Rock N Roll Archaeology (RNRA) is more than a podcast; it’s an immersive, carefully researched and produced audio documentary.
RNRA explores the history of Rock Music, and then goes a step further. We contextualize Rock N Roll; we place it within the cultural, political, and technological landscapes of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
With storytelling, commentary, and a dash of musicology, we explore how music, culture, and technology interact and affect each other—how they ARE each other.
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Episode 25: I Know What I Like: The Rise and Fall of Prog
Season 1 · Episode 25
Tuesday, October 7, 2025 • Duration 01:38:43
Progressive Rock reached its zenith during the early 1970s, a period often celebrated as the genre's golden age. This era of Prog Rock has inspired intense opinions—both positive and negative—that rival those of any other rock movement or genre throughout music history.
Fans of Progressive Rock are known for their passionate dedication.
On the flip side, critics, including renowned voices like Lester Bangs, Robert Christgau, and Robert Hilburn, were notoriously dismissive of Progressive Rock. Despite their often harsh criticisms, we believe that time has proven them wrong.
Our perspective has evolved, and we now view the best of 70s Progressive Rock as a genre with substantial depth and intellectual substance. The music from this era isn't just enjoyable; it’s some of the most significant work of the 20th century.
Not all Prog Rock from this period hit the mark—there were certainly moments of excessive self-indulgence. However, the Prog bands and songs that have stood the test of time are truly exceptional and worth celebrating.
Producer and Host: Christian Swain
Head Writer: Richard Evans
Sound Designer: Jerry Danielsen
RockNRollArchaeology.com
RNRA on Patreon
RNRA on TeePublic
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Shorts: Celebrating Country Soul
Tuesday, March 26, 2024 • Duration 28:48
A little about Country, a little about Soul, and more about how they are really just the same thing. And why it’s not at all surprising that a big Pop-Soul star like Beyoncé is releasing a Country album.
For this RNRA Short, we tapped the expertise of Professor Charles Hughes of Rhodes College in Memphis, author of “Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South.”
We’ll look at the origins of the Alt Country Revolt, and name-check some great artists working very loudly and deliberately outside the Nashville Pop Country machine.
Y’all keep up the rockin’ now, hear?
Producer and Host: Christian Swain
Head Writer: Richard Evans
Sound Designer: Jerry Danielsen
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Shorts: The Art of the Steal
Thursday, August 11, 2022 • Duration 26:36
Content warning: Here at RNRA, we don’t hide our views. At all. But when it comes to politics, we try not to be in-your-face about it either. Our little slogan is “Just tell the story, and the point will get made.”This time though, we’re a little more overt, we’re letting it rip just a little bit. This particular burr has been under our saddle for a while now.Now: on with the show.
Summer Time is Shorts Time! RNRA Shorts, that is!
So…here’s a thing. Sometimes we visit Right Wing World online, that’s usually how it starts.On these expeditions we’ll sometimes run into some whinging about “Woke Progressives” cancelling right wing culture and entertainment, or just griping in general about perceived left/liberal bias in popular culture.They’re not totally wrong about that. They’re right, just for the wrong reasons, and we’ll explain why.It’s not just complaining they do. We also see a lot of co-opting and outright stealing. And when they take Rock music and culture and dishonestly try to repurpose it, try to make it serve the conservative agenda, well…unintentional hilarity ensues.So we’ll do some roasting, but we’ll also do some thinking out loud, talk a little about the how and why, and even delve into the deeper history of…the Art of the Steal.
Enjoy!
Sponsors and Partners
BetterHelp
Rock’s Backpages
Boldfoot
Songs
Parliament Funkadelic: “One Nation Under A Groove”
Thomas Dolby: “Pulp Culture”
Ted Nugent: “Stranglehold”
Ted Nugent: “Hey Baby”
They Might Be Giants: “Your Racist Friend”
Neil Young: “Rockin’ in the Free World”
Woody Guthrie: “This Land is Your Land”
Trey Parker and Matt Stone: “America, Fuck Yeah”
Toby Keith: “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue”
Living Colour: “Cult of Personality”
Stevie Wonder: “He’s Misstra Know It All”
Green Day: “American Idiot”
Sources
Apocalypse Now: “Mangoes and Tigers” Scene (Retrieved from YouTube)
Roy Edroso Breaks it Down Substack (Paywalled. Roy writes a lot about this issue, and we think he’s really astute–and hilarious.)
The Five Most Repellent Things Ted Nugent Has Ever Done | Rocks Off
Music News: Why can't musicians get politicians to stop playing their songs?
The President’s Shock at the Rows of Empty Seats in Tulsa - The New York Times
American Cringe: Why can’t the contemporary right make art?
