Review: 'Totally Wired: The Rise and Fall of the Music Press'

One of the major factors that helped rock and roll "mature" from juvenile delinquent-soundtrack to the kind of thing they plop in a hall of fame was the emergence of a serious rock press. This went through its own maturation process beginning with the lightweight writing that appeared in rivals Melody Maker and New Musical Express in the early sixties through Paul Williams's informed and passionate Crawdaddy in the mid sixties to the destined-for-corporate-greatness Rolling Stone in the late sixties and on to overbearingly "anarchic" rags like Creem in the seventies and later taste-makers like Q, Spin, Vibe, and Mojo. 

Review: 'ABBA at 50'

Last year ABBA surprised their fans by doing the unimaginable: making their first music together in thirty years. Not that cashing in on a legacy is outlandish in the pop industry, but most members seemed to want to distance themselves from memories of "Waterloo" and "Dancing Queen". After having some success with more conceptual musical theater type pieces, chief songwriters Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeous regarded ABBA's pop glory as silly. Agnetha Fältskog seemed content to lead a civilian life outside the spotlight. There were also the members' broken marriages and the general lack of respect they'd always received from the snobby rock press that might make a reunion less than harmonious.

Review: 'Revolution: The History of Turntable Design'

The record revolution that now sees vinyl outselling CDs for the first time since the eighties is probably mostly due to two kinds of collectors: audiophiles who genuinely prefer the sound of vinyl to its little digital counterpart and take their equipment purchases very seriously and those who just dig the aesthetic of tactile vinyl LPs, with their groovy grooves, artful full-sized sleeves, and mechanically complex playing devises that will always be more interesting to look at than a sleek, slim, featureless CD player. 

Review: The Beatles' 'Revolver' Special Edition Vinyl Box Set

From the garage band simplicity of their first couple of albums to the more refined folk rock of their next few, and on to the genuine sophistication of Rubber Soul, the first half of The Beatles' career was a constant succession of progressions.

Review: Bob Dylan's 'The Philosophy of Modern Song'

How is someone like Bob Dylan going to write a book that purports to explore The Philosophy of Modern Song? Such a title seems to suggest an academic approach to analyzing songwriting. Dylan may be clever, but he's no academic. It implies a study performed with discipline. As anyone who ever read his rambling autobiography Chronicles: Volume One or the liner notes of Highway 61 Revisited knows, Dylan sneers at discipline.

Review: 'The Team-Up Companion'

In 1954, DC halved the page count of its World's Finest Comics and forced Superman and Batman into the same book as if they were a couple of recently divorced bozos sharing a flat. They mostly kept to their own sides of the room, but a new format was inadvertently born: the team-up. This was distinct from crossovers or guest appearances because both heroes were on equal footing in a shared title with both their logos on display. Pretty soon, team ups of everyone from Green Arrow and Martian Manhunter to Supergirl and Wonder Woman to Aqualad and Robin to Richie Rich and Casper to Spider-Man and Dracula (!) began proliferating funny books. 

Review: 'The Many Lives of The Twilight Zone: Essays on the Television and Film Franchise'

With so many episodes, so many themes, so many incarnations, and so much continuing influence over the pop-culture zone, Rod Serling's Twilight Zone is ripe for deep analysis, which is why there has been so much of it. Editors Ron Riekki and Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., are now dragging in even more by compiling eighteen new essays by various writers in their book The Many Lives of The Twilight Zone: Essays on the Television and Film Franchise. 

Review: 'The Monster' (1925) DVD

In 1959, Crane Wilbur directed an excellent adaptation of Mary Roberts Rinehart's old dark house stage play The Circular Staircase. 34 years earlier, Roland West did the same for Wilbur's own old dark house play The Monster. 

Review: 'Horror Hotel' DVD

In 1960, director John Moxey arguably outdid Hammer with his own atmosphere-rich Gothic horror. In contrast to Hammer's vibrant colors, Moxey opted for high-contrast black and white and deep focus photography to tell his tale of a burned witch who reappears in the present to lure a young woman to her sacrificial death. Much has been made of the structural similarities between Moxey's City of the Dead and Hitchcock's Psycho, but Moxey's story is purely supernatural and his film much more stylized. It's also a lot more fun than the grim and realistic Psycho. 

Review: 'Prince: All the Songs- The Story Behind Every Track '

Even if his music wasn't so extraordinarily inventive and alluring, even if he wasn't one of the very few pop artists who actually deserves the crown "genius," Prince would still be noteworthy for his Herculean productivity. The guy never stopped making music, and whether he was among the top stars of his time or more of a "legacy artist," he never slowed down. So we're left with lots and lots and lots of Prince music, and his estate keeps on finding new ways to scrape the archives.