Read anything interesting about the history of pop music media?
April 14, 2010 11:19 AM   Subscribe

Research filter: can anybody recommend any books/articles/etc. on rock & pop music media in the late 70's and very early 80's.

Magazines like Creem, Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone were strong voices of the rock era of the late sixties and much of the seventies, but by ~1977, their maintenance of their hippie/boomer ethos had already made them "what was." MTV wouldn't go on air until 1981, and wouldn't take over as the taste-making monolith it became until a few years after that.

So who really "got it" in the realm of music journalism/criticism/etc during that middle period? Who was writing about punk, new wave, the green shoots of hip hop in the late-late 70's? Who were the taste-makers? Who spoke for the counterculture, and who were the arbiters of cool?

I'm primarily looking for secondary sources, like a book or magazine article, or part of a documentary, about the music media of that era -- something that discusses it in historical and/or critical context -- but if anybody has any suggestions for primary sources from that time, that'd be great to.
posted by patnasty to Media & Arts (5 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Trouser Press.
posted by pinky at 11:25 AM on April 14, 2010


Synapse (not the medical journal!) was basically synthesizer porn, but it remains a neat little history of music in the late '70s.
posted by Sys Rq at 11:39 AM on April 14, 2010


ZigZag.
Lipstick Traces.
England's Dreaming.
posted by TheRaven at 1:49 PM on April 14, 2010


Best answer: I learned a lot from Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 by Simon Reynolds. Also from the movie 24 Hour Party People.
posted by Jasper Fnorde at 3:09 PM on April 14, 2010


Check out the works of Ben Fong-Torres.
posted by pineapple at 3:26 PM on April 14, 2010


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