- Lester Bangs
Leslie Conway Bangs (December 13, 1948 - April 30, 1982) was an American music journalist, author and musician. Most famous for his work at "CREEM" and "Rolling Stone" magazines, Bangs was and still is regarded as an extremely influential voice in rock criticism. - Ellen Willis
Ellen Jane Willis was an American political essayist, journalist, and pop music critic. - Cameron Crowe
Cameron Bruce Crowe (born July 13, 1957) is an Academy Award winning American writer and film director. Before moving into the film industry, Crowe was contributing editor at "Rolling Stone" magazine, for which he still frequently writes. Crowe has made his mark with character-driven, personal films that have been generally hailed as refreshingly original and void of cynicism. - Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau (born April 18, 1942), is an American essayist, music journalist, and the self-declared "Dean of American Rock Critics". In print, his name is sometimes abbreviated as "Xgau". - John Tierney
John Marion Tierney (born March 25 1953) is a journalist who has worked for the "New York Times" since 1990. Tierney writes a science column, Findings, and blog, TierneyLab for the Times. He was previously a columnist on the Op-Ed page (2005-6) and wrote a column about New York, The Big City, that ran in the New York Times Magazine and the Metro section from 1994 to 2002. - Bobbito Garcia
Robert "Bobbito" Garcia (born September 25 1966 in New York City), also known as "DJ Cucumberslice" and formerly known as "Bobbito The Barber", "Make It Happen", "Boogie Bob", "Kool Bob Love", "Soul Food Bob", and "Bag of Tricks" is a Puerto Rican streetball player, DJ, writer and member of the Rock Steady Crew. From 1990 to 1998 he co-hosted The Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show on WKCR. - Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus (born 1945) is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism. Marcus was born in San Francisco. He earned an undergraduate degree in American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, where he also did graduate work in political science. - Legs McNeil
Roderick Edward "Legs" McNeil (b. 1956 in Cheshire, Connecticut), is the co-founder and a writer for "Punk Magazine". He is also a former senior editor at "Spin Magazine", and the founder and editor of "Nerve" magazine (print only; 1992). - Robert Palmer
Robert Franklin Palmer Jr. (June 19, 1945 - November 20, 1997) was a 20th century American writer, musicologist, clarinetist, saxophonist, and blues producer. Robert Palmer is best known for books he authored such as "Deep Blues", his music journalism articles for "The New York Times" and "Rolling Stone" magazine, his work producing blues recordings and the soundtrack to the film "Deep Blues", … - Ben Fong-Torres
Benjamin Fong-Torres is an American rock journalist, author, and broadcaster best known for his association with "Rolling Stone" magazine (through 1981) and the "San Francisco Chronicle" (from around 1982). Due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, Fong-Torres' father, Ricardo Fong-Torres (born Fong Kwok Seung), changed his surname to Torres and posed as a Filipino citizen in order to emigrate to the United States. - Steve Albini
Steve Albini (born July 22, 1962, Pasadena, California) is a singer, songwriter, guitarist, audio engineer and music journalist. He was a member of Big Black and Rapeman and is still a member of Shellac. He is founder, owner, and engineer of Electrical Audio, a recording studio complex located in Chicago. - Peter Guralnick
Peter Guralnick (born December 15, 1943, in Boston, Massachusetts) is a American music critic, writer on music, and historian of US American popular music, who is also active as an author and screenwriter. Guralnick's first two books, "Almost Grown" (1964) and "Mister Downchild" (1967), were short story collections published by Larry Stark, whose small press in Cambridge, Larry Stark Press, was devoted to stories and poems. - Alex Ross
Alex Ross (b. 1968) has been the music critic of "The New Yorker" magazine since 1996. His work has also appeared in "The New Republic", "Slate", the "London Review of Books", "Lingua Franca", and "Feed". From 1992 to 1996 he was a music critic at the "New York Times". He has been featured in "Best American Essays", "Da Capo Best Music Writing", and "Studio A: The Bob Dylan Reader". - Vince Aletti
Vince Aletti is an American music journalist and photography critic. Vince Aletti was the first person to write about disco (in a piece published in "Rolling Stone" in 1973), writing a weekly column about disco for the music trade magazine "Record World" (1974-1979) and reporting about early clubs like David Mancuso's Loft for "The Village Voice" in the late 1970s and 1980s. - Jeff Chang
Jeff Chang is an American journalist and music critic on hip-hop music and culture. His writings have appeared in publications such as "URB", "The Bomb", "San Francisco Chronicle", the "Village Voice", the "San Francisco Bay Guardian", "Vibe", "Spin", "The Nation", and "Mother Jones", as well as in his history of hip-hop, "Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation", … - Brett Atwood
