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

I think the big thing with that description of category he was using is the fuzzier less archetypal part. Like there is a rippling edge of things tat fuzzily fit into the category that are not so immediately close to the middle which at closer inspection does have a connection that is just not as immediate. & has caused people on chatlists to try to make out the only things that fit into a category are those things that are more interchangeable with the archetype to the point of things needing to be almost clones of that archetype, Whereas I would think the more interesting things would be those that had some originality meaning they were absolutely not clone but still had a connection in influence/evolution/whatever.
Like all categories are artificial to start with but I do think that idea of a category with a semi obvious core radiating outwards with more fuzzy outliers included is more interesting. Fuzzy outliers may have venn overlap with other radiated categories too. & that overlap is a point of interest too.

I've known Andrew on a number of internet music places for the best part of two decades now*, including FT, so am surprised that he isn't on here too. Maybe he checked it out in the late 2000s when everyone was apparently doing their best to be as unpleasant as possible. Anyway, this is a fantastic project and he has been very supportive to my own much less successful project, so I'm happy to see he has his own thread, even though he isn't here.

*originally on Livejournal over a shared love of The Beiderbecke Affair, iirc.

Well great show and one that I hope continues. Going to take me a while to get through everything up to date. Have listened to several over last few weeks. So will continue to listen through them but am listening through a load of podcasts all the time. Eventually I will catch up witth everything, but i still think I will have caught up with the books i have as a backlog too.
& all the tv shows I've been finding out about.

That Q&A edition was quite interesting anyway. How he works through things, works out what does need to be covered in depth and what as a transient thing inside another discussion.
I'm surprised that Fontella Bass doesn't have more written about her though. Does she need to be rescued like?

Are you guys listening to these in order? I have just started randomly listening here and there, seems like it’s an embarrassment of riches.

I’ve been listening in order. Learned tons about 40s and 50s music. Up to #58 on the Bobettes. My 17 year old son got a kick out of the Billy Lee Riley ep with “Flying Saucers RnR” and has asked to hear more !? I’d call that success.

I think it was in one of these that I heard that Booker T & The MGs recorded Green Onions in what was scheduled as a Billy Riley recording session.
Heard that his band became the Sun house band in the late 50s a few years ago too.
Picked up a Charly cd of his r'n'r years about a decade ago that is pretty great. & had me wondering if it was his version of Baby Please Don't Go that a few bands in the 60s were starting from when covering the song. Pretty primal anyway.

Oh, perfectly timed thread - I started bingeing about a week ago after someone on an Eggpod Twitter Space mentioned it in connection with the Beatles.

I listened to the one for She Loves You then went back to the beginning. I love that it’s opened up new horizons for me in listening - I knew I was ignorant about the early history and prehistory of rock but after this it feels like a world I want to live in for a while.

He’s very impressive, though I can see that his delivery might put a few people off. And he could probably lighten up a bit on all the disclaimers.

even listening at 1x I find myself rewinding -- "Hey, wait, who was that? Gaynel Hodge? Hm, I should look him up" -- because of how much information he packs into each episode.

I'm completely addicted to this podcast. Currently on episode #36 (forced myself to start at the beginning after binging the Beatles episodes).

Favorites episodes:

Rosetta Tharpe - "This Train"
Les Paul and Mary Ford - "How High The Moon"
Johnny Otis, Little Esther - "Double Crossing' Blues"
Lloyd Price - "Lady Miss Clawdy"
Ruth Brown - "Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean"
The Chords - "Sh-Boom"
Johnny Ace - "Pledging My Love"
All of the Chess Record Episodes (Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and The Moonglows)
Little Richard - "Tutti Frutti"

In case anyone isn't familiar with Ruth Brown (I wasn't) should watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqmGZRGvKC8

For those that cannot handle his voice (I can’t) and don’t want to read the transcripts in browser (I don’t) he does offer full transcripts arranged in ebook format for his Patreon subscribers and god they’re good. I’m not sure if he’s published the second yet as I’ve been checked out for a while but that first ebook made for an amazing companion piece to bob Stanley’s new pre-rock’n’roll one this summer

