In the 70s and the 80s publications like Rolling Stone and Crawdaddy reported on the New Wave and Punk revolution. They annotated, described, transcribed, editorialized, researched, compiled and in general they put their whole big gallery of journalists to work to give us lowbrows the lowdown. The work reflected the titles of many punk songs and even the names of record labels who signed up New Wave acts. It was damn serious business. It was Stiff and No fun. Still,a respected pundit once said "good writing isn't always good reading". I think rock should be fun not educational. Rock should not be last hour algebra or 5th hour grammar with sentence diagram practice. I didn't go to college and I can remember bringing stuff to school in my book pack and stuff all folded up way down in my pockets to read if I finished my lessons early or if I didn't but couldn't stand it anymore and I got bored. It was at times like that,that the world of classic literature opened up to me hidden in my pockets or in my book pages and notebook. I'd sit off to myself or in back if I could. There was Mademoiselle,Cosmopolitan and Vogue. And comic books with dooble bloody World War Two action. There was Sadie Stern,the Dutch dominatrix. So you can see the world of literature opened up to me while I was still a youngster. I also had rock magazines like 16 and Song Hits. I'll describe a few of my favorite Rock Magazine writers in this article. Sometimes people get overlooked in hindsight. 16 magazine founder and editor Gloria Stavers was a good writer. Both 16 magazine and Gloria have been trashed off as commercial and banal by some people. 16 started up at the last couple of months of 1963 in the era of Teen Idols and Beach Parties,then they were right there in January of 1964 when The Beatles and The British Invasion exploded onto the scene. Magazines like 16,Datebook and Tiger Beat were never intended as deadly serious bibles of progressive and heavy rock. Honestly,they were teenybopper fanzines selling an entire line of gossip,vital statistics,8 by 10 glossy,dream date with the stars contests,addresses for fan mail and articles about teen hero rockers and stars. 16 kept people posted about Bobby Sherman,Kurt and Kevin,Sajid Kahn and Jay North,Jack Wilde,Tommy Roe,Gene Pitney,Herman and Freddie. 16 also ran articles about The Rolling Stones,The Beatles,The Monkees,The Dave Clark Five,The Nazz and even Bob Dylan. These articles dealt with a great deal of periphery,like John shelling out to have his Rolls Royce done up in a psychedelic paint job in 1966 but the articles also had a lot of info about music and they were just what the young record buying public was interested in at that time. 16 magazine and other similar fanzines were out to corner the 14 year old girl with the transistor radio under her pillow market. Guys liked magazines like 16,too. I used to count pennies to pick up a copy when I was 8 or 9. Gloria and 16 printed a lot of gossip and amusing trivial oddities about many of the stars yet they never printed anything scandalous or libelous. I learned a whole lot about how to write from studying Gloria's style and little words she used.
Ernest L.Kagle(pronounced Kag-lee)was the greatest rock critic. He started out with Dig Magazine in those 1963 days of Teen Idols and Beach Parties and continued into the days of The British Invasion. I could be wrong yet Ernest was probably one of the first actual rock critics you can put a name to. Time Magazine had rock criticism,reviews and coverage but it tended to be very limited and they only wrote about a few big time acts. Dig Magazine went out of print in the 60s,then it came back a couple of times in the 70s. I remember there was an article in Dig about a 5 man rock and roll group with long hair. They dyed their hair red,green,blue,yellow and purple. Now,Ernest was a Beatles debunker. I've always been a Beatles fan ever since I got The Beatles 2nd Album and A Hard Day's Night Album for Christmas in 1964,but Ernest was a Beatles debunker and nowadays that would put him in bad straits with people who think Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band saved rock and roll. The truth is Sgt. Pepper was a fine pop album alongside contemporaries such as The Sandalwood Candle,Mandala,The Fifth Dimension and The Baja Marimba Band. But it didn't save rock and roll. Ernest L.Kagle was the all-time greatest rock critic. All of you have heard of Lester Bangs. Lester moved from California to Detroit when he was in high school. His first big article was a review of The MC5's "Kick Out The Jams" album in Rolling Stone. He was with Creem magazine and he coined the term "punk rock" in 1970. Garage rock and related areas like surf and hot rod, bubblegum music and many lesser known acts under the "heavy rock" aegis were becoming very prominent among collectors and together with The MC5,The Stooges,The New York Dolls,Patti Smith,Jayne County,The Velvet Underground,Alice Cooper Band,The Flamin' Groovies,The Ramones,Blondie,The Dictators,Teenage Lust(plus lots more)it all became "punk rock". This meant that something seemingly insubstantial and second rate or "punk" could really be saying more than you are willing to listen to and just could be making music just as good if not better than big shots like CSNY and The Eagles. Lester Bangs championed people like Lou Reed,Sky Saxon,Count Five,The MC5. He liked free jazz,too. Lester was with Creem magazine from 1969-1977 and then he went to New York to Punk Magazine. Like Ernest L.Kagle in the mid-sixties a lot of people read Lester's stuff. "Punk Rock" became a marketing term in about 1976 used by indie labels. Lester Bangs died in 1984. He was very influential and to this day,people try to copy his style!
