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Spin Alternative Record Guide
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.
468 pages, Paperback
First published October 10, 1995
3 people are currently reading
185 people want to read
About the author
Eric Weisbard
11 books4 followersEric Weisbard is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Alabama and the author of Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American Music.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
February 10, 2008
OMG, this book was a fucking holy grail for me. I remember seeing it at the (now defunct) Waldenbooks in the mall when I was a senior in high school; a good deal of the artists mentioned sounded like Greek to me, yet it was Greek I wanted to learn. "Neu! ? Who the fuck is Neu! ?"
Fast-forward a year or so, to my first year of college (the one I slept through and flunked most of) when I finally got the much-desired music retail job...suddenly, I had first grabs and could special order any disc I wanted; plus, I lived with the parents still, which meant ALL of my money was disposable. Suddenly, the artists in this book became friends, as did websites like ebay, Gemm, and Allmusic.com.
Young Marble Giants, the Slits, Kleenex/Liliput, Mission of Burma, X, Neu!, Marine Girls, the Raincoats, Kiwi-pop, Gang of Four, various others...this book was my fucking secret to it all. This book allowed me to do major damage to mixtapes! Between this book, the incredible employees at the various local music stores who gave a high school student like myself the time of day - as well as great recommendations (and later, awesome jobs), and Allmusic.com, I had the fucking edge; I had breadcrumbs to follow into more and more and MORE music...and I learned how to follow those breadcrumbs, and how to discern what I liked, didn't like, would eventually possibly like, what I was curious about, etc.
This book planted the seed that gave me the ability to walk into a CD store today, with no list or expectations, and walk out with at least one CD, and a few others that I had to leave behind.
On a lighter note, not to sound like a petty dick (though I will), but...1998; Gang of Four, Wire, etc...I know countless others were into these bands before me (of course), but I, at 18, was into these bands before the bullshit "post-punk revival" of 2004-2006.
Watching people act like they were hot shit because they conveniently purchased 'Entertainment' on iTunes in 2004 made me silently look back and appreciate this book even more for its fab content, and where it got me at such a young, exciting age.
I can only imagine what it was like for the fellow Texans who had to find this shit on vinyl back in 1980!
(Actually, they probably cursed books like these just like I curse the easy iTunes download. However, "kids" now seem shittier/more arrogant than I recall myself and my peers being...at least we still had to interact/listen to older people for some of our knowledge...unlike the blazer-wearing, wannabe-know-it-all freshmen jackasses I encounter. I'm also getting older, hence the crankiness.)
Fast-forward a year or so, to my first year of college (the one I slept through and flunked most of) when I finally got the much-desired music retail job...suddenly, I had first grabs and could special order any disc I wanted; plus, I lived with the parents still, which meant ALL of my money was disposable. Suddenly, the artists in this book became friends, as did websites like ebay, Gemm, and Allmusic.com.
Young Marble Giants, the Slits, Kleenex/Liliput, Mission of Burma, X, Neu!, Marine Girls, the Raincoats, Kiwi-pop, Gang of Four, various others...this book was my fucking secret to it all. This book allowed me to do major damage to mixtapes! Between this book, the incredible employees at the various local music stores who gave a high school student like myself the time of day - as well as great recommendations (and later, awesome jobs), and Allmusic.com, I had the fucking edge; I had breadcrumbs to follow into more and more and MORE music...and I learned how to follow those breadcrumbs, and how to discern what I liked, didn't like, would eventually possibly like, what I was curious about, etc.
This book planted the seed that gave me the ability to walk into a CD store today, with no list or expectations, and walk out with at least one CD, and a few others that I had to leave behind.
On a lighter note, not to sound like a petty dick (though I will), but...1998; Gang of Four, Wire, etc...I know countless others were into these bands before me (of course), but I, at 18, was into these bands before the bullshit "post-punk revival" of 2004-2006.
Watching people act like they were hot shit because they conveniently purchased 'Entertainment' on iTunes in 2004 made me silently look back and appreciate this book even more for its fab content, and where it got me at such a young, exciting age.
