I'm trying to find a good way to dive into the genre in terms of general aspects, the early days, influential personalities, key events around history, essential pieces. Something that gives me a structure so I can dive deeper in the aspects I'm interested later. I need to start an investigation for a series of articles but I'd like to earn more context and historical accuracy.
As an example, I have a background in classical music in which you can read about renaissance, Baroque, the 20th century vanguards, different waves born in different countries. While moving towards that, you can study the actual plays, different sounds, key pieces, etc.
Can you recommend a good resource to start? May be a book, encyclopedia, documentary, or even a post here on reddit that can guide me through it. Thank you!
In some ways I think quite a good place to start is the multi-part BBC documentary from the 1990s, Dancing In The Street, if you can find it - that will definitely introduce you to the personalities, the early days, etc, and it's illuminating to see and hear the music and not just read about it (but watch out for some baby boomer-centricness in there, as well as in the book that went along with it by Robert Palmer). In terms of reading, I think the classic work originally from the 1970s is Charlie Gillett's The Sound Of The City, which is a little dry in places, but ultimately very thorough and balanced in terms of discussing the industry and the society in which the music happened, and in being quite methodical in listing who was on what record label and what that meant etc. In terms of more recent stuff about rock and pop, Bob Stanley's book Yeah Yeah Yeah is great in a bunch of ways - it's more about pop music than rock music, but because rock music is fundamentally pop music, Yeah Yeah Yeah perceptive about rock's place in popular culture in a way that the more rock-focused ones aren't. For a broader context around 20th century popular music, I think Love For Sale by David Hajdu does a good line in vignettes about different eras that illustrate different technologies and ways of thinking in the music. Otherwise, I think that the really good histories of rock are very often about subgenres of rock - e.g., Simon Reynolds' Rip It Up And Start Again or Rob Young's Electric Eden.