Sunday, January 1, 2017

Navigating on Inside The Rock Era

If you're one of the thousands of new people who have found Inside The Rock Era in the last month, welcome!  And, if you're an occasional visitor, here are some tips for enjoying the website.

We have to put in a shameless plug for our two books published thus far.  You can purchase them directly from us by clicking on the appropriate link on the right-hand side of the website and choosing your preferred method of shipping.

Our first book was The Top 500 Songs of the Rock Era*, which gathered up all the information we packed into that music special and put it into a handy book where everything is together and easy to keep track of.  We always try to keep the price competitive, but also invite you to check out Amazon's best prices.  If you're interested in obtaining an autographed copy, you can purchase that here.

Our second book was published last year, The Top 100 Female Artists of the Rock Era*.  Similarly, it contains all of the information from that music special and can also be purchased by clicking on the link on the right-hand side of the website.  Here is a link to Amazon's best New price, although keep in mind that some vendors "fudge" on what they consider "new".  If you buy on Amazon, always go with a dealer which has a 100% rating, even if you pay more for it.  A dealer with less than 100% is not worth time time, money or gamble.

The Tabs at the top of the Inside The Rock Era website are for your perusing pleasure and we highly recommend them!  Blog Highlights* are simply that--links to music specials and features that represent events that go beyond the daily scope of music news and information.

We separate an artists' work into Tabs for albums (Discography*) and singles (Hits List*).  Each contains peak rankings for each album or single for several countries.  Neither is an all-inclusive list, but they do contain most of the major stars and we just keep adding to them regularly.  

The Unknown/Underrated Songs* Tab is our most popular regular feature which now contains over 30 pages.  Each page contains about 10 songs, and the number of pages is constantly growing as we add one song per week to the feature.  We've found that 10 songs or less is the optimal number; any page greater than that takes too long to load, so to maximize your listening pleasure, we strive to keep each segment at about 10 songs.  For a song to be included in this category, it must not have reached the Top 10 in the United States. 

 From my experience in radio, I can tell you that there are several songs per month that never become big hits that are nonetheless songs that should have made the Top 10.  The reasons why they don't are many--it could be that the record company or the artist didn't promote it properly, in some cases, the song was released at the wrong time of year, or released during a time of amazing strength where it was difficult to reach the Top 10.

In any case, the songs in The Unknown/Underrated* category are all songs that we believe are worthy of Top 10 status and thus radio airplay today.

The Charts and Lists* Tab is a handy guide for those who love to see song rankings.  These are done on numerous other websites; the difference is that we don't just provide a boring ranking of The Top 100 Songs of a year; you actually get to hear the songs on Inside The Rock Era.  We constantly add new charts and lists so be sure to check this Tab often.

The Five Best Songs* is a periodic feature we do to present an artists' best work.  Ideally, we like to choose artists who have about five really good songs; but in some cases, we'll present the Five Best Songs* from a decade of that artists' work, or we expand the number depending on where we would like to make the cut.

Captured Live in Concert* is one of our relatively newest features.  In this feature, we present YouTube clips of outstanding live performances, in some cases historic ones.  If you really like an artist but haven't been able to come up with the money to see them or they haven't visited your city or town, this is a chance to hear a snippet of what their concerts sound like.  I know for me, some artists were long gone by the time I was "of age", so I never got to see them.  In some respects, then, this is a musical time machine where you can go back in time and hear what they sound like live.

Calendar* is another popular feature of Inside The Rock Era.  Each day, we present the top historical music news on our front page from that day in history.  The Calendar* contains links to every day of the year, so if you're wondering what song was #1 on the day you or your spouse or your children were born, or what the music news was on the day of your wedding, etc., you can find that out any time you desire.  

The Top Tracks* Tab was the final one we added.  The distinction between that and the Top Unknown/Underrated Songs* is that, while these songs wouldn't make the Top 10* in overall popularity, many Rock Era fans will still like several of them.  They are generally album tracks which were never released as singles and thus didn't receive widespread airplay.


Those nine Tabs* contain enough information and listening links to likely keep you busy for several hours a day for an entire year or more!  Enjoy them often!  Meanwhile, we keep adding to each of them weekly or monthly with new features.

You'll always find the "current" Top Unknown/Underrated Song* on the right-hand side of the website below our book offers.  The song is changed weekly.

A great feature of the Blogger* series is that the news and posts from the past can be accessed on the left-hand side of the website.  If you need to get back up to speed on recent posts, or are looking for something you saw recently, it might be a good place to look through those.  We also have a "Search" bar that allows you to search the website for music specials, songs, artists, etc.

And again, thank you for finding this site.  If you're a music lover like me, you'll likely find plenty of things to enjoy.  And if you ever have a suggestion, correction or question, please post below the item you are curious about!

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