Rock N Roll Archaeology

Content warning: Here at RNRA, we don’t hide our views. At all. But when it comes to politics, we try not to be in-your-face about it either. Our little slogan is “Just tell the story, and the point will get made.”This time though, we’re a little more overt, we’re letting it rip just a little bit. This particular burr has been under our saddle for a while now.Now: on with the show. 

Summer Time is Shorts Time! RNRA Shorts, that is!

So…here’s a thing. Sometimes we visit Right Wing World online, that’s usually how it starts.On these expeditions we’ll sometimes run into some whinging about “Woke Progressives” cancelling right wing culture and entertainment, or just griping in general about perceived left/liberal bias in popular culture.They’re not totally wrong about that. They’re right, just for the wrong reasons, and we’ll explain why.It’s not just complaining they do. We also see a lot of co-opting and outright stealing. And when they take Rock music and culture and dishonestly try to repurpose it, try to make it serve the conservative agenda, well…unintentional hilarity ensues.So we’ll do some roasting, but we’ll also do some thinking out loud, talk a little about the how and why, and even delve into the deeper history of…the Art of the Steal.

Enjoy!

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Rock’s Backpages

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Songs

Parliament Funkadelic: “One Nation Under A Groove”

Thomas Dolby: “Pulp Culture”

Ted Nugent: “Stranglehold”

Ted Nugent: “Hey Baby”

They Might Be Giants: “Your Racist Friend”

Neil Young: “Rockin’ in the Free World”

Woody Guthrie: “This Land is Your Land”

Trey Parker and Matt Stone: “America, Fuck Yeah”

Toby Keith: “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue”

Living Colour: “Cult of Personality”

Stevie Wonder: “He’s Misstra Know It All”

Green Day: “American Idiot”

Sources

Apocalypse Now: “Mangoes and Tigers” Scene (Retrieved from YouTube)

Roy Edroso Breaks it Down Substack (Paywalled. Roy writes a lot about this issue, and we think he’s really astute–and hilarious.)

The Five Most Repellent Things Ted Nugent Has Ever Done | Rocks Off

Music News: Why can't musicians get politicians to stop playing their songs?

The President’s Shock at the Rows of Empty Seats in Tulsa - The New York Times

American Cringe: Why can’t the contemporary right make art?

Episode 5: The Ballad of Bob and J.R. — Pantheon Podcasts

A Defence of Poetry

Voice Talent 

Darryl Alber as blogger Cameron Summers

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We start with a tragedy, then a cautionary tale of the world not ready for a band. We then find more positive inspiration from an artist who delivers a huge seller. We end with a legend.  

Janis Joplin dies just before releasing her magnum opus, “Pearl.” A band called Fanny is ready to rock, but a culture poisoned by the patriarchy isn’t yet ready to accept them. Carole King makes Tapestry, a sincere, modest, and deeply personal album that hits huge and becomes a milestone for women. We complete the story with a profile of one of the giants of 20th Century Music, Joni Mitchell. We discuss her artistic and commercial peak in the early 70s with “Blue,” “For the Roses,” and “Court and Spark.” We admire all of these women for kicking down the door, and we celebrate the progress we’ve made since them, but there is still a long way to go. 

Now for some general remarks about the research and writing.

To the best of our ability, we tried to center women in this chapter. We’ll leave it to the listener to decide how we did with that.

There’s a diversity of opinion about this, but we think it’s fair to say the second wave of feminism hits the crest during the period we are covering, and it is not at all a coincidence that women really start to make big and important contributions to Rock Music right around this time too. 

Roe vs Wade was decided right around here, about fifty years ago. We are painfully aware of the US Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Roe, stripping many millions of American women of their fundamental human rights to bodily autonomy and medical privacy.

As we move forward with our chapters, we will document that half century of regressive backlash and how it got us here; it’s part of the story. Like we often say, Rock N Roll reflects back on, interacts with, and affects the larger society. And vice versa. In the late Sixties and early Seventies, it seemed like the progress would be permanent, and that more progress was on the way. Some of us were naive enough to believe that. We would do well now to remember the words of the anti slavery activist Frederick Douglass, way back in 1857: 

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. 

