Histories of Rock and Roll

I happened onto Wikipedia"s listing for the old Bill Drake " History Of Rock and Roll " radio super-miniseries, which I remember very well hearing the 1978 and 1981 versions of. It got me to thinking of other attempts at Rock"n"roll-Our Music-" modern pop music " histories, radio, televised and written.
In the mid-90s both Time-Warner and the combination of PBS station WGBH Boston and the BBC made " history of Rock " TV miniseries at almost exactly the same time! They were even both 10-parters! Both series have fairly perfunctory Wiki entries, unlke the quite lengthy one for our Billy Boys!
In the70s, I had a couple of magazine-ztyled installment issues of a British-originated series tht was titled -or similarly-" Story of Rock " in the U.S. version and ' The Story Of Pop " in the Albion original . It was written collectively by a whole lot if Brit critic types and kind of reflected the British glam-teenybop era being current at that time - One volume I had an on-stage pic of David Cassidy as its cover.
For Christmas...1976? I received the first edition if that " Rolling Stone History Of Rock And Roll " book - a really massive page-sized trade paperback with pages about the size of a tabloid newspaper, while binding would fall apart, but had some great pictures!
I have never seen Tony Palmer"s UK-made history , " All You Need Us Love ", though I saw the tie-in book. I don't believe it was ever widely broadcast in the US, was it?

 

...One more ibscure one that I remember being on 77 WABC about 10:25 every night in 1971/72 was pint-size Ed & a series called " Retriricj ", which would look at one artist/one record every night, playing much of one record. It was.naybe 3&1/2 minutes (" five . minutes ") long. I coylc find nothing about it when I looked it up.

 

Dave Marsh, 1001 Greatest Singles, The Heart of Rock and Soul.

Everyone should have this.

 

Dave Marsh books are great if you want to read about Dave Marsh. My copy went to the thrift store.

 

LOL!

 

...I meant to write " Retrorock " above re: the 1971-2 series. . The 1978 Drake history rather predicted some if what we, and the Internet discuss - It had these memorable chronological-orded medleys-sweeps of all the #1 hits in a year, or other period - I remember taping some of the #1 segues, on my little box-portable radio and tape player then, which also got the audio of TV broadcasts!

 

Hard to beat the ROLLING STONE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF ROCK & ROLL. Terrific photos, funny captions and most importantly, great rock writers on great rockers, back when the genre could be covered with something resembling comprehensiveness.

I'm hoping Ed Ward will finish his HISTORY OF ROCK & ROLL. We got volume one covering 1920-1963.

 

The BBC Seven Ages of Rock was enjoyable, if you can overlook the blind spots. It would be nice to get a remix of the '90s PBS/BBC series with more modern content to pair with the archival gems, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

Marsh is pretty hit and miss. But I agree, this is a great book. Even when I don't agree with his judgments, I find it entertaining and informative. I can even overlook the factual errors

 

I have both of these and they are excellent in my opinion.

 

Ditto.

 

Standard answer.
Get The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll by Charlie Gillette
THE book on history of rock and roll.

 

...Thank you both for the info on the Ward and BBC ones. Ron, do you mean that first edition of the Stone history? I read at least much of the Gillet book a long long time alone. Yeah, the Stone book - certainly my first edition!!!! - came out if a time when there was a generally held consensus on the history of r'n'r - and, as many years as it seemed to cover, it was so many less years!

 

Alan Freeman ("Fluff") presented a 26-part Story Of Pop on BBC Radio One in 1973-'74, revising the programme to 52 hour-long episodes in 1994. It was essential listening back in its day. There's an Episode Guide here: BBC Radio 6 Music - The Story of Pop - Episode guide

 

It would make a great playlist!

 

Tony Palmer's TV wonderful series "All You Need Is Love: The Story Of Popular Music" starts in Africa and ends with Mike Oldfield using African influences on the Ommadawn album. It discusses Ragtime, Jazz, Blues, Music Hall, Tim Pan Alley, Musicals, Swing, R&B, Country, Folk, Rock 'n' Roll, The Beatles, Psychedelic/Acid Rock, Art Rock/Prog along the way. He wanted to go on to do an episode on Punk, but the money ran out apparently.

Otherwise my favorite book is The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Rock by NME writers Nick Logan and Bob Woffinden.

 

It was released in 1989, but it’s hardly dated. I started collecting all of the music in it and finally finished in 2000. Had to buy most, and the last few hundred were downloaded via good old Limewire! All on cassette tape first, taped from CDs and vinyl. Then, tapes were recorded to hard drive. Six CDs of mp3’s now, as well as stored on a hard drive.

My prized collection!

 

Yes, like not attributing the vocals to Steely Dan songs to Donald Fagan, and Donna Summer’s Hot Stuff being called Bad Girls!

But what a resource.

 

I devoured that Logan and Wiffinden book. Very important.

 

I practically memorized the copy at my local library, checking it out repeatedly before I finally got my own copy. Still have it.

 

Bill Drake's "The History of Rock and Roll" is the best of the bunch.

 

I've never found anything highly satisfying (to me) in terms of film, series, or books on the history of rock 'n roll. There are always (understandably) omissions and biases that make such an endeavor nearly impossible.

I have seen films and read books that worked well for me for delving into certain periods of rock and roll. For example, Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life; Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1081-1991, does an excellent job of covering much of that period in iindie rock and roll in the U.S. Same with the book and film of the same title, American Hardcore (book by Steven Blush) covering American hardcover punk, and Legs McNeil/ Gillian McCain's Please Kill Me covering punk more generally.

Another good one is Greil Marcus' Ranters and Crowd Pleasers covering 1977-1992.

I'm generally more satisfied breaking it all down into periods and creating a whole from both those pieces and my own years of immersion in all forms of rock and roll.

 

my choice as well. The 1976 edition (pictured). so lucky and happy to have had access to this book as a young rock fan late 70s/early 80s. The First edition predated punk and new wave so there was much more room for the more progressive footnotes before an onslaught of new artists demanded the space in later editions. Nothing against those genres as I love it all, but there is something very peaceful and innocent about the 1976 edition. Barclay James Harvest, perhaps?

 

...Of course, a problem is that the church of rock and roll, too metaphor-ize, has broken up into many denominations. That Drake history
- in its '78 version - I imagine still sorta stuck to the formula " R'n' R equals - radio music ", and more what was still AM radio, more, music in '78 - I suppose it might have given some brief mention to Beloved Dead Janis and Jimi, perhaps nothing to the G. Dead... and, as far as people who were't really radio play-getters, a modern one still, probably, would't much mention Esquerita or the Stooges or the Sonic or. on America. And Barrett... Add your own " Or. ...... neither! "s here!








diophilePhil, post: 18779136, member: 2776"]Bill Drake's "The History of Rock and Roll" is the best of the bunch.





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