Michael Erlewine, Archivist of Popular Culture

Michael Erlewine was very active in the folk scene in the late 1950s and 1960s, especially in the Ann Arbor area, which included traveling with Bob Dylan (hitchhiking) in 1961. Later, as leader of the influential Prime Movers Blues Band (Iggy Pop was their drummer), Erlewine played a wide variety of venues, including the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco (during the “Summer of Love” in 1967), where his band opened for “Cream” during their first U.S. tour.

Erlewine was instrumental in the landmark Ann Arbor Blues Festivals of 1969 and 1970, as well as the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivals in 1972 and 1973, where he did audio and video interviews of almost all performers. This led to his becoming interested in archiving popular culture and founding the All-Music Guide (AMG), which today is the largest must review site on the planet. He did the same for film, video games, and rock posters. Next to Microsoft, Matrix Astrological Software (founded by Erlewine) is the oldest software company on the Internet. Erlewine still owns and runs the company today, which is located in Big Rapids, Michigan. Erlewine is also very active in Tibetan Buddhism and Macro Photography.