It’s a pretty extraordinary thing he’s doing here and I very much appreciate the lengths he goes to to mitigate against the shittiness of his subject matter . It doesn’t slow things down so much when you’re reading rather than listening, perhaps

Also <3 to you CaAL, I discovered your project and Andrew’s at roughly similar times and have followed them in tandem, and between the two of you you’ve completely blown away my previous conceptions about when 20th century popular music got “interesting” and I’ve found it extremely rewarding

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-lWQBjnFg

Doing this on phone so apologies if the tags fuck up. But that’s my fav entry. When the chorus kicks in and we go from old timey to rock’n’roll. It’s good stuff

I love this podcast.

I also found about it from ILM, specifically from a thread about Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, where someone linked to a transcript of an episode where Hickey discusses Jones's abuse of women. That episode contains his one effort to avoid causing offense that I found completely ridiculous:

You see, Brian Jones was a sadist, and not in a good way. There are people who engage in consensual BDSM, in which everyone involved is having a good time, and those people include some of my closest friends. This will never be a podcast that engages in kink-shaming of consensual kinks, and I want to make clear that what I have to say about Jones has nothing to do with that.

Because Jones was not into consent. He was into physically injuring non-consenting young women, and he got his sexual kicks from things like beating them with chains. Again, if everyone is involved is consenting, this is perfectly fine, but Jones didn’t care about anyone other than himself.

I can't imagine someone weird enough to be offended by this, but reasonable enough to be assuaged by the disclaimer.

In general, his efforts with this kind of thing strike me as both well-intentioned and pretentious. I think he sincerely wants to avoid causing pointless suffering, and to tell a version of rock history that sheds light on how various people have been unfairly sidelined. And I also think he's very invested in presenting himself as enlightened on these topics (which, of course, requires him to solemnly deny that he sees himself this way).

But that's a minor gripe, considering how good the show is. I've learned so much from it, and I'm beyond curious to see where it goes.

As another listener pointed out in the recent Q&A episode, he's rapidly approaching the point at which a lot of the most critically acclaimed rock music becomes stuff that was less commercially successful and therefore less immediately influential. I'm very interested to see how he'll handle that. I can imagine a version of this show that covers, say, the Eagles but not Minor Threat, and is justified on its own terms in doing so.

What is Camaraderie at Arms Length's project?

XP I don’t read his disclaimers as him being invested in seeming like anything at all … I read them more like “I’ve seen a thousand internet shitstorms and I want to be VERY VERY CLEAR about what I mean by what I’m about to say.”

JRN at 11:24 10 Aug 22

What is Camaraderie at Arms Length's project?

my attitude to the disclaimers is: I am fortunate enough not to have any form of PTSD and therefore these are not for me, but other people aren't so lucky.

I can imagine a version of this show that covers, say, the Eagles but not Minor Threat, and is justified on its own terms in doing so.

He's done Patreon bonus episodes (usually around 10-20 minutes) on a couple of songs that I was sure would be part of the regular 500, particularly Link Wray's "Rumble," and Tommy James And The Shondells' "Hanky Panky." And in his bonus episodes on the Walker Brothers' "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" and Jackie Shane's "Any Other Way" he says that he tried to find a way to make them part of the 500, but wasn't able to. I'm still not 100% clear on the criteria for inclusion -- and he has stressed that it's not about personal preference, the aesthetic merits of the song itself, or establishing a canon -- but it could be because I wasn't listening closely enough to the episodes that may have laid out the criteria.

All that said, there hasn't been a single "main" episode where I thought, "Why is this here? What does this have to do with anything?" I have thought that before listening -- the one on "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" especially -- but not after.

Listening to the Q&A episodes he’s done, a big criterion is songs that give him a way to continue strands of the overall narrative. Sometimes several strands at once.

I've only listened to the James Brown episode, and it was really good even though he seems to be way more of a harmony person than a rhythm person. I probably would have picked a different tune to talk about the invention of funk, but he defended his thesis and I learned a lot of trivia despite being a JB nerd.

