TS: The New Rolling Stone Record Guide Vs. The Spin Alternative Record Guide

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NRSRG1983.gif

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51BMQWEXDFL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

As a record guide aficionado throughout my teen years, I spent hours upon hours with both of these guides. Though it's been years since I read it, the RS one, edited by Dave Marsh in 1983, its list of contributors reads like like a virtual who's who of American rock critics: J.D. Considine, David Fricke, Greil Marcus, Ira Robins, Lester Bangs, Ken Tucker.

Where the RS guide is a snapshot of 1983 conventional wisdom about pop music, written when virtually no artist had yet been critically rehabilitated, by contrast, the Spin guide was released dead in the middle of the alternative rock mania (1995). In some respects, with its enormous entries championing the likes of Adrian Sherwood, Abba and John Fahey, it's a an explicit rejection of the values espoused by Marsh and co. in the RS book.

Yet...yet, there's something the Rolling Stone guide captures. Even as it bleeds with all the biases and blind spots held by American rock critics at the close of the 1970's, there's something almost admirable, even quaint, about the utter righteousness of it all.

Which, pray tell, does ILM prefer?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/NRSRG1983.gif

vs. the forthcoming Pitchfork Guide, surely

Which itself promises to reject Spin's earnestness and will surely embrace an even wider swath of that which the RS rejected?

sorr

New Rolling Stone Record Guide was a lot funnier. I would even read about bands I didn't care about because the writing was so good. The red version is even better.

What happened to Dave Marsh?

How is the red version better? I never even saw it...

Which is to say, I've heard of it, obv., but never read it.

It was from a couple years earlier and includes a lot more funny Dave Marsh slams of no-name obscure bands.

In the red book, every Yes album gets either four or five stars, and every AC/DC album gets zero stars. The book sums up their entire career with, "AC/DC's purpose apparently is to offend anyone within sight or earshot. They succeed on both counts." Ha!

Rolling Stone Record Guide > Spin Alternative Record Guide > anything Pitchfork has ever written >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the Trouser Press Record Guide

No way. I like Trouser Press.

Wait, if I love Trouser Press, and haven't read any of the others, does that mean I'll like the others even more, or does it just mean I'll think Mr. Snrub is wronger than wrong?

probably the latter. most people do.

Mr. Snrub is witty and wise.

^ not a fact fyi

Allow me to harp on this wrong opinion from the Spin Alternative Record Guide...

Who does Scott Seward review in the new Rolling Stone Guide?

I would like to stick up for the funniness of the SPIN guide. Particularly anything by Sheffield, but also the Kogan review of Enigma and the Greer review of Cheap Trick. Sheffield's stuff in the NEW New RS guide is also great, as I remember, but I haven't committed as many of the lines to memory.

Oh! And the Hannaham review of Henry Rollins, comparing him to Morrissey, is perfect.

One, two, three, kick!
Come on everybody, clap your hands
Ooh, you're looking good
Are you having a good time? I sure am
Do you like soul music?
(No)
Well, do the trouser press, baby! One, two three!

Most entertaining RS guide was the red 1979 one, not the (still pretty good) blue 1983 one.

Some recent discussions of these topics here:

http://rockcritics.com/2008/10/17/rockcritics-podcast-chuck-eddy-part-1/

http://rockcritics.com/2008/10/18/more-on-the-rolling-stone-record-guide/

http://rockcritics.com/2008/10/29/rockcritics-podcast-chuck-eddy-part-3/

Time and again, Trouser Press is the only one of the three that covers bands I'm interested in, especially in any depth.

I would like to stick up for the funniness of the SPIN guide. Particularly anything by Sheffield, but also the Kogan review of Enigma and the Greer review of Cheap Trick. Sheffield's stuff in the NEW New RS guide is also great, as I remember, but I haven't committed as many of the lines to memory.

Sheffield's Duran ("They got accused of being fascistic, but that's what straight American rockers always say about British dolly-boys who dress up as Ann-Margaret") and Roxy entries remain my two favorite pieces of his. Ditto Ann Powers' Eno entry, Weisbard's Wire and Pere Ubu entries (both responsible for getting me to check those bands out), and Craig Marks' Lucinda Williams.