I can only imagine what it was like for the fellow Texans who had to find this shit on vinyl back in 1980!
(Actually, they probably cursed books like these just like I curse the easy iTunes download. However, "kids" now seem shittier/more arrogant than I recall myself and my peers being...at least we still had to interact/listen to older people for some of our knowledge...unlike the blazer-wearing, wannabe-know-it-all freshmen jackasses I encounter. I'm also getting older, hence the crankiness.)
September 1, 2017
Probably read this 5 or 10 times total, in small out of order increments, over the last 20 years. Not perfect by any means but formative to my understanding of music. Given the year it came out, it's interesting to see who was in and who was out, and would love to see an updated books and top 100 albums.
January 18, 2018
This book was my first internet; although I was on the Internet before I ever read it, that old Internet 1.0 was not yet the internet, and this book was. My freshman year college roommate owned it. We called it "The Big Book of Petty Annoyances". In 1997, a walking white-boy cliche, most every music I was interested in (or would become interested in during that very educational first year) was discussed in its pages, and that discussion was always exactly wrong enough to drive you insane. Not enough to make you put it down and dismiss it as something intended for other people than you, but just enough. Thank god, I cannot remember specifics, but things like dutifully singing the praises of Sonic Youth while giving Confusion is Sex a 2, or saying that Butch Vig's production is the "most audacious" thing about Nevermind, not noticing that there was any difference between 70s Tom Waits and 80s Tom Waits. You could read a 10 out of 10 review for your favorite album, and it was somehow all wrong in its rightness, in a way that made you feel a sort of horror and alienation from your own beloved favorite music. These weird needles, poking you, so that every time you picked it up, you'd put it down with a Charlie Brown face of mild grouchiness. There was nothing important here. They were petty annoyances.
Yet it was addictive. Intensely addictive. Its open-ended, ill-defined purview -- Madonna and Lyle Lovett included, Blur not -- meant you'd think, again and again, "I wonder if that's in there," and flipping to where it ought to be (although sometimes things turned out to be there but very poorly catalogued, with no cross-reference in the alphabetical ordering) get distracted by some other band you like, and read the aggravating bullshit about them, which would contain some reference to another band, so you'd flip over to that one, and so on. And so frequently you'd find out about something, some CD your friend played and you liked, and it would be in there, or you'd pick up a CD at Rhino because you'd seen it in there and it turned out you'd really like it -- it was useful, in exactly the way it was intended to be, in the same proportion that it was horrible, because of the bad taste and dull imagination of the writers, garbage people like Rob Sheffield and Robert Christgau and Michael Azzerad. (The only relief from the terrible reviewers was the Top 10 lists by artists, which were often wonderful selections -- I seem to remember Courtney Love had a really killer one -- but these were offered without commentary.) And you'd go back and read, and read again, the infuriating stupidity about your favorite band, as though somehow it would re-write itself between readings, into something reasonable, and also just through some perverse pleasure in your anger, endorphins from these acupuncture needles of stupidity. Hate-reading what you've already hate-read, over and over again.
And that is the internet to me. It is exactly the internet. Even when it is right it is wrong, even when it tries to be widely inclusive it is provincial, even when it has the information you want it is hard to find it and badly organized, even when you hate it you are addicted to it. If ever there was a corrective to the idea that you can tell a person is good because they have a good record collection, it was this. This crew of SPIN assholes reached into the future, blindly, grasped something, and brought it back to the 90s for us: the internet, this burning methane garbage waste, so we skinny alterna white boys could sit deep in it, soaking up its poisoned juices, before it was all opened to the public, the elect. And this is the world they made.
