Mmmm... Crawdaddy...

I've been poking around quite a bit on the Crawdaddy website, which has a cool interactive dealie where you can look through their initial 1966-68 run. It's pretty instructive for a lot of reasons, but most notably it's a fascinating glimpse into both the earliest days of rock criticism and the response from the music industry.

Crawdaddy is generally said to be the first attempt to seriously review rock music beyond the Tiger Beat level. It was founded by Paul Williams (not this guy) in zine form, with a typewriter, a mimeograph and a desire to take the new sounds seriously. Actually, the first issue features reviews that begin, "This is a pretty cool song" and "I'm not sure what to say about this one," so it took a while to really get its gravitas on, but it's a pretty noble effort for a kid.

Because Crawdaddy was based in San Francisco, there's a lot of attention paid to Jefferson Airplane and the Steve Miller Band, and it makes me wonder what would have happened if Williams and Jann Wenner had been based somewhere else. Rock as we know it would surely have been changed if they'd been in New York (more Velvet Underground) or Detroit (more Stooges). Or would they have just focused their attention on the hippie jammery wherever they were, if for no other reason than to serve as a counterpoint to the more gonzo Creem.

Looking these issues over, another thing that becomes immediately clear is how quickly the record industry got behind this new rock journalism. Within a year, Crawdaddy went from being a 10-page homemade zine to 52 pages long and chock full of groovy looking ads touting the latest releases from Columbia, Atlantic and Elektra. Commerce can only keep its big bazoo out of art for so long, it seems (or is it the other way 'round?). Not that that's entirely bad; rock wouldn't have progressed in the same way if there hadn't been a market, and by serving as Boswells to the rock stars of the day, the early journalists provided a clearinghouse for the new sensibilities.

What it also did was secure the groups that now define the Sixties as the next links in the chain. Groups like the Grateful Dead and Santana became canonical; Moby Grape and the Quicksilver Messenger Service, for whatever reason, didn't. (The Monkees were just plain screwed.) As these scrappy young publishing start-ups became bigger business over the years, the rock journalism they proffered had a lot to do with determining the canon that emerged throughout the 1970s and into the early '80s, at which time MTV and hip hop stole a lot of rock's hegemonic mojo. (Not to be confused with Rick's Hegemonic Mojo, a failed prog outfit from the Tacoma area in the mid-'70s. A real shame what happened to them.)

I maintain that the canon that was established in that time is unlikely to be added to in any significant way, just as the emergence of Down Beat and The Jazz Review coincided with the heyday of the post-bop era, leading to a canon of jazz albums that is all but impenetrable for younger artists. The last rock album to make it in was OK Computer in 1997; before that it was Nevermind in 1991. The end of rock history? I may be on to something; anyone know a good literary agent?