This here page is made with several purposes. First, it will hopefully help you get a little bit oriented in rock'n'roll history - you know, to eliminate the endless question 'what came before what and after what?' Second, I will try to make some crappy statistics and determine the relative 'quality' of each of the years from 1962 to 1999 by counting out the average overall rating for each year. I also hope that within a brief period of time I'll be able to provide a short 'overview' of each of these years (an idea honestly ripped off of Wilson & Alroy), but I'll refrain from such generalizations for now, until I fill in some gaps in my collection.

The average overall rating is counted out according to the following formula: '(the sum of all the ratings of all the reviewed records from the year X divided by the number of all the reviewed records of the year X) + (the number of all the reviewed records of the year X divided by 50)'. The second part is necessary, as it pumps up the ratings of years that have been especially productive, such as the ones in the period from 1969 to 1973. The number 50 is chosen for no particular reason; it more or less represents the average 'quota' of good records per year. Note that, since I'm rather skint on 1963-65 records (I mostly have the best and don't have any of the fluff from those years), the overall ratings of those years will come out a little exaggerated. If I ever get around to reviewing Herman's Hermits, the Turtles or Gerry and The Pacemakers, this situation will be corrected automatically; but Lord knows I wouldn't really wanna do that.

Example: there are 30 records from the year 1967 reviewed; the sum of their ratings is 354. 354/30+30/50 approximately equals 12.4; this is the rating for the year 1967, and a pretty high one.

Note also that the overall rating of every year after 1975 or so will not, of course, reflect the general state of music in that particular year, simply because I haven't yet reviewed any major (or minor) acts that surfaced since the mid-Seventies. Sooner or later I'll probably get around to some of the more worthy New Wave acts; but for now, the 'overall rating' of the post-1975 years will rather reflect the general creativity of 'dinosaurs' only.

Technical note: the 'archive' releases are grouped under the year of their official release if they are collections of previously unreleased material. 'Archived' complete live shows, like Dylan's Live 1966 or the Who's Live At The Isle Of Wight, are grouped under the year of the corresponding event (in 1966 and 1970, respectively). All 'archive' releases are put in square brackets ([]).

Simply click on any year out of the list below and it will take you there. Oh, and if you see any errors in the 'dating', please drop me a line; I'd be glad to hear from ya.