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

New Yorker article on the project by Bill McKibben(!)

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/podcast-dept/a-music-podcast-unlike-any-other

I've been hounding friends to listen to this. The initial reaction is usually, "oh, huh, another music podcast. Yeah, I might check it out someday."

Weeks later, said friend will collar me and say, "THAT PODCAST HAS ENRICHED MY LIFE!"

It's sure enriching mine. Just caught wind of it here earlier this summer and I am super obsessed (though still catching up). As someone said above, some of my fave episodes are about acts I am not as passionate about, like the Dark Star/Dead episode, which knocked it out of the park imo. It was so great how began with Prufrock and Vonnegut; one of the real pleasures is hearing him drop an apparent non sequitur like that and waiting to see how he'll make it relevant to his larger take.

one of the real pleasures is hearing him drop an apparent non sequitur like that and waiting to see how he'll make it relevant to his larger take.

Definitely. When he kicked off with Eliot and Vonnegut, it was one of those moments where you know you’re in for a helluva ride.

And because it took him so long to finish, I was able to read Slaughterhouse-Five, which I’d inexplicably missed, in the interim. Come to find out Ilium is based on a nearby town. Said town has a great record store where I recently picked up Roy Wood’s Boulders after hearing a snippet on the Move episode. It’s all a rich tapestry.

Also: Firesign Theatre!

I’ve enjoyed some of this guy’s books and those episodes of the podcast I have listened to but now it seems to have mushroomed into a jam band Dick’s Picks volume of material that I will never be able to catch up to in this lifetime.

I'm not even sure when I started this, but I've been making my way through it at least since last autumn and am almost caught up. Proud Patreon subscriber since probably four episodes in and I'm glad to see this getting more attention. I've tried to get so many friends interested in this, but so far nobody has bitten.

I just finally took the plunge, 1 episode in lol. Question for the devotees - will I miss a lot if I skip around? Does he do a lot of referring back to previous episodes, not repeating the context for something that is part of a multi-episode through line, etc? I'd love to be a completist but just seeing how the episodes get longer and longer I can't imagine I'm really gonna be able to do it

I think it's fine to pop in and out, every episode is fairly self-contained and he does say when some previous context is needed. I would start with one of the big recent episodes to see if it's your thing.

Personally, I highly recommend not skipping around for several reasons. I would have missed out on a LOT of fascinating information and tremendous music if I'd skipped some of the earlier songs that I unfamiliar or only somewhat familiar with -- the "Love Is Strange" episode in particular had something in it that utterly floored me.

He does often refer back to previous episodes without contextualizing, though that's not always the case. But for example, if you skipped ahead to the Love "Alone Again Or" episode, there's a reference to Johnny Otis's pigeon breeding. Huh?? Yeah, you'd have to go back to the episodes that talk about Johnny Otis (and there's more than a few) to get that story.

that I *was unfamiliar or only somewhat familiar with

started a while back, it's an incredible piece of work. to echo tarfumes i would say that it's worth going through in order - also for the fact that the episodes i found the most fascinating were not always the ones i was most excited about going in (for instance, bill haley)

in any case, the whole thing has been humbling! (in the old sense of the word) like i really thought i had a better than your average bear knowledge of the origins and early days of rock n' roll but this has been completely eye opening, so much i didn't know.

Just want to clarify that when I say he refers back to previous episodes without contextualizing, it's usually along the lines of mentioning someone in passing -- Gaynel Hodge, or George Goldner, say -- without always saying who they were or what they did.

Does he refer to the latter as "Record Man George Goldner"?

No, but sometimes he'll say "they signed to George Goldner's record label," but won't (and can't, without seriously derailing the episode) give more of the story of who Goldner was.

a reference to Johnny Otis's pigeon breeding.

otis was like the secret nexus of early rock n roll, he pops up every 3rd episode it seems like

I love that I've stuck to it strictly chronologically, to get the feel for it as the years pass. It gave me context for doo wop and vocal groups that made be appreciate those forms much more, which later on gives, say, James Brown's emergence a full band leader a lot more weight. Or how surf, folk revival, Merseybeat, British blues and Motown intertwined in 1962-64.

Just thinking that due to recent episode length you might be better checking out earlier shorter episodes. Though this is pretty high quality so you might just be swept up by an episode that is 2 or 3 hours long anyway.
But earlier episodes were much shorter though they do cover earlier era of music since he is developing a history like.
Just not sure where one would jump in as a neophyte. Couple of series ago he was doing hour and a half though.

another vote for starting from the beginning. like ums i thought i had reasonable grasp of rock history but i was quickly disabused of that notion. the social context discussed in the episodes on music from the 40s and early 50s were super interesting as well

I started at the beginning but then started a second run starting in 1966 since I'm doing some writing about that period right now (and I also kind of wanted to be current with others who were totally up to date). It's working fine for me to be in two places at once, but I do think you would miss something if you were just randomly dipping in here and there. Though it's impossible to remember every single thing he puts down there's a cumulative force to hearing everything that's happening, say, over several episodes in 1957.

As bendy mentions, the benefit of starting at the beginning is that it gives you an inkling of what it may have sounded like to hear, say, Blue Suede Shoes for the first time in 1956.
One thing he's really good at is highlighting what was innovative about a song/artist *at the particular moment in history*. So if you've haven't spent weeks working through the doo-wop episodes, this effect might be lost when you listen to the first rockabilly episode.
The whole thing really is telling a long-form story.

I keep thinking a new episode was posted every time this thread bumps. :(

this is the update he put out yesterday

As part of my efforts to get things to backers on a slightly more regular basis I'm staggering things a little bit rather than clumping them, but there's still a lot of things coming this week.