Yet it was addictive. Intensely addictive. Its open-ended, ill-defined purview -- Madonna and Lyle Lovett included, Blur not -- meant you'd think, again and again, "I wonder if that's in there," and flipping to where it ought to be (although sometimes things turned out to be there but very poorly catalogued, with no cross-reference in the alphabetical ordering) get distracted by some other band you like, and read the aggravating bullshit about them, which would contain some reference to another band, so you'd flip over to that one, and so on. And so frequently you'd find out about something, some CD your friend played and you liked, and it would be in there, or you'd pick up a CD at Rhino because you'd seen it in there and it turned out you'd really like it -- it was useful, in exactly the way it was intended to be, in the same proportion that it was horrible, because of the bad taste and dull imagination of the writers, garbage people like Rob Sheffield and Robert Christgau and Michael Azzerad. (The only relief from the terrible reviewers was the Top 10 lists by artists, which were often wonderful selections -- I seem to remember Courtney Love had a really killer one -- but these were offered without commentary.) And you'd go back and read, and read again, the infuriating stupidity about your favorite band, as though somehow it would re-write itself between readings, into something reasonable, and also just through some perverse pleasure in your anger, endorphins from these acupuncture needles of stupidity. Hate-reading what you've already hate-read, over and over again.
And that is the internet to me. It is exactly the internet. Even when it is right it is wrong, even when it tries to be widely inclusive it is provincial, even when it has the information you want it is hard to find it and badly organized, even when you hate it you are addicted to it. If ever there was a corrective to the idea that you can tell a person is good because they have a good record collection, it was this. This crew of SPIN assholes reached into the future, blindly, grasped something, and brought it back to the 90s for us: the internet, this burning methane garbage waste, so we skinny alterna white boys could sit deep in it, soaking up its poisoned juices, before it was all opened to the public, the elect. And this is the world they made.
February 26, 2018
This was a pretty good book for a mission that the internet accomplished. You don't have to read it cover to cover, but it helped me learn a lot about new musicians and reconsider random new wave people I wrote off as one hit wonders before. Even if Rateyourmusic or Wikipedia or AllMusic exist now, this is a good crash course for a lot of musicians. They helped me realize it's okay to just listen to greatest hits, too, which should be a given but I appreciate regardless.
March 29, 2010
to my knowledge this is WAY THE FUCK out of print, but by no means obsolete. outside Lester Bangs I really and truly don't know of much more eloquent rock writing in such a broad modern rock history as this. it is my go-to reference for rock details, observations, ratings (many of them are FUCKED by the way, they really rip The Cure a new one, unfairly, for instance, i don't think you can safely make the case The Cure is as unremarkable as this book makes them out to be!). if you can find this book GET IT. it will change your life if you stick yourself deep into it. i have read every article, pored over every page, leafed through this front and back so many times, i have whole passages of it memorized, some of the most beautiful words in all rock criticism are in here, it is a fountain of excellent rock appreciation, and it is not nearly as forgettable as the dated, slightly shitty cover might suggest. essential essential essential, search it out and throw your heart into it. i promise you you won't regret it!
this book is on my shelf, in five pieces, water damaged, torn up, cover unattached, reassembled the best i can, but i can still see the words, and the reviews of Big Star and Roxy Music and The Replacements STILL make me cry.
Big star: "the jangly equivalent of learning calculus."
*sigh*
i owe so much to this book, and the remarkable intuitive writers Rob Sheffield and Eric Weisbard in general.
this book is on my shelf, in five pieces, water damaged, torn up, cover unattached, reassembled the best i can, but i can still see the words, and the reviews of Big Star and Roxy Music and The Replacements STILL make me cry.
Big star: "the jangly equivalent of learning calculus."
*sigh*
i owe so much to this book, and the remarkable intuitive writers Rob Sheffield and Eric Weisbard in general.
April 15, 2018
Closer to a 3.5
This is basically a list book so yeah. If you want new people to find or see how your favorites are remembered, this is nice. Although sometimes it was confusing to see people like Madonna or Abba (or some New Wave artists) get mentioned while other counterparts didn't, they still covered enough ground. I think they shouldn't have included foreign language artists or compilations as much (and on another note, EPs described as out of print with reviews like "although this was recorded using a microwave, the band's cover of Wheels on the Bus won't leave a dry eye in the house"). Sometimes it felt like they tried too hard to put down artists or be snappy and it made you wonder why they got included. I wouldn't mind an expanded upon version, but this was already almost 500 pages and I can see why this kind of project would only be done once. I guess I could complain about pre 1975 people and country/classical/jazz/avante garde artists as well but I'm sure some of my favorites would make others annoyed so there's that.
