Two reasons I call them to your attention:
- They're utterly fascinating in a first-draft-of-history kind of way. Page 11 of the January 1967 issue -- "What Goes On," a sort of collection of news briefs from the rock world -- begins, "There's a group you have to hear. They're called the Doors, and they're the best new band I've heard this year." I missed this stuff growing up. I was just too young and too far away. Everything I know about Sixties rock came at second-, third-, fourth-hand. This journalism is the closest you're going to get to eyewitness accounts, of the visceral reactions of a true fan seeing the stuff of rock 'n' roll legend unfold before his eyes. I haven't gotten to the Sgt. Pepper reaction yet, but I bet it's a doozy.
- The writing is astonishingly good. Williams' essay on Bob Dylan, in issue #4, in reaction to the release of Blonde on Blonde, is one of the best essays I've ever read about how to approach Dylan's opacity and obliqueness. And it was written by a seventeen-year-old! At seventeen, I felt oppressed when tasked by my English teacher to write a 500-word review of The Grapes of Wrath. The Man was Keepin' Me Down. This guy was doin' it.
Off you go.
2 comments:
Thanks - that link will keep me busy for a while.
I've been reading a lot of articles online lately about the supposed 'Demise' of the album format, (since album sales are down, and I-Tunes does a brisk trade in Single Tracks), and am curious about your opinion.
Would today's 17-year-olds produce a piece of writing like the 'Blonde On Blonde' essay, when they would supposedly only download 'Rainy Day Women #12 and 35", for example.
Even then they'd just press plastic Guitar Hero buttons in time to it.
http://www.beatles.com/core/news/
Please don't be hot mastered... Please don't be hot mastered...
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