Brett Atwood is a print and online journalist, whose writings have appeared in "Billboard", "Rolling Stone", "Vibe", "Hollywood Reporter" and other publications. In addition to his writing career, Atwood has held managing editor positions at leading Internet sites Amazon.com and RealNetworks. In 2001, Atwood's career shifted to academia. - Alan Rich
Alan Rich (born 1924, in Brookline, Massachusetts) is an American music critic who currently writes for LA Weekly magazine. He first studied medicine at Harvard before turning to music. He was music director of KPFA, the Berkeley radio station, and successively a music critic for publications including The New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, New York magazine, Newsweek, California magazine and the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. - Stephen Davis
Stephen Davis is an American music journalist and historian. Davis was born in New York City and began his career writing for the " Old Cambridge Phoenix" in 1970. His journalism has appeared in "Rolling Stone Magazine", "The New York Times", the "Boston Globe" and numerous other papers and magazines. Biography *"Reggae Bloodlines: In Search of the Music and Culture of Jamaica", with photographies of Peter Simon, … - Nelson George
Nelson George (b. September 1, 1957) is an African American author, music and culture critic, journalist, and filmmaker. He has been nominated twice for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He attended St. John's University, after which he served as a music editor for Billboard magazine from 1982 to 1989. While there, George published two books; "Where Did Our Love Go: The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound" in 1986, … - Jay Nordlinger
Jay Nordlinger is a U.S conservative journalist. He is the managing editor of National Review and also writes an irregular column for the magazine's website. He is frequently critical of the People's Republic of China’s Communist government and Fidel Castro's Cuba. In the 2000 presidential election, Nordlinger worked for George W. Bush as a speech-writer. Nordlinger is also a music critic, writing about classical music for The New Criterion, the New York Sun, … - John Rockwell
John Rockwell (born 1940 in Washington D.C.) is a music critic, editor, and dance critic. He studied at Phillips Academy, Harvard, the University of Munich, and the University of California, Berkeley, earning a Ph.D. in German culture. Rockwell began his journalistic career at the "Oakland Tribune" and the "Los Angeles Times". In 1972 he began writing at "New York Times", first as a classical music critic and reporter, … - Fred Bronson
Fredric M. Bronson is an American journalist, author and writer. He is best known for the weekly "Chart Beat" column in "Billboard magazine", and as the author of books related to "Billboard" charts. Born on January 10,1949 to Irving and Mildred Bronson and raised in California, Bronson showed an early aptitude for gauging the popularity of artists and songs. - Kurt Loder
Kurt Loder (born May 5, 1945) is a film critic, author, and television personality. He has served as editor at "Rolling Stone" magazine and presently continues to serve as a contributing editor. Prior to "Rolling Stone", Loder worked for "Circus" magazine, and before that, he served three years in the United States Army. He joined MTV in 1988 as the host of their flagship music news program, "The Week in Rock", … - Todd E. Jones
Todd E. Jones also known as The New Jeru Poet is an American music journalist from Edison, New Jersey and currently living in North Plainfield, New Jersey. Origin He was born on August 21st, 1975 in Rahway, New Jersey. For college, he attended William Paterson University, but eventually graduated from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ in 1999 with a Bachelor's in English. - John D. Luerssen
John D. Luerssen -- born July 12, 1968 -- is a national music writer who broke into journalism in 1985, when he reviewed The Smiths' "Meat Is Murder" for his high school newspaper. In 1991, after forays into journalism, broadcasting and record company employment -- as well as a brief turn as an independent radio promoter -- Luerssen took a job with a New Jersey utility and didn't write a CD Review or an artist feature for eight years. - Shawna Kenney
Shawna Kenney is an American author and journalist born on August 4, 1969 in Auburn, New York Kenney authored the memoir "I Was a Teenage Dominatrix" (Last Gasp) at the age of 29. The book developed an underground cult following, receiving a Firecracker Alternative Book Award in 2000, with translations published in Italy and the UK. Kenney's personal essays appear in several anthologies, … - Robert Shelton
Robert Shelton (June 28, 1926, Chicago, Illinois, United States - December 11, 1995, Brighton, England) was a music and film critic. Shelton's most enduring claim to fame was that he helped launch the career of a then unknown 20-year-old folk singer named Bob Dylan. Dylan was performing at Gerdes Folk City in Greenwich Village the ne-plus-ultra of New York City folk venues, opening for a bluegrass act called the Greenbriar Boys. - Dave Marsh
Dave Marsh (born March 1, 1950) is an American music critic. Growing up in the environs of Detroit, Michigan, he attended Wayne State University but failed to graduate. Marsh was a co-founder of "Creem" magazine in Detroit, and he also wrote for "Newsday", "The Village Voice", and "Rolling Stone" magazine. He also edited "Rock and Roll Confidential", a newsletter about rock music and social issues. - Gregg Wager