Sheffield's essays in the book challenge orthodoxies that still held sway; he was daring you to argue that Madonna didn't deserve a place. The last line of that essay ("She'll be back as soon as she remembers to write good songs" or something) is a gauntlet thrown at scolds who dismissed her as a disco dolly.

I dunno, Alfred, I'm a big Sheffield fan (and he does obviously write some funny essays in that book), but it was hardly "unorthodox" by that point to argue that Madonna was important. I mean, it's not like the book came out in, say, 1985 (when Dave Marsh, by the way, was already arguing that Marsh was important, to the annoyance of rockist idiots like me who still dismissed her as a disco dolly.)

My favorite "alternative" guide was still the first Trouser Press one (grey cover, I think, from the early '80s), which still dared to call the music "new wave." But then, I'm a more new wave guy than alternative guy. I'm actually in that orange Spin guide, but reading about that kind of music was a lot more fun before it even had much of a canon to challenge. (Plus, just like with those early RS guides, especially the first one, that first Trouser Press guide didn't limit itself to "important" stuff everybody had already written about to death; including all the cool weird funny fall-through-the-cracks bands that nobody ever gave a shit about.)

I mean those early guides did include the weird stuff, and were way more fun for it (and I'm not saying the weird stuff had been written about to death, like Ubu and Wire and Eno etc had up to that point. Which isn't to criticize what Ann or Eric wrote about them. Always did hate Eric's MC5 writeup, though.)

the Spin guide is after my time, I remember seeing it in stores but in terms of magazines I had already gravitated towards the Option/Sound Choice/Forced Exposure/Puncture/etc. axis. The RS blue book, on the other hand, I probably memorized. As much as I hate a lot of Marsh's snotty reviews, it's still a great read and a great period piece.

I liked the Trouser Press guides a lot more, 3rd and 4th editions were my want-list bibles for years.

Always did hate Eric's MC5 writeup

that's the one where he says of KOTJ something along the lines of "it's unlistenable but not in an interesting way" right? - hilarious sub-marcus nonsense. of course they're my favorite band so I wouldn't like that. to me the flaw in the spin guide is all the attitude, like reviewing the cure in terms of robert smith's makeup. ugh. of course writing that many reviews, covering that much ground, entire careers and discographies in so short a time inevitable leads to hasty superficial judgements and factual errors. mistakes, I've made more than a few.

reading the spin guide now all the "alternative" ideology just seems incredibly dated though I didn't buy in the 90s, either. (and I can't look at the later RS guides w/o CRINGING haha)

to me the flaw in the spin guide is all the attitude, like reviewing the cure in terms of robert smith's makeup. ugh.

I love this approach! It's superficially superficial.

I dunno, Alfred, I'm a big Sheffield fan (and he does obviously write some funny essays in that book), but it was hardly "unorthodox" by that point to argue that Madonna was important.

It wasn't unorthodox, but, as Mark points out, Sheffield's angle makes all the difference.

I bought the blue RS guide on eBay the other day for $5. How much I look forward to the one-star Alice Cooper reviews.

I always liked the MC5 write-up because every time I've ever listened to them it's felt like homework, even when I enjoyed them.

As noted above, this is a great piece on the RS guide: http://www.glorygloryglory.com/marshonline.htm

My favorite line from that piece:

"Seventy-two percent of the Record Guide’s entries were created by white people. Twenty-eight percent were made by black people. The remaining entries were from Hispanics (.6 percent), Asians (.2 percent), Native Americans (.2 percent), and albinos (Johnny and Edgar Winter, .01 percent)."

Always did hate Eric's MC5 writeup...that's the one where he says of KOTJ something along the lines of "it's unlistenable but not in an interesting way" right?

Well, somebody who actually has a copy of the book in their posession should correct me if I'm way off base, but as I recall the review was more along the lines of (paraphrasing like crazy here) "The MC5's neanderthal boys-will-be-boys ethos may have seemed revolutionary once upon a time, but in these enlightened '90s days of truly alternative music like Pavement and Bjork and Jane's Addiction, we know better." (If Eric had merely called them homework, or unlistenable, it would have struck me as less silly.)

