Record Guide Shootout: Rolling Stone vs. Christgau Consumer Guides vs. Trouser Press vs. Spin Alternative

In descending order of most use

Christgau
SPIN
Trouser Press
RS

I think I preferred the red RS to the Blue . Though possibly the Blue one was more accurate. Think I liked the biases and working against them. Liked a lotof the records taht the Red one gave a square to.
BUt interesting to see what thought about certain records was at certain times. Though may be better to look at one of the Richard Morton Jack volumes on that count.

Enjoyed teh Christgau 70s too & think I may have the 80s somewhere. Really need to sort through all my books at some point. Quite a few I haven't seen in a while.

Is Spin Alternative the one with Rollins on the cover?

I have Big Blue, Big Red, and three editions of the TP guide (New Wave Records; “New” TP Guide; and “Fourth Edition,” the last one published before they redid all the reviews for the ‘90s — I don’t need the ‘90s guide, I lived it!)

I never really saw RS & TP as “competing,” as there wasn’t a ton of overlap. Obviously, you go to TP for Throbbing Gristle and RS for Dave Marsh snark about some ‘70s band, etc.

loved loved loved the red and blue rolling stone record guides. Somebody digitize those pronto before all the copies get withered away.

I f'd up the links which don't work in the main text body. Here's what they look like:

https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1442068071i/1219046._UY659_SS659_.jpg
https://www.robertchristgau.com/images/cg80s-b.jpg
https://https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387663259i/899268._UY630_SR1200,630_.jpg
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51BMQWEXDFL.jpg

GAH

https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1442068071i/1219046._UY659_SS659_.jpg
https://www.robertchristgau.com/images/cg80s-b.jpg
https://https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387663259i/899268._UY630_SR1200,630_.jpg
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51BMQWEXDFL.jpg

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31RECCM3ZSL._BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

In descending order of most use

Christgau
SPIN
Trouser Press
RS

I think this is close to me, but I swap Spin and TP. My TP is gone now bc I read it so much it fell apart.

The TP stuff is all online (as y’all probably know)

I still have the Spin guide, though the binding is completely broken so it's in 2-3 pieces. That one's definitely my #1. I also still have the red RS guide. Had the TP at one point but I think that one might still be at my parents' house. Never bought the Xgau.

Rolling Stone Alt Rock O Rama!!!

Learned the most by far from the first three TP editions, especially the second one. I liked how they attempted to disentangle the differences between US and UK releases; not sure how well the other guides did this. Not crazy about the dismissive pans with the square ratings in the RS guides, too "grumpy old man." By the time the SPIN guide came out I basically no longer cared about alternative music, so don't really remember that one.

For me, it's a tie between TP and Xgau -- TP is great in that it covers stuff that RS and Xgau don't and the writing is pretty good. But Xgau's miniatures seeped into my brain like molasses.

Tough call between Xgau, RS Red, and TP for me. Can't overstate how valuable these were, especially pre-internet.

xpost -- yeah, for me, Xgau really excels at 250-300 words per subject.

Dark horse vote for the "Psychozoic Hymnal" section of Joe Carducci's Rock and the Pop Narcotic.

I remember working in the library in college (this was 1995 ok) and going through the Trouser Press guide in the reference section and making a list of all the obscure records by obscure bands that looked interesting. I don't think I got past M. I don't know what happened to the actual list, so I only had my memory of the list.

xpost -- yeah, for me, Xgau really excels at 250-300 words per subject
Agree with this.

I’m old so I Vote RS Record Guide (Red). Read Trouser Press the magazine more than the TP guide and Xgau in the VV more than his guidebook, although I did find it useful.

I do remember years of looking for some of those records -- for about 2 or 3 years, I could not find a James Chance record anywhere -- that time seems totally irrelevant now.

I'm with the consensus, I think. Xgau, TP, and RS in the last place. Never got to read the Spin one.

I find the RS Encylopaedia much more interesting than the guide. The guide gets weaker as it gets nearer to what was the present back then. I'm not sure if this is due to the proximity, or if it was related to being written by JD Considine.

And the XGau stuff is the only one I still go back to.

