The title of Jessica Hooper's book may be accurate and the point about this being the first book specifically comprised of a female rock writer's criticism is duly noted well into the 21st Century. A bit misleading though as an early female pioneer of rock writing was Ellen Willis and her essays were published in her lifetime up through her passing in 2006.

Having said that, and in no way wanting to disparage Jessica Hooper's breakthrough here, there are other kinds of rock writing besides criticism. A couple of Pacific Coast female pioneers of rock writing in SF WEEKLY and EAST BAY EXPRESS that included criticism, Ann Powers and Gina Arnold have also written books that while being closer to socio-musical memoir and biography should be noted as context for the trail continuing to be blazed by Jessica Hooper. Ann Powers' 1990's and aughts boho Pilgrim's Progress is covered in the aptly titled WEIRD LIKE US: My Bohemian America from Seattle to San Francisco record shop shifts and lifestyles to alt journalism via (still indie) SF WEEKLY movin' on up fast to NY TIMES back down by her own choice to no longer quite so indie VILLAGE VOICE back up to corporate LA TIMES to last heard over NPR essaying pop big game hunting from Alabama, where as Groucho noted the Tuscaloosa!

Gina Arnold's EXILE IN GUYVILLE a reassessment of Liz Phair was reissued in 2014 with a think piece by NY TIMES book reviewer Dwight Garner last June that is as chunkily accessible as it is ambitious in championing that alchemical moment in pop that used to be weighed or buoyancy-tested for gravitas and annointed somewhat pretentiously by trademarked rock-as- art writers like Greil Marcus and Ellen Willis's onetime partner of the VV PAZZ & JOP Awards, the Dean of Rock Writing Anal Retentive Concision, Robert Christgau. Like Jessica Hooper and Robert Ham's appreciation above, these are essayists and journalists as well as critics whose writing about the music our lives play background to works on a whole lotta levels.

Correction: Ham on Hopper, not Ham on Hooper...

Also: A line from Ann Powers' WEIRD LIKE US that provides a frame for hopefully future generations of kids as seekers after truth. Writing about rock was a way to write about the world. That has been lost along with the curiosity about the world as each new tech disruption contributes to the NarciStick Selfie effect.