Andrew Hickey Is Ruining My Life
For more decades than I can remember I have been reading about the history of modern music, be it jazz, blues, R&B, pop, rock, heavy metal, alt-rock -I have boxes and boxes of books. I have been religiously reading Q, Uncut,Mojo, the Word, NME, Rolling Stone, Paste, Under the Radar, Jazzwize, Downbeat,
Jazz Times, Prog and other magazines since the 1980s. I thought I knew a lot. I was wrong. By chance I bumped into a colleague who mentioned the 500songs.com podcast. This podcast is hosted by an Englishman, Andrew Hickey, and has been running since 2018. Andrew has ow reached song 150 (“All you need is love”) and the episodes just keep getting better. It is now his fulltime job. Frankly the BPI should
be paying his a salary – as should the Library of Congress.
The podcast is slightly misleadingly titled (“A History of Rock Music”) – it is really the story of all modern popular music since World War 2. Hickey covers political, cultural and business history of music (alongside a fair smattering of anthropology) that frames songs that we all know, and some we don’t, in the times that they were recorded and the influences from which they were derived. The detail is astonishing. No punches are pulled regarding sharp business practices, racism and homophobia. You will hear about Jimmy Rogers, Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, Rosetta Tharp, Ravi Shanker and others – alongside the crooks and bozo managers who ripped off the artists, the white imitators of the original black singers, the magnificent musicians that are hideous people.
I have learned more from listening to these podcasts than I have from decades of reading music magazines and books and watching documentaries. For example, Andrew is the first person who has adequately explained modal jazz to me, without being patronizing. The podcast is like doing a college course – in fact it is better than any of the Great Courses lecture series that I have followed. And there is a good reason. Each episode, they started at 30 minutes but now run to 90 or even 120 minutes, is chock full of snippets of songs. This means that Andrew will, for example, play a snippet of Little Richard singing “Tutti Frutti” and then play the copycat Pat Boone version. He explains the underlying music theory (simply). He is able to make connections between different strands of music and tie them all together cleverly. If you don’t know the difference between R&B, rock ‘n’ roll, hillbilly, rockabilly, bluegrass, mountain music, country, western swing or medley other genres – this is the place for you.
Fortunately, for me, I have started 3 or 4 years back – so following this podcast is like binging on a box set. Although the podcast is free on iTunes (and other platforms), for a modest fee you can be a subscriber and gain access to bonus podcasts. Unfortunately, for me, so obsessed have I become with Andrew’s podcast that my Audible audiobook credits are piling up (better buy something before they expire) – as I have no interest in listening to anything else. Beyond recommended.
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