Voice Talent

Online Resources

Rock’s Back Pages

Coroner's Report, archived at janisjoplin.net 

ABC Nightly News Report, from October 4th, 1970

Deeper Digs in Rock: 'Rock N Roll Woman: The Fifty Fiercest Female Rockers' with Meredith Ochs

The Institute for the Musical Arts

1416 N. La Brea Ave, Hollywood

50 years ago, the Sylmar earthquake shook L.A., and nothing’s been the same since

Women of Rock Oral History Project

"That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be": Baby Boomers, 1970s Singer-Songwriters, and Romantic Relationships

Carol Hanisch The Personal is Political

New York Times “Albums as Mileposts in a Musical Century”

Deeper Digs in Rock: Reckless Daughter - A Portrait of Joni Mitchell

Jonimitchell.com

Joni Mitchell, Woman of Heart and Mind

Books

Documentaries and Films

Fanny: The Right to Rock

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Welcome back to RNRA Shorts! This time, it’s Filth Through The Ages, and let’s meet some unlikely Free Speech Warriors. Yes, we said it, and we will die on this hill: The Juggalos Are Alright.

Psst, hey! Got a topic suggestion? Let us know!  

Songs

Frank Zappa: “Stinkfoot,” from Apostrophe’, 1974

Insane Clown Posse: “My Axe,” from Bizzar, 2000

Insane Clown Posse: “Hokus Pokus,” from The Great Milenko, 1997

Insane Clown Posse: “To Catch A Predator,” from Bang! Pow! Boom! Nuclear, 2010

Insane Clown Posse: “Boogie Woogie Wu,” from The Great Milenko, 1997

Insane Clown Posse: “What Is A Juggalo,” from The Great Milenko, 1997

AC/DC: “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” from Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, 1976

Insane Clown Posse with Perpetual Hype Engine: “Let’s Go All The Way,” from Bizzar, 2000 

Books

Nathan Rabin: You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me, 2013

Documentaries and Videos

American Juggalo (Recommended!)

Trailer for “The United States of Insanity” (Just released on 12/10/2021, also recommended!) 

ICP Press Conference Video from 9/16/2017 (Behind Time Magazine’s paywall, but the first three views are free.)

Online Resources

Insane Clown Posse’s Official Website

Catullus

The First Amendment Right to be a Juggalo

The FBI Memorandum on Juggalos in pdf format (This one is a real piece of work!)

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A quick look at an intriguing relationship: Joni Mitchell and Prince. 

Enjoy! Oh, hey! Got a topic idea for RNRA Shorts? 

Shoot us an email: [email protected]

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The fuse was lit in 1966. Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and Keith Moon came together to record a proto-metal classic. After the session an offhand quip from Keith Moon sticks with Jimmy Page. 

Then we meet The G; the imposing Peter Grant. Led Zeppelin’s fearsome tough-guy manager was a key reason why Zep dominated the rock landscape in the early 70s. 

Well away from Swinging London, in the grimy industrial town of Birmingham, Black Sabbath comes together. We’ll also take a look at one of the greatest Jam Bands ever, Deep Purple. 

Then on to probably the single saddest story in all of Rock History, the final days of Jimi Hendrix. 

Jimi towers over all of it, the late, lamented godfather of Heavy Rock--Rock that centers around the guitar and celebrates blazing virtuosity on that instrument. 

Gone but not forgotten: the Guitarmageddon explosion has reverberated way beyond the Seventies--all the way up to the present day. 

Far more than any other movement or genre within Rock music...Metal, Heavy Rock, Jam Rock, pick your label...it’s got legs. It changes and grows, continues to reinvent itself, and it sticks around. 

Still with us, still going strong, still powered by fans.  

Voice Actors

Full show notes at http://pantheonpodcasts.com/rock-n-roll-archaeology

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Rock N Roll as the First Draft Of History

We begin in the midwest college town of Kent, Ohio, in the late spring of 1970. We’ll meet three future rockers--students at Kent State University, barely out of their teens--who will be changed forever by what they witness. We’ll check in on Motown, where the fluffy pop “Sound of Young America” is still alive, but there's a big change coming, a movement towards a tougher, more topical sound. We’ll foreshadow that just a little--lots more to come in a later chapter. Rock N Roll is now Rock, and it is mainstreamed now, big and getting bigger. It set out to subvert the dominant paradigm, now it is the dominant paradigm. It can be downright paradoxical at times; defined by its own contradictions. We come back to the campus for the shattering events of May 4th. They inspire a unique musical response, something we really haven’t seen since then.  

Written by Richard Evans and Christian Swain

Hosted and Produced by Christian Swain

Sound Design by Jerry Danielsen

Voice Actors

Songs

Books

Online Sources

Podcasts

Films and Documentaries

• The Murder of Fred Hampton, Directed by Howard Alk, 1971

This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts.

@PantheonPods

Listen in HD only at www.rocknrollarchaeology.com

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This episode is dedicated with love to the memory of our dear friend Dennis Gordon. Dennis was the big booming voice on our show “bumpers” that would begin and end each chapter of Rock N Roll Archaeology. Thank you Dennis, we miss you. May the Four Winds blow you safely home. 

