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

He doesn't strike me as someone who hates many bands. And I bet in the course of deep diving for a month on a band, you come to appreciate stuff that you thought you never could.

enochroot otm, this is something i really like about Hickey. Listening to the recent "Hey Jude" one and Byrds/Gram Parsons one, I did get the feeling that he probably likes the Beatles substantially more than he likes the Byrds. But in both episodes, he really strikes a fine balance of describing the respective bands and where they stood in the broader rock/pop context of the time--both artistically and within the economics of the industry.

It's really rare to hear anything that sounds like either hagiography or hatchet job on the podcast, and there's also enough insight and ideas and unexpected connections that it avoids the "I'm reading wikipedia into a microphone" trap that some podcasts fall into.

Like you can tell when he thinks the members of a group are kind of dopey--like in the Cream episode--but there was also a really good contextualizing of the band in that episode and the critiques he makes of them are usually insightful, not just potshots.

A History of Rock Music in 500 Potshots, would listen.