There's been a few episodes where he points out the differences between certain rhythms, and how certain rhythmic approaches evolved over the years. iirc, these were mostly in the earlier episodes.

Alba, yes, I do now remember how he's talked about the strands and connections and such.

Chiming in with a few thoughts. The podcast is one of my favorites of the past few years and there are so many similar shows that absolutely get this format wrong compared to Hickey... most "great record survey" type podcasts just gush over an album like a perfect 10 retrospective review and maybe offer a bit of "what was the band doing in the few months leading up to it" information. The approach here is light on the praise, and much more about putting the career of the artist into the context of the evolution of popular music. Excellent research and some great connections drawn between artists and songs I hadn't thought about.

I actually like his relaxed, bemused reading tone, and the writing isn't too cringe apart from the wallowing overmuch in salacious events wherever they crop up and the accompanying endless trigger warnings, and I can definitely quibble with Hickey's curious curatorial choices. He explains why he feels Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters don't belong in his survey but I think it doesn't make sense, really, since one of the big themes of his show appears to be the excellent point that "rock music and (black) soul music are basically contiguous and the musicians themselves listen to and operate across those boundaries, and it's only racist marketing / categorization that kept these two segregated on the radio and in record stores and in people's minds". So instead of some great electric blues episodes featuring what I think most critics would feel are far superior to yet sound right at home next to most 50s "rock and roll" songs, you get 2 Wanda Jackson and Eddie Cochran and Everly Brothers episodes, and full episodes on Tommy Steele, Manfred Mann and that LSD gimmicky surf song, and way too many episodes on Elvis, the Beatles and Beach Boys that betrays an overly "white oldies music fan" focus at odds with the aforementioned "segregation of soul music" theme. But this is quibbling; it's ok to have a point of view and go with it and the extremely high quality of the show speaks for itself.

My head canon I suppose would also have leaned a bit more international and focused less on telling just the story of the US and UK single and album charts. If you're going to say soul music and rock music are basically the same, you might as well include new york cuban-soul fusion bugalu (Joe Cuba) and maybe its precursor the conjunto sound of Arsenio Rodriguez; Jorge Ben and the Jovem Garda which was basically samba-rock fusion; Serge Gainsbourg evolving from chanson to latin jazz to full on 60s rock to writing a ye-ye anthem that wins the Eurovision; and I think the "Lion Sleeps Tonight" episode was fine but soul/latin/highlife hybrids happening in 60s west africa seems like a pretty big oversight to a history of rock music, it's basically some of the best electric guitar music ever made. And same goes for ska, I can see why Hickey went with "My Boy Lollipop" but geez that is just not the 60s ska track I would have picked. Just because it made the hit parade in the UK doesn't mean it's as important as the actual innovations that preceded it. There might be upcoming episodes on Hugh Masekela and Bob Marley and maybe a bonus episode on Mutantes or Veloso/Gil in exile.

Overall I like what Hickey's doing so much I've seriously considered basically copying the format and doing some seasons focusing on some of my sweet spots, like say doing 25 episodes on female 70s/80s post-punk, followed by a season on african musicians... but I think about the head start Hickey must have had owning hundreds of biographies and memoirs and the music I would want to cover, much of it doesn't even have a single biography, so the focus would have to be more on the music than on the biographical details of the artist... sounds like a ton of work.

25 episodes on female 70s/80s post-punk

Oooh, that is rich territory to mine. Au Pairs, Ari Up, Lora Logic, Danielle Dax, AC Marias, just to name a few...

He explains why he feels Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters don't belong in his survey but I think it doesn't make sense

That definitely raised an eyebrow for me, but I do think it makes sense. The early rock 'n' rollers came from Louis Jordan, the Moonglows, the Ink Spots, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Wynonie Harris...Hickey points out that the overt influence of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf didn't happen until Bo Diddley, and then not again until the Rolling Stones. He does point out that Waters influenced Chuck Berry, but has stressed that Waters was one among many of Berry's influences alongside Louis Jordan, Nat "King" Cole, and Charlie Christian.