Episode 5: The Ballad of Bob and J.R. — Pantheon Podcasts
A Defence of Poetry
Voice Talent
Darryl Alber as blogger Cameron Summers
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Episode 22: The Second Wave - On the Morning After the Sixties
Season 1 · Episode 22
Tuesday, July 5, 2022 • Duration 01:11:38
We start with a tragedy, then a cautionary tale of the world not ready for a band. We then find more positive inspiration from an artist who delivers a huge seller. We end with a legend.
Janis Joplin dies just before releasing her magnum opus, “Pearl.” A band called Fanny is ready to rock, but a culture poisoned by the patriarchy isn’t yet ready to accept them. Carole King makes Tapestry, a sincere, modest, and deeply personal album that hits huge and becomes a milestone for women. We complete the story with a profile of one of the giants of 20th Century Music, Joni Mitchell. We discuss her artistic and commercial peak in the early 70s with “Blue,” “For the Roses,” and “Court and Spark.” We admire all of these women for kicking down the door, and we celebrate the progress we’ve made since them, but there is still a long way to go.
Now for some general remarks about the research and writing.
To the best of our ability, we tried to center women in this chapter. We’ll leave it to the listener to decide how we did with that.
There’s a diversity of opinion about this, but we think it’s fair to say the second wave of feminism hits the crest during the period we are covering, and it is not at all a coincidence that women really start to make big and important contributions to Rock Music right around this time too.
Roe vs Wade was decided right around here, about fifty years ago. We are painfully aware of the US Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Roe, stripping many millions of American women of their fundamental human rights to bodily autonomy and medical privacy.
As we move forward with our chapters, we will document that half century of regressive backlash and how it got us here; it’s part of the story. Like we often say, Rock N Roll reflects back on, interacts with, and affects the larger society. And vice versa. In the late Sixties and early Seventies, it seemed like the progress would be permanent, and that more progress was on the way. Some of us were naive enough to believe that. We would do well now to remember the words of the anti slavery activist Frederick Douglass, way back in 1857:
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Voice Talent
Richard Evans as L.A. County Coroner
Stephanie Pena as Alice Echols
Stephanie Meyers as the voice of Creem Magazine
Amanda Morck as Meredith Ochs
Christy Alexander Hallberg as the voice of the IMA mission statement
Carole King as Herself
Erin Alden as Tanya Pearson
Lynley Ehrlich as Carol Hanisch
Thessaly Lerner as Judy Kutulas
Holly Cantos as the voice of the New York Times
Online Resources
Rock’s Back Pages
Coroner's Report, archived at janisjoplin.net
ABC Nightly News Report, from October 4th, 1970
Deeper Digs in Rock: 'Rock N Roll Woman: The Fifty Fiercest Female Rockers' with Meredith Ochs
The Institute for the Musical Arts
1416 N. La Brea Ave, Hollywood
50 years ago, the Sylmar earthquake shook L.A., and nothing’s been the same since
Women of Rock Oral History Project
"That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be": Baby Boomers, 1970s Singer-Songwriters, and Romantic Relationships
Carol Hanisch The Personal is Political
New York Times “Albums as Mileposts in a Musical Century”
Deeper Digs in Rock: Reckless Daughter - A Portrait of Joni Mitchell
Jonimitchell.com
Joni Mitchell, Woman of Heart and Mind
Books
Joan Didion, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”
Alice Echols: “Scars of Sweet Paradise”
Carole King: “Natural Woman”
Meredith Ochs: “Rock And Roll Woman: The Fifty Fiercest Women Rockers”
Sheila Weller: “Girls Like Us”
Jerry Wexler: “Rhythm and the Blues”
David Yaffe: “Reckless Daughter”
Documentaries and Films
Fanny: The Right to Rock
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Shorts: The Juggalos are Alright
Tuesday, March 15, 2022 • Duration 25:37
Welcome back to RNRA Shorts! This time, it’s Filth Through The Ages, and let’s meet some unlikely Free Speech Warriors. Yes, we said it, and we will die on this hill: The Juggalos Are Alright.
Psst, hey! Got a topic suggestion? Let us know!
Songs
Frank Zappa: “Stinkfoot,” from Apostrophe’, 1974
Insane Clown Posse: “My Axe,” from Bizzar, 2000
Insane Clown Posse: “Hokus Pokus,” from The Great Milenko, 1997
Insane Clown Posse: “To Catch A Predator,” from Bang! Pow! Boom! Nuclear, 2010
Insane Clown Posse: “Boogie Woogie Wu,” from The Great Milenko, 1997
Insane Clown Posse: “What Is A Juggalo,” from The Great Milenko, 1997
AC/DC: “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” from Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, 1976
Insane Clown Posse with Perpetual Hype Engine: “Let’s Go All The Way,” from Bizzar, 2000
Books
Nathan Rabin: You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me, 2013
Documentaries and Videos
American Juggalo (Recommended!)
Trailer for “The United States of Insanity” (Just released on 12/10/2021, also recommended!)
