Rock Around The World^™

The time has come to share the Rock Around the World library — a collection of original interviews, performances, and full shows that captured the open, generous spirit of artists in the mid-1970s, a spirit increasingly rare in today’s high-pressure corporate music world. Rock rose like a force of nature in the tradition of blues, jazz, and folk — raw, indigenous music straight from the streets and onto the radio, where icons like Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and Paul McCartney shared the Rock Around the World forum with rising stars and local bands alike. Where else can you find a live recording from Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour alongside an intimate interview with David Bowie?

The 232 shows in the Rock Around the World collection are more than high-octane nostalgia from rock’s most defining years — they’re a record of the deep commitment shared between performers and audiences. What faded during the eighties and nineties can be experienced again: music embraced wholeheartedly, without sponsors, without an agenda — a pure delight.

These shows capture a pivotal era, when music was electric and eclectic, free of the synthesized, over-processed blandness that dominates so much of popular music today. This is music made with conviction, drawn straight from the heart of the artists who created it — and it resonates not only with those who came of age in the sixties and seventies in England and America, but with many at the forefront of popular music today, across the U.S., U.K., and around the world.

As the world shrinks and information moves faster than ever, this record of popular culture’s roots becomes only more valuable. The original shows were made at a turning point — a moment before the world leapt into the future, leaving behind the comfort of local identity and insulated scenes. Where today would a local band like Andy Pratt find a national audience? If there’s a vulnerability in these programs, it’s that very obscurity — but it’s also their strength. The willingness to give relative unknowns a national platform “for the sake of music” is nearly gone today, and music is poorer for it. The rest of the world — especially developing nations — recognizes this, eager to embrace what we’ve too quickly discarded, even as homegrown, local music everywhere continues to resurface and grow.

Rock Around the World remains a vital link to the past, a connection that has grown into the present through the internet, where the show continues to draw thousands of visitors each week — still delivering the fresh, insightful music coverage that defined it from the start.