I think some of you folks will have fun with this between now and the end of the month... over to Sir Barney of Hoskyns....
"I'm writing to let you know that Rock's Backpages is celebrating its 5th birthday this autumn, having recently added its 10,000th piece to its library of seminal rock interviews and reviews from Aaliyah to ZZ Top.
As a valued contributor to and/or friend of the site, I am hoping that you might help us to get the word out about the anniversary by placing a story or a news item somewhere in the media, on- or offline.
RBP continues to be a labour of great love and dedication, and we need all the help we can get.
Below is a press release with additional information and tributes to the site from both great and good.
For those without subscriptions to RBP, I hereby extend the following courtesy username and password.
Take a free tour on us at any time before the end of September 2006!
Username: visitor@rocksbackpages.com Password: trial
Best regards,
BarneyONLINE ROCK JOURNALISM LIBRARY CELEBRATES FIFTH BIRTHDAY BY ADDING 10,000th ARTICLE!
Online rock journalism library Rock's Backpages at www.rocksbackpages.com has just uploaded its 10,000th article. This makes it by far the largest database of rock journalism online.
Rock's Backpages has just been voted one of the Best 25 Music Sites by the Observer Music Monthly, who call it "a cultural resource for students, a tool for journalists, and a great way of whiling away a wet afternoon", and one of the Best 40 Music Sites by The Daily Telegraph, who invite their readers to ""marvel at the pre-PR days when writers could hang out with Keiths Moon and Richards…"
Launched five years ago, Rock's Backpages features interviews with and reviews of thousands of artists from Aaliyah to ZZ Top, covering Rock, Pop, Soul, Alternative, R&B, Folk, Dance, Blues and Jazz. It was co-founded five years ago by author and former Mojo US editor Barney Hoskyns. Rock's Backpages features the work of many of the world's best-known music journalists past and present, including Lester Bangs, Lenny Kaye, Carol Cooper, Dave Marsh, Ben Fong-Torres, Charlie Gillett, Penny Valentine, Robert Greenfield, Jon Savage, Richard Williams Charles Shaar Murray and Simon Reynolds. The archive is fully searchable by artist, genre, writer or keyword (allowing search by album or single title, date etc). Articles can be used for academic research, journalistic background or just browsed for fun.
Rock's Backpages also features a growing library of audio interviews for podcast, including classic conversations with Morrissey, Little Richard, Joni Mitchell, Johnny Cash and Tom Waits.
Subscribers to the site include the BBC, the Experience Music Project and universities such as NYU, Penn State, UCLA, Wesleyan and Berklee College of Music in the USA and the Universities of Central England, Leeds, Liverpool John Moores and Gloucester in the UK.
"There is nothing out there that is even remotely like it for exploring the past 40 years of rock music history or the culture that rock music helped to shape," says ALEXANDER STREET PRESS. "Be cool. Subscribe."
"As comprehensive as a Google search, but with less insane liars." LAUREN LAVERNE
"There's no finer website for the Archivalist Snob than Rock's Backpages." SNOBSITE.COM
"Rock's Backpages is as important to my research in writing my books as Graham Greene."ANDREW LOOG OLDHAM
"Rock's Backpages is an invaluable tool to remind me of what was really was going on in the '60s and '70s when I started out in this wonderful business." DAVID ENTHOVEN
As well as offering visual access to its content, Rock's Backpages also provides a range of business services, from syndication to editorial development. Its Rock Magazine Archive is an indispensable tool for both media and academia. Books produced by Rock's Backpages include The Sound and the Fury: A Rock's Backpages Reader (Bloomsbury) and Into the Void: Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath (Omnibus). Says Hoskyns, "Before we set up this site, journalists, researchers and music fans had to trawl through hundreds of different sites to find the information they needed. Now they can find them all on Rock's Backpages with just a few keystrokes. It's also made it easier for publishers and website owners that want to find and use great music content to do so." For more information, contact
info@rocksbackpages.com
THE COME-ONS are headed for Europe to hep you to their latest album, STARS on MO-POP. Make it worth their while wontcha?
