Advertise on podcast: A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs

This episode, we look at the song “Many Rivers to Cross”, the birth of reggae, and the career of the late Jimmy Cliff. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a sixty-seven-minute bonus episode available, on “Return of Django” by the Upsetters. 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/. (more…)

This episode, we look at the song “Proud Mary” and the brief but productive career of Creedence Clearwater Revival. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-four-minute bonus episode available, on “Mendocino” by the Sir Douglas Quintet. 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/. ERRATUM: Three times early on I talk about a 1940s label called Concord Records. That’s meant to be Coronet Records — Concord Records is the label that *bought* Fantasy Records in the early twenty-first century, Coronet Records is the label that *became* Fantasy Records. (more…)

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 “Dazed and Confused” by Led Zeppelin, although this episode doesn’t get as far as Led Zeppelin’s formation, and is mostly about the intertwining session careers of John Paul Jones and (especially) Jimmy Page. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a thirty-eight minute bonus episode available, on “Jim’s Blues” by P.J. Proby. 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/ (more…)

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 “Dazed and Confused” by Led Zeppelin, although this episode doesn’t get as far as Led Zeppelin’s formation, and is mostly about the intertwining session careers of John Paul Jones and (especially) Jimmy Page. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a thirty-five minute bonus episode available, on “Boom-Bang-a-Bang” by Lulu. 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/ (more…)

Erratum: At one point here I say “Cannonball Adderley” when I mean “Nat Adderley”. This episode is part of Pledge Week 2025. For five days this week, I will be posting old Patreon bonus episodes to the main feed to encourage people to subscribe to my Patreon. If you want more of these, and only if you can afford it, subscribe for $1 a month at patreon.com/andrewhickey . Whether you do or not, I hope you enjoy this one. (more…)

This episode is part of Pledge Week 2025. For five days this week, I will be posting old Patreon bonus episodes to the main feed to encourage people to subscribe to my Patreon. If you want more of these, and only if you can afford it, subscribe for $1 a month at patreon.com/andrewhickey . Whether you do or not, I hope you enjoy this one. (more…)

This episode is part of Pledge Week 2025. For five days this week, I will be posting old Patreon bonus episodes to the main feed to encourage people to subscribe to my Patreon. If you want more of these, and only if you can afford it, subscribe for $1 a month at patreon.com/andrewhickey . Whether you do or not, I hope you enjoy this one. (more…)

This episode is part of Pledge Week 2025. For five days this week, I will be posting old Patreon bonus episodes to the main feed to encourage people to subscribe to my Patreon. If you want more of these, and only if you can afford it, subscribe for $1 a month at patreon.com/andrewhickey . Whether you do or not, I hope you enjoy this one. (more…)

This episode is part of Pledge Week 2025. For five days this week, I will be posting old Patreon bonus episodes to the main feed to encourage people to subscribe to my Patreon. If you want more of these, and only if you can afford it, subscribe for $1 a month at patreon.com/andrewhickey . Whether you do or not, I hope you enjoy this one. (more…)

Transcript It’s that time of year again, the time that regular listeners have come to know as Pledge Week, where for five days (this time from Tuesday through Saturday, because I had a migraine yesterday when I should have been recording this intro) I post five old Patreon bonus episodes to the main feed as a way of persuading some of you to sign up to become Patreon backers. I say at the end of every episode that every week there’s a ten-minute bonus episode, and that’s no longer completely true (and I’ll be refreshing the outro on the podcast soon to acknowledge that). Instead there’s at least one bonus for every main episode, plus other ones as frequently as I can release them, which seems to average about once a fortnight overall. But the bonuses are also a lot longer than ten minutes now — at the shortest they tend to be twenty minutes, and some of them can stretch to ninety minutes or longer. And you can get access to all of them — around two hundred currently available, plus new ones — for one dollar a month at patreon.com/andrewhickey . You could, if you wanted, sign up, pay your one dollar, download the two hundred or so episodes that are there, and then cancel. Though obviously I’d prefer you stick around a while. As always when I do this though I want to make something clear — while Patreon is the only way I make my living, and my Patreon supporters are the only way I am able to keep doing what I’m doing, I do not want you to sign up to my Patreon if you are short of money yourself. I am currently making a very comfortable living — I could always do with more, and I need to do these pledge weeks every so often to keep the numbers up, but if you don’t have any spare cash I do not want anyone going short to support my work. But if, after paying your own bills, helping out loved ones, supporting charities and good causes, and putting something away in savings, you still have a dollar a month left over (and it’s completely understandable if you don’t), then I think there are worse things you could do with that dollar than support me at patreon.com/andrewhickey. And if you don’t have a spare dollar left over after all that, then please continue listening to the main podcast for free, and maybe tell just one friend about it. I’ll be back in a week or so with the next main episode, on a band a lot of people have been looking forward to hearing about.

This episode, we look at the song “Kick Out the Jams” by the MC5, and the brief career of the most revolutionary guitar band of the sixties. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. As explained in the episode itself, it would be impossible to do this episode without using one particular Oedipal epithet, but use of that term would lose this podcast its clean rating. Therefore this is a censored version of the episode, with the many, many, many uses of that word replaced. Patreon backers have access to an uncensored version, if you want to hear me say a lot of swear words. Patreon backers also have a twenty-four-minute bonus episode available, on “Get Together” by the Youngbloods. 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/ . Also, thanks to Mia Murch for checking the final version and making sure no expletives were left in. (more…)

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/ (more…)

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/ (more…)

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/ (more…)

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 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 forty-eight-minute bonus episode available, on “Fruit Tree” by Nick Drake. I’ve also started up an email newsletter at https://it-was-ninety-years-ago-today.ghost.io/ 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…)