About The Reviewers

Billy Altman founded a music magazine called Punk in the Sixties, and was the review editor of Creem magazine.

Gil Asakawa is the Content Editor for America Online's Digital City Denver, co-author of The Toy Book and has written for Rolling Stone, Pulse, Creem, No Depression, New Country and other publications.

Lester Bangs was a contributor to Creem and wrote for several other musical publications including Rolling Stone.

Ken Barnes has served as Senior Vice-President and Editor of Radio and Records magazine and has written for Creem and Rolling Stone.

Bob Blumenthal is a Massachusetts attorney who wrote jazz and rock reviews for Rolling Stone and The Boston Globe.

Fred Bronson has worked in the publicity department at NBC Television in Burbank, Calif., where he handled the publicity for the Bob Hope specials, Tom Snyder's Tomorrow, Sanford and Son, Bonanza, BJ and the Bear, Petrocelli, The Hollywood Squares and other network series. He wrote and co-produced the ABC-TV special, America Picks the Number One Songs, based on his Billboard Book of Number One Hits. He has also produced segments for KCBS-TV in Los Angelesand written a Hollywood-based column for the British pop weekly Record Mirror.

Robert Christgau became Esquire magazine's "secular music" columnist in early 1967. He has been a weekly columnist and later music editor of The Village Voice, a music critic for Newsday, and a contributor to Creem and Rolling Stone.

Anthony DeCurtis has a Ph.D. in American Literature, has written for Saturday Review, been an Associate Editor of Record, and is a Contributing Editor to Rolling Stone.

Eric Deggans is the pop music critic for the St. Petersburg Times (Fla.). His work has also appeared on Rolling Stone Online and in Hit, Modern Drummer, P.C. Novice and Rockgrl magazines.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine is the associate editor of All Music Guide. He studied English at the University of Michigan and was the arts editor of the school's newspaper, The Michigan Daily. In addition to editing the All Music Guide, Erlewine is a freelance writer and musician.

Brian Escamilla is the editor of Contemporary Musicians, a biographical reference series, and a musician.

Shane Faubert played in a band called Cheepskates during the '80s and is presently a solo artist in Montvale, N.J.

Chet Flippo was a Rolling Stone associate editor with a master's degree in journalism which he received at the University of Texas for writing a thesis on the rock press. Best known for writing about country musicians, he also authored a biography of Hank Williams and was Nashville Bureau Chief of Billboard magazine from 1995 to 2000. He also served as editorial director of the country music cable TV channel CMT beginning in 2001.

David Fricke, a native of Philadelphia, is a Senior Editor at Rolling Stone. He began working for the publication in 1977 and as of 2008 has written 44 cover stories and reviewed 2,079 albums.

Lawrence Gabriel is a Detroit-based writer, poet and musician who has been covering music and issues for more than 20 years. His work has appeared in the Detroit Sunday Journal, the Detroit Metro Times and the Detroit Free Press.

David Galens is the editor of Contemporary Authors on CD and a regular contributor to the Contemporary Theatre, Film, and Television and Contemporary Authors print series. He is also a member of the Detroit-based band The Civilians.

Paul Gambaccini is the editor of several rock-related books, including The Top 100 Rock 'n' Roll Albums of All Time, and has written for several music publications in the US and UK including Rolling Stone.

Simon Glickman is the lead singer and lyricist for the L.A. band Spanish Kitchen. He has written for Contemporary Musicians, Uncommon Heroes, Entertainment Today, Rockrgrl, and other publications, and served as co-editor of Native American Biography.

Gary Pig Gold is a musician and songwriter who has published the music fanzine The Pig Paper since 1975.

Gary Graff is a nationally published, award-winning music writer for the Detroit Free Press/Detroit Sunday Journal and has also contributed to Rolling Stone, People, Guitar World, Request and Hits, and to the popular Internet entertainment site, Mr. Showbiz. He is co-founder and a board member of the Motor City Music Awards, and has been featured weekly on a major Detroit radio station as the "Rock & Roll Insider."

Mike Greenfield plays guitar, writes songs and works in advertising and public relations in Youngstown, Ohio.

William Hanson is a movie critic for the Detroit Sunday Journal and has written for the Ann Arbor News and Detroit Free Press.

Stephen Holden is the author of Triple Platinum, a novel about the record industry, and frequently contributed to Rolling Stone and the Village Voice.

Steve Holtje is freelance writer and editor in New York whose work has appeared in Creem, New Power Generation, the New Review and other publications.

Steve Knopper is a Chicago-based freelance writer who has contributed to Rolling Stone, Newsday, Request, Billboard, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Reader and the Rocky Mountain News.

Jon Landau has served as reviews editor for Rolling Stone and now produces and manages Bruce Springsteen.

Kurt Loder has been a reporter for MTV, Senior Editor of Rolling Stone, and co-authored Tina Turner's biography.

Elizabeth Lynch is an Evanston, Ill., writer and novelist who has written for the Chicago Sun-Times, the Miami Herald, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinal and Replay magazine.

Brian Mansfield is the Nashville editor of New Country magazine and has written for Request, CCM, The Tennessean, Spin and Country America.

Greil Marcus is the author of Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock'n'Roll Music and the editor of Stranded. He has written a monthly music column for Artforum and Music Magazine. His articles on culture and politics have appeared in the Village Voice, Creem, Rolling Stone, Triquarterly, the San Francisco Express-Times, The New Yorker, and many other publications.

Dave Marsh was a founding editor of Creem, a music critic at Newsday and an editor at the Real Paper in Boston before joining Rolling Stone as an associate editor in 1975. His syndicated record reviews have appeared in over 200 newspapers, and his articles have appeared in Playboy, The Nation, and TV Guide. His books include Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story; The Book of Rock Lists; The Rolling Stone Record Guide; Elvis; Before I Get Old: The Story of the Who; Rocktopicon; and Fortunate Son. He began publishing Rock & Roll Confidential, a monthly newsletter of rock criticism, in 1983.

Patrick McCarty has written about rock 'n' roll for the past 25 years for publications including the Richmond Times-Dispatch (Va.), the Richmond News Leader and Style Weekly. He's a classically trained musician, producer and songwriter.

John Milward has been a reviewer for the Chicago Reader and Rolling Stone. Milward was also a music critic for the Chicago Daily News before that paper's demise.

Paul Nelson founded the Little Sandy Review, edited Circus Weekly, and was a former associate editor in charge of Rolling Stone's record reviews from 1969 to 1983. He also formerly worked in publicity for Mercury Records and signed such acts as the New York Dolls and Blue Ash to the label. He died in New York City in June 2006 at age 70.

Alan Neister is a former Toronto high school teacher who wrote for a variety of American and Canadian magazines.

David Okamoto is the music editor for the Dallas Morning News and a contributing editor to ICE. His work has also appeared in Jazziz, Rolling Stone and CD Review.

Allan Orski, in addition to freelance writing, is an associate editor at the New Review in New York City. He is also an actor and a vegan.

Alan Paul is senior editor of Guitar World magazine and the executive editor of Guitar World Online. He has also appeared in the New Yorker and Mojo.

James Person is a senior editor of New Power Generation and the former editor in chief of Creem. He currently fronts a band called the WrightBrothers.

Gary Plochinski is an advertising copywriter at the BBDO advertising agency in Detroit and was a founding member of the Polish Muslims.

Kit Rachlis has been music editor of the Boston Phoenix and has written for Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, and the late New Times.

Frank Rose has contributed to the Village Voice and Rolling Stone, is the author of the book about styles of masculinity.

William Ruhlmann is a freelance journalist and critic covering the performing arts with a special emphasis on popular music. He is the author of a series of illustrated biographies of major popular music artists, including Barbra Streisand and Bruce Springsteen. Mr. Ruhlmann is a regular contributor to Goldmine magazine, and he has written liner notes for retrospective albums by a wide range of performers including box sets by Chicago and by Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra featuring Frank Sinatra.

Leland Rucker has been writing about popular music since 1975. He is co-author of The Toy Book (Knopf, 1992) a study of Baby Boomer toys, and managing editor of Blues Access, a quarterly journal of blues music published in Boulder, Colo.

Joel Selvin has covered pop music for the San Francisco Chronicle since 1970 and is the author of six books on the subject. He co-produced Dick Dale's Tribal Thunder album.

Bill Shapiro earned a national following as host and creator of "Cyprus Avenue," a weekly program carried by National Public Radio stations across the U.S., that covers rock & roll music from its mid-fifties beginnings to the newest releases. He is the author of The CD Rock & Roll Library: 30 Years of Rock & Roll on Compact Disc and Rock & Roll Review: A Guide to Good Rock on CD.

Greg Shaw was a pioneering rock critic, magazine publisher, manager, label head, historian and archivist, and concert booker. He began publishing the San Francisco-based Mojo-Navigator Rock & Roll News in 1966 and the punk/power pop mag Who Put the Bomp in 1970. In 1974 he founded the indie label Bomp! records, which put out a single by the cult group Flamin' Groovies, and subsequently became their manager. In the early '80s he paved the way for the garage-rock revival by assembling the influential Pebbles series (modeled after Lenny Kaye's Nuggets) and, according to former Rhino Records VP Gary Stewart, "created the blueprint on which Rhino was started." He died of heart failure at age 55 on Oct. 19, 2004, in Los Angeles.

Ariel Swartley has contributed to the Boston Phoenix, Rolling Stone, the Village Voice and other publications.

John Swenson grew up a Who fanatic in Brooklyn and began writing about his mania while in college. He became records editor at Crawdaddy in the mid-Seventies, and has also performed similar functions for Circus Weekly while writing books about the Who, the Beatles and Kiss. Swenson has been a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone.

Ken Tucker has been a rock music critic for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and a contributor to Rolling Stone.

Richie Unterberger is a San Francisco-based writer and editor. He was the editor of the travel and music sections of The Whole Earth Catalog (Harper Collins, 1994). Between 1985 and 1991, he was the editor of Option magazine, the national publication devoted to coverage of all types of alternative and independently produced music.

Aidin Vaziri is a freelance jounalist in California whose work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Guitar Player and Vibe.

Polly Vedder is an associate editor for Gale Research with a passion for music that most of her acquaintances have never heard of -- notably Scottish folk, contemporary Christian and off-the-beaten-track pop and rock.

Charley Walters managed a record store on Nantucket Island and has frequently contributed to Rolling Stone.

Chris Woodstra has had a lifelong obsession with music and is an avid record collector. He has worked many years in music retail, he was a DJ, and has been contributing editor for several local arts and entertaiment magazines. He currently serves as an editor of the All Music Guide database.