Rock N Roll Archaeology

We start our tale of Paradise Lost in Buena Vista Park, San Francisco, in the fall of 1967. Hippie, the Devoted Son of Mass Media, is dead, and the San Francisco Diggers are conducting the funeral. 

From the funky streets of the Haight we head east a couple miles to the Fillmore West, and meet a complicated man, concert promoter Bill Graham. It was during these early years in San Francisco that Bill created the rock concert experience. 

Then a brief trip to Texas, where Janis Joplin cleans up and then heads back; to San Francisco to find her family. We get to know Janis a little better, and talk about her early work with Big Brother and the Holding Company--and what happened when Janis left Big Brother. 

We’ll spend a little more time on the Big Picture. Politically, culturally, in pretty much every way, 1968 was a pivotal year, in America and around the world. 

Then across the Bay, to the lands that lie East of Eden. We’ll meet two very different acts, that interestingly enough, have similar stories: Sly and the Family Stone, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. 

We close it out with a short meditation on the aftermath of the Summer of Love. We still dream it and dance to it. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An impressionistic look at the interplay of Rock N Roll and Culture in Los Angeles during the latter half of the 1960s. There are familiar elements: storytelling, critical discussion and commentary, and lots of Rock N Roll attitude. But this one is different from most of our previous RNRAP offerings.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We open in Manila, in the Republic of the Philippines, July 3rd, 1966. The second stop of the Far East leg of the Beatles’ 1966 tour starts out weird and ominous, and gets worse from there. By the time the tour sputters to a halt—late August in San Francisco—the boys are almighty sick of it.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We open at Waldo Point Marina in Sausalito, California, just north of San Francisco.

Otis Redding takes a break from the road on Bill Graham’s houseboat, and comes up with a signature song.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jimi Hendrix's astonishing, supernatural talent was forged in poverty and neglect as he grew up in Seattle. We talk about that, and about the night Elvis came to town. After a short stint in the Army comes to a humiliating end, Jimi takes it on the road and spends the next four years paying his dues as a sideman.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We start by taking a clear-eyed look at the infamous seaside “Riots” in the resort town of Clacton, United Kingdom and several other towns in the summer of 1964. The British press were WAY over the top in their depiction of these events, but they did document the first schism, the first big division in Rock music and culture: the traditionalist Rockers versus the Modernists, or “Mods.” Oh yeah, a couple bands like The Who and Kinks make an appearance...

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode Ten opens up with Christian narrating at the site of the Bricklayer’s Arms Public House, in Soho, West London, where Brian Jones met with two younger men, school chums, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, in the fall of 1963. You might know them as The Rolling Stones.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back Diggers to Episode Nine: The Medium, The Message, The Music. This show will contain familiar elements — storytelling, commentary, and musicology — but it is also a bit of a departure.

It takes place mostly in the mid-sixties, but we’re not following a timeline or building a story: it’s more of a mosaic, a think-piece.

We think the influence of psychedelic drugs — especially LSD — on rock music is critically important and very much overlooked. It’s a vital part of the overall story. We hope to make that case with this show.

We will meet some rockers and there will be lots of musical examples, because that’s how we roll. But we will also meet scholars, inventors, researchers and writers: Marshall McLuhan, Albert Hofmann, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey…and more.

We will spend some time on the advances in music technology — better instruments and amps, multi-tracking and effects — and show these advances in the musical media arrive at the same time as advances in the psychedelic media.

And the results of that arrival are, well, mind-blowing.

We’re going “Further” with this episode, so turn on, tune in, and enjoy!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The show opens December 27th, 1961, at the Cavern Club where Pete Best calls in sick, and the boys bring in Richard Starkey - Ringo Starr to the world - to sit in on drums, his first paid gig with the Beatles. It clicks musically; the band really swings with Ringo on drums.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Arrival: we begin the show on February 7th, 1964, in the first-class cabin aboard Pan American Airlines Flight 101 from London to New York City. It’s a raucous, party atmosphere, but John Lennon, for a moment anyway, feels alone in a crowd. 

A door opens, pandemonium ensues, and a new era arrives. 

Some housekeeping, and we move on to the Soho District, West London, and lay some foundation for today’s story—and for future discussions. Then we pull back a bit, and look at some of the political, economic, and cultural forces at play in 1950s England.

We then move on to Liverpool, late 1950s, and meet John Lennon and Paul McCartney, before they was fab. Then we pull back once again, and talk about alchemy and catalysts—and about a shared bond of shared loss. 

One catalyst comes in the form of a person: Paul’s school chum George Harrison, the baddest young guitar-slinger in Liverpool. 

John, Paul and George settle in together in the spring of 1958, and begin a four-year apprenticeship that will take them from coffee-house skifflers to the “Toppermost of the Poppermost.”

Then it’s off to Hamburg, fall of 1960. The Beatles work hard and play hard, and learn the basics of being a professional Rock N Roll band. We briefly meet a sad-eyed bloke who plays drums—and plays them well—in a competing band on the circuit. 

We will also meet two founding Beatles: Stu Sutcliffe and Pete Best, and tell some of Stu’s story, a story with a tragic ending. 

At the end of the second tour, the Beatles become a four piece, and acquire their signature instruments. At the end of the third Hamburg tour, they come back to Liverpool as conquering heroes. 

June of 1962, and John, Paul, and George stand on the brink. 

Departure: there is one final move, one last step to take. And the Beatles already have someone in mind.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices