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

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

was no mention of "Miracles."

but apparently JeffStar fans were pretty pissed about that.

I can't even imagine having to put up this these kinds of people.

Plus, I don't understand why he would need to have talked about this song which wasn't released 'til 75 when he's still in the late 60s. Also, I have never heard this song in my life and I've listened to a ton of music from this era, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As someone that kind of likes this but doesn't think it's the greatest thing ever, it's perfectly ok to skip episodes and only listen to the ones that might interest you.

brilliant advice, I'll take it

Plus, I don't understand why he would need to have talked about this song which wasn't released 'til 75 when he's still in the late 60s.

This threw me for a loop as well, but I guess it's that he covers the entire Jefferson Airplane/Starship career? He sometimes does that if the artist doesn't have any more songs to come on the list...

Exactly. Many episodes will cover the artist’s entire career. The earlier ones, due to relatively minimal documentation on the artist, can usually manage this in 30-40 minutes. But the more recent ones can be upwards of two or three (or nearly five) hours.

The Airplane episode covered their whole lifespan, from pre-formation through “We Built This City” and beyond (the no-original-members lineup even gets a mention). I thought it worked perfectly, but yeah, I can’t imagine the annoyance of dealing with angry JeffStar fans. And you’d think Dead Heads would be all over him, complaining he left out a minor detail, but weirdly, there seems to be consensus among Dead Heads and non-fans alike that the Dead episode was something of a tour de force.

I’m a pretty obsessive deadhead and that episode was very cool. I loved hearing the take of an impartial observer with a vast knowledge of the larger music world. There are so many GD bios that cover the same tired territory over and over. This one was different in a great way. Only wish he’d spent more time on the 80s when things kinda went off the rails but that’s probably not so interesting a story to non- obsessives.

Take a load off Andy.

Hes back down to 2 hours with the new episode. So maybe he is lightening his load. Not listened to it yet and probably should get the patreon and not miss any of his output.

I don’t think it’s necessarily that he’s purposely lightening his load. He did say that the Dead, Velvets, and “All You Need Is Love” episodes are outliers, and listening to the Band episode you can see why: there’s a bunch of mentions of people who figured prominently earlier in the series (George Goldner and Morris Levy, among others), and the Velvets and especially the Dead episodes simply couldn’t be tied into the story in the same way. One of the things I admire most about his approach is his keen understanding of how and why details and accounts are important to the story — the Dead episode had to be nearly five hours, but those hours weren’t taken up by minutiae at the periphery. And did we really need all that time on La Monte Young in the Velvets episode, or Dexter Gordon in the “Eight Miles High” episode (which, at 90 minutes, is quaintly introduced with, “This is going to be an absurdly long episode”)? Yes. Yes we did.

(Also, we’re up to five Sun Ra mentions in the series, starting all the way back at episode 7.)

He said in the Rick Rubin interview – which is a great listen – that he very much viewed the Dead one as experimenting with the form in contrast to what he called the "meat and potatoes" approach of the typical episode.

He mentioned in the recent Q&A that there would be other big long shaggy ones coming up, and I am here for it. Even the new Band episode begins with John Ruskin. I love that.

The Band episode was the first major one where I felt like I didn’t learn anything significant or get a perspective that I hadn’t heard before. Maybe I’m too steeped in Dylan & The Hawks lore .. altho I’m probably a bigger Beatles nut TBH and have been illuminated by every Beatles episode. I wonder if Hickey just isn’t as much of a Dylan / Band fan and as such didn’t put as much effort into building a bigger story around the scene; I would have thought that this story, as the real locus of the Cult of Authenticity in Rock, would have been ripe for a new perspective or a takedown even, but it was about the most straightforward retelling of the Rolling Stone version of events as you could get. Ah well.

Fantastic new episode on Aretha's "I Say a Little Prayer," which includes much material on Burt Bacharach. After the featured song is covered there's still one hour of interesting stuff to come.