A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs

By Andrew HickeySociety & Culture Documentary Music History Music History

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A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs episodes

July 13, 2022 PLEDGE WEEK: “Hanky Panky” by Tommy James and the Shondells
This episode is part of Pledge Week 2022. Every day this week, I’ll be posting old Patreon bonus episodes of the podcast which will have this short intro. These are short, ten- to twenty-minute bonus podcasts which get posted to Patreon for my paying backers every time I post a new main episode — there are well over a hundred of these in the archive now. If you like the sound of these episodes, then go to patreon.com/andrewhickey and subscribe for as little as a dollar a month or ten dollars a year to get access to all those bonus episodes, plus new ones as they appear.
Click below for the transcript
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16 min
July 12, 2022 PLEDGE WEEK: “The Name Game” by Shirley Ellis
This episode is part of Pledge Week 2022. Every day this week, I’ll be posting old Patreon bonus episodes of the podcast which will have this short intro. These are short, ten- to twenty-minute bonus podcasts which get posted to Patreon for my paying backers every time I post a new main episode — there are well over a hundred of these in the archive now. If you like the sound of these episodes, then go to patreon.com/andrewhickey and subscribe for as little as a dollar a month or ten dollars a year to get access to all those bonus episodes, plus new ones as they appear.
Click below for the transcript
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16 min
July 11, 2022 PLEDGE WEEK: “Blues Run the Game” by Jackson C Frank
This episode is part of Pledge Week 2022. Every day this week, I’ll be posting old Patreon bonus episodes of the podcast which will have this short intro. These are short, ten- to twenty-minute bonus podcasts which get posted to Patreon for my paying backers every time I post a new main episode — there are well over a hundred of these in the archive now. If you like the sound of these episodes, then go to patreon.com/andrewhickey and subscribe for as little as a dollar a month or ten dollars a year to get access to all those bonus episodes, plus new ones as they appear.
Click below for the transcript
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16 min
July 10, 2022 PLEDGE WEEK: “Winchester Cathedral” by the New Vaudeville Band
This episode is part of Pledge Week 2022. Every day this week, I’ll be posting old Patreon bonus episodes of the podcast which will have this short intro. These are short, ten- to twenty-minute bonus podcasts which get posted to Patreon for my paying backers every time I post a new main episode — there are well over a hundred of these in the archive now. If you like the sound of these episodes, then go to patreon.com/andrewhickey and subscribe for as little as a dollar a month or ten dollars a year to get access to all those bonus episodes, plus new ones as they appear.
Click below for the transcript
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19 min
July 10, 2022 ADMIN: Pledge Week 2022
The Facebook community I talk about is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/293630102611672/
The post for asking Q&A questions is here
The Patreon post for Q&A questions is here
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the start of 2022’s Pledge Week.
For those of you who don’t know, this podcast is my full-time job, and I can only do it because of listener support, and the best way people can support me is to set up a regular donation through patreon.com, and to reward those supporters I do short bonus podcasts that only backers can access, as well as doing occasional other bonus things for them.
Now, I have been very, very, lucky when it comes to people backing me. For the first couple of years of the podcast I had to take on additional work because this wasn’t paying enough, but now I have enough very generous backers that I can pay my mortgage, buy all the books and CDs I need for the research, pay Tilt for his time editing the podcast, and generally do the work without worrying about my finances the way I had to at first. This has been especially useful in the last year, when as you may have gathered everything *else* went wrong in my life — to have that basic financial security because of people’s generous donations has literally saved my life.
I’m making that clear now because I don’t want anyone to give a single penny they can’t afford. If my Patreon donations continue at the same level they have been, I can continue making the podcast indefinitely without worrying, so don’t give me money you can’t afford. But, of course, the only way I can keep the donations at the same level is to remind people occasionally that the Patreon exists — otherwise, the levels will slowly go down, as people lose their jobs or retire and can’tafford that extra dollar a month, or the podcast gets past the era of music they’re interested in, or I say something that causes offence, or they just decide the podcast isn’t for them any more.
So, every year or so, for a week I do a pledge week, where every day for a week I put up one of the old backer-only ten-minute or so podcasts, that Patreon backers have had access to for a year or so. There are well over a hundred of these now, and only a tiny selection of them get posted in these Pledge weeks, so if you want to hear the rest of them you have to subscribe for as little as one dollar a month — or ten dollars for a year.
Again, I want to emphasise — as long as donation levels stay around where they are now, the main podcast will always remain free, and will have no ads or any of the other things people do to monetise their podcasts. Nobody is under any obligation to pay me a penny, and you should only give what you can afford after looking after yourself and your loved ones and any charitable donations or so on. There are many more important uses for your money than my podcast, especially in difficult times like this, and I don’t begrudge anyone listening for free. I’m making enough, and while it’s always nice to have more, there’s no pressure on anyone.
But if you have a little spare cash left over after all that, and you want to help out, for the next week you’ll get a taste of what you can get.
Also, two weeks from today I will be doing two question and answer podcasts. One will be for backers only, and will be answering questions on a Patreon post I’m going to make, which only backers will be able to access. The other will be for the general public, and will be answering questions posted in the comments for the admin post I made a couple of weeks back. I’ll link both posts in the notes to this episode.
