A documentary on rock criticism from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s (with a technical release date of 2016, though I saw it at a film festival in early 2017), this as expected focuses on interviews with rock journalists of the era. These include such well known ones as Ben Fong-Torres, Ed Ward, John Morthland, Sandy Pearlman, Gene Sculatti, Ira Robbins, and Jaan Uhelszki (with some too young to have been writing then, like Mike Stax of Ugly Things, providing some historical context). Its strengths are that some good stories are told, like the one about hookers descending upon a rock critics convention in the early 1970s, only to realize that guys getting paid $25 per review (if they were lucky) were not exactly prime targets. As a film, it has problems. The narration is overbearing; the sound quality of the interviews erratic; and the background music sometimes doesn’t sit comfortably in the mix of a talking head-heavy documentary. I also found some of the premises baffling, such as championing the Dictators as a turning point of sorts in reviving rock from the doldrums in the mid-1970s. And MTV is too conveniently pinpointed as a villain that killed the golden age of rock criticism, though there’s been plenty of rock writing since the early 1980s, even if there may never again be publications with the reach and influence of Rolling Stone, Creem, and Trouser Press. Barely any UK writers are involved, which means this is really an overview, if a flawed one, of US rock criticism of the era .....

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