ICP Press Conference Video from 9/16/2017 (Behind Time Magazine’s paywall, but the first three views are free.)
Online Resources
Insane Clown Posse’s Official Website
Catullus
The First Amendment Right to be a Juggalo
The FBI Memorandum on Juggalos in pdf format (This one is a real piece of work!)
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Shorts: Joni & the Prince
Tuesday, February 22, 2022 • Duration 18:59
A quick look at an intriguing relationship: Joni Mitchell and Prince.
Enjoy! Oh, hey! Got a topic idea for RNRA Shorts?
Shoot us an email: rocknrollarchaeologyproject@gmail.com
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Episode 21: Guitarmageddon
Season 1 · Episode 21
Wednesday, July 28, 2021 • Duration 01:40:51
The fuse was lit in 1966. Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and Keith Moon came together to record a proto-metal classic. After the session an offhand quip from Keith Moon sticks with Jimmy Page.
Then we meet The G; the imposing Peter Grant. Led Zeppelin’s fearsome tough-guy manager was a key reason why Zep dominated the rock landscape in the early 70s.
Well away from Swinging London, in the grimy industrial town of Birmingham, Black Sabbath comes together. We’ll also take a look at one of the greatest Jam Bands ever, Deep Purple.
Then on to probably the single saddest story in all of Rock History, the final days of Jimi Hendrix.
Jimi towers over all of it, the late, lamented godfather of Heavy Rock--Rock that centers around the guitar and celebrates blazing virtuosity on that instrument.
Gone but not forgotten: the Guitarmageddon explosion has reverberated way beyond the Seventies--all the way up to the present day.
Far more than any other movement or genre within Rock music...Metal, Heavy Rock, Jam Rock, pick your label...it’s got legs. It changes and grows, continues to reinvent itself, and it sticks around.
Still with us, still going strong, still powered by fans.
Voice Actors
Jemma Sconce as Sophia DeBoick
Bryan Reesman as Gauntlet.com
Tony MIchaelides as Martin Power
Jerry Danielsen as Oxford Dictionary
Courtney Anderson as Gregg Tate
Peter Ferioli as Stephen Hyden
Mistress Carrie as Consequence of Sound
Charles Cross as Charles Cross
Rich Price as David Fricke
Dave Sloan as Jon Landau
Full show notes at http://pantheonpodcasts.com/rock-n-roll-archaeology
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Episode 20: Ohio
Season 1 · Episode 20
Friday, January 15, 2021 • Duration 56:58
Rock N Roll as the First Draft Of History
We begin in the midwest college town of Kent, Ohio, in the late spring of 1970. We’ll meet three future rockers--students at Kent State University, barely out of their teens--who will be changed forever by what they witness. We’ll check in on Motown, where the fluffy pop “Sound of Young America” is still alive, but there's a big change coming, a movement towards a tougher, more topical sound. We’ll foreshadow that just a little--lots more to come in a later chapter. Rock N Roll is now Rock, and it is mainstreamed now, big and getting bigger. It set out to subvert the dominant paradigm, now it is the dominant paradigm. It can be downright paradoxical at times; defined by its own contradictions. We come back to the campus for the shattering events of May 4th. They inspire a unique musical response, something we really haven’t seen since then.
Written by Richard Evans and Christian Swain
Hosted and Produced by Christian Swain
Sound Design by Jerry Danielsen
Voice Actors
Holly Cantos as the voice of the Kent State Official History
Dr. Stephen Arnoff as the voice of Prof. Charles Reich
James O’Laughlin as the voice of Jimmy McDonaugh
Eric Nash as the voice of Kevin C. Smith
David Browne as the voice of David Browne
Songs
Randy Newman: “Burn On” from Sail Away, 1972
James Gang: “Funk 48” from Yer’ Album, 1969
The Stooges: “1970” from Fun House, 1970
Rare Earth: “Hey Big Brother” single released in 1970
Graham Nash: “Chicago” from Songs for Beginners, 1971
Edwin Starr: “War” from War & Peace, 1970
Eric Burdon and War: “Spill The Wine” from Eric Burdon Declares War, 1970
Frank Zappa and The Mothers: “Nanook Rubs It” from Apostrophe, 1974
John Lennon and the Plastic Ono: “Working Class Hero” from Plastic Ono Band, 1970
Jackson 5: “I Want You Back” Single released in 1969
Marvin Gaye: “Inner City Blues” from What’s Goin’ On, 1971
War: “Slippin’ Into Darkness” from All Day Music, 1971
CSN&Y: “Carry On” from Deja Vu, 1970
Neil Young & Crazy Horse: “Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown” from Tonight’s the Night, 1974
Neil Young: ”The Needle And The Damage Done” from Harvest, 1972
Elton John: “Burn Down The Mission” from Tumbleweed Connection, 1970
Ten Years After: “I’d Love To Change The World” from A Space In Time, 1970
CSN&Y: “Find The Cost Of Freedom” single released in 1970
CSN&Y: “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” from Four Way Street, 1971
CSN&Y: “Ohio” single released in 1970
Led Zeppelin: “What Is And What Should Never Be” from Led Zeppelin II, 1969
Books
David Browne: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Bob Burroughs: Days of Rage
Robert Giles: When Truth Mattered
Todd Gitlin: The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage
Chrissie Hynde: Reckless: My Life as a Pretender
Jimmy McDonough: Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography
Rick Perlstein: Nixonland
Charles Reich: The Greening of America
Neil Sheehan: A Bright Shining Lie
Kevin C. Smith: Recombo DNA
Hunter S. Thompson: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Online Sources
The Cuyahoga River
James Gang on Tour
Port Huron Statement
Jerry Casale at Kent State
Kent State University Official History
More Resources on the The Kent State Massacre
Assassination of Fred Hampton
Assassination of Fred Hampton--Gov’t Docs
Podcasts
WTF With Marc Maron: Episode 942, interview with Joe Walsh
Deeper Digs in Rock With Christian Swain: Interview with David Browne
Films and Documentaries
The Murder of Fred Hampton, Directed by Howard Alk, 1971
This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts.