I initially questioned some of his choices, but not after understanding that a) he's not out to create nor establish a canon; b) he's not choosing songs because they're good (or not); and c) each episode is more about the story than the song. An obvious example of the latter is his most recent episode on "All You Need Is Love." In the nearly 4-hour episode he doesn't get to that actual song until maybe 3 hours in. And when I saw that he'd chosen Peter, Paul & Mary's version of "Blowin' In The Wind" I thought, "What?! Not Dylan's version?!" But the story about PP&M's version is also the story about Dylan's version, and also broadens the scope to encompass the changes happening in the established popular music industry at the time (among other things). As counterintuitive as this sounds, an episode on Dylan's version would've been more narrowly focused, to its detriment.

In his recent Q&A episode, he says that he has done (and will do) episodes on songs that he absolutely despises. This isn't about "Hey, this is a great record! I'll do an episode on that!" And to his credit, the two episodes he's done so far on artists I intensely dislike were surprisingly -- shockingly, even -- engaging and informative.

And what I probably love most about this podcast is who unexpectedly turns up, and where. Sun Ra, Iannis Xenakis, Dexter Gordon, Coleman Hawkins, and Antonio Carlos Jobim are all mentioned, but not in the episodes you think they might be.

In the nearly 4-hour episode he doesn't get to that actual song until maybe 3 hours in

Re: rhythm. He spends a lot of time in the 40s/50s episodes pointing out rhythmic innovations and trying to explain their origins and influence. Also makes an interesting point that rhythmic innovations could not be copyrighted - so everyone could copy Bo Diddley without him getting paid.

Yeah, I found the Peter Paul and Mary episode interesting and all, but pretty tangential to the history of rock music per se, and again, I'm not sure we need quite as much Dylan in this series as we are going to wind up with. But like I say this is just a quibble. Personally I think the podcast would be better if it focused on the greatest and most innovative performances while maybe not having as much repeated focus on the very biggest names like Elvis, Beatles, Beach Boys, Dylan - and I think Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf absolutely recorded some of the best electrified stomping sing-along popular music that is basically rock and roll, although it gets pigeonholed or dismissed as just being blues music.

I have to imagine that by the time he gets to the 70s there will be less repeat artists, with glam, prog, metal, punk, funk, disco, new wave, etc. all in the mix.

In his recent Q&A episode, he says that he has done (and will do) episodes on songs that he absolutely despises

I've been trying to figure out which ones these are, think Louie, Louie is one, though his description of it just made me love it even more.

I'm still not 100% clear on the criteria for inclusion -- and he has stressed that it's not about personal preference, the aesthetic merits of the song itself, or establishing a canon -- but it could be because I wasn't listening closely enough to the episodes that may have laid out the criteria.

one of the big themes of his show appears to be the excellent point that "rock music and (black) soul music are basically contiguous and the musicians themselves listen to and operate across those boundaries, and it's only racist marketing / categorization that kept these two segregated on the radio and in record stores and in people's minds".

I might be wrong about this but I think I do remember him saying that at some point he would stop covering Soul music on the podcast as the genre becomes established as a separate thing from Rock - curious to see where he places this cut off, as I'd have probably placed it at the emergence of Motown and Stax.

The problem with just continuing to cover Soul and R&B imo is that while musicians listen to all sorts of music sure, as the story advances "Rock and Roll" becomes a term that is very much coded white and carries with it a whole lot of cultural baggage that simply wasn't there in the 50's. So while including Soul or, as per mig's post, MPB and Gainsbourg could be viewed as breaking down dumb marketing barriers, it's also doing so within the context of making it all a sub-genre of Rock & Roll, which I think ends up reinforcing some fucked up hierarchies, it's the same thing as Hip-Hop artists getting inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. The way to sidestep that would be for it to be A History Of Pop Music, but of course that widens the scope to an absurd degree.

