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Early rock formations: Sanjoy Narayan picks his favourite music podcasts

Jan 18, 2025 07:10 PM IST

Shows focused on rock history are linking places, people and phenomena in ways that are truly surprising, Narayan says.

The song Eight Miles High, released as a single by The Byrds in 1966, is considered one of the earliest examples of psychedelic rock.

What connects The Byrds, The Beatles, Ravi Shankar and John Coltrane? Andrew Hickey has answers, in A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. PREMIUM
What connects The Byrds, The Beatles, Ravi Shankar and John Coltrane? Andrew Hickey has answers, in A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs.

Heavily influenced by what the band members were listening to then — Indian classical sitarist Ravi Shankar and jazz saxophonist John Coltrane — it is also cited as one of earliest raga-rock compositions. The history behind the song is fascinating and it involves a number of disparate events and phenomena.

For instance, how Coltrane met Shankar in the early 1960s, and learnt from the latter Indian classical music’s modes and scales; the unfortunate fact that the two couldn’t record together before Coltrane died in 1967. And the fact that it was The Byrds singer David Crosby who introduced George Harrison to Indian classical music in 1965, sparking the Beatle’s interest in the sitar.

Are these things related? Andrew Hickey, a middle-aged Englishman, would have you believe they are.

In 2018, Hickey started a podcast called A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. He releases a new episode every week or fortnight. By mid-December 2024, he was on song #177, Never Learn Not to Love, by The Beach Boys.

It has two episodes devoted to it, each over an hour long, threading together a back story that combines social history, theory of music, and influences you’d probably never have guessed at.

Hickey’s project is ongoing and it is huge. Although he plays short clips to illustrate his points, there are no interviews or comments from others. Instead, it is he who does all the talking. His shortest episodes could have a transcript of 5,000 words; some of the longer ones run into tens of thousands of words. Song #165 is Grateful Dead’s Dark Star, and that episode runs for more than four hours.

Hickey has already chosen his 500 songs, but he isn’t even close to halfway through. Completing the series could easily take him several more years and, by one estimate, more than two million words. Meanwhile, his fan following has grown and it is rumoured that musicians such as Bob Dylan are among them.

What makes A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs unique are Hickey’s near-obsessive burrowing for facts and stories, and his remarkable ability to join wildly disparate dots. But there are other shows that can take you on a journey to the other side of contemporary music too.

Apple Music has the jazz pianist and composer Robert Glasper’s ongoing series, In My Element Radio, now in its fourth episode. Glasper, 46, an itinerant musician and producer, has worked with a pantheon of musicians, from Stevie Wonder to Kendrick Lamar and the legends Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock.

His series explores his musical journey (one episode is titled Soundtrack to My Childhood) and pays tribute to friends and fellow artists. There are backstories and quirky facts that will fascinate music-lovers. Glasper, who conducts an annual residency at New York’s storied Blue Note Jazz Club, expects to feature some of his guests there — Norah Jones, Meshell Ndegeocello and Black Thought — on later episodes.

On BBC Radio 1, the weekly Monday night programme Rock Show with Daniel P Carter is all about “rock, metal, hardcore, and everything in between”. Carter, a heavy-metal guitarist himself, ended 2024 with three shows: Tunes of the Year, Albums of the Year, and an episode on his favourite album of the year, which was The Cure’s first new album in 16 years, Songs of a Lost World. In a bonus, there was a candid interview with frontman Robert Smith.

On an earlier episode, the guitarist Slash discussed the music that “ruined” his life!

Broken Record is a podcast featuring interviews with musicians, conducted by producer Rick Rubin, writer Malcolm Gladwell, and former New York Times editor Bruce Headlam. It has featured artists ranging from hip-hop’s DJ Premier to Neil Young and Justin Timberlake.

Finally, one for all the nerds out there: Discord & Rhyme is a podcast by a bunch of music nitpickers who choose an album every fortnight and just discuss it threadbare. There are facts, opinions, oodles of irreverence, and the albums are played, of course, track by track.

On Christmas Eve, Discord & Rhyme chose the Pixies’ landmark Doolittle (1989), and traced the band’s influence on other artists. These include, of course, Radiohead, PJ Harvey, and most importantly Nirvana, a band that may never have come together if not for their shared dream of creating something even remotely like the Pixies.

(To write in with feedback, email sanjoy.narayan@gmail.com)

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