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Robert Milliken: Lillian Roxon, Mother Of Rock

Clinton Walker, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 2002

ROCK JOURNALISM is, of course, the lowest of the low. Trust me, I know. It has recently enjoyed improved profile with films like High Fidelty and Almost Famous, and with the publication of the first biography of a rock writer – Jim de Rogatis's Let It Blurt – about the late Lester Bangs, the father of rock writing. (Lester the Great even makes a cameo appearance in Almost Famous; played by Phillip Whatsisname, he is a mentor to real-life director Cameron Crowe, himself a recovering rock journalist.) But still the genre as a whole, which accounts for a nice little publishing niche these days, is very much ghettoised down the back of bookstores, as if it were all just a bit, well, vulgar, all sex and drugs and rock'n'roll. 

Total word count of piece: 897

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