To mark the launch of the Pete Frame and Simon Frith archives at the University of Glasgow, we hosted a well-attended event on the eve of the conference, at Glasgow University Library on Wednesday 13 January 2016.

Pete and Simon were in conversation with Dave Laing, discussing  some of the material in the archives and their careers more generally.

Pete is best known as the author of Rock Family Trees (and its offshoot TV series) but was also the founder of Zig Zag magazine in 1969 and, more recently the author of Restless Generation: How rock music changed the face of 1950s Britain.

Simon has enjoyed a distinguished parallel career as both a journalist and academic and played a pivotal part in getting popular music taken seriously in higher education. He has written extensively for Rolling Stone, Cream and the Village Voice in the US and Melody Maker, The Sunday Times and the Observer in the UK.

Pete’s archive includes the transcripts of many of the original interviews for Rock Family Trees as well as a huge collection of music magazines including near complete runs of Rolling Stone, Mojo and some copies of a range of other underground magazines spanning the 1960s-1980s.

Simon’s contains an extensive range of books relating to the study of popular music (which are being integrated into the University of Glasgow collection) as well as his correspondence with fellow journalists and commissioning editors spanning several decades.

A contemporary of both, Dave is another significant contributor to both journalistic and academic discourses on popular music. His seminal work on punk, One Chord Wonders, was recently re-published to mark its thirtieth anniversary.