Also, while I’m here I’d just like to mention that my friend Shawn has set up a Facebook discussion group for the podcast, which I’ll also link. I’m not on Facebook myself, and while I’m not looking at it myself, Shawn will pass on anything she thinks I should know about the discussions there — but you can also use it to talk about my podcast without worrying that I’m looking over your shoulder.
Anyway, for the next seven days, enjoy these old Patreon backer bonus episodes.
4 min
June 26, 2022 Episode 150: “All You Need is Love” by the Beatles
This week’s episode looks at “All You Need is Love”, the Our World TV special, and the career of the Beatles from April 1966 through August 1967. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.
Patreon backers also have a thirteen-minute bonus episode available, on “Rain” by the Beatles.
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/
NB for the first few hours this was up, there was a slight editing glitch. If you downloaded the old version and don’t want to redownload the whole thing, just look in the transcript for “Other than fixing John’s two flubbed” for the text of the two missing paragraphs.
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0 min
June 26, 2022 Admin: July and Onwards
Transcript
This is just a note to let everyone know what's happening over the next few weeks. As I said a few months back, I'm taking a break after episode one hundred and fifty, which I'm uploading at the same time as I upload this, in order to get a backlog of episodes done. There won't be another new episode up for at least a month, possibly longer, as I'm going to get a backlog of four episodes written, recorded, and edited before I release the next one, so that I know I can keep to a regular schedule. When the podcast comes back, those four episodes will go up weekly, and I am *hoping* that that will be the case from then on -- but by taking this time to prepare a backlog, I will also know what regular schedule I *can* do. It might be -- it almost certainly will be -- an episode every week, but it might be three weeks on, one week off, it might be every other week, it might be four times a month with skip weeks, but you'll be able to predict exactly when it'll be.
If it *is* three weeks on, one week off, or every other week, I'll still also make sure I do *something* for my Patreon backers in off weeks -- once the podcast restarts, backers *will* get a bonus podcast every week, whether or not the main podcast is up then.
Whatever schedule it is, though, it will be a *regular* schedule, which the podcast hasn't had for eighteen months, because I'll no
longer be running on a treadmill that's going faster than I can keep up, and I'll be able to upload episodes in advance and schedule them, and I'll be able to do work in blocks -- so if, as has happened in the past, I have to put off recording a couple of days because of roadworks outside, and then Tilt has to leave the editing a couple of days because of a health problem, that won't mean the episode goes up four days late, because we'll be working a month ahead. That kind of leeway is what I had for most of the first two years of the podcast, and it's what I lost when I was hit with a whole bunch of catastrophes in late 2020 and throughout 2021.
Episodes from this point on are also going to be, in general, shorter than they have been for the last few months. 1966 and 67 is a period where I had to cover a *lot* of ground, adding in new backstory while also moving the story forward, and where nearly every episode had to introduce a whole new style of music *and* a piece of relevant social or political history *and* the biography of an artist *and* their connections to other parts of the story. For most of the next fifty episodes, that won't be the case. There will be other long episodes in the future -- I can think of half a dozen episodes in the next fifty that will require lengths of over ninety minutes as I tell multiple stories, and no doubt more will turn up.
So the way I'm planning to do this is to work on four episodes at once. In each batch of four there will be one long episode -- say, twelve thousand words, the same length as the "Respect" or "Eight Miles High" episodes. There will be two six-thousand word episodes, the same length as, say, the "My Girl" or "Mr. Tambourine Man" episodes. And then there'll be a fourth which could be shorter -- three thousand words like the very earliest episodes -- or longer, depending on how much time I've had to spend on the others. So that should be an average of thirty thousand words of script a month -- the same length as the Beatles episode I'm uploading now. A pace that should be achievable, that should mean those who like longer *and* shorter episodes will be happy at least some of the time, and that will hopefully allow me to stick to a schedule.
So you can expect at least a month with no new regular podcast episodes, but this feed won't be empty. Two weeks from today I'm going to start another of my Pledge Weeks, where for a week I'll put up one old Patreon bonus episode a day. These are things that my backers have already heard, a year or so ago, and it's to encourage new backers to take the plunge -- there's a lot m
5 min
May 22, 2022 Episode 149: “Respect” by Aretha Franklin
Episode 149 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Respect”, and the journey of Aretha Franklin from teenage gospel singer to the Queen of Soul. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.
Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode available, on “I’m Just a Mops” by the Mops.
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/
Also, people may be interested in a Facebook discussion group for the podcast, run by a friend of mine (I’m not on FB myself) which can be found at https://www.facebook.com/groups/293630102611672/
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1 hr 43 min
April 30, 2022 Episode 148: “Light My Fire” by the Doors
Episode one hundred and forty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Light My Fire” by the Doors, the history of cool jazz, and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. 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 Friend Jack” by the Smoke.
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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1 hr 29 min
April 16, 2022 Episode 147: “Hey Joe” by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Episode one hundred and forty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Hey Joe” by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and is the longest episode to date, at over two hours.
Patreon backers also have a twenty-two-minute bonus episode available, on “Making Time” by The Creation.
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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2 hr 1 min