This is basically a list book so yeah. If you want new people to find or see how your favorites are remembered, this is nice. Although sometimes it was confusing to see people like Madonna or Abba (or some New Wave artists) get mentioned while other counterparts didn't, they still covered enough ground. I think they shouldn't have included foreign language artists or compilations as much (and on another note, EPs described as out of print with reviews like "although this was recorded using a microwave, the band's cover of Wheels on the Bus won't leave a dry eye in the house"). Sometimes it felt like they tried too hard to put down artists or be snappy and it made you wonder why they got included. I wouldn't mind an expanded upon version, but this was already almost 500 pages and I can see why this kind of project would only be done once. I guess I could complain about pre 1975 people and country/classical/jazz/avante garde artists as well but I'm sure some of my favorites would make others annoyed so there's that.
August 24, 2019
An interesting look at Alternative circa 1995. I really enjoyed reading it when I was younger and it helped gain some insight to a lot of artists that were otherwise fairly obscure even then. Looking back, it's interesting to see some viewpoints that would not at all be the prevailing outlook now: so many 1 and 2 ratings in The Cure's catalogue (I don't disagree; fight me), inexplicably odd ratings disparities between releases (Galaxie 500's On Fire is an 8, but This is Our Music is a 2?), bands we considered classics that don't even get a mention (Shoegaze is limited almost entirely to MBV, plus JAMC, Cocteau Twins, and even AR Kane getting coverage), REM's Monster being critically acclaimed instead of Used Bin fodder, etc.
Overall it's at least an interesting read as a time capsule of the era.
Overall it's at least an interesting read as a time capsule of the era.
October 4, 2017
Yeah, this was basically my bible when I picked it up in the mid-90s. I can't count how many great bands I discovered through reading this. I miss this era of music.
February 26, 2008
I got this used for nostalgia's sake, having flipped through it in the bookstores numerous times when it came out in 1995. An "alternative" record guide, yet begins with sections on ABBA and AC/DC. What? And glaring omission include all the brit-pop bands, like Blur, Oasis, Pulp, and Sleeper, who were in their heyday during this time period. Checking out the profiles of my favorite bands made me realize why I stopped reading record reviews like a decade ago, but I guess it was still kind of fun to look through again.
March 26, 2008
This book was the bible for me growing up. When all of my friends were listening to shitty Victory Records hardcore, I had this to get me through high school. It seems silly since Spin is such a parody of itself now and even then I was a bit embarassed by it, but this back actually does feature interesting overviews by the likes of Byron Coley, Simon Reynolds, Frank Kogan, Michael Eric Dyson, Rob Sheffield, Ann Powers, Etc. I still reference it about as often as All Music Guide. It lead me to discover Big Black, Birthday Party, Faust, and the Just Can't Get Enough discs.
September 13, 2008
A sentimental favorite. True, history has not looked kindly on this anthology's deletion of influential women's contributions to post-punk or a deeper reading into tropicalia. Also, the hip-hop selections are purely stuff white people like. That said, when I was 12 (pre-file sharing, pre-online radio being standard broadcast procedures for college stations), this was my only window into the world of underground, independent, and alternative music. Also, it was my introduction to the work of journalists dream hampton, Ann Powers, and Rob Sheffield.
April 6, 2008
If you love indie/alt music, get it. Examines bands the Rolling Stones Guides don't do bother with. I bought The Meat Puppets' "Up On The Sun" based on this book, thank god.
July 18, 2012
I LOVE THIS BOOK!
October 2, 2014
Still relevant and topical 2 decades on. Reviews of tons of stuff I didn't yet know I'd like back when the book came out.
December 10, 2016
Each record examined and classified like gems (and rocks) in a geologist's table, and provides insight into the stratum's history that each belongs to. backlog backlog backlog.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews