Alan Betrock
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Alan Betrock
Alan Betrock (1950  – April 9, 2000) was an American music critic, publisher, editor, author and record producer. Initially a music critic, Betrock founded the influential ''New York Rocker'' magazine in 1976 and the publishing house Shake Books in 1979. He has written and edited several books, including the critically acclaimed ''Girl Groups: The Story of a Sound''. He produced Blondie's first demos in 1975 and launched the short-lived record label Shake Records. He has produced and/or released music by such artists as Marshall Crenshaw, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, the dB's and the Smithereens. Early career A native of Queens, New York City, Betrock went to Newtown High School in Queens and attended Queens College. He founded the fanzine ''JAMZ'' as an undergrad in 1971, which led to ''Rock Marketplace'' in 1973. The magazine united record collectors nationwide in the search for obscure releases and included articles that established catalog numbers and release date ...
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Music Journalism
Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on what is now regarded as classical music. In the 1960s, music journalism began more prominently covering popular music like rock and pop after the breakthrough of The Beatles. With the rise of the internet in the 2000s, music criticism developed an increasingly large online presence with music bloggers, aspiring music critics, and established critics supplementing print media online. Music journalism today includes reviews of songs, albums and live concerts, profiles of recording artists, and reporting of artist news and music events. Origins in classical music criticism Music journalism has its roots in classical music criticism, which has traditionally comprised the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of music that has b ...
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British Invasion
The British Invasion was a cultural phenomenon of the mid-1960s, when rock and pop music acts from the United Kingdom and other aspects of British culture became popular in the United States and significant to the rising "counterculture" on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Pop and rock groups such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Zombies, the Kinks, Small Faces, the Dave Clark Five, Herman's Hermits, the Hollies, the Animals, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Searchers, the Yardbirds, the Who and Them, as well as solo singers like Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, Petula Clark, Tom Jones and Donovan, were at the forefront of the "invasion". Background The rebellious tone and image of US rock and roll and blues musicians became popular with British youth in the late 1950s. While early commercial attempts to replicate US rock and roll mostly failed, the trad jazz–inspired skiffle craze, with its do it yourself attitude, produced two top ten hits in th ...
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East Village, Manhattan
The East Village is a neighborhood on the East Side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is roughly defined as the area east of the Bowery and Third Avenue, between 14th Street on the north and Houston Street on the south. The East Village contains three subsections: Alphabet City, in reference to the single-letter-named avenues that are located to the east of First Avenue; Little Ukraine, near Second Avenue and 6th and 7th Streets; and the Bowery, located around the street of the same name. Initially the location of the present-day East Village was occupied by the Lenape Native Americans, and was then divided into plantations by Dutch settlers. During the early 19th century, the East Village contained many of the city's most opulent estates. By the middle of the century, it grew to include a large immigrant populationincluding what was once referred to as Manhattan's Little Germanyand was considered part of the nearby Lower East Side. By the late 1960s, many artists, ...
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Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the List of counties in New York, original counties of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located near the southern tip of New York State, Manhattan is based in the Eastern Time Zone and constitutes both the geographical and demographic center of the Northeast megalopolis and the urban core of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass. Over 58 million people live within 250 miles of Manhattan, which serves as New York City’s economic and administrative center, cultural identifier, and the city’s historical birthplace. Manhattan has been described as the cultural, financial, Media in New York City, media, and show business, entertainment capital of the world, is considered a saf ...
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CBGB
CBGB was a New York City music club opened in 1973 by Hilly Kristal in Manhattan's East Village. The club was previously a biker bar and before that was a dive bar. The letters ''CBGB'' were for '' Country'', '' BlueGrass'', and '' Blues'', Kristal's original vision, yet CBGB soon became a famed venue of punk rock and new wave bands like the Ramones, Television, Patti Smith Group, Blondie, and Talking Heads. From the early 1980s onward, CBGB was known for hardcore punk. One storefront beside CBGB became the "CBGB Record Canteen", a record shop and café. In the late 1980s, "CBGB Record Canteen" was converted into an art gallery and second performance space, "CB's 313 Gallery". CB's Gallery was played by music artists of milder sounds, such as acoustic rock, folk, jazz, or experimental music, such as Dadadah, Kristeen Young and Toshi Reagon, while CBGB continued to showcase mainly hardcore punk, post punk, metal, and alternative rock. 313 Gallery was also the host location ...
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Liner Notes
Liner notes (also sleeve notes or album notes) are the writings found on the record sleeve, sleeves of LP record albums and in booklets that come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or the equivalent packaging for cassettes. Origin Liner notes are descended from the program notes for musical concerts, and developed into notes that were printed on the inner sleeve used to protect a traditional 12-inch vinyl record, i.e., long playing or gramophone record album. The term descends from the name "record liner" or "album liner". Album liner notes survived format changes from vinyl LP to cassette to CD. These notes can be sources of information about the contents of the recording as well as broader cultural topics. Contents Common material Such notes often contained a mix of factual and anecdotal material, and occasionally a discography for the artist or the issuing record label. Liner notes were also an occasion for thoughtful signed essays on the artist by another party, often ...
