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The New Rolling Stone Record Guide
The New Rolling Stone Record Guide. Edited by Dave Marsh and John Swenson. 1983. Stated First Edition. Random House. Paperback. 'Revised,updated and more compete than ever, tis indispensable book reviews and rates over 12,000 rock, pop, soul, country,blues, folk and gospel albums.'
648 pages, Paperback
First published October 12, 1983
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 16, 2014
I've enjoyed reading and writing reviews for a darn long time, and I blame books like this.
Around the time I was getting into music - well, I mean, besides listening to my own Disney records and boogie-ing down to mom's ABBA collection (in our house I was the Dancing Queen) - it was about 1983 or '84, and my two slightly older cousins were paving the way for me. One of them had The New Rolling Stone Record Guide on his shelf and when I discovered it, I was amazed! I couldn't believe there was a whole book out there that flat out told you about every band and every record that ever existed! Well, it doesn't include ALL that, but for a kid living in the pre-internet sticks, this was a frickin' gold mine!
Rolling Stone these days is most associated with the rock genre, but back then they made sure to include plenty of blues, folk, soul, country and even gospel. Due to the time of publication (I'm reviewing the '83 edition,) disco made it into this book perhaps more than any other general music reference text, perhaps ever...take that for what it is. Punk came along at about the same time as disco, but its contribution to this book is relative in size to its popularity at the time compared with disco. Meaning, there's not much of it.
Being that the guide was originally published in '79 and that it necessarily takes most of its content from the magazine reviews over the prior few years, this focuses heavily on the country-folk rock of the early to mid 70s. So, we're talking James Taylor, John Denver, CSN, etc. Due to the likes of Black Sabbath, Kiss, Deep Purple, and others, hard rock and seminal heavy metal acts muscle in beside those Jim Croces, Carly Simons and Carol Kings.
These days I like to flip through this book as well as the newer version RS did about a decade later to see if time changed their views on certain albums. It's funny how a few years and a new perception can translate to the addition or subtraction of a few stars in their annoyingly ridged one-to-five star rating system (sound familiar?). It's also a hoot to see what the writers had to say about certain performers back then.
Especially fun are their spot-on condemnations of the newcomers:
Air Supply
Quintessential saccharin: ersatz, sickly sweet and probably carcinogenic.
Just as fun are the misfire prognostications for bands they saw in the late 70s as having absolutely no future:
Journey
Journey was a dead end for San Francisco area rock.
And in a snarky way, I even enjoyed their elitist snobbery with which they disregarded acts like tossing away rubbish:
Mary Burns
What a great voice. What a lousy record.
Kat Mandu
Poor as the pun 'pon which it's based.
Love of Life Orchestra
Sounds more like love of death.
Around the time I was getting into music - well, I mean, besides listening to my own Disney records and boogie-ing down to mom's ABBA collection (in our house I was the Dancing Queen) - it was about 1983 or '84, and my two slightly older cousins were paving the way for me. One of them had The New Rolling Stone Record Guide on his shelf and when I discovered it, I was amazed! I couldn't believe there was a whole book out there that flat out told you about every band and every record that ever existed! Well, it doesn't include ALL that, but for a kid living in the pre-internet sticks, this was a frickin' gold mine!
Rolling Stone these days is most associated with the rock genre, but back then they made sure to include plenty of blues, folk, soul, country and even gospel. Due to the time of publication (I'm reviewing the '83 edition,) disco made it into this book perhaps more than any other general music reference text, perhaps ever...take that for what it is. Punk came along at about the same time as disco, but its contribution to this book is relative in size to its popularity at the time compared with disco. Meaning, there's not much of it.
Being that the guide was originally published in '79 and that it necessarily takes most of its content from the magazine reviews over the prior few years, this focuses heavily on the country-folk rock of the early to mid 70s. So, we're talking James Taylor, John Denver, CSN, etc. Due to the likes of Black Sabbath, Kiss, Deep Purple, and others, hard rock and seminal heavy metal acts muscle in beside those Jim Croces, Carly Simons and Carol Kings.
These days I like to flip through this book as well as the newer version RS did about a decade later to see if time changed their views on certain albums. It's funny how a few years and a new perception can translate to the addition or subtraction of a few stars in their annoyingly ridged one-to-five star rating system (sound familiar?). It's also a hoot to see what the writers had to say about certain performers back then.
Especially fun are their spot-on condemnations of the newcomers:
Air Supply
Quintessential saccharin: ersatz, sickly sweet and probably carcinogenic.
Just as fun are the misfire prognostications for bands they saw in the late 70s as having absolutely no future:
Journey
Journey was a dead end for San Francisco area rock.
And in a snarky way, I even enjoyed their elitist snobbery with which they disregarded acts like tossing away rubbish:
Mary Burns
What a great voice. What a lousy record.
Kat Mandu
Poor as the pun 'pon which it's based.
Love of Life Orchestra
Sounds more like love of death.
May 14, 2009
The 1983 "new" edition (the first was 79/80) of the Rolling Stone Record Guide; read cover to cover, bit by bit through the years. I still have it and a later edition from 1990. Interesting to see how certain artists rose and fell in the estimation of the critics between the editions. The Doors, for instance, are deflated here but upgraded in later editions.
March 31, 2013
Obviously superannuated now, but this was a bible when I was younger. I learned that sometimes it's better to know the critics with whom you routinely disagree than the ones with whom you agree. Many happy hours were spent with this, and with the previous edition.
May 21, 2020
The best guide to buying albums. This book really helped me with my LP collection which then became my CD collection. Which now is digitatised so people can now just pluck the songs they want off the albums totally ruining the album experience although many times there was only 3 good songs anyway. But before all that this was the book to help you. Marsh is a really good music critic.
February 28, 2016
This one got rid of the really stupid review of Jimi Hendrix.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews