Introduction

I earned my doctoral degree the same year Ron Denisoff launched Popular Music and Society (PMS). While I had been a record collector since 1953, and had taught college-level courses in lyric analysis since 1968,1 did not publish my initial music article until 1972. A decade later my first book—Images of American Society in Popular Music—was released by Nelson-Hall. Between 1984 and 1996, I produced ten more volumes, several of which were co-authored, on bibliographic music resources, thematic imagery in songs, discographic materials, and various topics of pedagogical and historical interest. Most of my books were derived from articles that have appeared in more than forty different scholarly journals, popular magazines, and educational periodicals. My two Rock Music in American Popular Culture volumes, compiled with Wayne Haney and released by The Haworth Press in 1995 and 1997, feature a variety of essays, book reviews, record commentaries, and reference compilations that typify my eclectic tastes in contemporary music. All of my writings stem from the conviction that modern music is a particularly revealing source of the human spirit. Poetic, profane, patriotic, pulsing, powerful, ponderous, and plagiaristic—music from the second half of the twentieth century merits serious investigation. This was an essential tenet of Popular Music and Society. It remains my guiding principle today.