This weekend brings the three-night Sparklefest to Raleigh's Pour House Music Hall, with bewigged Boston rockers Upper Crust in the pole position as Saturday night headliners. But take a look a bit farther down the bill and you'll find lots of folks with deep roots in Tarheel college-radio pop -- Mitch Easter from Let's Active, for example; or Kick the Future, featuring former Arrogance man Robert Kirkland; or the Olympic Ass Kickin' Team, featuring ex-Woods/Fabulous Knobs drummer Terry Anderson; or Jeff Hart and the Ruins, who have been around for the better part of 20 years in one form or another.

Those might just be names that don't mean much to you. So for a primer on how all this fits together, take a look at "The Golden Age of North Carolina Music" -- a very fine Encyclopedia-style summary of several decades of local music history by one of its longtime participants, Matt Barrett.

That's not the blogosphere's only item of interest to historically minded local music fans. There's also NC Music History Dot Com, a nice collection of entries about bands compiled by Michael Slawter (also playing Sparklefest); "Communication Theories and Musical Communities," a fascinatingly wonky 2002 paper about the Chapel Hill music scene written by Squealer Records impressario Butch Lazorchak; and "How North Carolina Got Its Punk Attitude."

ADDENDA (2/2/07): There's a really cool documentary in the works. Check out some of the vintage videos here and here. And another cool online archive is WXYC deejay Jason Perlmutter's Carolina Soul. Also, Tarheel expatriate Norwood Cheek has been putting out some cool stuff.

MORE (5/15/07): Rest in peace, Sam Moss.

AND MORE (5/16/07): "Disco Communist"?

STILL MORE (5/28/07): Durham, represent.

AND MORE (6/6/07): Some vintage blogcasts.

STILL GOING (2/11/08): A couple of reports from 1984 and 1992.

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