Andrew Hickey — bon vivant, author, middle-aged record nerd — has started a new podcast: an attempt to tell the history of rock music as we know it. In a podcast series that is likely to take several years.
I want you to go right now to 500songs.com and download every episode. And if you follow podcasts, you need to subscribe to this one. Every record nerd needs this.
Each episode is notionally based around one song. Andrew presents the history of how the song came about, and important events in the musical history surrounding it.
(Seven episodes in, we’ve got as far as the 1940s …)
Andrew knows his shit — both the history, and how songs and their descent work in real life. And he loves this stuff, and he wants you to love it too.
The podcasts are scripted — but you want the recorded version because it works with the snatches of the songs he’s talking about. And it’s only half an hour.
This is the only podcast I look forward to, and save on my phone to play multiple times.
I must note how Andrew finishes every episode:
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please by all means subscribe in iTunes or your favourite podcast app and rate it — but more importantly, please tell just one other person about this podcast. Word of mouth is the best way to get information out about any creative work. So please: if you like this, tell someone. Thank you very much.
This is a good universal rule. If you play a cool thing you like — tell people. Hit the social media. Folk is now enforced by law.
It’s all paid for by people backing his Patreon. Go on, give him some money.
I have only just come across this podcast(November 2021) and l wish l had found it earlier.
Andrew is very much the friend l haven’t got( sob sob) . I love old songs and the social history surrounding them- which is where Andrew excells . He is also drily humorous: even his trigger warnings,though perfectly sincere,have their charm. I listen to this to relax and l marvel at how thoroughly he has done his homework.
Hugely enjoyable.
Andrew is actually that nice a fellow!
Does anybody know what song Andrew uses as the intro and closing of each segment? Its driving me nuts and there must be some significance in his choice.
Per the first Q&A episode for patrons – now up for all to listen to – it’s “Rock and Roll” by the Boswell Sisters from 1934:
> It is, I believe, the very first song to use the phrase “rock and roll” in those words — there was an earlier song called “rocking and rolling”, but I think it’s the first one to use the phrase “rock and roll”.
I just found the podcast, actually because I had just watched My Dinner With Jimi, and then wanted to know how disastrous the Turtles’ encounter with the drunken John Lennon had really been. When I googled, this podcast came high up in the results.
May I ask where Andrew Hickey comes from, as I am interested in English dialects and accents? Somewhere in the British Isles, I assume, but what region?
Andrew is from, and still lives in, Manchester.
New convert- seems like I started yesterday and I’m 38 episodes in. I cannot get enough. I love everything about this podcast. I am nerding out!
I stumbled across this podcast last year or maybe the year before (?) and I tell every friend I know who’s into music about it. For me, the crazy connections of musicians and other people is what I really enjoy hearing about.
Andrew does such an expansive dive into the history of the time and influences around a song/band etc that I’m damn glad there’s no test at the end of each episode!
Thanks to this site I know why his accent is so deliciously different. I’m American, so as you know I have no accent.
Episode 106 pulled me back to my Northwest musical initiation ; what a mastery of the scene, the times, the aching teeth from braces! Andrew Hickey, a work of rare erudition.
I am 67 years old and I’m a drummer since age five. I grew up listening to and playing drums to Alot of the great songs Andrew plays! My older brother and I got a drum set for Christmas in 1962.
He got involved with other things but I beat on them everyday! He would buy singles at the record store and bring them home, then I would do my best to imitate the drummers.. Ringo, Charlie Watts,
Hal Blaine, etc.. and at 13, I joined my first band, “Apache Blue”! The other guys and the female singer were in their 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s.. At 13, I was the babe, but played my heart out to classic songs from, “Hang on Sloopy”, to “He stopped loving her Today”, to “Are you Ready” by Grand Funk Railroad, which I also sang! Now, at 67, 25 bands later, I can Finally find out the back stories of the songs I’ve enjoyed all my life.. Andrew, thank you for filling in all the “holes of Rock history”! I travel in my van, working for a living.. a few months ago, my radio went out, so I began exploring podcasts to play by Bluetooth through my stereo system in my van.. I found your great podcast and began listening from episode one.. Who knew that whacking the snare drum on “two” and “four” would begin what has (mostly) been the most enjoyable genre of music ever! Thanks Again, mate!