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

I was much more into the early avant garde history than the VU stuff, but it was cool to hear the commercial rock & roll/r&b soundalike tracks that Lou worked on early on (still not done with the episode obv, only two hours in).

How is the Otis Redding one?

Redding episode is great and (obviously) sad. But honestly — and I’m on my third listen to the whole series, gearing up for a fourth — there isn’t a single episode that either misses the mark or has any glaring (or not-so-glaring) omissions.

I’m on my third listen to the whole series, gearing up for a fourth

Wow!

I love Stax of course, but should listen if only because I go past the fateful lake every single day.

I was a little disappointed that the Otis episode was only the third one on Stax (counting “In The Midnight Hour”) but he’s done Patreon episodes on “Sweet Soul Music,” “Hold On, I’m Comin’,” and “Knock On Wood.” One thing I liked about the Otis episode was how it fleshed-out long-heard stories. That is, there’s far more to the story of how he ended up at Stax than “he was the driver for another band and insisted on singing at the end of the session” — very little (if any) of that was happenstance.

For more on Reed’s Pickwick years and how he went from staff songwriter to sometimes performer to touring band to Cale being in the band to the VU (an almost untold story up til now) I can highly recommend Ugly Things magazine issue #60 and the accompanying 2-part podcast, which goes into just about as much depth as possible on the subject.

One of my favourite details from the VU episode was Cale finding out the particular institute he was working at (I forget which) had 88 pianos, obviously the same number of keys on a single piano. His idea was to put each piano on a different boat, send them out onto a lake and record the sound as each boat sank into the water.

Budgeting might be a bit of a problem?

And 88 dead pianists. We mustn't let our conservative instincts stand in the way of the avant-garde!

I can highly recommend Ugly Things magazine issue #60 and the accompanying 2-part podcast, which goes into just about as much depth as possible on the subject.

Jeez, apparently I only listen to podcasts about the VU now despite not even being that big of a fan. :)

But I'm starting out with their episode about Gabor Szabo, which is great so far, and I've never gone deep on him.

Johnny Echols one is pretty good too. In fact the entire series has been good.

xpost speaking of Szabo, I posted this several years ago on Rolling Jazz, re an intriguing first glimpse ov him:

Looking for Charles Lloyd on Bandcamp, found Manhattan Stories (2014), comprised of
Two 1965 New York Concerts, Disc 1 recorded at Judson Hall & Disc 2 recorded at Slugs' Saloon.
A remarkable and previously unrecorded quartet featuring three jazz giants: guitarist Gábor Szabó, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Pete La Roca.
'It was a specific time and place,' Lloyd told Manhattan Stories annotator Don Heckman. 'We all felt like the boundaries were being dissolved and we could do or try anything. This is a music of freedom and wonder -- we were young and on the move.' Which is just what the sample track, "Sweet Georgia Brown," sounds like (17' 49", but quite spritely). Especially digging the interplay of guitar and sax, bass and cymbals, also succinct solos, esp. PLR's and Szabo's---the latter bright and brittle, autumn leaves, but def not drifting. What other Szabo should I check? Used to see his LPs...
https://charleslloyd.bandcamp.com/

I was delighted to learn in the Sounds of Silence episode that when Simon premiered the song in Greenwich Village folk clubs, the audience thought it was hilarious, and people started greeting each other with “hello darkness my old friend.”

and a lulz meme it remains!

Also Rick James's greeting, just about, to Charlie Murphy, according to Charlie Murphy on Chappelle Show (CM being dark-skinned as perceived by RJ) "Old friend" wasn't part of it though!

4.5 hour episode on Dark Star just landed. Holy shit!

yeah it's been a long time in gestation, understandably. quite the piece of work! supporters in patreon have had it for a week now so I've already heard it. can't say I am any more a fan of the dead than I was before, but it goes some fascinating places, they turn out to be very important in a number of ways, though "musical influence" isn't one of them.

Is it fitting that the longest show he's done so far is on a band that specialised in expansive stretching out? & filled with extra tidbits that i hope people aren't seeing as noodling.
I see he excerpts teh Eleven which has to be one of my all time favourite songs too.
Glad he is conscious of how long the episodes have been getting and hope taht si going to mean he cuts back a bit. Thought he was pretty ill recently so hope this keeps coming and he can keep up to to 500. Got to be a lifetime project like.
I was thinking it was a shame he'd got to 1969 cos it meant he was moving out of one of my favourite eras and hadn't covered absolutely everything in it. Though maybe he has in passing.
Think I need to read some of his books now.

yeah, he has been ill, mostly from the effort of putting this thing together. the grateful dead being fundamentally a live act, with songs developing over decades, and not really overlapping with the scenes / musicians he's covered- this breaks the chronological arc of the show, meaning he had to do a lot of extra research, just for the one episode. also his usual editor is ill, so he had to edit it himself. don't think we will see another episode of anything like this length for quite a while, he has sworn he won't anyway.

