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Rock's Backpages.

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Rock's Backpages. Backpages Ltd. http://www.rocksbackpages.com. [Requires a Web browser and an Internet connection. Audio selections require a player capable of playing MP3s. Pricing: individual subscriptions, $30 for six months or $50 per year; institutional subscriptions, $150 per year for public schools, $450 per year for private schools, and $1000 per year for colleges and universities.]

Rock music journalism is a unique niche, and a peculiarly self-referential and exclusive one. The barrier to entry is low, especially in the era of file sharing, podcasting, and blogging, but with any given article, essay, polemic, or review, the observer may be almost as interesting as the observed. Anyone can dance about architecture, but how did Lester Bangs or Ian MacDonald do it? Reading or listening to really good rock journalism is almost as much fun as experiencing the music itself: this guy really gets it, man. In a way, it's very satisfying to read an original turn of phrase and know that one is looking at tomorrow's rock cliche--as opposed to reading the same cliched opinions about the same artists over and over again. To look back on the rock writing of yesteryear is to see how the attitudes of audiences, as well as those of musicians, have changed--and how they have remained the same. The excesses of heavy metal in the 1980s reappear in today's hip-hop world. It's a funhouse of schlock. Rock's Backpages does not fill this niche completely, but it does include content that is difficult if not impossible to find anywhere else. Here is where the features from Creem, Circus, Kerrang!, and The Face have come to rest--though, it must be said, not all of them.

The reason for this is that although Rock's Backpages does index by artist, publication, and general topic (these range from doo-wop and Merseybeat to drugs and politics), the emphasis here is on particular writers, to a degree not typically found in...

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