He's done eight Motown episodes, but only one (or two, if you count "In The Midnight Hour") on Stax so far. One of the more recent episodes was on Aretha's "Respect," which obviously talked about Otis Redding a fair amount (and he's said there'll be at least one Otis episode coming up). My guess is that if he stops covering soul, it'll be in the mid-'70s. He did say in an early episode -- one which led me to one of the most stunning recordings I've discovered in the last 15 years or so -- that he will be covering hip-hop to some degree in the future.

Ah, ok, this is what I was looking for (from episode 32 on Ray Charles's "I Got A Woman"):

...it’s worth talking about the musical boundaries we’re going to be using in this series, because while it’s called “A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs”, I am not planning on using a narrow definition of “rock music”, because what counts as rock tends to be retroactively redefined to exclude branches of music where black people predominate. So for example, there’s footage of Mohammed [sic] Ali calling Sam Cooke “the greatest rock and roll singer in the world”, and at the time absolutely nobody would have questioned Cooke being called “rock and roll”, but these days he would only be talked about as a soul singer.

And much of the music that we would now call “soul” was so influential on the music that we now call rock music that it’s completely ridiculous to even consider them separately until the late seventies at the earliest. So while we’re going to mostly look at music that has been labelled rock or rock and roll, don’t be surprised to find soul, funk, hip-hop, country, or any other genre that has influenced rock turning up. And especially don’t be surprised to see that happening if it was music that was thought of as rock and roll at the time, but has been retroactively relabelled.

Overall I like what Hickey's doing so much I've seriously considered basically copying the format and doing some seasons focusing on some of my sweet spots, like say doing 25 episodes on female 70s/80s post-punk, followed by a season on african musicians... but I think about the head start Hickey must have had owning hundreds of biographies and memoirs and the music I would want to cover, much of it doesn't even have a single biography, so the focus would have to be more on the music than on the biographical details of the artist... sounds like a ton of work.

― mig (guess that dreams always end), Thursday, August 11, 2022 6:32 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I put together this list of what the first 18 episodes of "A History of Jazz in 500 songs" would be, there is absolutely no way I'm ever making it, but if anyone wants to have a go then I would be very happy to help out.

Unique Quartette - Mama's Black Baby Boy
Vess L Ossman - A Bunch of Rags
Scott Joplin - Maple Leaf Rag
Arthur Pryor with Sousa's Band - The Patriot
Bert Williams - Nobody
Buddy Bolden Band - Funky Butt
Europe's Society Orchestra - Down Home Rag
Sophie Tucker - Some of These Days
Prince's Band - St Louis Blues
Collins & Harlan - That Funny Jas Band From Dixieland
Original Dixieland 'Jass' Band - Livery Stable Blues
Earl Fuller’s Rector Novelty Orchestra - Russian Rag
Wilbur Sweatman's Original Jazz Band - Dallas Blues
Marrion Harris - I Ain't Got Nobody
Art Hickman's Orchestra - Rose Room
Lieut. Jim Europe's 369th U. S. Infantry “Hell Fighters” Band - Memphis Blues
Joseph C Smith's Orchestra - Yellow Dog Blues
Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds - Crazy Blues

David Wondrich is great on Europe’s “down home rag” in ‘stomp and swerve’, that was a real opener for me for with the super early stuff

New episode! And I strongly suspect this is less about the song itself -- unless Scott McKenzie really is somehow fascinating enough to warrant a 2 1/2 hour episode -- and more about the story: https://500songs.com/podcast/episode-151-san-francisco-by-scott-mckenzie/

wasn’t there some stuff with John Stewart as well?

just finished listening, the song itself is covered for only a few minutes- majority of the episode is the career of The Mamas & the Papas and The Monterey Pop Festival 1967.

