream episode--but there was also a really good contextualizing of the band in that episode and the critiques he makes of them are usually insightful, not just potshots.

A History of Rock Music in 500 Potshots, would listen.

Smokey Robinson has shown up in episodes on Mary Wells and The Temptations so far, of course; but it's still kind of mind blowing to me that he hasn't had his own episode yet and we're halfway through 1969! I can only assume Andrew is waiting for 1970 and "The Tears of A Clown", Smokey's sole pop #1 in the US/UK so far, to sum up and climax his story to that point?

I suppose levels of rank misogyny should never be a surprise but god what a piece of shit David Ruffin was.

Yes. Motown has been covered extensively so it's strange that there is no Smokey episode yet. Tears Of A Clown is the likely one. After that, maybe Cruisin' in 1979?

the thing is, Hickey has made it clear that there's a point at which Soul and R&B will no longer be part of the podcast, and his recentish take on what makes a genre - basically something is a genre as long as its fans refer to it as that genre - makes me think the cut off will probably be sometime in the 70's?

What major soul/R&B acts have not been covered yet that are sure to get at least 1 episode? Jackson 5/Michael, Parliament-Funkadelic, Prince, Donna Summer, maybe Al Green

Curtis Mayfield surely

is he in 1969 yet? i thought he joked in the current episode that he's spent more time on 1968 than 1968 itself lasted. and was there a mary wells episode?

i'm kind of glad there's not been a smokey episode yet; i think he's a cruicial songwriter and his voice is remarkable - is it effeminate or just vulnerable? is it falsetto or head voice or what? - but there have been too many motown episodes, just like there were too many beatles and beach boys and spector episodes. lots of the best work of this pod are the smaller stories. perhaps his life is not interesting enough to warrant a deep dive and his episode will just be a quick spin through his incredible catalog.

There's been a curtis and the impressions episode for people get ready, and i'd imagine there will be another for superfly. besides those mentioned i'd expect a gamble and huff ("backstabbers" maybe), an isaac hayes shaft episode, and possibly ones for war's lowrider, gil scott heron's revolution will not be televised, chic, and then we're off to the 80s for who can say what hickey will think fits the brief. if muddy waters and howlin wolf aren't rock and roll in his view but the ink spots are, there's really no way to tell if grandmaster flash or donna summer will get episodes, and that's part of the fun.

he did a previous episode on stevie but we're sure to get at least 1 more.

He also did an Impressions/Curtis Mayfield episode, People Get Ready

he did zappa and the velvets and love's forever changes as main episodes, he should do fela and jorge ben and mulatu astatke when the time comes, and bitches brew. i'm resigned to the fact that maybe franco and ok jazz, while pioneering rock music of the late 50s important to millions of people, is maybe outside the remit of this show.

Interesting development re: whether Hickey hates the Grateful Dead: In this Bluesky post, he says he has 611 tracks in his digital Grateful Dead collection, with "separate directories for Garcia and Weir solo, New Riders, and Dylan & The Dead".

Just found this thread, surprised I hadn't looked earlier. I've listened to them all, just heard the final Sympathy for the Devil episode. I'm also in the facebook group and the sometimes fun sometimes silly "Long-term speculation" chat, which is often a more general chat. I'll have to catch up on this thread, but man he does not have much love for the Stones...Mick Jagger or Brian Jones particularly.

The curious lengths hickey went to sidetrack on wilde, milton, shelley and keats was hit or miss. I appreciate the comparison of the stones and shelley as ever-thus upper class young drug-using edgelord seducers and milton's sympathetic satan as a model for jagger's antihero/evil persona but the wilde trial stuff was maybe too tangential.

Perhaps as with the grateful dead episode, he needed a clear theme and frame to keep his own interest when writing about a subject he doesn't like.

I thought this was one of my favourites, particularly the final part which just went out today. Seems some of the best episodes are where he doesn't really care for the artist in question.

I really don’t get any sense of Hickey’s likes and dislikes. I came away from this song more impressed with Jagger’s intellect, and I already liked his intellect just fine. What I really like is how Hickey gives a ton of context for how wonderful music was created. It’s not geniuses. It’s regular fucked up humans in situations that provided amazing opportunities to reach, and move, a mass audiences. Which probably fucked them up even more.

I miss the long episodes. I understand why he's breaking them up but I appreciate sprawl.

