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

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.

I'm still in the relatively early days but honestly the prehistory stuff is so fascinating and so much more complex than I thought it would be, I would not miss it

Had my mind truly blown when I learned about the early 1940s musician strike and how it led to the decline of big band music and the domination of vocalists in mainstream. So yeah, don't skip the early episodes.

I thought I knew enough about that from Phil Schaap but maybe I need to go back to the well.

“… so that I don’t spend too long on the Byrds.”

THAT SHIP HAS SAILED, ANDREW

I missed any reasoning for him going multiple part to what would have been one long episode. Is it reaction to public demand or his own recognition of pressure. If he's doing it and continuing to research between episodes is he not finding more material pertinent to episodes already transmitted.
Not sure what his work model is. Just finding new episodes dropping into my new episode grouping. So will look if he has given a separate explanation.

i loved all the byrds eps!

He said it was getting to where their editing software was choking on the large files

Yeah and I think he finds it stressful to keep people waiting for a month for new episodes, though now I guess people complain about there being so many episodes on one song they don’t care about. (Though really the first couple episodes hardly get into the Byrds’ country era.)

His explanation is here: https://500songs.com/podcast/announcement-regarding-schedule/

I like the new tack — much rather have an hour every week or 2 than wait 2 months for a big episode.

I just don’t understand how Hickory Wind warrants FOUR HOURS of content. It’s peak cocaine-era Stephen King literary elephantiasis. Hickory Wind is his Tommyknockers.

Well, his explanation for the increasing length is that he doesn’t want the podcast to turn into a rote retelling of lore from an era that’s had a million books written about it, and so the episodes have to include both the stuff that everyone knows, and also the odd connections and backstories that he’d built into the podcast from the beginning. And the stuff most people know and expect to be there is much larger in scope than when the episodes were about the Drifters or Adam Faith.

I have no complaints. So what if Hickory Wind doesn't warrant four hours of content? One of the joys of this podcast, besides being such an amazing example of citizen scholarship, is Andrew's idiosyncrasies. I totally agree with a point above about the many of the best episodes being about music you don't necessarily like or care that much about (and maybe still don't!).

I think it would start to get worse if he started overthinking about what we think we want from him. (Even though I'm already disappointed about his repeated notes that he won't be covering shoegaze, for instance).

Did he say he won't cover shoegaze?

Yes, he's said "I probably won't" a couple of times, leavening it with a possible bonus episode on MBV. I mean, who knows maybe he'll change his mind.

That will be a hard moment for me, since I'm sure he'll feel compelled to do a big Oasis thing, but maybe he'll make it interesting. Definitely the whole Tony Blair/neoliberalism/Cool Britannia moment could be used to discuss Oasis and Blur as exports.

Discussing Britpop alongside Blair is already giving me J*** H***** flashbacks, please no

He will probably do something more interesting!

I think he should cover shoegaze but I’d also be kind of stunned if this podcast makes it to the late 80s at all. I’ll be grateful for whatever we get of course

it seems pretty obvious hickey won't be able to make it to the 90s given his current pace and how every half year his pace markedly decreases. which is fine, he clearly loathes half the music and most of the people he's covering in the late 60s and i'll be surprised if he won't grow even more negative and focused on the salacious and drug-addled aspects of the 70s and 80s. a more accurate title of this podcast might be a history of rock music in 500 content warnings.

4+ hours on the byrds' country turn and gram parsons' early years feels like it seriously needs both an editor to cut it down to 1 hour, and to also ask, what is the theme of this episode... is this about turning away from psychedelia to a pastiche of ultraconservative music, or is it regrounding rock closer to one of its constituent birth parents, the plaintive minor key strummy yawpy dirges of rodgers and williams, which would bear fruit in the often corny but occasionally revelatory singer songwriter genre? but is that genre really influenced by sweetheart?

i suppose i am biased against sweetheart as an album, it has always felt like an above average late 60s country record fakeout by a poisoned compromise between mcguinn and parsons rather than some sort of true template for all the more full-blooded country rock to come from dylan, eagles, stones, neil, dead, etc.

One of the joys of this podcast, besides being such an amazing example of citizen scholarship, is Andrew's idiosyncrasies.

Feels like there's been a lot less of this as he feels compelled to follow the conventional history of boomer rock - so these days the bonus episodes, where he gets to play outside that canon, are a lot more fun imo.

Yeah the current one on Arthur Brown is my favourite thing he's done for a while.

he clearly loathes half the music and most of the people he's covering in the late 60s

I don't get this impression. Which music do you think he loathes?

@Daniel_Rf: See what you mean about the podcast becoming a bit less idiosyncratic, though he did go out of his way (again!) to talk about Firesign Theatre via Gary Usher. And I love it. But I also agree that Arthur Brown bonus episode is a lot more fun than the Byrds one was overall.

The one act I'm 100% he hates so far is The Kingsmen - though I know he's not that keen on The Rolling Stones or Jefferson Airplane.