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Rhino Entertainment
Rhino Entertainment Company is an American specialty record label and production company founded in 1978. It is currently the catalog division for Warner Music Group. Its current CEO is Mark Pinkus. History Founded in 1978, Rhino was originally a novelty and reissue label during the 1970s and 1980s. It released compilation albums of pop, rock & roll, and rhythm & blues successes from the 1950s through the 1980s, as well as novelty-song LPs (compiled in-house or by Dr. Demento) and retrospectives of famous comedy performers, including Richard Pryor, Stan Freberg, Tom Lehrer, and Spike Jones. Rhino started as a record shop on Westwood Boulevard, Los Angeles, in 1973, run by Richard Foos, and became a record distributor five years later thanks to the effort of then-store manager Harold Bronson. Their early releases were mostly novelty records (such as their first single, in 1975, Wild Man Fischer's "Go To Rhino Records"). The difficulties involved in getting airplay and distri ...
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Pye Records
Pye Records was a British record label. Its best known artists were Lonnie Donegan (1956–1969), Petula Clark (1957–1971), the Searchers (1963–1967), the Kinks (1964–1971), Sandie Shaw (1964–1971), Status Quo (1968–1971) and Brotherhood of Man (1975–1979). The label changed its name to PRT Records (distributing as Precision Records & Tapes) in 1980, before being briefly reactivated as Pye Records in 2006. History The Pye Company originally manufactured televisions and radios. Its main plant was situated off what used to be Haig Road, in Cambridge, and it entered the record business when it bought Nixa Records in 1953. In 1955, the company acquired Polygon Records, a label that had been established by Leslie Clark and Alan A. Freeman to control distribution of the recordings of the former's daughter, Petula Clark. Pye merged it with Nixa Records to form Pye Nixa Records. Pye International In 1958, Pye International Records was established. The company licensed ...
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Compilation Album
A compilation album comprises tracks, which may be previously released or unreleased, usually from several separate recordings by either one or several performers. If by one artist, then generally the tracks were not originally intended for release together as a single work, but may be collected together as a greatest hits album or box set. If from several performers, there may be a theme, topic, time period, or genre which links the tracks, or they may have been intended for release as a single work—such as a tribute album. When the tracks are by the same recording artist, the album may be referred to as a retrospective album or an anthology. Content and scope Songs included on a compilation album may be previously released or unreleased, usually from several separate recordings by either one or several performers. If by one artist, then generally the tracks were not originally intended for release together as a single work, but may be collected together as a greatest hi ...
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SoHo Weekly News
The ''SoHo Weekly News'' (also called the ''SoHo News'') was a weekly alternative newspaper published in New York City from 1973 to 1982. The paper was founded in 1973 by Michael Goldstein (1938–2018). History The first issue was published on October 11, 1973. Initially published in eight pages, it eventually grew to over 100 pages and competed with ''The Village Voice''. The paper's offices were at 111 Spring Street (Manhattan), Spring Street, Manhattan, although the earliest issues showed the address of Goldstein's apartment on the masthead. Circulation was reported as 25,000 – 30,000. The paper was sold to DMG Media, Associated Newspaper Group (ANG) in 1979. In the fall of 1981, ANG announced plans to close or sell the paper by February 1982. Although there were negotiations with possible purchasers, which continued beyond the original deadline, continuing losses ($1.7 million in the previous year) forced ANG to shut down the paper in March. The recent unionization o ...
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Rock's Backpages
Rock's Backpages is an online archive of music journalism, sourced from contributions to the music and mainstream press from the 1950s to the present day. The articles are full text and searchable, and all are reproduced with the permission of the copyright holders. The database was founded in 2000 by British music journalist Barney Hoskyns. As of November 2018 its database contains over 37,000 articles, including interviews, features and reviews, which covered popular music from blues and soul up to the present date.Group subscriptions
. Rock's Backpages. Rock's Backpages also features over 600 audio interviews with musicians from Jimi Hendrix and Johnny Cash to Kate Bush and Kurt Cobain. The articles are sourced from magazines including ''

Hit Parader
''Hit Parader'' was an American music magazine that operated between 1942 and 2008. A monthly publication, it focused on rock and pop music in general until the 1970s, when its focus began turning to hard rock and heavy metal. By the early 1980s, ''Hit Parader'' focused exclusively on heavy metal and briefly produced a spinoff television program entitled ''Hit Parader's Heavy Metal Heroes''. The magazine reached its circulation peak in the mid-to-late 1980s selling a half-million copies every month as heavy metal music achieved high levels of popularity and commercial success. History Early years ''Hit Parader'' was launched in 1942 by Charlton Publications, based in Derby, Connecticut. Publishing its first issue on September 16, 1942, the magazine's original mission statement read as follows: ''Hit Parader is designed to appeal to boys and girls in school, in colleges, and in the armed services... and the millions who listen to radio every day, the people who go to the movie ...
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