Voted RS, since red/blue and yellow (jazz) were the ones I spent the most time with, but I don't think they're the best in retrospect. The differences between red and blue did teach me that critics hauled a fair bit of personal baggage around with them and that I should just treat the books more as discographical references than guides. I wish Cook/Morton's Penguin Guide to Jazz had been an option, definitely would have voted for that.

Voted RS. The blue guide steered me through a lot of my listening as a kid (and later), but the in print/out-of-print inclusions/exclusions meant a lot of one-star reviews for mediocre one-album artists, and no reviews at all for, say, Big Star or the MC5. But RS also used experts in reggae/dub, gospel, and other areas. I recently picked up a few records from the Music In The World Of Islam series based on the RS blue guide recommendations.

The Trouser Press guide (the first two, maybe three editions) filled in some of the gaps of the RS guide, but I seem to remember weird shit like Ira Robbins flatly dismissing the entirety of dub as a genre/movement (in his Sandinista! review).

I didn't care for Ira's judgments very much... and at least Marsh's weird judgments (like the Led Zep hate) were usually entertaining to read.

Basically agree with the last two posts.

Think one of the most idiosyncratic and enjoyable features of the RS Guide (Red) has thus far gone unmentioned: the pictures of the five star albums scattered throughout.

Marsh didn’t hate Zep, nor did he write the RS guide entries on them (Billy Altman did, and they were generally laudatory).

xp

Maybe it was Sabbath?

I think I had all of these except TP. The one I liked reading the best by far was the Spin Guide

Marsh didn’t hate Zep, nor did he write the RS guide entries on them (Billy Altman did, and they were generally laudatory).

The way I remember it is that Marsh hated Zep, and BA sort of punched up those entries. Do I have it backward? I'll have to look back at those books tonight.

Marsh didn’t write the Sabbath one, either (I think that was Ken Tucker?). But as co-editor, yeah, he could’ve chosen someone somewhat attuned to metal to write the Sabbath entry.

xxp

I wish Cook/Morton's Penguin Guide to Jazz had been an option, definitely would have voted for that.

Agree with this 1000%. The final (sixth?) edition was incredible.

As it is, I'm voting TP. By the time I got around to reading books like this I was already deep into trawling for weird shit and didn't need to know about the classic rock canon, having grown up listening to it on classic rock radio. I already knew about Jim Morrison; I needed to know who Jim Thirlwell was.

I don’t think Marsh was a massive Zep fan, but he didn’t hate them: two of their songs are in his 1001 singles book (and there’s no hint of backhanded praise or anything along the lines of “they suck except for these two songs”).

Maybe you’re thinking of the Doors? Altman’s praise for them in the red guide was absurdly over-the-top, so Marsh panned them in the blue guide.

I already knew about Jim Morrison; I needed to know who Jim Thirlwell was.

yep!!

Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia from 1969 is an amazing snapshot of a very small world, even compared the world of the red RS just a few years later, all written by one person.

i had this one which in retrospect just completely blew:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51TK9CCM8EL._SX323_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

i never owned any of the others mentioned here but would skim them periodically in bookstores. The SPIN one was my speed at the time. I also owned an All Music Guide from the mid-'90s and it was a vv good resource.

I didn't mind this one! The New Order section is wack, though.

The first two editions of the Trouser Press guide were invaluable for me. And remarkably solid critically, for my taste.

This is my most dog-eared reference, salvation (along with an enlightened guitar teacher loaning me records) in a benighted junior high year in Alabama:

https://ia800801.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/18/items/olcovers662/olcovers662-L.zip&file=6620858-L.jpg

Trouser Press >>>>>>>>> Spin > RC=RS

I didn't mind this one! The New Order section is wack, though.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, August 23, 2019 11:21 AM (thirty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it gave me a truly misguided notion regarding the importance of the '80s solo work of Robbie Robertson, is what i remember. i should amend it to admit that it was pretty decent on blues music, but at the same time it only covered the obvious artists and then only the big Chess guys and the old timey Blind Lemon Jefferson types.

