Rock's Backpages ... the ultimate archive of rock journalism.

Rock's Backpages is the largest online database of rock music writing, sourced from the pages of the music and mainstream press.  The library of articles includes reviews, interviews, features and more from the early 1960s right up to the present day.  Articles feature over two thousand artists and range from 500-word album (or concert) reviews to 10,000-word interviews and features.  There are also over 200 exclusive, and previously unpublished, audio interviews with major rock music artists.

Rock's Backpages is an ever expanding and unique archive, making the database an essential resource for any serious student of modern music, journalism, literature, popular culture and the media.  The database is invaluable for undergraduates and graduates studying in the media and related fields in addition to those studying on vocational media courses, and for those studying popular music.  Rock's Backpages has also been used in courses covering subjects such as Sociology, Politics, and Contemporary History.

Subscribers include nearly 100 university libraries worldwide, including Harvard, Cornell, UCLA, NYU, Columbia, Penn State, Syracuse and Wesleyan in the US. 

Written by nearly 500 music journalists, the articles are taken from a wide range of publications in the US and UK: from Cream and Trouser Press to Rolling Stone, and from New Musical Express and Melody Maker to Mojo.

The archive covers all types of popular music from the 1950s to the present: from Abba to Zappa, the Stones to the Stone Roses and from Elvis to Eminem.

All the material in the database includes the full agreement and permission of the copyright holders - freelance writers and journalists - or their estates.  Auto-Citations are provided in the Harvard format.

Content Highlights - The library includes previously unpublished pieces about The Beatles (by Michael Lydon in 1066), The Doors (by Lester Bangs in 1975), and seminal interviews with major artists from Bob Dylan to Radiohead.  As an example of time periods covered there are over 240 articles on the Rolling Stones, the first in 1965 and the most recent in 2010.  The library is added to weekly, with between 30 and 50 text articles, and usually with a new audio interview.

Additional content and features

• Writers blogs

• Selected Free Material

• Weekly Newsletter

• COUNTER compliant level one usage statistics available

• Co-branding for subscribing institutions available with their own logo and message

• Promotional materials available including posters, bookmarks, stickers and more.

• Available Soon:  Full-text linking and federated searching

"...there's nothing remotely like this file for exploring rock's culture."  ...  Bruce Connolly, Library Journal, 11/15/2008, Popular Culture E-Reference Reviews.
 

“Rock's Backpages has become an invaluable resource to students studying music, media and communication at the University of Leeds. On our popular music BA the archive provides material to support study on, for example, genre, politics and subcultures, for essays at all levels, all the way through to final dissertations, and as a library for primary sources for the popular music journalism module I run it is perfect.”

– Simon Warner, Senior Teaching Fellow Director, PopuLUs, the Centre for the Study of the World's Popular Musics School of Music University of Leeds, UK

“I have made extensive use of Rock's Backpages over the past couple of years. Not only am I impressed by its ease and speed of access, but also by the way that it is constantly improving and updating its archive. I consider it an invaluable asset to any researcher or serious fan of the subject.”

– Dr Ron Moy, Sr Lecturer in Popular Music Studies, Liverpool John Moores University, UK.

“For anyone exploring the history of popular music, Rock’s Backpages is a gold mine. Its vast yet constantly expanding database of hard-to-find primary materials is high in quality, wide in scope, easy to access, and fully cross-referenced. Whether you’re a student or professor, journalist or archivist, researcher or fan, Rock’s Backpages puts you in the front row.”

– Dale Carter, Associate Professor of American Studies, University of Aarhus, Denmark

Hear Johnny Marr (visiting Music Professor at Salford University, formerly of The Smiths) and others talk about Rock's Backpages in this Informational Video

Download RBP Brochure

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For free trial setup, please contact support@waldolib.org

http://www.rocksbackpages.com