I think you're projecting a bit of your 1990s hatred onto the review. But yeah you're essentially correct. I like the review a lot especially the great line about how High Time "was two full years ahead of its time." My problem with it is that Weisbard doesn't realize that their camp value had made them endearing to a certain 1990s mindset. Part of the pleasure my Gen X friends and I took in the MC5 in the late 1980s/early 1990s stemmed directly from the band's hollow, goofy revolutionary rhetoric. So it hardly mattered that their vision was "unaware of itself as a B-movie" if indeed that was the case. Plus "hairier than Steppenwolf" is an aesthetic achievement on par with Robert Smith's makeup.

And then there's the first guitar solo in "Looking at You" which is arguably the greatest ever.

BUT. xhuxk, you should know that your top ten list (with Appetite for Destruction perched right at the top) appears on the same exact page as the MC5 pan! Clearly your list's placement there was meant as a self-conscious antithesis.

And as if on queue from Rock's Back Pages...

Dear Matthew

Free this week: Kick Out The Jams with the MC5!

David G. Walley meets the newly-signed MC5 (Jazz & Pop, 1969)

Mike Jahn reports on the release of Kick Out The Jams (Pop Scene Service, 1969)

Charles Shaar Murray celebtrates KITJ's reissue (NME, 1977)

John Sinclair writes about the rise and rise of the MC5 (ZigZag, 1977)

Tom Hibbert swiftly runs down The MC5 Story (The History of Rock, 1983)

I just got my New Rolling Stone Record Guide in the mail today -- just picking it up quickly was like walking into your childhood house after twenty-five years. Consider me excited to read this.

The Giorgio Moroder entry is HILARIOUSLY dismissive. I'm really enjoying this. And I should also note that not all of it is white rock guys.

Though a lot of it is written from a white rock perspective.

I have the blue one (and I am forgetting some of the other funny dismissive Marsh reviews in there but there are many) but not the red one. Anybody else have Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia? I have the revised one from 1978 (compiled by Ed Naha (who?)) that I found recently for $3.

ed naha was a fairly prominent rock critic in the 70s, he was at the NY Post for awhile. IIRC he went into screenwriting, sci-fi, something like that. his updated Rock Encyclopedia is disappointing if you know the original. Roxon's book is a real period piece, written in a 60s tabloid newspaper style that's really unlike most early rock writing and takes some getting used to but she's knowledgeable and enthusiastic and her Rock Encyclopedia really is encyclopedic, including not only discographies but in most cases listing the tracks on each album! this is a touchstone for me cause it was one of the few books on music in my local library, along with Xgau's Any Old Way You Choose It. I practically memorized these two very different tomes in my early teens. picking up a used copy 10-15 years later I though Roxon's RE aged quite well.

so if you like the revised one at all, search the original, it's well worth a couple bucks.

I've got the earlier Roxon Rock Encyclopedia- what's really interesting is how small and fast moving the pop world was at that point, how a record that's 20 months old is referred to in the distant past tense. She makes statements like "The Beatles SERGEANT PEPPER album, in the summer of 1967, marked the formal beginning of electronic rock." Her early impressions of canonical bands are a trip. "I can easily imagine someone performing black masses with the Velvet Underground's albums. Not for the kiddies" "Led Zeppelin is the new name for what was left of the Yardbirds...they play heavy blues with a great deal of improvisational techniques." She rhapsodizes on the sophistication of the Kinks, how they anticipated Sgt. Peppers and Pet Sounds, but closes regretfully, "People have written a lot about the Kinks, but there is so little to say because there is no spectacle, no drama, no intrigue- just that music." Rockism seems a long way off.

The blue RS record guide was my bible. I think it came out in 83, and the red guide came out in 79.

I was fascinated by the concept of 5 star records - because you so rarely saw them in the print edition of RS, but there was oodles of them in the guide! So instead of buying Duran Duran and Naked Eyes records, I started buying the likes of Trout Mask Replica, early Dylan and Byrds.

The Spin guide was an honest attempt to create an alternative canon, I guess. It didn't stick with me, though.