I got pretty much nothing from the RS guide, and I think I only ever saw xgau's '90s guide, by which point he was well on his way to desiccation (imo). Trouser Press and Spin, however, both had in inestimable impact on the expansion of my musical tastes (even as some of the reviews in the latter made me furious). Really need to track down fresh copies of those things.

first couple solo Roberton albums are pretty good, imo

kinda bruce hornsby esque

"Somewhere Down the Crazy River" is some all-time-worst boomer post-Peter Gabriel crap, though.

I'll include some non-poll options:

1. Red RS Guide, Stranded, Christgau's '70s book

Basically a tie. I can point to dozens and dozens of the records I bought in the late '70s/early '80s and tell you which book prompted me to buy them. There are phrases from each, especially the first and third, I can recite from memory.

2. Lilian Roxon's encyclopedia, the Logan/Woffinden encyclopedia pictured above, Paul Gambaccini's first Top 200 Albums book, the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll (second edition, I think--the 1980 edition edited by Jim Miller)

These shaped my record collection too. I have great affection for the Lilian Roxon book, though I wouldn't seriously advise anyone to use it as a guide--that's how you end up with Sons of Champlain albums.

I have the Trouser Press book, but it came later and didn't have much influence on me. Triple that for the Spin guide--I've flipped through once or twice, otherwise it just sits on the shelf. It's all a matter of timing.

Ok, Montgomery was right and I was wrong about Zeppelin — their entries in both volumes were written by Altman, and most of the albums are highly rated (even though Physical Graffiti is underrated and glossed over in a single sentence that only mentions “Kashmir”). Weird, what was I thinking of?

Haha, Marsh definitely is no fan of the Doors (entry begins: “Unlikely as it may seem, given the obnoxious and insipid cult that now surrounds Jim Morrison...”).

His slam of X’s two (at the time) albums even begin with a guilt-by-association move (noting that Manzarek has produced the group).

Yeah, Marsh really hates X with a passion, which is a little mystifying. Part of me wonders if it’s meant to serve as a corrective/response to Christgau’s occasionally over-the-top X love.

Assume you guys are taking about the Blue Guide, can’t find that in the Red.

Ah! I was thinking of the Grateful Dead — whose catalogue Marsh eviscerates in the blue book (“one assertedly major oeuvre that’s virtually worthless except for documentary purposes”), awarding most of the albums only a single star. What an asshole! Listen to the music play, Dave!

The Dead’s entry in the red book, written by John Milward, was entirely different, and at least gave the albums a fair shake (even though 3 stars was their ceiling).

I love that, never read it before but it speaks to me deeply as someone who found that RS guide very bewildering when I was 15 and was finally able to get the big picture a few years later with the Trouser Press Guide.

Feel like the original was still the greatest, critical imbalance and poor fact-checking aside. Nothing can replace the magic of the randomized five star album cover placement, for one thing.

Trouser Press guide came a little too late for me. I was still missing the magazine but it didn’t fill the void.

Mr. Bowie is faulted for something called ''lack of faith in rock''; Mr. Springsteen is praised for making ''no concessions to nonrock.''

can't stop laughing at this

It’s pretty funny

What I love about Palmer was that rock, for him, was just a beloved bend in the river of American musical forms.

Mr. Bowie is faulted for something called ''lack of faith in rock''

This about the guy who sang "Rock and Roll With Me"!

oh man Iron City House rockers I spent money on some comp once

“Crazy Little Thing Called Lack Of Faith In Rock”

This about the guy who sang "Rock and Roll With Me"!

Dave Marsh loves his second-string Springsteen imitators. He wrote an article where he asserts that because John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band had a hit single, "no-one is comparing them to Bruce anymore". Of course, now they're only remembered as the Boss's most shameless copyists.

When was the last book like these? The Dave Thompson Alternative Rock guide is from 2000. Of course there's been guides to more specific subgenres but I'd love to see something bigger in scope.

There's a Spin book from 2005 but I think it's all essays?

The Wire put out a book of some of its Primers about 15 or so years ago.

It's 2009 and the newer ebook seems to be the same version

Important, world-altering correction to something I posted here seven years ago:

1. Red RS Guide, Stranded, Christgau's '70s book

Basically a tie. I can point to dozens and dozens of the records I bought in the late '70s/early '80s and tell you which book prompted me to buy them. There are phrases from each, especially the first and third, I can recite from memory.

"Second and third," that should have read--it's Stranded and Christgau's book where certain phrases are embedded in my mind. I remember very little of the writing in the first RS guide, though I can usually remember if an album got five stars or not.

Fourth and presumably final edition of Rolling Stone Album Guide was 2004

good riddance, I will never forgive Dave Marsh for his bullshit. even in high school (red and blue volumes both iirc) it was obvious how clueless he was.

I drove myself nuts a few years ago trying to find my old copy of the Spin guide but never could. I ought to just buy a replacement on ebay but they tend to be fairly expensive.

When was the last book like these?

The Rolling Stone 2004 guide does seem to be the last of its sort. No-one regards these books as authoritative anymore, or wants to read putdowns of their favourites. It's been replaced to an extent by books celebrating certain records, especially obscurities that the authors want to bring to light.

Of course there's been guides to more specific subgenres but I'd love to see something bigger in scope.

The last I can recall reading was Martin Popoff's

The Collector's Guide To Heavy Metal Volume 4: The '00s

There's a Spin book from 2005 but I think it's all essays?

There was a third Spin book from around the same time that I can't seem to name or find online but was essentially a short writeups around a chronological playlist of the history of alternative from punk onward. One of the early tracks was Eno's "1/1".

Fourth and presumably final edition of Rolling Stone Album Guide was 2004

good riddance, I will never forgive Dave Marsh for his bullshit

Don't think Marsh had anything to do with the fourth edition, though we've discussed in other threads as well why that book was such a misfire.

I'd just like to say a good word for the MusicHound guides, published between 1996 and 2002. They had a somewhat eccentric and unusual selection of artists profiled, and somehow awarding "bones" instead of stars made it seem genially absurd when they put down something you liked.

Outside the purview of this thread but hugely important in its way: The Penguin Guide To Jazz On CD was published until 2010; the first nine editions were guides to as much music as they could cover, but the final/10th edition was more of a "1001 jazz albums You Must Hear" collection.

I regret unloading all my Penguin Jazzes; they were great guides.

I still have a jazz one, but I got rid of the classical one, which I now regret.

yah I still have a 1992 Penguin Jazz Guide

FYI all of the Penguin Jazz Guides are on archive.org. I could never find the last two editions (the ones before the guide was reworked as The History of the Music in the 1001 Best Albums), so finding them there was extremely useful, but I feel less bad about missing them because they drastically scaled back on their coverage.

I always wished they had done a digital version that combined ALL of their past guides rather than dropping any titles. I figured the idea had less appeal to them because it might discourage sales of the updated editions, but now that the guides are pretty much done, it really would've been a better way to conclude its run.

Jim Svejda's guide to classical music is fantastic but I don't think it got updated past 2001.

No-one ever seems to remember the Rough Guide to Rock, but I used to think it was great. From what I gather the last edition came out in 2003 (White Stripes on the cover).

I've got the Rough Guide To Classical from 2010. They had a couple of World Music guides that I need to look into.

out of all of these, the Trouser Press guide was the biggest for me, and the most influential

I bought a hard copy AMG recently when i realised i could read all the Blue Gene Tyranny reviews in one chunk

Trouser Press is probably me favorite too, though it clearly isn't trying to be comprehensive (which tbf may make it easier for them to maintain a higher standard across the entire guide). I wish they kept updating it, especially when it's all online now, but it's understandable and not surprising when Trouser Press itself ceased publication a long, long time ago.

I basically had the 2nd edition memorized

Not a guide as such but the International Discography of the New Wave was my bible in the early 80s. Still got my copy which is super expensive now. https://www.abebooks.co.uk/INTERNATIONAL-DISCOGRAPHY-NEW-WAVE-VOLUME-1982-83/31430928386/bd

xp if you mean the Trouser Press same here!

I was hoping someone would bring up the New Wave Discography - I didn't have it, and couldn't quite recall what it was named. But as a kid trying to grasp punk/new wave at the time, after only being exposed to AOR radio, I found leafing through it in an urban bookstore incredibly imposing. It teased about this vast world I could never learn about until I could escape my small town and trips to shopping mall record chains. It brought about FOMO angst, which made each acquisition of something that might be in that book feel like a victory.

yes I absolutely devoured my friend's copy of that book, and wrote down everything in it I wanted

(some of which did not actually exist, lol)

it introduced me to so much amazing stuff, but their negative reviews of the Associates prevented me from getting into the magnificence of Billy McKenzie

New Wave Discography, Vol 2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1auySn0jZ4KAaJ_lb_5CNuYAEEzGWLaLJ/view?usp=sharing

Vol 3: http://collectorscum.com/volume3/

the first nine editions were guides to as much music as they could cover

They mimicked the Penguin Classical Guides in covering what was 'in print' at the time of writing, but Cook/Morton were never spot on with that, particularly when it came to Japanese and American reissues - but I'm guessing that after Cook died, Morton/Penguin realised such a remit was just impossible, and pretty redundant w/ the interweb, hence ditching the whole thing ultimately. When I worked in a big jazz disc emporium (imagine such a thing!) many customers would only make a purchase after consulting the Penguin.

https://archive.org/services/img/modernjazzessent00harr/full/pct:200/0/default.jpg

I've been going through this excellent guide recently, listening to anything I don't know (or reminding myself about canonical classics I've only listened to maybe once or twice in my lifetime). Virtually everything listed is on Apple Music (other streaming services available), there's just SO MUCH jazz out, tons of it almost impossible to find once upon a time, especially in the UK. More, much more, than a lifetime's listening. Reading Max Harrison, I'm not sure this plenitude has made us more attentive critics.

New Wave Discography, Vol 2:

omg that is amazing

The Punk Diary was the big one for me, but it wasn’t really reviews.

I still need to read that, seems like it would be a nice addendum to England's Dreaming

It’s pretty cool to get a sense of how fast all of this stuff was bursting out. There’s a postpunk diary as well.

Mr. Bowie is faulted for something called ''lack of faith in rock''; Mr. Springsteen is praised for making ''no concessions to nonrock.'' These are empty sophistries, characteristic of the book's rear-guard action against new ideas, redolent of a fan-club mentality that penalizes originals for daring to be different while taking the cynical posturings of arena-rock ''populism'' at face value.

― birdistheword, Tuesday, October 6, 2020 5:15 PM (five years ago)

That is really funny. I guess these were the guys who went around shouting "rock and roll will never die!" as if it were a religion.

I guess this is why Bowie made an album called Heathen.

I got the Dave Thompson (Third Ear) Alternative Rock guide. It's a rare case of me buying something I got rid of years ago, I guess I thought RateYourMusic and other sites would be more than enough, but I'm getting this book again because I mostly find the internet useful for very specific subgenres/moods, but a guide like this might be better at searching outside my favorite niches (while still being in a sort of comfort zone). I don't know where I'd begin finding pop music I like.
I haven't seen any particularly dickish criticisms from Thompson yet but there's an eccentric rating system where he rates the bands albums out of 10 based on they're own standards (Kate Bush's Red Shoes gets 2/10!)
There's a lot of significant bands who aren't in here but it's only one guy doing the whole thing and I'm guessing he only wanted to cover bands that he could be comprehensive about. The Producers/Labels section at the end is interesting.

In the back there's an advert for Third Ear guides to Swing, Bebop, Afro-Cuban Jazz (all by Scott Yanow) and Celtic Music (by Kenny Mathieson)

The one of these books that circulates in our public library is a guide to reggae, I haven't read it yet.

Rough Guide to Reggae wasn’t terrible iirc

it introduced me to so much amazing stuff, but their negative reviews of the Associates prevented me from getting into the magnificence of Billy McKenzie

― The New Blockader (Boring, Maryland), Tuesday, April 14, 2026 3:36 PM (one month ago)

I just got the third edition and it's really negative about Swans, Art Zoyd, Skinny Puppy and a few more of my favorites but I'm going to read this very cautiously about their judgements