Saturday, July 11, 2009

Circus Magazine....A Blast From The Past


Got a call today from Shawn Foxx, a DJ out of Waterloo, Iowa. We had a great conversation about music, vinyl records (he is an avid collector of music) and the general state of the music industry, among other things. He did bring back an old, faded memory for me that has been stored away for many years ~ Circus Magazine. For those who can remember, it was the authorative music magazine of its time and I vividly recall cutting out many of the pictures to make posters from them. You to can learn more about the magazine and what it stood for, check it out:


Running Away With the Circus
An Oral History of Circus Magazine


By Steven Ward

Rolling Stone is not the only rock magazine still publishing today that was founded in the late '60s; believe it or not, Circus magazine has appeared on newsstands, unabated, since 1968. And like Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone, Circus Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Gerald Rothberg is still at the helm. Rothberg actually started Circus in 1966, under the title, Hullabaloo. In the almost 40 years since, Circus has been many different kinds of music publication. It started out as a general interest rock magazine, running stories on classic rockers such as the Doors, Genesis, and Grand Funk Railroad. Later, Rothberg realized that his target audience--teen boys--loved to read about their favorite rock stars over and over, month after month. So when a band like Kiss hit, they were one of Circus's biggest cover stars. Circus covered all kinds of rock and pop music but always featured a large number of heavy metal and hard rock bands in its pages......

Unlike Rolling Stone, there are no books, websites, or articles that exist on the history of Circus magazine. Thus rockcritics.com presents this ongoing oral history of the magazine. Here, former Circus writers and editors--and even a few who continue to write for the magazine today--talk about Circus, their time there, and the man behind the magazine, Gerald Rothberg.

Read More Here


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