Gregg Wager (born September 16, 1958 in Adrian, Michigan) is an American composer, pianist, and music critic. He studied composition at the University of Southern California and the California Institute of the Arts. His teachers included Morton Subotnick and Morten Lauridsen. His piano teachers included Yuri Oliynyk, Doris Stevenson, and Chester Swiatkowski. In 1996, he earned a Ph.D. in musicology at the Free University Berlin. - Jon Pareles
Jon Pareles is an American journalist who is chief music critic at the arts section of the "New York Times". Prior to taking up that role, in the 1970s he was an associate editor of "Crawdaddy" Magazine and in the 1980s a contributing editor to "Rolling Stone" Magazine. - Scott Yanow
Scott Yanow is an American jazz commentator. Growing up near Los Angeles he wanted to be a jazz journalist early, discovering Dixieland in the Danny Kaye movie "The Five Pennies" and on a daily radio show while in high school. He soon broadened his tastes to the swing idiom and college opened his mind further. "One day at a used record store, I ran across a $1.99 Charlie Parker LP that, among other songs, included "White Christmas". - Anthony Decurtis
Anthony DeCurtis is an American author and music critic, who has written for "Rolling Stone," "The New York Times", Relix and other publications. He is the author of "In Other Words: Artists Talk About Life and Work" (Hal Leonard Publishing Co, 2005) and "Rocking My Life Away: Writing About Music and Other Matters "(Duke University Press, 1998), and editor of "Present Tense: Rock & Roll and Culture" (Duke University Press, 1992). - Roxanne Blanford
Roxanne Blanford is an "American" freelance music publicist, music reviewer, and entertainment journalist born and based in New York City (Brooklyn, to be exact) and affiliated with several online music sources including All Music Guide, MusicEmissions.com, and the independent <B>Impact Music Publicity and Journalism 'Zine</B>. She attended elementary school on a full art scholarship and high school on a full academic scholarship. - Michael Azerrad
Michael Azerrad is an American author, journalist and musician. He grew up in the New York City area and received his BA degree from Columbia College in 1983. During his college years, he was both a roommate and a bandmate of keyboard virtuoso Marc Capelle (who later went on to become a member of American Music Club.) After college, Azerrad played drums in various small bands while pursuing a career in music journalism. - Marv Goldberg
Marv Goldberg (b. 1944) is a writer and music historian in the field of rhythm & blues (R&B). Goldberg is a graduate of Stuyvesant High School (1960), City College of New York (Biology; 1964), and Pace College (now Pace University; Accounting; 1967). Since his first articles in 1964, he has spent over forty years interviewing singers and documenting their contributions to American music. - Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Stephen Thomas Erlewine is senior editor for All Music Guide. He is the author of thousands of artist biographies and record reviews, as well as a freelance writer, and has written several liner notes. He studied at the University of Michigan, where he majored in English and was music editor (1993-94) and then arts editor (1994-95) of the school's newspaper, the "Michigan Daily". He has also appeared on VH1. - Steven Cerio
Steven Cerio (born September 8, 1965), is an American artist, musician, writer, and composer. He has some published works of his own and has done a large body of work for magazines and the San Francisco rock group The Residents Cerio was raised in Liverpool, NY, where he attended a high school of the same name. He then attended Syracuse University, where he received a BFA in 1987. - Alan Light
Alan Light is an American journalist who has been a rock critic for "Rolling Stone", an editor for "Spin", and a co-founder of "VIBE". Light grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, where his mother was a dance reviewer for the local newspaper. He graduated from Yale University in 1988, majoring in American Studies and writing his senior thesis on "Licensed to Ill" by the Beastie Boys. In 1993, he became the founding music editor of "VIBE" magazine, … - Marc Geelhoed
Marc Geelhoed was born November 18, 1977 in Muncie, Indiana and planned on a career as a trumpet-player before turning to journalism. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Music at Butler University in Indianapolis, in 2000, where he studied trumpet with Daniel Gosling. While at Butler, Geelhoed was Principal Trumpet in the Butler Symphony Orchestra for three semesters and played the first trumpet parts to Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, … - Eric Nisenson
Eric Nisenson (February 12, 1946 - August 15, 2003) was an American author and jazz historian. The son of inventor Jules Nisenson, he was born in New York City and raised in Rye, New York. He attended New York University (NYU), where he studied English, and then moved to San Francisco where he worked on the staffs of alternative publications including "The Berkeley Barb" and "Heliotrope". Nisenson became a lifelong lover of jazz when, at the age of 15, …
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