Spin Alternative Record Guide - Softcover

Weisbard, Eric

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679755748 ISBN 13: 9780679755746

Publisher: Vintage, 1995

Synopsis

America's premiere alternative music magazine presents a book of outrageously opinionated reviews of the essential albums of punk, new wave, indie rock, grunge, and rap. National ads/media.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

emiere alternative music magazine presents a book of outrageously opinionated reviews of the essential albums of punk, new wave, indie rock, grunge, and rap. National ads/media.

Reviews

Spin magazine's record guide is useful but problematic. The entries are generally accurate, the criticisms sound and informed, but the editors' definition of alternative is nebulous. The label once referred to bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam that were deemed noncommercial. The definition of alternative here--music for "people with alternative sensibilities" --encompasses not only such megahit formerly noncommercial rock bands but also supposed alternatives to mainstream country (e.g., Lyle Lovett), traditional jazz (e.g., Sun Ra), even to all Western music (e.g., Pakistan's Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) and to noncommercialism (ABBA!). And despite the catchall definition, there are only some 500 artists here, as compared to 2,500 in the similar and frequently revised Trouser Press Record Guide (4th ed., 1991). At least, Spin is up-to-date enough to include such breaking acts as The Orb and Luscious Jackson. Ideally, libraries should have Spin for currency, Trouser Press for comprehensiveness. Gordon Flagg

So much of the popular music released these days is billed as "alternative" that it's tough to locate the mainstream without really looking. The proliferation of these alternatives notwithstanding, this guide fills a gap in the literature of modern music. Where else are you going to find the complete discographies of Trobbing Gristle and Jonathan Richman under the same cover? Maybe in the Rolling Stone Album Guide (Random, 1992), but not with the length and scope of the reviews provided by the 64 contributors to this volume. Each entry includes a complete discography, and each release is rated on a scale of one to ten. The hip writing is geared toward those in the know, and the authors themselves are knowledgeable. Entries are interspersed with top-ten album lists from various artists and photographs of album covers. An appendix offers a list of the top 100 alternative albums of all time, and a mercifully short essay on the nature of alternative music outlines the principles of the category: "antigenerationally dystopian, subculturally presuming fragmentation ...built on an often neurotic discomfort over massified and commodified culture." Though 99 percent of those who check out this volume won't be able to offer anything close to a dictionary definition of "dystopian," they'll probably think it's a pretty cool book. Recommended for both public and academic libraries. (Index not seen.)?Adam Mazmanian, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679755748
• ISBN 13: 9780679755746
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 468