From the Online section in Thursday’s Guardian, which I only got around to reading this evening:

Paul Gorman’s coffee table compendium, In Their Own Write (launched today by Sanctuary Publishing as a “definitive account of the collective madness known as the music press”) charts the rise of pop hackery. From 50s Tin Pan Alley and typewriters to MTV and the email age, these heartwarming tales reveal a constancy of drink, drugs, back-biting, score-settling and general bitchiness. Today also sees the launch of Rock’s Backpages, a searchable online library that brings long-forgotten gems within the reach of any nostalgic music fan with internet access. The site is the brainchild of Barney Hoskyns, a freelance music journalist and one-time US editor of Mojo magazine. “We set up Rock’s Backpages (RBP) to aggregate nearly 50 years of rich, unique and compelling writing,” says Hoskyns. He believes the collection has wide appeal. “Our content is not exclusively from the music press - many of the pieces appeared in newspapers, including the Guardian. But whatever their provenance, the interviews and articles cover virtually every seminal figure in rock and pop and thereby have evergreen value. The public’s appetite for this sort of writing is proved by the success of retrospective magazines like Mojo, Uncut, Goldmine and Record Collector”.

If I had the money, I might actually subscribe to this.

Sat 03 Nov 2001 at 20:16   ·