Tilt is currently editing the first of two Patreon Q&A episodes, which should be up some time Tuesday.

My interview on Rick Rubin's podcast should be up Tuesday night/Wednesday morning assuming it comes out on their normal schedule (I've been told it's this week).

Thursday will be the Patreon bonus episode on The Pretty Things.

Saturday the main episode on The Band will go up (the Pretty Things is the bonus for that episode)

Monday of next week I'll be doing a blog post, reviewing gigs I saw in July

Wednesday of next week will be the next Patreon Q&A.

And with luck you'll get another backer-only bonus podcast on Friday of next week, but I can't promise that.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts. I’m starting at the beginning (listened to ep 1 on Benny Goodman in the car this morning) and will go in order but allow myself to take little detours here or there to a song or era that is already well known/beloved to me and thus more easy to engage with. I’m excited.

Yeah, I started with episodes on a few songs I had a connection to and quickly rewound back to episode 1. I’ve listened to the whole thing twice (excepting the most recent episodes). If you click with it, I must recommend becoming a patr(e)on and getting the bonus episodes — they’re essential.

feel like a big part of fixing "the volume question" would be just using better eq and comp for the speech and would really make this a lot more listenable https://500songs.com/the-volume-question/

layering speech over music is my thing, have been tempted to do some remixes but I'll stay out of it. Feel that over the last couple of years "the volume question" has been quietly fixed in any case.

cool! I'm not that far in yet but was thinking it would prob get fixed at some point

He's on Rick Rubin's podcast today

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/andrew-hickey/id1671669052?i=1000623142385

Also posted the first part of the Patreon q&a this morning. (And he answered my question!)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/87062010

For those who’ve wondered about his slow delivery on the early episodes, he explains in the Rubin interview.

Hearing him speak without a script explains it pretty well, even without having got to the explanation part yet.

i wish i could find the time to listen to these! they're all super good and interesting. i guess i could just read the transcripts but i do really like listening to the episodes.

anyway i was talking last night to someone about music (because of course i do when i can) and she's like, i was going out with this 56 year old dude and he was telling me about this podcast about all these old songs, and i was like oh yeah that podcast rules, and then she complained that hickey didn't do an episode on "rumble", because that's so often the way with these things, but it was fine because we just wound up listening to a bunch of '70s link wray, which is never a bad thing.

In the first few minutes of that Rick Rubin interview, he mentions that what was originally a 10-year project is now a 20-year project, which means he plans to wrap it up in 2038 (which would mean a pace of 2 episodes per month).

and then she complained that hickey didn't do an episode on "rumble"

It's one of the Patreon bonus episodes.

I've stopped approaching the podcast in terms of "but what about...?" because either a) he'll get to it, or b) there's likely a good reason for it not being covered. That said, the only omission I found genuinely odd -- and I absolutely do not have a horse in this race, because I mostly don't give a shit about Jefferson Starship (though I dig Airplane) -- was no mention of "Miracles." He'd mentioned many lower-charting songs by other artists in other episodes, and that's something of a career highlight for that band. Not a criticism, just an observation, but apparently JeffStar fans were pretty pissed about that.

maybe something to do with the song not being a hit in the UK? I've certainly never heard it before.

It hit # 3 in the US in 1975, and was by far their biggest hit here in the years between "Somebody To Love" and "We Built This City":

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

(Apologies for the awful "lyric" video -- it was the only one I could find with the single edit.)

I dig it myself, but yeah, neither the single nor the album (Red Octopus) charted at all in the UK. But then, none of the Airplane singles charted there either.

i'm sure that's true chartwise but i dunno "jane" feels much more enduring

It seems like their airplay, at least on the station I listened to at the time (WLS-AM in Chicago), was out of proportion to their chart positions. I heard "Jane" several times a day, though Chicago's mayor at the time was Jane Byrne, so it was often played after news segments with stories about Chicago politics. Hit # 14 (and #21 in the UK, their only '70s chart placing there). But I also heard "Find Your Way Back" so much that I assumed it was at least top 10. Nope, peaked at #29.

i heard jane on our classic rock station all the time, it was a staple on kqrs in minneapolis

i just listened to miracles and vaguely remembered it but i'm not sure i've ever heard it on the radio

i also didn't know that "find your way back" was them! they used to play that as well

I think "Miracles" suffers from maybe being a little too "Easy Listening" for Classic Rock programmers, the same way you won't necessarily hear certain other popular at the time songs from, say, Steely Dan or Fleetwood Mac.

Remember too that Classic Rock stations would be playing the album version of "Miracles", which is like 7 minutes--alot of real estate to be taken up when Joe Six Pack is tuning in to get the Led out of groove to some prime CCR/BTO/BÖC.

"do it again" and "my old school" are the dan songs that got a lot of play on our station, but they are some of the most conventionally rock of the SD jawns

The "Jefferson" rock family evolved so much that it's hard to think of all of those groups as incarnations of the same thing. Paul Kantner is the only person who's on both "White Rabbit" and "Find Your Way Back" and of course Grace Slick is the only Airplane member on "We Built This City."

"Miracles" sounds like the most Airplane-ish of all the post-JA material because of the intertwining vocals of Marty Balin & Grace Slick.

Jesus fucking Christ, they're apparently still going, without one single original member, except, I guess, David Freiberg. What's the point? Who goes to listen to them? This makes me irrationally angry.

Need gas for the Starship.

7 minute version of "Miracles" also had the cunilingus reference, lest we forget

Ahem, a "taste of the real world."

Jesus fucking Christ, they're apparently still going, without one single original member

Wait’ll you hear the episodes on the Drifters…

Andrew Hickey seems to talk faster and faster as the Rick Rubin interview progresses