The streaming of music offers us a two-dimensional view of pop. Stars that peaked decades apart seem close to one another, like the constellations in the night sky. A young fan of guitar rock, coming across “My Generation” and “Pretty Vacant” for the first time on a playlist, might imagine they came from the same period. That could never have happened during the vinyl age, when one look at the haircuts on the record sleeve would immediately tell you that the Who and the Sex Pistols came from different eras of pop. With nothing but the capacious but disordered resource of the internet to help us make sense of the vast array of music at our fingertips, what we need is a comprehensive handbook, a text that provides contextual depth to 120 years of recorded sound.
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