Richie Unterberger (born January 19, 1962)[citation needed] is an American author and journalist whose focus is popular music and travel writing.
Unterberger attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he wrote for the university newspaper The Daily Pennsylvanian and in the early 1980s was a deejay on the Penn radio station, WXPN-FM.[1] Just prior to graduating in late 1982, he started reviewing records for Op magazine, which marked the start of his career as a freelance writer.[2][3]
From 1985 to 1991, Unterberger was an editor for Option.[4] Since 1993, he has been a prolific contributor to AllMusic, the on-line database of music biographies and album reviews, for which he has written thousands of entries, and many of his on-line contributions have been printed in the AllMusic guide series. Unterberger contributes to various local and national publications, including Mojo, Record Collector, Rolling Stone, Oxford American, and No Depression. He has written liner notes for dozens of CD reissues from labels like Rhino Records, Collectors' Choice, and Sundazed.
Unterberger's books draw extensively on first-hand interviews with musicians and their associates.[5][6][7][8]
Unterberger has given talks on music and popular culture at public libraries in San Francisco, Berkeley, and San Mateo County, California. He is also a speaker at area bookstores, including The Booksmith in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco.
Unterberger has also written on travel, including The Rough Guide to Seattle (1996), and co-authored The Rough Guide to Shopping with a Conscience (2007), a book about ethical products, investment, and related topics. He has traveled to more than thirty countries and is an advocate of independent travel and alternative culture.
His nephew, Andrew, formerly wrote for Stylusmagazine.com,[9] and in 2007 was part of the winning team on VH1's World Series of Pop Culture.[10] He has been a staff writer or featured contributor on music and sports blogs.[11][12][13]
His books include:
