A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs Podcast By Andrew Hickey cover art

A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs

A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs

By: Andrew Hickey
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 Andrew Hickey presents a history of rock music from 1938 to 1999, looking at five hundred songs that shaped the genre.© 2021 A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs Music Social Sciences World
Episodes
  • Song 178: “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” by Fairport Convention, Part Two: “I Have no Thought of Time”

    Song 178: “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” by Fairport Convention, Part Two: “I Have no Thought of Time”
    Jun 23 2025
    For those who haven’t heard the announcement I posted, songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the second part of a two-episode look at the song “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” by Fairport Convention, and the intertwining careers of Joe Boyd, Sandy Denny, and Richard Thompson. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-one-minute bonus episode available, on Judy Collins’ version of this song. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by editing, 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/ Errata For about an hour this was uploaded with the wrong Elton John clip in place of “Saturday Sun”. This has now been fixed. I say “The Ballad of Evermore” at one point where of course I mean “The Battle of Evermore” (the script was correct and it’s right in the transcript, I just misspoke). Resources Because of the increasing problems with Mixcloud’s restrictions, I have decided to start sharing streaming playlists of the songs used in episodes instead of Mixcloud ones. This Tunemymusic link will let you listen to the playlist I created on your streaming platform of choice — however please note that not all the songs excerpted are currently available on streaming. The songs missing from the Tidal version are “Shanten Bells” by the Ian Campbell Folk Group, “Tom’s Gone to Hilo” by A.L. Lloyd, two by Paul McNeill and Linda Peters, three by Elton John & Linda Peters, “What Will I Do With Tomorrow” by Sandy Denny and “You Never Know” by Charlie Drake, but the other fifty-nine are there. Other songs may be missing from other services. The main books I used on Fairport Convention as a whole were Patrick Humphries’ Meet On The Ledge, Clinton Heylin’s What We Did Instead of Holidays, and Kevan Furbank’s Fairport Convention on Track. Rob Young’s Electric Eden is the most important book on the British folk-rock movement. Information on Richard Thompson comes from Patrick Humphries’ Richard Thompson: Strange Affair and Thompson’s own autobiography Beeswing. Information on Sandy Denny comes from Clinton Heylin’s No More Sad Refrains and Mick Houghton’s I’ve Always Kept a Unicorn. I also used Joe Boyd’s autobiography White Bicycles and Chris Blackwell’s The Islander. And this three-CD set is the best introduction to Fairport’s music currently in print. Transcript Before we begin, this episode contains reference to alcohol and cocaine abuse and medical neglect leading to death. It also starts with some discussion of the fatal car accident that ended last episode. There’s also some mention of child neglect and spousal violence. If that’s likely to upset you, you might want to skip this episode or read the transcript. One of the inspirations for this podcast when I started it back in 2018 was a project by Richard Thompson, which appears (like many things in Thompson’s life) to have started out of sheer bloody-mindedness. In 1999 Playboy magazine asked various people to list their “songs of the Millennium”, and most of them, understanding the brief, chose a handful of songs from the latter half of the twentieth century. But Thompson determined that he was going to list his favourite songs *of the millennium*. He didn’t quite manage that, but he did cover seven hundred and forty years, and when Playboy chose not to publish it, he decided to turn it into a touring show, in which he covered all his favourite songs from “Sumer Is Icumen In” from 1260: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Sumer is Icumen In”] Through numerous traditional folk songs, union songs like “Blackleg Miner”, pieces by early-modern composers, Victorian and Edwardian music hall songs, and songs by the Beatles, the Ink Spots, the Kinks, and the Who, all the way to “Oops! I Did It Again”: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Oops! I Did it Again”] And to finish the show, and to show how all this music actually ties together, he would play what he described as a “medieval tune from Brittany”, “Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt”: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt”] We have said many times in this podcast that there is no first anything, but there’s a reason that Liege and Lief, Fairport Convention’s third album of 1969, and the album other than Unhalfbricking on which their reputation largely rests, was advertised with the slogan “The first (literally) British folk rock album ever”. Folk-rock, as the term had come to be known, and as it is still usually used today, had very little to do with traditional folk music. Rather, the records of bands like The Byrds or Simon and Garfunkel were essentially taking the sounds of British beat groups of the early sixties, particularly the ...
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  • Song 178: “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” by Fairport Convention, Part One, Going Electric

    Song 178: “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” by Fairport Convention, Part One, Going Electric
    May 16 2025

    For those who haven’t heard the announcement I posted, songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the first part of a two-episode look at the song “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” by Fairport Convention, and the intertwining careers of Joe Boyd, Sandy Denny, and Richard Thompson. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.

    Patreon backers also have a twenty-seven-minute bonus episode available, on “Baby It’s You” by Smith.

    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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  • Song 177: “Never Learn Not to Love” by the Beach Boys, Part 4: “Sometimes I Have A Great Notion”

    Song 177: “Never Learn Not to Love” by the Beach Boys, Part 4: “Sometimes I Have A Great Notion”
    Mar 22 2025

    For those who haven’t heard the announcement I posted, songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the third and final (and very, very long) part of a multi-episode look at the song “Never Learn Not to Love” by the Beach Boys, and the links between Charles Manson and the LA music scene, as well as the life of Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.

