"There have been many biographies about The Who but this one is almost as entertaining as the group it documents. Dave Marsh, who was a founding editor at Creem magazine and an editor at Rolling Stone, writes as an unashamed fan of the band. No other writer, with the exception of Richard Barnes, has ever really understood The Who the way Marsh did with this work. In Before I Get Old the author analyzes their roots in "Mod" culture to their development into "the first avant-garde rock band". As a biography it is valuable piece of rock-music history."

"Dirty and loud, this film put a face to the music that represented the ultimate freedom from the suburbs. Pre-YouTube, footage of these bands was super hard to come by. There were only a couple videotapes floating around… and once in a while, you could see something truly outré on “120 Minutes”… but in truth, if you weren’t in LA/NY/DC, you missed out on most of the scene. Like water to the desert, Penelope Spheeris’s film brought the culture into our lives. And shortly thereafter, I had myself a hideous painted leather jacket — just like Darby Crash."

"I was a student when I read Orlando for the first time, and I remember how for many days afterwards I walked around in a happy daze. Daring to transcend boundaries of gender, class, history, culture, geography…. this is a story—Woolf called it a biography—like no other. Our hero wakes up and finds himself turned into a woman, and delightfully, this transition takes place in Istanbul—Constantinople. Orlando is a novel about transformations and journeys—from man into woman, from the West to the East, from one existence to the next and vice versa."

"Much has been written about authoritarianism and its multiple manifestations, but little has been said about the ways in which people, even the most educated, seemingly open-minded people, internalise authoritarianism in their daily life. What happens to politics and politicians under a corrupt system is obvious. But what happens to a society and a culture under authoritarianism is a question less understood. The Polish poet, essayist and thinker Milosz wrote extensively about home, homeland, exile, memory, history…. As a writer who comes from a turbulent land of collective amnesia, I have always read him with a sense of affinity."

"With its exquisite packaging, reminiscent of old rock posters with a subtle Hatch Show Print letterpress homage (even using a textured paper), this boxed set is a treasure. I was especially thrilled to find extra footage of songs and bands that were left out of the original film. This footage is a time capsule of California (and American) culture in the sixties, that as a Californian, I find warmly nostalgic. There is so much gritty footage of the crowd, and of the various bands in preparation for the event—it humanizes them and makes these often idolized figures, seem real and accessible."