Richard Mackay is a leading collector/archivist of The Yardbirds and related areas such as Renaissance,Cream,Led Zeppelin,Jeff Beck Group. He lives in Oxford,England. The American John Walsh was also very expert in the collecting and archiving of The Yardbirds. Unfortunately I'm told he passed away. Richard publishes Yardbirds World Monthly. He's got all kinds of information about the Yardbirds and related areas. Richard doesn't publish any gossip. It's all music. He's very respected and he knows many of the people he writes about. Richard has several Facebook Pages of music information. Yardbirds World Monthly is the one to get for information on The Yardbirds' current activities and on the regrouped Yardbirds put together by Jim and Chris in 1994. And for information on the current heavy metal blues/rock scene in general,Yardbirds World Monthly is a must! Richard Mackay is in Facebook. You can message him or email or send snail mail and he'll answer. Richard saw quite a few of the early greater London blues groups growing up. He saw The Yardbirds in 1966. Richard's critical observations are astute and he welcomes reader's opinions. Yardbirds World comes out xeroxed once a month at Richard's personal expense. You can google for all the information or look it up in any of the various Yardbirds World Facebook pages. Richard sometimes lists old Yardbirds,UK,European vynil records for sale. The prices are very decent for "Think About It" "Painter Man" or "Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James". I bought a really smokin' "The British Invasion All-Stars" audio cassette featuring about 16 really long jamming songs by ex-members of The Pretty Things,The Creation,The Downliners Sect,The Yardbirds out of Yardbirds World Monthly. The music kicked ass and the cassette filler was autographed by Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty! So if you've got love if you want it,check out Yardbirds World Monthly. Cub Koda grew up in Detroit suburb Chelsea,Michigan. He wrote The Vynil Junkie column in Gulcher Culture,Goldmine and Discoveries for years. When it came to 45 rpm records he knew what he was talking about. People sometimes criticized him for his double strength cups of Maxwell house coffee and his midwestern "messing around at Sutter's field" marlboro cigarettes. Cub was one of the least stodgy reads in the business. I used to send Cub Koda short notes once in awhile. Actually,these pertained to music. He wrote back once. It was a nice letter but I was looking through my things and I may have accidentally thrown the letter away! Cub and about 5 or 6 other guys formed Brownsville Station in 1969. They released their first album in 1970. The Band eventually consisted of Cub Koda(Lead Guitar) Michael Lutz(Bass)Henry Van Weck(Drums). They had a big hit single with "Smokin' In The Boys Room" in 1974. Brownsville station were a fine band and Cub Koda was a Detroit Guitar player in the same high energy style as Jim McCarty,Wayne Kramer,Fred"Sonic"Smith,Ron Asheton. As an aside,Cub was very short in stature and he was only about five feet tall. Cub died of heart failure at his home with a few freinds in 2000. Check him out. He could really write.
