233 episodes

Andrew Hickey presents a history of rock music from 1938 to 1999, looking at five hundred songs that shaped the genre.

A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs Andrew Hickey

    • Music
    • 4.8 • 404 Ratings

Andrew Hickey presents a history of rock music from 1938 to 1999, looking at five hundred songs that shaped the genre.

    PLEDGE WEEK: “Dark End of the Street” by James Carr

    PLEDGE WEEK: “Dark End of the Street” by James Carr

    This episode is part of Pledge Week 2024. From Tuesday through Saturday this week I’m posting some of my old Patreon bonuses to the main feed, as a taste of what Patreon backers get. If you enjoy them, why not subscribe for a dollar a month at patreon.com/andrewhickey ?
    (more…)

    PLEDGE WEEK: “I Love You” by People

    PLEDGE WEEK: “I Love You” by People

    This episode is part of Pledge Week 2024. From Tuesday through Saturday this week I’m posting some of my old Patreon bonuses to the main feed, as a taste of what Patreon backers get. If you enjoy them, why not subscribe for a dollar a month at patreon.com/andrewhickey ?
    (more…)

    PLEDGE WEEK: “Son of a Preacher Man” by Dusty Springfield

    PLEDGE WEEK: “Son of a Preacher Man” by Dusty Springfield

    This episode is part of Pledge Week 2024. From Tuesday through Saturday this week I’m posting some of my old Patreon bonuses to the main feed, as a taste of what Patreon backers get. If you enjoy them, why not subscribe for a dollar a month at patreon.com/andrewhickey ?
    (more…)

    PLEDGE WEEK: “My World Fell Down” by Sagittarius

    PLEDGE WEEK: “My World Fell Down” by Sagittarius

    This episode is part of Pledge Week 2024. From Tuesday through Saturday this week I’m posting some of my old Patreon bonuses to the main feed, as a taste of what Patreon backers get. If you enjoy them, why not subscribe for a dollar a month at patreon.com/andrewhickey ?
    (more…)

    PLEDGE WEEK: “A Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harum

    PLEDGE WEEK: “A Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harum

    This episode is part of Pledge Week 2024. From Tuesday through Saturday this week I’m posting some of my old Patreon bonuses to the main feed, as a taste of what Patreon backers get. If you enjoy them, why not subscribe for a dollar a month at patreon.com/andrewhickey ?
    (more…)

    ANNOUNCEMENT: Pledge Week 2024

    ANNOUNCEMENT: Pledge Week 2024

    An announcement of this year’s pledge week. To sign up to the Patreon, visit http://patreon.com/andrewhickey
    Transcript
    Welcome to Pledge Week 2024.
    For those who don’t know — perhaps you’ve only recently started listening to the podcast — this podcast is entirely funded by people backing me on Patreon, the crowdfunding site, and so occasionally I’ll do a pledge week, where I remind people about this and encourage people to sign up.
    The main benefit you get for signing up to the Patreon, other than the knowledge that you’re supporting an independent creator, is bonus episodes. There’s one of these with every main episode, and sometimes random other ones as well. They’re shorter episodes than the main episodes — I say at the end of each main episode that they’re ten minutes, and that’s how they started out, but often in more recent years they’ve been twenty-five minutes or more, sometimes as long as an hour, as they’ve grown in the same way the main episodes have grown.
    These bonus episodes are about artists who for whatever reason don’t fit into the main narrative I’m telling. Sometimes they’re a massively important artist, but one who never interacted much with the rest of the music world and made their own path, and so they don’t feed into the larger story. Sometimes they’re an obscure artist who never had much success at the time but gained a cult following after their death. Sometimes they’re just a personal favourite of mine who I can’t really justify devoting a main episode to. Sometimes they’re someone who made great music but had a boring story that wouldn’t be worth spending a long time over, but I can tell the highlights, and sometimes they’re someone who made terrible music but had a fascinating story. And sometimes they’re people who I would cover in a main episode but who there’s simply not enough information about to tell the story in any detail.
    There are lots of reasons for artists being covered in the Patreon but some of the episodes I’ve done for that have been among my favourites.
    Anyway, anyone who signs up to the Patreon as a backer for $1 or more gets access to every single bonus episode I’ve done, and continues to get access to new ones as long as they’re a backer.
    Now I have to emphasise this time round that that is “for $1 or more”. For some reason known only to themselves, the people at Patreon recently decided it would be a good idea for their crowdfunding site which exists as a way for people to pay artists they want to support, if they put in a compulsory free tier on every account where you pay nothing, and to make that the default that people see. So if you sign up, you see “Sign up for free!” If you sign up for free you won’t get anything.
    But if you sign up for $1 a month, you’ll get somewhere in the region of two hundred bonus episodes — and if you want you can cancel right after you download them all, and you’ll have only paid one dollar. I won’t be annoyed at that — that’s the deal here. I know times are tough and sometimes a dollar is a lot. If you sign up for higher tiers, you get copies of most of my old books as ebooks, and new print books when they come out (though it’s been quite a while since a new book came out — the person who was proofing and indexing the next book based on the podcast got sick with long covid and I’ve been having to do that myself while doing my other work, but that should be out sooner rather than later, and you’ll get access to all the past ebooks straight away). People on all tiers also get occasional blog posts from me — gig reviews, occasional updates about my work process, and so on. But the main extra you get is the bonus podcasts.
    So for the next five days, tomorrow through Saturday, I&#821

Customer Reviews

4.8 out of 5
404 Ratings

404 Ratings

Plasticomar ,

Educational, enlightening, entertaining

I only started listening to this podcast last year, after hearing Paul mention it on The Big Beatles Sort Out podcast, and am finally up to date. Each episode is a gem, regardless of whether you are particularly interested in the artist or era in question. I don’t think that there is a more informative and well-researched music podcast in existence. Great job, Andrew Hickey!

DougM_Edinburgh ,

Andrew Hickey’s tour de force

I can’t recommend this podcast highly enough, it’s a monumental piece of work. There is a lot of listening here, maybe too much for some, but well worth your time, and dipping in and out works just as well as starting from the beginning. A real treasure trove for the music fan.

JJ PP Drummer ,

My favourite podcast by a mile

Thanks Andrew for the detailed, informative fascinating and addictive podcast.
I’ve gone through the lot and I’ve also bought the first book.
I can’t wait for the next episode to drop and have recommended your podcast to all my friends.
Kind Regards
Jonathan

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