Welcome back to the second half of our big chapter telling the big story of a big year in Rock. If you haven’t done so already, we highly recommend you listen to Episode 18 before you delve into this one! 

We tell the story of 1969 by telling the story of four concerts: The Beatles on the Roof, The Rolling Stones in Hyde Park was the first part. Part Two will take us to the peak, to the apotheosis of Woodstock...and to the abyss at Altamont. And we’ll go to some other places in between too. 

1969 is the year Rock N Roll goes global, and we’ll get into that a little, and set up later discussions of great topics like Rock behind the Iron Curtain and the growing influence of Reggae and World Beat. 

Then we’ll take you to Woodstock, and call off the roster, with lots of great music and commentary.  

The first mythical Rock tour--the Rolling Stones ‘69 tour of America, is up next. That will take us to the final show of the tour, on a dark December night in California, where everything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and the consequences will be tragic. 

We close out with some thoughts on the year and on the decade we’ve just completed, and on what comes next.

This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts.

@PantheonPods

Listen in HD only at www.rocknrollarchaeology.com

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We’re putting down a marker with this episode, and the follow-up: the highest highs and the lowest lows of the entire Rock Era occurred in 1969. It’s a year so big, we had to cut it in two, in order to serve it up properly. 

We start in January, with The Beatles on The Roof, a 42-minute outdoor concert that definitely warmed up the neighborhood of Mayfair, London, England. Then we catch up with their friends and rivals, The Rolling Stones.  

The Stones broke out HUGE in 68 and 69, the beginning of an incredible five-year run: from Beggars Banquet on through to Exile On Main Street. Peak Stones, the sweet spot for the World’s Greatest Rock N Roll Band. 

Brian Jones is out, Mick Taylor is in. We talk about how that happened, and how it impacted the Stones’ sound and attitude. Another influence starts seeping in: American Country Music, thanks to Keith’s new best buddy, Gram Parsons. 

Brian’s tragic--and still unexplained--demise changes the Hyde Park Concert from a coming-out party into a memorial service. Emotion and conviction carry the day, and Hyde Park sets a very high and hopeful bar; it’s an early example of How To Successfully Pull Off A Really Big Concert. 

During that “Moon-Crazy Summer” of 1969, NASA pulls off something really big. It’s the single greatest feat--so far--of human exploration: The Apollo 11 mission to the moon and back. We look at the moon landing through the Rock N Roll lens; we’ll talk about space travel, science fiction, and fantasy...in books, film, television, and most of all, in Rock Music. 

Then David Bowie, with his lifelong knack for being ahead of his time, said take your protein pills and put your helmet on. 

And we did. 

And in just a short time we got used to it, became a little jaded about it. 

That comes later. Here and now in the summer of 1969; stardust, golden, billion year old carbon...got to get ourselves back to the garden. 

We’ll open Part Two at Yasgur’s Farm in upstate New York, and we’ll light a candle in the rain.

Head over to Pantheon Podcasts for full show notes.

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Chapter 17 of Rock N Roll Archaeology is bookended by a couple of Simon & Garfunkel albums: “Bookends” from the spring of 1968; and “Bridge Over Troubled Water” from January of 1970. 

Our story takes place mostly in New York City: a city big enough to spawn two very different, very talented--and very influential--artists: Paul Simon and Lou Reed. 

We skip work on a cold January afternoon to catch a movie: Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate.” It’s a generation milestone of a film, and Simon & Garfunkel’s music is a big part of that; what’s more, we argue, it’s a different kind of soundtrack, something new in film and popular culture. 

We meet Tom Wilson, the first African-American staff producer at Columbia Records. Tom oversaw the first two Simon & Garfunkel albums. We follow him for a little while and he leads us to...Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground.

We get to know Lou and the Velvets, and the scene from which they sprang: Andy Warhol’s Factory. We meet a Factory hang-around, an angry young woman with good reasons to be angry, but she takes it way too far, with tragic consequences. 

And we’ll meet the first Punk Rock band: The MC5, and the revolutionary political milieu they occupied. Wayne Kramer of the MC5 has some things to say about that, and about a fateful MC5 gig at the Fillmore East.

 Finally, we’ll meet one of our favorite artists ever, who came from the same scene as the MC5: Iggy Pop. We say “Amen” to Iggy Pop. 

We wrap it back around to Simon & Garfunkel, and their take on the anger and disappointment, on the turmoil of the late 1960s. An offer of comfort and healing is the first big Pop hit of the 1970s.

Listen to episodes 1-16 of Rock N Roll Archaeology and all our other podcasts at www.pantheonpodcasts.com

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