who uses record guides for what

The International Discography of New Wave is fantastic as well, but I've never found a copy.

dan, beyond truning you onto things how else are they "essential resources"? My Chicago Manual of Style and OED are essential (as is the shift+F7).

I've got a very dog eared copy which I've had for 20+ years now. A quite astonishing piece of work as it was constructed in the pre-internet era when it would have taken a fair amount of legwork to get all the info together.

However Discogs is better for electronic music.

My college's library actually had a copy (and still does, presumably). I'd flip through it from time to time. I was impressed that Half Japanese rated an entry, and seeing a write-up for a young band from Athens with one Hib-Tone 45 to their name was amusing. It wasn't until after I graduated that I learned how rare that book is. I worked at the Library, too. Not that I'm implying anything by mentioning that...

I know I mentioned this to Chuck Eddy on another thread, but there is a copy of this on Alibris.com priced at $1,187.45! Ebay sold one recently for a hundred bucks.

The Trouser Press guides are useful, discography-wise, but I find them to be totally dull to read (the entries never seem to give a good sense of what anyone's music sounds like, but instead focus mainly on facts and details).

Anyway, I often pull out copies of each from the coffee table to look up some band on VH1 Classic, etc.

how about when they described The Swans as sounding like banging your head to Sister Ray, against a wall, under water?

In a minor defense of that book, there was a fine entry for the Go-Betweens (written, I think, by J.D. Considine). Not that I want to argue buying a record guide for one entry, though.

"The Trouser Press guides are useful, discography-wise, but I find them to be totally dull to read (the entries never seem to give a good sense of what anyone's music sounds like, but instead focus mainly on facts and details)."

It might sound like heresy to some indie types, but I actually found the Spin guide to Alternative Rock more fun to read, regardless of my opinions of the music being reviewed versus the writers'. The Spin book had some sharp writing from the likes of Byron Coley and Rob Sheffield, and the overall tone was more fun and less mannered. I can't argue that the Trouser Press Guide was more comprehensive, though.

I can't fathom how anyone would think the SPIN Guide was useless. Show me these indie type so that I can destroy them.

i've come close to picking up t.press a few times. maybe i will do.

thanks to posters who have freed me from the paranioia that im acting like a spoiled brat of a critic refusing to read the views of my "forefathers".

but for a while, where else would you find listings for the Desperate Bicycles, the Homosexuals, the Spherical Objects etc...

DON'T LET YOUR CHILDREN GROW UP TO BE LIKE ME

I used the Trouser Press guide to track down the various bands related in some way or another to Pere Ubu. One thing I really liked about the TP was the "see also" set-up. Helpful in learning about Tripod Jimmie, House and Garden, the Styrenes, Easter Monkey, etc.

I'm pretty sure both the 3rd (blue) Trouser Press Guide and the 1992 Rolling Stone album guide were completed after -Nevermind- was released, but before "Nirvanamania" hit full bloom.

keep in mind that books usually take a year or so to come out after writing, though. so it's very possible that the RS guide was put to bed long before Nirvana became a humongous thing.

Relatedly: this summer I was at my friend Dylan's house in Minneapolis. we were deciding what to listen to. "Pick any record you want," he said, leaving me in his newly refurbished and packed-full record room. Wound up picking Al Cohn's America, a 1976 album by a cult-fave saxophonist. "I bought that because it got five stars in the Rolling Stone Jazz Album Guide," he said. It wasn't paradigm-shifting, just a damn solid record I'd never heard of. Later that night I tracked it down on eMusic, and d/l'ed it and a few other Cohn titles, all good. I've played America a lot--one of my most-listened-to records this year that isn't from this year. So I'd like to thank whoever wrote that review for exposing Dylan, and thus me, to that record.

Dang. You are correct. I stand by my opinion on the 1992 Rolling Stone Guide, though. Even though it was published the year of "Nirvanamania," the entry reads with no reference to the band's mainstream success. Which makes me suspect it was written just after the album was released, long before publication.