A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs

By Andrew Hickey

Andrew Hickey presents a history of rock music from 1938 to 1999, looking at five hundred songs that shaped the genre.... more

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FAQs about A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs:

How many episodes does A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs have?

The podcast currently has 282 episodes available.

A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs episodes:

January 20, 2021 Episode 111: “Heat Wave” by Martha and the Vandellas
Episode one hundred and eleven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Heat Wave” by Martha and the Vandellas, and the beginnings of Holland-Dozier-Holland. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.
Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “My Boyfriend’s Back” by the Angels.
Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/
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January 09, 2021 Episode 110: “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes
Episode 110 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Be My Baby”, and at the career of the Ronettes and Ronnie Spector. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.
Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Little Saint Nick” by the Beach Boys.
Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)
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January 03, 2021 BONUS: A Tribute to Gerry Marsden
I just heard the sad news that Gerry Marsden, of Gerry and the Pacemakers, has died today aged seventy-eight. As the latest episode of the podcast is late due to personal issues, I thought I’d make this available to the general public – this is a ten-minute Patreon bonus episode I did back in October, on Gerry and the Pacemakers, so it’s here as a little tribute. He’ll be missed.
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January 01, 2021 Apology for Delay
This is just a quick apology for the delay with this week’s episode. I had some very, very bad news in my personal life last weekend, and haven’t been able to focus properly. I hope to have the next episode up in a couple of days’ time, and things should be back to normal, at least as far as the schedule goes, after that.
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December 23, 2020 Episode 109: “Blowin’ in the Wind” by Peter, Paul, and Mary
Episode one hundred and nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Blowin’ in the Wind”, Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, the UK folk scene and the civil rights movement. Those of you who get angry at me whenever I say anything that acknowledges the existence of racism may want to skip this one. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.
Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” by the Crystals.
Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/
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December 23, 2020 Episode 109: “Blowin’ in the Wind” by Peter, Paul and Mary
Episode one hundred and nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Blowin’ in the Wind”, Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, the UK folk scene and the civil rights movement. Those of you who get angry at me whenever I say anything that acknowledges the existence of racism may want to skip this one. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.

Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” by the Crystals.
Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/
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Resources
As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.

This compilation contains all Peter, Paul and Mary’s hits.
I have used *many* books for this episode, most of which I will also be using for future episodes on Dylan:
The Mayor of MacDougal Street by Dave Van Ronk and Elijah Wald is the fascinating and funny autobiography of Dylan’s mentor in his Greenwich Village period, including his interactions with Albert Grossman.
Chronicles Volume 1 by Bob Dylan is a partial, highly inaccurate, but thoroughly readable autobiography.
Bob Dylan: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon is a song-by-song look at every song Dylan ever wrote, as is Revolution in the Air, by Clinton Heylin.
Heylin also wrote the most comprehensive and accurate biography of Dylan, Behind the Shades.
I’ve also used Robert Shelton’s No Direction Home, which is less accurate, but which is written by someone who knew Dylan.
Only one book exists on Peter, Paul, and Mary themselves, and it is a hideously overpriced coffee table book consisting mostly of photos, so I wouldn’t bother with it.
Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World by Billy Bragg has some great information on the British folk scene of the fifties and sixties.
And Singing From the Floor is an oral history of British folk clubs, including a chapter on Dylan’s 1962 visit to London.

Patreon
This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?
Transcript

Today we’re going to look at the first manufactured pop band we will see in this story, but not the last — a group cynically put together by a manager to try and cash in on a fad, but one who were important enough that in a small way they helped to change history. We’re going to look at the March on Washington and the civil rights movement, at Bob Dylan blossoming into a songwriter and the English folk revival, and at “Blowin’ in the Wind” by Peter, Paul, and Mary:
[Excerpt: Peter, Paul and Mary, “Blowin’ in the Wind”]
Albert Grossman was an unusual figure in the world of folk music. The folk revival had started out as an idealistic movement, mostly centred on Pete Seeger, and outside a few ultra-commercial acts like the Kingston Trio, most of the people involved were either doing it for the love of the music, or as a means of advancing their political goals. No doubt many of the performers on the burgeoning folk circuit were also quite keen to make money — there are very few musicians who don’t like being able to eat and have a home to live in — but very few of the people involved were primarily motivated by increasing their income.
Grossman was a different matter. He was a businessman, and he was interested in money more than anything else — and for that he was despised by many of the people in the Greenwich Village folk scene. But he was, nonetheless, someone who was interested in making money *from folk music* specifically. And in the late fifties and early sixties this was less of a str
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December 16, 2020 Episode 108: “I Wanna Be Your Man” by the Rolling Stones
Episode 108 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Wanna Be Your Man” by the Rolling Stones and how the British blues scene of the early sixties was started by a trombone player.
Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.
Patreon backers also have an eight-minute bonus episode available, on “The Monkey Time” by Major Lance.
Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/
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December 16, 2020 BONUS: I Read The NewsToday Oh Boy: The Kennedy Assassination
The third in the occasional series of ten-minute looks at topics in the news during the time we’re looking at covers the Kennedy assassination. Click through for the transcript:
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December 08, 2020 Episode 107: “Surf City” by Jan and Dean
Episode 107 of A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs looks at “Surf City” and the career of Jan and Dean, including a Pop Symphony, accidental conspiracy to kidnap, and a career that both started and ended with attempts to get out of being drafted. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.
Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Hey Little Cobra” by the Rip Chords.
Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/
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December 08, 2020 Admin Note: Changing Providers
This is just a quick admin note to let you know that there might be a brief disruption to the podcast soon. Last night someone pointed out to me that the podcast’s host, Podbean, has made a change and now when you visit the website on a mobile device and try to download an individual episode, you get told you must install the Podbean app.
I pay for hosting so that people can access the podcast in whatever way they choose, and the open, platform-independent nature of podcasting is very important to me. So while this week’s episode will go up as normal, I’m going to change providers as soon as possible, hopefully this week. That might mean that there’s a little bit of disruption to the feed, and if so I apologise, but I’ll do my best to minimise that. But it’s very important to me that my listeners don’t feel forced to download apps whose quality I can’t vouch for.
The next proper episode will be up in a few hours.
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FAQs about A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs:

How many episodes does A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs have?

The podcast currently has 282 episodes available.

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