Here’s the thing everybody forgets about “youth” and “establishment”. If you wait a few decades, they change places. All those boomers about to retire? They used to be the ones that got busted by the cops. All those kids with glowsticks and Myspace hookups? They’re going to be offended by a pop song one day. God knows what it will take in this post-Madonna world, but it’ll happen, you wait and see.

So why, you ask, would someone younger be interested in this Rolling Stone Cover to Cover – The First 40 Years Digital Archive? Well, let’s come back to that. Let’s start by talking to the people who were there when it happened.

Even if they changed their mind on Zeppelin once or twice, Rolling Stone has been a huge influence on where the world has gone. Back in the Seventies, you grown-ups will recall, Rolling Stone was a sort of New York Times for those still willing to live ten to a room and spend their money having fun. Bands would kill to get a good review, and the cover? Well, we all know what happened to any band that made the cover… probably because we all knew those bands. Even in the 80’s, Rolling Stone was still a way for thirtysomethings to keep up with whatever was important in their corner of the culture. If you were there to live through it, you certainly want to be here to relive it.

At the risk of sounding like late night television, Rolling Stone Cover to Cover – The First 40 Years Digital Archive contains issues 1 through 1025/1026, all digitally archived on to DVD-Rom. That’s 98,000 searchable pages, including the ads. Yeah, that’s right, the ads. Those days when vans had 8 track tapes, those days when the music industry said cassettes would ruin their business (boy, what they’d give to go back there), the rise of punk, the fall of punk, the return of punk, the days when hip hop was still new and strange, the crappy albums that got too many stars and the influential ones that got too few. You can spread out forty years of culture right in front of you, and go from laughing at how random the t-shirts are to being amazed at what some of our current politicians were trying to get away with even back then.

So what about the younger crowd? The Rolling Stone Cover to Cover – The First 40 Years Digital Archive set will finally answer a question you guys have always had: why does anyone care about this magazine that keeps releasing that crappy Top One Hundred list? Just start at the beginning, when the millionaire publisher was still a guy who needed a job. Discover Hunter Thompson in context, beside his peers, and see why he rattled all the cages. Read young Cameron Crowe’s first interviews, well before Almost Famous. Look at a cheap little rock and roll paper become a slick, glossy, well-connected corporation. And you’ll start to understand why this was the voice of the people who came before you, and how it grew up like they did. Don’t keeping wonder how Dylan and Bowie got their reputation, watch them earn it bit by bit!

With the RSC2CT1st40YDA you’ll also get a no-strings-attached one year subscription to the current Rolling Stone. And there’s a softcover photo companion book that lets you follow the year-by-year timeline. Plus the Bondi Reader lets you make your own lists, so you can cross-reference all of Jeff Lynne’s production work or maybe just compile a list of dead rock stars.

The Rolling Stone Cover to Cover – The First 40 Years Digital Archive is like an old hippie with glaucoma. At first he might not seem like someone you’d hang out with, but once you visit, you’ll quickly find a good reason to stick around. This is practically the Edith Hamilton’s Mythology of pop culture. If you can read, you can enjoy it. And if you can’t read, how did you make it all the way down here?