History Of The Rock Concert

The early lineage of the modern rock concert can be traced to The Barrelhouse Club — a venue co-owned by Johnny Otis in the Watts section of Los Angeles — which started featuring rhythm and blues reviews in the late 1940s, but by the time Alan Freed presented the Moondog Coronation Ball in Cleveland in 1952, there was no looking back.

The Dec. 11 edition of Greasy Tracks spotlighted the history of what started as a social phenomenon and ultimately became a multibillion-dollar industry.

Check out the archive by clicking here for an archive, while a playlist is here

Author Marc Myers will discuss his just-published Rock Concert: An Oral History as Told by the Artists, Backstage Insiders, and Fans Who Were There (Grove Press) and selections from some of the best live concert albums from the 1950s through 1980s will be included.

A regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal, Myers is one of the most highly regarded jazz writers in the country. He posts six days a week to based JazzWax.com, a three-time winner of the Jazz Journalists Association’s award for Jazz Blog of the Year. His previous books include the critically acclaimed Why Jazz Happened (University of California Press) and Anatomy of a Song (Grove Press).