I'm a bit baffled at how much Hickey shoehorned into this one. Enjoyable to listen to as always but not sure I needed 2.5 hours on the Mamas & the Papas w/ Scott McKenzie and Monterey Pop detours. I feel like I don't have a strong sense of who this John Phillips character really was, or why I should want to know him given what I know of how he turned out. I think the problem was me; I have always held California Dreamin' at arms' length, it's great of course, and moreover I'm intrigued by the hyper capitalist American go-getter make friends and influence your uncle attitude of putting easy listening ba-ba-da-da-da peanut butter in my chocolate rock but beyond Pet Sounds and the more marginal hipster crate digs like Free Design and Millenium, the whole field is kind of a blur to me and the big hits like Eloise and Windy kind of bore me. If I'm in the mood for interesting 60s easy listening I'll usually reach for something like Morricone or Esquivel, Swingle Singers, Peggy Lee, Scott Walker, Francoise Hardy. I think there's more for me to explore in the world of the big sunshine pop hits, "The Archies plus Bacharach" sounds appealing to me, but it's currently lost on me, even after this episode.

It seems there could be a way to use the moment of the summer of love to tie together sunshine pop of the Turtles/Association/5th Dimension and sophisticated adult-themed records of Bacharach and Webb, lounge precursors and the Beatles/Beach Boys/folk rock stuff he's already covered, and talk about California Dreamin' as a sort of happy-sad, beautiful-summation of this cultural moment, and how the band's Fleetwood Mac style internal drama is a presage of the sexual chaos of the dawning era.

I think he's big into that kinda stuff, possibly through being a huge Beach Boys fan. The comment on the LA/SF feud was interesting to me as I was totally unaware this had even been a thing.

Ditto. That strain of '60s California music -- Mamas & Papas, Association, much of the non-Spector/non-Beach Boys Wrecking Crew things like Gary Lewis & The Playboys -- isn't really my bag. And I can't stand the McKenzie song, but I thought it was the perfect fulcrum for this episode. What really struck me was learning that Monterey was set up to be a kind of battle of the bands between LA and San Francisco. As Hickey pointed out, most most of the LA bands either declined, didn't show, backed out, were missing key members, or (as with the Association) were seen as squaresville next to the Dead, Airplane, Moby Grape, Quicksilver, and Big Brother (and forget about comparing the Association to Hendrix or the Who...though Steve Miller is on record saying he despised the Who's set and loved the Association). So it's about how the slick LA scene came up with the McKenzie song -- representative of cynical showbiz appropriations of the new hippie culture -- that those on the SF scene not only laughed at, but made irrelevant overnight.

Latest episode is also California-centered, but is much more focused on the song itself ("For What It's Worth" -- and I had no idea about the somewhat hilarious origin story of the song's title). Not sure how much in this episode will be news to Neil fans (of which I am one, but I never got around to reading Shakey or his autobios), but a few things -- like Neil's love for Bobby Darin, which explains a fuck of a lot about how Neil went about his career -- were genuinely surprising to learn.

Thoroughly enjoying this podcast thanks to this thread. Thanks!

Neil briefly being a Motown artist was news to me!

also lol @ Stills description of Mike Love as "spooky"

i love this sort of thoughtful and in-depth analysis of music, one that takes a wide-ranging purview. the thing that sticks out to me most from the transcripts i read (podcast listening isn't something that comes easy to me so i'm glad the transcripts are there) is andrew pointing out that had little richard been born thirty years later he might have identified as some variety of genderqueer or trans. it's something i struggle with a lot personally - there's a particular really intense piece i've been working on about a particular famous musician, and it's an _extremely_ controversial topic within trans communities. the little richard story also _really_ gives me thoughts about the malign influence of christianity on queer people's lives.

I think about this with prince a lot too but it's obviously extremely sticky territory

I learned a lot esp from the early episodes (later ones are well done too but my interest wanes the closer we get to classic rock) I would love something like this that goes deeper into jazz/blues/proto-r&b and the the connections between the what-we-might-now-call queerness of little richard and sister rosetta sharpe and the what-we-might-now-call GNC/butch/trans/gay/bi/pan/queerness of early blues and jazz performers and the extremely complex intersections with race and religion... basically I'm asking for a different podcast which is no criticism of hickey - it's only that he's done such a good job that I want more

I do strongly approve of reclaiming soul/funk/doowop/vocal groups as rock and I'm v curious to see how far he'll go with this as we move into 70s and later

