Jazz Rock Soul is a music database that covers the full range of 1970s/1980s-era musical performers and releases from around the world.
The goal of Jazz Rock Soul is simple: to retell the story of late-20th century rock, soul, and jazz in a manner that benefits the music. Over the years, various tombs and databases have leaned all too easily on the toxic and outdated narratives of ’70s/’80s music critics. On Jazz Rock Soul, we favor facts over mythology and description over opinion.
During the ’70s and ’80s, roughly 6,000 original master albums were released each year by acts in every region of the globe. No database can paint a representative picture by approaching the music of this era from a canonical or populist standpoint. The answer is to take a holistic approach where artists are objectively summarized nation-by-nation. Emphasis and prioritization are the sole discretion of the editorial department.
Updates
Jan–Dec. 2023: Bio completion for the 100 biggest UK acts.
February 2022: Currently upgrading 100s of bios of UK post-psych acts (TriMax Spring) from beta to alpha.
May 2021: Background/formation sections for more than 450 big-name bios completed.
November 2020: The bio pages for 200+ legacy acts (big-name/long-discography) are being developed layer-by-layer for completion in 2021.
August 2020: All existing pages are now in beta mode with dozens being upgraded to alpha each month. The weekly schedule for the time being is 10 upgrades of small-name/short-discography artist bios and two upgrades of big-name/long-discography artist bios.
May 2019: Thousands of bio pages are currently being upgraded from blank to beta (basic info) status. This stage of site development should be completed by late-September 2019, after which every album and artist entry in the database will gradually be upgraded to alpha status with lengthier, more in-depth bodies of information and commentary.
April 2018: The database is currently in beta mode as contents are developed for thousands of entries. A full-scale launch of the database is slated for 2020.
October 2017: Database founded.