Items related to The New Rolling Stone Album Guide: Completely Revised...

The New Rolling Stone Album Guide: Completely Revised and Updated 4th Edition - Softcover

Brackett, Nathan

  • 4.09 out of 5 stars
    98 ratings by Goodreads
 
9780743201698: The New Rolling Stone Album Guide: Completely Revised and Updated 4th Edition

Synopsis

Updated to include seventy percent new material, a reference to the past decade's top trends, performers, and sounds reviews the music industry's most influential albums, provides biographical overviews of key artists, and considers how technology and the Internet have impacted the industry. Original. 75,000 first printing.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Authors

Nathan Brackett is a senior editor at Rolling Stone, where he has edited the magazine's record reviews section since 1996.

Christian Hoard is a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone. He has also written for The Village Voice, Blender, Spin, and The Boston Globe.

Reviews

"How do you make an album guide that fits in a book bag?" Bracket asks in the introduction to this door-stopping compendium. "Selectively," he answers. To trim down the possibilities, the editors of this book decided to limit their entries to domestically released recordings currently available through major online stores. This makes it easy for consumers to buy what they want, as long as they want the latest mainstream music. Roughly 70 percent of the writing in this guide is new; Brackett notes that the editors chose artists who "have made a lasting, undeniable contribution to pop music." There are extra-long entries for Miles Davis, Dion, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Elvis and Muddy Waters, but a few baffling oversights (e.g., George Harrison is missing while the maligned Paula Abdul remains). The Guide is not intended for popular music historians, but a comparison with earlier editions reveals much about trends in popular music commentary: Chicago’s recordings, once ahead of their time, are now "schlock;" a Rolling Stone reviewer has realized that Yes made some good records; and Tony Bennett merits triple the space he occupied in 1992. The new edition’s 72 authors (vs. the four in 1992) produce a tone and style less consistent than in past editions. Some things have not changed: the best-selling albums generally get the highest ratings, and punks and bluesmen are demigods. Often entertaining, the guide offers comprehensive album lists and usefully ranks the innumerable collections available for many artists. (Also welcome is the short section on anthologies and soundtracks.) However, readers seeking lengthy reviews of individual albums would probably be better off looking elsewhere.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.