Rolling Stone Taiwan Magazine Launches

Source: Rolling Stone Magazine: Shaking an Entire Era
From: Underground Nostalgia Blues
Date: 2015Author: Ma Shih-fang

The American Rolling Stone magazine was the mouthpiece of US counterculture, and its influence on that front was irreplaceable through the 1980s. For readers of that era, rock was far more than music — it was a synthesis of an entire generation’s values, and a window onto contemporary culture. In the 1970s, the Tuan brothers — Tuan Chung-i and Tuan Chung-tan — published a music magazine in Taiwan also called Rolling Stone, modeled after the American original. In the latter half of Taiwan’s 1970s, it was not only Taiwan’s sole rock magazine but also left behind a rich record of youth culture, serving as an awakening for Taiwan’s first generation of music professionals. Taiwan’s Rolling Stone had a pleasantly casual editorial style — translations, music news, album analyses, artist interviews, sheet music lessons, personal essays… it covered everything, making it the closest thing Taiwan had to the American Rolling Stone. After the founding of Rock Records, this magazine was eventually transformed into the label’s promotional publication — nothing like what it once was.

 

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External Links

• Who Translated “Rock and Roll”: From the Mainland to Taiwan to Hong Kong (KKnews)
• Rock Records: A Nobility in Slow Decline (New Min Weekly)
• Rock Books: From Niche to Mainstream (China.com.cn)