Fascinating

Thank Andrew for enhancing my mornings with your awesome podcast! I look forward to them! As someone with their masters in music I have thoroughly enjoyed your research. Thank you!

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Incredible Work

Enjoy every episode and admire the tremendous amount of research and insight in each. Tells the stories with sensitivity, humbleness and occasional humor. Quite a body of work being assembled in this series.

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come for the music, stay for the backstory.

Am only 30 episodes in, but will be staying for the duration. Andrew Hickey has done his homework. This is not just a history of the music but of the times and places it comes out of. Highly recommend it for lovers of both rock and roll and contemporary history.

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Excellent podcast to learn about rock and its artists

I got attracted to this podcast due to my interest and desire to learn more about rock music. In the process I have discovered many artists I was no aware of.

Subscribe and enjoy!

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Awesome, In-Depth Story-Telling

These episodes are very well put together. I was pleased surprised at the quality of the research and writing. Would definitely recommend! So, so good!

A couple of points:
1. Level the volume of the narration and musical clips. Bus the music clips into a limiter/maximizer for consistent volumes.
2. Just place a tag or warning up front to warn about sensitive material. The apologetics are a bit much and distract from what is quality content. (No, I’m not an old man. Lol). People are resilient and capable of making reasoned judgment about the media they consume.

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Much too long

This entire story could have been an hour long and nothing important would have been left out. There was so much unimportant, uninteresting trivial info in here it was maddeningly difficult to stay focused for four hours. As usual his research and presentation are impeccable, but thoroughly wasted on this rambling mess.

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More History, Less Whinging!

The research is simply amazing, and I appreciate having the actual music clips as samples — although they are too quiet in relation to the narration.

However Hickey’s incessant, annoying and conspicuous virtue signalling is utterly exhausting and a major time suck. Please STOP IT.

By all means, issue trigger warnings, avoid *non-contextualised* use of outdated and/or insulting ethnic terms, nor should bad behaviour be excused or normalised. But mind, humans behaving badly — men and women, of all colours and walks of life — are a major part OF the story of Popular music. Tell the story minus all the whinging and self-flagellation over nonsense like “cultural appropriation,” a misnomer if ever there was one. Was it also “appropriation” when Chuck Berry rewrote the old fiddle tune “Ida Red” into “Maybelline”? Or when Henry Sloan first played blues using Hawaiian slide technique on Dockery plantation at the turn of the century?

Of course not. Music is a huge melting pot. Everybody who wants to dip in can, and will.

In fact, there's an excellent argument to be made that “trigger warnings” themselves are really more about white entitlement, condescendingly “protecting” people YOU deem too weak or fragile from bad words or concepts. Please. Life doesn’t come with trigger warnings, certainly not in the so-called “third world” or for the working poor. Grow up.

It’s easy to dismiss such criticism, as Hickey has given the majority of positive reviews, as being from “old white Boomers” (we won’t even go into the inherent ageism involved) calling him a “woke snowflake” (though if the brothel creeper fits...).

But the salient point being missed is that Hickey is actually drawing undue attention to HIMSELF and making the podcast all about HIS discomfort with the events, names, motivations, etc. he’s reporting on. Witness the ridiculous contortions he goes through to avoid just saying “gypsy,” which appears in the title and/or lyrics of at least a dozen really important songs in the genre (and which most Romany people have no issue with), which would be utterly hysterical if it weren’t so bloody pathetic.

Not to mention the inevitable hypocrisy that arises from such vain attempts at purity, and as such the series is shot through with those inconsistencies. One that immediately comes to mind is Hickey’s not wanting to use the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn’s “dead name” (WTAF?) — BTW, some of his old friends still call him “Jim” to this day — yet apparently having no problem with using drummer Michael Clarke’s real name (Michael Dick), and even almost making a dry, somewhat adolescent joke about it. Come on, mate.

Hickey makes such inconvenient truths a MUCH bigger deal than needs be, and in the process he inserts himself into the story — something all too common with millennial podcasters, I’m afraid. Sorry mate, you are NOT the story. You are a chronicler. Full stop.

Please spend more time on equalising the relative volumes between voice and music, and stop being so bloody unctuous, because otherwise it’s a brilliant podcast.

PS - Appalachia is pronounced “Apple-AT-chia” NOT “Apple-AY-shah.”

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