Classic Rock Review was launched on January 1, 2011, as a sub-division of the website Modern Rock Review but became its own autonomous domain in 2012. The site is owned and operated by 33 Dimensions LLC, a Pennsylvania-based web development and creative arts firm, and is operated by company founder and creative director Ric Albano. The primary purpose of Classic Rock Review is to review significant, historic rock albums that have proven valuable over through the test of time. This is done in a systematic way, by dedicating particular periods to focus on particular feature years in rock and roll.

Each of these periods are approx 61 days in duration, so there are 6 per calendar year, and the initial mission was spread out over five calendar years from 2011-2015. From 2016 through 2019, we have extended the review feature to include the rock n’ roll years 1965 to 1999 and will be adding more features starting in 2020.

However, in order to keep things interesting, this will not be done in sequential order of the feature years. Instead, these feature years are chosen by anniversary divisible by five, ranging from 20 to 45 years. For example, 2011 is the 45th, 40th, 35th, 30th, 25th, and 20th anniversary of 1966, 1971, 1976, 1981, 1986, and 1991 respectively, so these are the six years featured during that calendar year (and not necessarily in that order).

More info concerning these dates:

1. This scheme assures that at least 20 years of real time has past before any feature year is reviewed. Important music that is newer than this will be covered by Modern Rock Review.
2. The earliest year featured is 1966. This was chosen because, in our opinion, this was about the time when rock “matured” and became more album-oriented and began to fuse many styles and genres with the core rock n roll.
3. Classic Rock Review may feature important works before the 1966, as well as articles about non-album related events, but these will be above and beyond the regular “feature year” rotation.

The first featured year, between January 1 and March 2, 2011, was 1971, and 15 full reviews of 16 albums were conducted for that feature year (there was one review that covered two albums). The editorial staff has since agreed that this was just a bit excessive, so our policy will be to review between 10 and 13 albums each period, assuring at least one every week and well over 300 for the entire five-year mission.

Our reviews aim to be honest and thorough, focusing on the good and bad, although there will likely be much more positive than negative because we are being selective about which albums we actually review (and we’re not going to chose something that sucks). However, we do not feature any rating system beyond what is stated in the prose, with the exception being that we will choose an Album of the Year for each of the featured years. This Album of the Year will be the last review of each period.

We realize that this is mostly opinion-based and we are unlikely to please everyone everywhere and very likely to make a few controversial decisions. We strongly encourage your feedback and opinions on these matters to give our readers a more complete view of the rock n roll we are celebrating.

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Ric Albano
Editor-in-Chief