I think he's still in 1968 since "Dark Star" was originally on a single in April ''68

was wondering if this was single or lp version. So cool, maybe some more on the era then. & I do like the next few years just want loads on psych like.

yeah he is still at the start of 1968, though the year only takes up about 10 minutes of this episode

I think its the live version that is better known and possibly more significant though. But yeah good to know he's got the rest of the year to cover etc.
Is Astral Weeks or Gris Gris going to get a showing? Pentangle before Basket of light?

There are only two points in time where it makes sense to do a podcast episode on the Grateful Dead — late 1967 and early 1968, when the San Francisco scene they were part of was at its most culturally relevant, and 1988 when they had their only top ten hit and gained their largest audience. I can’t realistically leave them out of the story until 1988, so it has to be 1968. But the songs they are most remembered for are those they wrote between 1970 and 1972, and those songs are influenced by artists and events we haven’t yet covered in the podcast, who will be getting their own episodes in the future.  I can’t explain those things in this episode, because they need whole episodes of their own. I can’t not explain them without leaving out important context for the Grateful Dead.

he had to do a lot of extra research, just for the one episode.

And frustratingly, pretty much all the books on the Dead are either oral histories, or stuffed with half-remembered anecdotes that may or may not have happened, and can only be verified by cross-referencing other Dead books with the same half-remembered anecdotes misremembered slightly differently. So, for instance, when Hart says he was hanging out with Sonny Payne after a Count Basie show in 1967, it turns out Payne wasn’t in the Basie band at that time. And while every Dead book says Donna Jean sang on “Suspicious Minds” recorded at Muscle Shoals, Hickey went, “OK, that’s not right” — it was recorded at American in Memphis. Six weeks of that kind of research must have been (and sounds like it was) insanely trying. The Grateful Dead did not have a Mark Lewisohn.

Is Astral Weeks or Gris Gris going to get a showing? Pentangle before Basket of light?

One of the Patreon episodes is on “I Walk On Guilded Splinters.” I assume Astral Weeks will be covered — he already did a Them episode — but I don’t know if a song from it will get its own episode or if it’ll be covered in an episode about a later Van song. He didn’t do a Velvets episode until “White Light/White Heat” (which caused a bit of consternation among some of his fans; “IT’S 1967! WHERE’S THE VELVETS?!”) but it covered their entire career.

And the song is often a device for telling the larger story. The one on “San Francisco” isn’t two solid hours on Scott MacKenzie, but a way to tell the story of the focal point of the California scene shifting from LA to the Bay Area.

damn, i know what i'm doing next week. i still haven't gotten around to those oral history podcasts... i have "the making of vs", "the making of song cycle", and "the making of neu!" in my backlog. such a backlog.

The Dark Star episode was fascinating. Some wild stuff near the end about the Dead being pioneers of marketing to obsessive fans and the crossover to internet culture. Love me some Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty but that’s all I need. That wasn’t a problem listening to the episode since so many interesting sidetracks to the story.

The stuff about the impact of the Dead on internet culture is a good starting point for a totally different podcast.

Has Jesse Jarnow covered it elsewhere. I Think he talks about it in Heads and I know he does a regular Grateful Dead podcast which is probably archived in a few places. So may be worth looking around to see if there is anything up online by him since I think he was one of the sources for Hickey.

Yes there’s an episode of the Good Old Grateful Deadcast that’s all about the rise of the band wrt Silicon Valley stuff. It doesn’t get anywhere near Barlow and his weird internet politics tho.

ty both ...i should have guessed this topic has already been explored

new episode dropped.
Down to 3 hours, I mean what is happening pull the finger out.
Crossroads by Cream which seems odd chronology but I am blanking on how the last episode fell to be where it stood chronologically. I thought the first appearance of the song was on the first lp but may be confusing it with Spoonful.
I assume this is going to be another case of a song where he can look at improvisation but also the blues revival.
& what an ass Clapton would go on to be of course.

I can only repeat myself when talking about this podcast, because each episode warrants it: this is absolutely stunning.

He’s in 1968 now, and he tends to choose songs that were released as singles, as the live “Crossroads” was. So, chronologically, it makes sense. He doesn’t always introduce an artist with their first record (which is why Velvets fans were losing their shit when 1967 came and went without mention of them), but always covers everything that led up to the song (and most everything that happened after).

And as with many other episodes in this series, the song in question is primarily a jumping-off point to tell a much larger story: the final 40 minutes are about Robert Johnson, and how white historians (Mack McCormick chief among them) fought over his legacy, exploited and stole from his surviving relatives, and simply made up shit about Johnson in order to reinforce their ideas of what “the blues” “should” be.

got there before me, I will just add that the episode finishes in 1969, so Clapton's 1970s fuckery is saved for a later episode.