@PantheonPods
Listen in HD only at www.rocknrollarchaeology.com
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Episode 19: 1969 Part II
Season 1 · Episode 19
Wednesday, July 8, 2020 • Duration 01:58:59
This episode is dedicated with love to the memory of our dear friend Dennis Gordon. Dennis was the big booming voice on our show “bumpers” that would begin and end each chapter of Rock N Roll Archaeology. Thank you Dennis, we miss you. May the Four Winds blow you safely home.
Welcome back to the second half of our big chapter telling the big story of a big year in Rock. If you haven’t done so already, we highly recommend you listen to Episode 18 before you delve into this one!
We tell the story of 1969 by telling the story of four concerts: The Beatles on the Roof, The Rolling Stones in Hyde Park was the first part. Part Two will take us to the peak, to the apotheosis of Woodstock...and to the abyss at Altamont. And we’ll go to some other places in between too.
1969 is the year Rock N Roll goes global, and we’ll get into that a little, and set up later discussions of great topics like Rock behind the Iron Curtain and the growing influence of Reggae and World Beat.
Then we’ll take you to Woodstock, and call off the roster, with lots of great music and commentary.
The first mythical Rock tour--the Rolling Stones ‘69 tour of America, is up next. That will take us to the final show of the tour, on a dark December night in California, where everything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and the consequences will be tragic.
We close out with some thoughts on the year and on the decade we’ve just completed, and on what comes next.
This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts.
@PantheonPods
Listen in HD only at www.rocknrollarchaeology.com
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Episode 18: 1969 Part I
Season 1 · Episode 18
Monday, November 18, 2019 • Duration 01:40:50
We’re putting down a marker with this episode, and the follow-up: the highest highs and the lowest lows of the entire Rock Era occurred in 1969. It’s a year so big, we had to cut it in two, in order to serve it up properly.
We start in January, with The Beatles on The Roof, a 42-minute outdoor concert that definitely warmed up the neighborhood of Mayfair, London, England. Then we catch up with their friends and rivals, The Rolling Stones.
The Stones broke out HUGE in 68 and 69, the beginning of an incredible five-year run: from Beggars Banquet on through to Exile On Main Street. Peak Stones, the sweet spot for the World’s Greatest Rock N Roll Band.
Brian Jones is out, Mick Taylor is in. We talk about how that happened, and how it impacted the Stones’ sound and attitude. Another influence starts seeping in: American Country Music, thanks to Keith’s new best buddy, Gram Parsons.
Brian’s tragic--and still unexplained--demise changes the Hyde Park Concert from a coming-out party into a memorial service. Emotion and conviction carry the day, and Hyde Park sets a very high and hopeful bar; it’s an early example of How To Successfully Pull Off A Really Big Concert.
During that “Moon-Crazy Summer” of 1969, NASA pulls off something really big. It’s the single greatest feat--so far--of human exploration: The Apollo 11 mission to the moon and back. We look at the moon landing through the Rock N Roll lens; we’ll talk about space travel, science fiction, and fantasy...in books, film, television, and most of all, in Rock Music.
Then David Bowie, with his lifelong knack for being ahead of his time, said take your protein pills and put your helmet on.
And we did.
And in just a short time we got used to it, became a little jaded about it.
That comes later. Here and now in the summer of 1969; stardust, golden, billion year old carbon...got to get ourselves back to the garden.
We’ll open Part Two at Yasgur’s Farm in upstate New York, and we’ll light a candle in the rain.
Head over to Pantheon Podcasts for full show notes.
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