Simon Frith wrote the Letter from Britain once a month in Creem Magazine. Simon was from the midlands in England. Yorkshire or Leeds maybe,I don't remember. Simon Frith's story was interesting. He was 10 or 11 when The Beatles did "Love Me Do" and Beat Music broke bigtime in The UK and Europe. Simon bought records and magazines. He wrote to big British Invasion Stars who would always write back. Even though he was the equivalent of an American 5th grader he began to establish some very interesting freindships and he often went backstage at concerts. He knew everybody and he knew quite a few of the people in management and production. Over time,Simon accumulated a great deal of information about the British Invasion even though he wasn't any older than Beaver and Larry Mondello when he got started with this. Not long before he passed away,Simon more or less let it be known he was thinking about writing a potboiler,kind of a whodunit about British Invasion rock and roll. He wanted to mentioned everything from The Gay Managers to sex and drugs and money but he hesitated because there were plenty of people who were still around(1978)who could come after him with lawsuits if the book was too racy. I've thought about doing a book like that myself. But I'd be stealing Simon Frith's idea and I'm not from the UK in the first place. Simon died in 1978. Hit Parader first went to press in the 2nd world war. It was a monthly and it ran the lyrics of the preceding several weeks Top 40 hits. My brother and I were both trying to make music with some friends on a cheap guitar and drums and we always scraped together our pennies for a shared copy of Hit Parader. The printed lyrics came in handy. "Mony Mony" "Magic Carpet Ride" "96 Tears" "Kind of a Drag" "Gloria". There were articles about people like The Yardbirds and Mitch Ryder. Hit Parader coined the term "garage rock" in the spring of 1966. There was also Song Hits which was a condensed Hit Parader,so to speak. Lisa Robinson came to Hit Parader in 1969. She was an exceptionally good reporter and she had the ingenuity to get permission to go on the road with practically all of the super big-time rock bands both here and in England throughout the 70s. She gave dozens of interesting interviews. Lisa has worked for other publications including Rock Scene and Vanity Fair.
I first heard of Patti Smith in a November 1971 issue of Creem Magazine. Patti had started out as a Warhol crowd actress and by November of 1971 she had been published as a poet and a rock critic and writer. She was beginning to expand into music and she performed on the Detroit/St.Louis/LA early cable TV prototype called "Tubeworks"in 1971. Over the years,Patti Smith wrote extensively about The Rolling Stones and such artists as Todd Rundgren and The Doors. For a long time she fronted The Patti Smith Group and writer and critic friend Lenny Kaye played Lead Guitar and Bass Guitar for PSG. Patti sang lead and played Lead Guitar on much of the material they played. As a songwriter and a poet she wrote about subject matter a few people thought was unladylike such as prison,rape,molestation,suicide. Patti is still very busy writing and performing. She was married to The MC5's Fred "Sonic" Smith for years and lived in a Detroit suburb. Patti is a great writer! Lenny Kaye was published in Cavalier and Creem,among other publications and he came to prominence and much notoriety as the main compiler and annotator of Elektra records' very fine 2 record set "Nuggets". Nuggets was sort of a compile or "best of" featuring "original psychedelic artifacts" from the Top 40 era of psychpunk and garage rock all put together on a 2 record set. Lenny Kay did much of the compiling and research and wrote all of the liner notes. Lenny Kay reviewed a lot of great stuff in magazines like Creem and he wrote cool liner notes for vynil releases like The Live Yardbirds featoring Jimmy Page(Also called The Anderson Theatre Concert). Lenny played Lead Guitar and Bass for friend Patti Smith in The Patti Smith Group for years. Lenny Kaye has recorded as a solo artist. He is an easygoing read but remember that he is a leading expert in a lot of the stuff he talks about. Lenny doesn't brag or act high handed about this.
Barry Mann was a very well known songwriter in the early 60s. He collaborated with Cynthia Weil. Barry and Cynthia wrote bubblegum music and girl group songs mainly. They were an influence on The Beatles and The British Invasion,too. In the 70s Barry wrote for Bomp magazine. Bomp tended to celebrate Rock and Roll from the standpoint of Top 40 radio in the early and middle 1960s and from the standpoint of 2 to 3 minute songs on 45 rpm singles. I had an interesting experience 25 years ago. I was lightening the load on moving from Danville,IL to Champaign,IL. I was selling some old records in Goldmine Magazine and a Bomp Magazine writer called up with some questions from California. That was years ago. I don't remember if it was Barry Mann or not. That was 25 years ago. I don't remember very much about the conversation. Bomp was similar to Creem Magazine. It was a very cool and entertaining magazine. It had disappeared by the end of the 80s. These are only a few of the cooler writers and critics who were/are out there. And there are others still. So remember there's the collegiate version of Rock History(A Long Long time ago I remember how that music used to make me cry but February made me shiver with every paper I'd deliver,etc. and so on)and then there's the history plenty of other people subscribe to. You might find it to be more fun.