Also the first part is a very decent history of the first couple of decades of blues music, I agreed with 95% of it, which is an extremely high percentage compared to most of the music histories I read.

I thought the first appearance of the song was on the first lp but may be confusing it with Spoonful.

Clapton first recorded in early '66 as part of a one-off studio supergroup called the Powerhouse for What's Shakin', an Elektra records comp. The arrangement is pretty close to the one Cream later used. Steve Winwood sings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUSah2Egid8

'recorded it'

This was … great. I don’t want to criticize his process because the results are worth the wait, but as soon as I’m finished each new episode I go into a sort of withdrawal and want MOAR CONTENT.

If you like the podcast and don’t support the dude on Patreon, I wholeheartedly encourage it. This is What He Does For A Living and I want — nay, need! — him to continue to do it.

Yeah, I had to artificially slow down my consumption so I didn't fully exhaust the backlog of episodes.
He's been averaging one episode a month in 2023, so with 334 episodes left, this series should be done in... May of 2051.
(I'm also not holding my breath that we're ever getting back to 30 minute episodes... the Patreon bonus episodes are longer than that these days)

I thought the one thing missing from the Cream episode was a clear sense of what makes Cream important enough to warrant this career-spanning examination. They provided a good excuse for digressions about the development of the blues genre and the life of Robert Johnson, which were great. And I enjoyed the stories about Ginger Baker being bellicose and Clapton being pretentious and insecure. But I came away unsure of why Hickey actually thinks Cream are all that significant to the development of rock, musically or culturally.

The '60s British blues scene does strike me as important, but mainly because it birthed the Rolling Stones. And the Stones covered Robert Johnson too, on Let it Bleed in 1969. I wouldn't be surprised if he's got a late '60s Stones episode coming up anyway. So why bother with Cream? I'm sure there's a good answer, but I don't think it was there in the episode.

Cream is a big benchmark in terms of rock instrumentalists being seen as stars largely on the basis of their playing ability. Clapton (and then Beck) with the Yardbirds was an early indicator of this evolution, but with Cream (and soon Hendrix) it really became a major trend - basically, the start of "rockism".

Halfway otm. I thought Hickey perfectly illustrated how the emergence of Cream was a kind of line of demarcation: the end of the multi-artist package shows where everyone plays four songs, and the beginning of headlining shows where one band plays for 90 minutes, necessitating a kind of “stretching out” that hadn’t really happened in that way before, and certainly not from a band with top 10 hits.

In his book, Nick Mason talks about seeing Cream live in 1966 and, noticing the drum kit was as much of an centre-stage attraction as the other members, decided that Pink Floyd's performances could be as striking as theirs was.

I thought Hickey perfectly illustrated how the emergence of Cream was a kind of line of demarcation: the end of the multi-artist package shows where everyone plays four songs, and the beginning of headlining shows where one band plays for 90 minutes

I don't think he illustrates this at all. If you're already aware that package shows fell out of favor, and long jams became a more prominent feature of rock shows, then sure, he gives Cream as a good example of a band whose career straddled that line. But the episode itself only hints that this was a consequential shift for the genre, rather than just a funny thing that happened to Cream.

(Also, one thing the episode DOES make clear is that Cream were accustomed to "stretching out" from their club days (albeit for the length of a standard club set rather than 90+ minutes), and that becoming a band with successful pop singles that coupld play a few numbers on package tour was the more awkward transition.)

Altho come on 45 minutes on Tiny Tim, significantly longer than the first 100 or so _main_ episodes?

That Tiny Tim episode was crazy! I had no idea that he moved in such interesting circles.

I am not a big fan of Cream but it seems pretty hard to avoid that Cream + Hendrix was basically the first step to heavy rock/metal

I'd be interested to know if Cream were an acknowledged influence on the early Black Sabbath. Seems plausible, and their careers did overlap. That's the kind of thing I'd like to have been discussed in the episode.

Sabbath were big Cream fans, Geezer and Bill Ward especially

I thought Cream band the Yardbirds had been significant in popularizing improvisation with major impact on the San Francisco ballroom scene and elsewhere. Or at least translating something that had been happening in a jazz setting into an electric rock one.
I have heard that the very early Who and possibly their earlier incarnation under a different name had done jams on r'n'b/blues stuff so some other bands were probably doing similar but it becoming a direction taken more consciously in the wake of those bands touring.

Also that in a Chinese whispers type take on Cream's intentions of keeping something vibrant but getting stuck in noisy distortion placeholders become widely dispersed method. Repetitive riffs played to at least have a part being played become the focus of those inspired by what the original player thought of as a lack of inspiration etc.& you get the more stoner end of hard rock.

Cream's intentions being more of a nuanced interplay. But amplification and having to play when not feeling fully inspired adding to something not being fully to their liking but something that does lay a usable template for others to explore.