Crawdaddy Magazine Online Via Wolfgang's Vault

Interesting review of Sounds Of Silence from 1966 there. Having read some of the reviews that NME and Melody Maker were printing at that time, it's well ahead of that in terms of how it discusses the record. The birth of rock criticism as we know it today?

I know Williams has republished some of his writing on the Beach Boys from this time, I wonder if there is a proper collection of his Crawdaddy stuff.

There is this which collects several of Williams' articles from the mag, plus stuff from Meltzer, Ed Ward, Peter Guralnick, Jon Landau and others. Basically you get condensed versions of each issue from Williams' run w/annotations from the man himself.

There's another collection,Outlaw Blues, published in the early '70s,of Williams' own writing from '60s Crawdaddy. The main bits I remember may be atypical, but one is, "The Byrds sound good when you're stoned, but The Doors will get you stoned." The other is when he was interviewing some guy who was talking about listening to "A Day In The Life," and the orchestral rush was like The Beatles were trying to break out of the record, which was impossible, and too much. (He preferred Pet Sounds.) '70s Crawdaddy, with different owners, was good too, sometimes, like John Storm Roberts reviewed for them.