Unterberger attended theUniversity of Pennsylvania, where he wrote for the university newspaperThe Daily Pennsylvanian and in the early 1980s was adeejay on the Penn radio station,WXPN-FM.[2] Just prior to graduating in late 1982, he started reviewing records forOp magazine, which marked the start of his career as a freelance writer.[3][4]
From 1985 to 1991, Unterberger was an editor forOption.[1] Since 1993, he has been a prolific contributor toAllMusic, 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, includingMojo,Record Collector,Rolling Stone,Oxford American, andNo Depression. He has writtenliner notes for dozens of CD reissues from labels likeRhino Records,Collectors' Choice, andSundazed.
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 TheBooksmith in theHaight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco.
Unterberger has also written on travel, includingTheRough Guide toSeattle (1996), and co-authoredThe 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'sWorld Series of Pop Culture.[10] He has been a staff writer or featured contributor on music and sports blogs.[11][12][13]
1998:Unknown Legends of Rock'n'Roll. Profiles of 60 underappreciated cult rock artists of all styles and eras
1999:TheRough Guide to Music USA. A guidebook to the evolution of regional popular music throughout America in the twentieth century
2000:Urban Spacemen & Wayfaring Strangers: Overlooked Innovators and Eccentric Visionaries of '60s Rock. Another look at underappreciated cult rock artists
2002:Turn! Turn! Turn!: The '60s Folk-Rock Revolution. The first part of a history offolk rock
2003:Eight Miles High: Folk-Rock's Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock. The second part of a history of folk rock
2006:The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film. An illustrated 400-page guide to music that theBeatles recorded but did not release, as well as musical footage of the group that has not been made commercially available (winner of a 2007 Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research from theAssociation for Recorded Sound Collections)[14]