I think about this with prince a lot too but it's obviously extremely sticky territory

― Left

oh god yes, and with prince it's complicated even further by his being a pretty horrifically narcissistic and abusive person. did he spend most of his time around women because he could relate to them more in a gendered sense? or did he spend most of his time around women because due to their marginalized status it was easier for him to take advantage of them then it was for him to take advantage of men? given that the way he treated women is frankly a _lot_ more prevalent (and condoned) in cis men than it is in trans women, it's fucking hard to argue that his gender non-conforming behavior in any way played a role in his treatment of women, but TERFs have been making that argument for decades anyway, absent anything that even _resembles_ evidence.

i've been trying to read duane tudahl's day-by-day histories of prince in '85 and '86, but it's really harrowing reading, so i haven't gotten as far as the late '86 _camille_ sessions. hard to know what to make of _camille_. he adopted a female persona, altered his voice, and started singing songs like "if i was your girlfriend" under that persona. what sort of song is "if i was your girlfriend"? is it a song of trans lesbian yearning? or is it a song sung by a possessive, controlling abuser who wants to have total control over the person the song is addressed to? ("why not both?", as the answer to these questions generally goes.)

i mean, prince, the question that was always asked about him was "is he gay", and when wendy and lisa were asked that they would laugh and say "oh, no, he's not gay, he's a lesbian, he likes girls". but, you know. they didn't mean it in a _trans_ way or anything. and then complicating that is the influence of, specifically, christianity - a strongly queer-negative religion, but one which has historically served as one of the most major ways for Black people to survive collectively in a systemically racist society that denies them personhood. that's a very different experience with christianity than my own experience with it.

on top of that, there are his obvious conflicted feelings about his own gender and sexuality ("shockadelica", for instance, portrays camille as a basically _malevolent_ force. his songs are filled with these types - annie christian, anna stesia). and there's of course the family abuse and trauma prince went through. again, the idea of "victims" and "abusers" as separate people breaks down when you look at actual abusers. prince was both. the abuses he perpetrated recapitulated, in many ways, the abuses he suffered, the fucked up bullshit he was taught to think of as normal.

female sexuality? on _dirty mind_, prince sings about being sexually assaulted by his sister, and implies though does not openly state that this is what made him queer. this isn't a song i necessarily think of as "dirty" per se. even when he's trying to be positive about queerness, as when he describes the lesbian he names "vagina" (the original name he wanted to give to Vanity) as "half boy/half girl/best of both worlds", that's not really a _queer_ perspective so much as a _chaser_ perspective. he never is able to bring himself to _say_ that he is queer, only to drop double-entendres and perform in heavily queer-coded ways. so if you listen to "originals" you can hear him singing these explicit sapphic songs, but you know, those songs weren't meant to be sung in _his_ voice. they were for the _girls_ to sing, the girls he tried to control and treat as puppets.

and then of course there's prince's death being one of the twin shocks, for a lot of us, in 2016, along with bowie's death. bowie, like prince, was beloved, acclaimed, gender non-conforming, and an abuser. there's a fucking lot to process there.

yes yes all of that I couldn't put any of it better

idk if I read too much into the original camille album being scrapped but it seems pretty significant

obv his predatory behaviour and personal homophobia complicates everything even more same prob goes for little richard

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.

The Satisfaction episode was a great one though.

I loved Hickory Wind, and didn't mind the length at all. The one time I felt impatient for him to *get on with it* was on the episode on The Weight, where 40 minutes of the 2 hours was spent on Ronny Hawkins.

Next up is All Along the Watchtower, which is both an obvious, and fantastic choice.

So we’ve had four straight episodes of basically country rock. Eager to get back to some actual rocking type rock.

But first a detour to Nashville Skyline!

the nashville dylan detour is good, glad to take spend some time on the slow road to electric ladyland

New bonus episode on Arlo Guthrie is a good listen.

The cool bit where he isolates on the drums of Lay Lady Lay made me appreciate that song a lot more. Love it when he dives in like that (also on the My Girl episode for instance)

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.