There was some podcast confluence today/yesterday as the Altamont disaster was covered simultaneously by Andrew Hickey and by 'My Favorite Murder.'

The 'My Favorite Murder' girls actually covered it in more and better detail, but then that was their episode's entire focus.

I found it interesting that Hickey basically pooh-poohed all of the alternative Brian Jones' death theories.

I e been waiting since July for this final Sympathy episode to drop before starting to listen. I’m in the middle of part 3 at the moment. I do t feel like this one is as wide-ranging or tangential as the Dark Star or VU episodes, thankfully. I really enjoyed those and think they’re among the best podcasts I’ve ever heard, but as with TM Coe, bloat sets in when you think every episode needs to be an epic. I really didn’t think the Hickory Wind episode needed to be so damn long. And if you need 6 hours to tell the story of the Stones from Satisfaction through Sympathy, well, maybe they deserve a song in the middle somewhere — Paint It, Black or Night Together probably could have got the job done and allowed the narrative to move along. Anyway, I don’t wanna come off like a Neg Nancy because I think he’s still killing it. But he’s only gonna get like 5 songs done this year!

man he does not have much love for the Stones...Mick Jagger or Brian Jones particularly.

As artists or as people? I didn't get a vibe he doesn't like the music, but it's hard to go through the list of events and retain much sympathy for these guys imo, Brian Jones particularly.

I seem to remember in one of the Q&A eps he mentions he used to view Jones as the voice of the group's conscience and now, after his research, very much does not.

Until fairly recently I had this underlying assumption that there would be a buildup to Altamont / Manson as the death of the 60s but having been through the whole story it should have been obvious that was a prime myth to be busted. Hearing Jagger and others try to invoke peace and love while people were being killed really brought home that most of the musicans - and especially the stones - never bought into that in the first place, and any use they had for it was cynical from the start.

xPost I think both. He hasn't shown a TON of interest or respect for their music, and has mentioned an upcoming episode on the Stones will go even deeper into their "problematic" relationship to black music/culture. He's not as effusive in his taste as Tyler Mahan Coe, so it's always nice when the veneer drops and he expresses a real love for some music, or respect of it's influence, and there hasn't been a lot of that with the Stones, going back to the beginning. Probably even a more pronounced discussion of influences, whether going in depth on Martha & The Vandellas influence on Satisfaction, or the Kinks influence on Lady Jane I think it was? I was surprised and happy to hear him say as much as he did regarding the Kinks innovations in that sort of baroque influence.

in part one of sympathy:

The album that they started working on in the same set of sessions as “19th Nervous Breakdown” and completed in a further set of sessions in March 1966, Aftermath, was the first Stones album to be made up entirely of originals, and those originals had a distinctly misogynistic tone. The album started with “Mother’s Little Helper”, a song that stylistically seems to be modelled on the Kinks’ then-recent “Well-Respected Man”, the first of Ray Davies’ series of bouncy acoustic social satires, which came out as a single in the US shortly before “Mother’s Little Helper” was recorded. The song also features the use of electric guitars to imitate the sound of sitars, something that had again been done by the Kinks earlier that year, on “See My Friend”, though it’s likely the group also were thinking of the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood”, which had come out the week before

and part two:

However, I suspect that there was another inspiration, and that it either directly inspired Richards or that Jones was inspired by it in the melody he played for Richards. We saw in the last episode how several Stones records in 1966 seem to have been at least partly inspired by the Kinks’ recent records — not that they were plagiarising or anything like that, just that they were picking up on and responding to what their rivals were producing.

There’s an album track by the Kinks from a year or so earlier, “Ring the Bells”, that I never see anyone mention in the context of “Ruby Tuesday”, but which seems to me to be very, very similar indeed. Compare the Kinks:

Excerpt: The Kinks, “Ring the Bells”

to the Stones:

Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, “Ruby Tuesday”

See what I mean? I find it very hard to believe that there was no connection between the two tracks.

Lol @ Hickey’s little sideways dig, quoting Crowley’s “auto-hagiography”.

My biggest “whoa” moment in the latest episode was the demonstration that Keith Richards took a rhythm guitar lick from Etta James’ version of “I Got You Babe” for use in “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” I own that Etta James 45 and have listened to it dozens of times over the years without noticing that, but there it is.

I'd never heard that Etta James...was amazing. I think that version just got a whole lot of new fans.