    Patreon backers also have a ninety-minute bonus episode available, on “The Letter” by the Box Tops and the career of Alex Chilton.

    I’ve also started up an email newsletter at https://it-was-ninety-years-ago-today.ghost.io/. I took a temporary break from that while finishing this episode, as it became much, much longer than I expected, but I will be resuming it shortly.

    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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Featured Article: 20+ of the Best Music Podcasts to Play on Repeat


These are 20+ of the best music podcasts around. They're as different from one another as rock 'n' roll is from opera; some are funny and lighthearted, while others explore hefty social issues. Some focus on specific kinds of music—rap, country, classical, rock, pop—and others highlight diverse artists working in just about every musical style. Music fans are as varied as the music they listen to, but we promise there's something here for everyone.

Featured Article 20 of the Best Music Podcasts to Play on Repeat
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Thank Andrew for enhancing my mornings with your awesome podcast! I look forward to them! As someone with their masters in music I have thoroughly enjoyed your research. Thank you!

Fascinating

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Enjoy every episode and admire the tremendous amount of research and insight in each. Tells the stories with sensitivity, humbleness and occasional humor. Quite a body of work being assembled in this series.

Incredible Work

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These episodes are very well put together. I was pleased surprised at the quality of the research and writing. Would definitely recommend! So, so good!

A couple of points:
1. Level the volume of the narration and musical clips. Bus the music clips into a limiter/maximizer for consistent volumes.
2. Just place a tag or warning up front to warn about sensitive material. The apologetics are a bit much and distract from what is quality content. (No, I’m not an old man. Lol). People are resilient and capable of making reasoned judgment about the media they consume.

Awesome, In-Depth Story-Telling

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Am only 30 episodes in, but will be staying for the duration. Andrew Hickey has done his homework. This is not just a history of the music but of the times and places it comes out of. Highly recommend it for lovers of both rock and roll and contemporary history.

come for the music, stay for the backstory.

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I got attracted to this podcast due to my interest and desire to learn more about rock music. In the process I have discovered many artists I was no aware of.

Subscribe and enjoy!

Excellent podcast to learn about rock and its artists

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Each vignette is an experience, holds my attention, and pulls old memories while creating anew.

I like this...

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This entire story could have been an hour long and nothing important would have been left out. There was so much unimportant, uninteresting trivial info in here it was maddeningly difficult to stay focused for four hours. As usual his research and presentation are impeccable, but thoroughly wasted on this rambling mess.

Much too long

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The research is simply amazing, and I appreciate having the actual music clips as samples — although they are too quiet in relation to the narration.

However Hickey’s incessant, annoying and conspicuous virtue signalling is utterly exhausting and a major time suck. Please STOP IT.

By all means, issue trigger warnings, avoid *non-contextualised* use of outdated and/or insulting ethnic terms, nor should bad behaviour be excused or normalised. But mind, humans behaving badly — men and women, of all colours and walks of life — are a major part OF the story of Popular music. Tell the story minus all the whinging and self-flagellation over nonsense like “cultural appropriation,” a misnomer if ever there was one. Was it also “appropriation” when Chuck Berry rewrote the old fiddle tune “Ida Red” into “Maybelline”? Or when Henry Sloan first played blues using Hawaiian slide technique on Dockery plantation at the turn of the century?

Of course not. Music is a huge melting pot. Everybody who wants to dip in can, and will.

In fact, there's an excellent argument to be made that “trigger warnings” themselves are really more about white entitlement, condescendingly “protecting” people YOU deem too weak or fragile from bad words or concepts. Please. Life doesn’t come with trigger warnings, certainly not in the so-called “third world” or for the working poor. Grow up.

It’s easy to dismiss such criticism, as Hickey has given the majority of positive reviews, as being from “old white Boomers” (we won’t even go into the inherent ageism involved) calling him a “woke snowflake” (though if the brothel creeper fits...).

But the salient point being missed is that Hickey is actually drawing undue attention to HIMSELF and making the podcast all about HIS discomfort with the events, names, motivations, etc. he’s reporting on. Witness the ridiculous contortions he goes through to avoid just saying “gypsy,” which appears in the title and/or lyrics of at least a dozen really important songs in the genre (and which most Romany people have no issue with), which would be utterly hysterical if it weren’t so bloody pathetic.

Not to mention the inevitable hypocrisy that arises from such vain attempts at purity, and as such the series is shot through with those inconsistencies. One that immediately comes to mind is Hickey’s not wanting to use the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn’s “dead name” (WTAF?) — BTW, some of his old friends still call him “Jim” to this day — yet apparently having no problem with using drummer Michael Clarke’s real name (Michael Dick), and even almost making a dry, somewhat adolescent joke about it. Come on, mate.

Hickey makes such inconvenient truths a MUCH bigger deal than needs be, and in the process he inserts himself into the story — something all too common with millennial podcasters, I’m afraid. Sorry mate, you are NOT the story. You are a chronicler. Full stop.

Please spend more time on equalising the relative volumes between voice and music, and stop being so bloody unctuous, because otherwise it’s a brilliant podcast.

PS - Appalachia is pronounced “Apple-AT-chia” NOT “Apple-AY-shah.”

More History, Less Whinging!

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