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| The New Rolling Stone Album Guide: Completely Revised and Updated 4th Edition | 
 enlarge | List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $12.06
You Save: $17.89 (60%)
Buy New/Used from $9.58
Avg. Customer Rating:  (based on 88 reviews)
Sales Rank: 149655
Category: Book
Author: Nathan Brackett
Publisher: Fireside
Studio: Fireside
Manufacturer: Fireside
Label: Fireside
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: 4 Rev Upd
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 944
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.3 x 2.1
ISBN: 0743201698
Dewey Decimal Number: 781.660266
EAN: 9780743201698
ASIN: 0743201698
Publication Date: November 2, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
For the first time since 1992, Rolling Stone's definitive classic returns to the scene, completely updated and revised to include the past decade's artists and sounds. When it comes to sorting the truly great from the merely mediocre, the enduring from the fleeting, The New Rolling Stone Album Guide provides music buffs and amateurs alike with authoritative guidance from the best voices in the field. Filled with insightful commentary, it not only reviews the most influential albums of all time, but also features biographical overviews of key artists' careers, giving readers a look at the personalities behind the music.This fourth edition contains an impressive -- 70 percent -- amount of new material. Readers will find fresh updates to entries on established artists, hundreds of brand-new entries on the people and recordings that epitomize the '90s and the sounds of the 21st century -- from Beck to OutKast to the White Stripes and beyond -- along with a new introduction detailing changes in the music industry. Celebrating the diversity of popular music and its constant metamorphoses, with thousands of entries and reviews on every sound from blues to techno, The New Rolling Stone Album Guide is the only resource music lovers need to read.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 83 more reviews...
 Entertainment Tonight April 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm a little puzzled by previous reviewers who've fumed about the alleged omission of such bands as NIN and Metallica from this edition of the guide, when in fact they're right here: NIN on page 587 ("When Todd Rundgren came up with the title 'The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect' back in 1983, he couldn't have known that he had just summed up the future appeal of Trent Reznor...") and Metallica on page 538. In fact there's quite a variety of music to read about in this guide: rock, pop, r&b, country, blues, jazz, disco, punk, funk, reggae, rap, and genres too esoteric to come to mind at the moment.
Maybe my musical tastes just aren't narrow enough to get upset over a perceived slight to my favorite band(s), but I subscribe to the old saw that any music you haven't already heard is new music, and this book is the most entertaining roadmap I've picked up this year to new music in the English-speaking world.
So what if a RS reviewer gives one of your favorite albums three stars? Aesthetic judgment isn't an exact science and besides, it's the writing in the RS Guide, which has been giving me weeks of entertainment, that counts. For example:
"John had the vision, Paul had the heart, George had the spirit, and Ringo had two fried eggs on toast, please."
"Look on his works, ye mighty, and despair." (on Bob Dylan)
"When Simon and Garfunkel broke up in 1970, the custody battle was simple. Art Garfunkel got the voice, the hair, and the honor of starring in Sherilyn Fenn's finest film, 'Boxing Helena.' Paul Simon got the songs."
"Rock & roll had pretensions long before it had a David Bowie, but Bowie invented whole new levels of theatrical posing, stylistic diddling, and sexual provocation, doing for pretensions what Jimi Hendrix did for electric guitars."
And there's plenty more where those came from. I love this book. It's hilarious, and if it isn't always "true", it's true enough.
More inside than record reviews February 22, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This new edition was very welcome. I compared it to the 1992 edition and was pleased to see some consistency and some deviation from the previous reviews. In the 1992 edition, "Yes" was torched and burned. This edition has a much more realistic and positive appraisal.
The 1992 version had many unexpected omissions, like the Cure- love them or hate them they were a prominent and influential band. The latest version has no entry for Captain Beefheart but many entries for lesser known and influential recent bands, many of whom are likely defunct or reconstituted.
I have to say some of the reviews are extremely funny, sarcastic, isightful, very well written, and thus entertaining. The review of Lou Reed's work is very pungent- as it should be given the subject. The review of the body of the work of the Cure and the New York Dolls (who have since reformed and it can no longer been stated that they have gone "tits up" into demise), is great. I laughed out loud while reading them and appreciate the clever and witty word play used in this new edition. Maybe we should have a companion booklet which rates the reviews!
 Really shows Rolling Stone are at a complete loss November 17, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The previous Rolling Stone Album Guide is a book I will always have some respect for because it introduced me for the first tim ever to music that was never or rarely played on commercial radio in Australia. It was very informative and some of the information in it still sounds quite interesting over a decade after I first read the book - despite the fact that I can most definitely see gaping flaws in its judgment, especially of commercial music of the eighties, which clearly is very derivative of earlier music and camouflaged to feel more original.
After the 1992 guide and the earlier, also interesting 1978 guide became impossible to find in stores, Rolling Stone failed to update their guide until 2004. As I see it, it is a pity they left it so late and did not follow the same strategy as when writing their previous guide. There clearly are too many critics (versus only one 1978 and four in 1992) used to write the guide, which means it lacks coherence. Moreover, the justifications for the ratings given to most albums in the "New" Guide are extremely weak compared even with what they produced in earlier guides - all of which made sense to me even if I have increasingly veered away from the methods they used and use to judge these albums. On the "New Rolling Stone Album Guide", even that basic ability is completely absent and one is left thinking seriously about every single word in the book.
Moreover, whilst I without any grudges accept the need to prune out many artists who were present in earlier guides, it must be said that a pretty poor job was done of doing this. As often as not, bands of considerable relevance and influence (Captain Beefheart) were pruned rather than those who were nothing more than blatant commercial fads (Spandau Ballet, Britney Spears). There is also very little effort to embrace many modern trends in music, for instance the brilliant Godspeed You Black Emperor were mentioned in the text without actually having an entry to review their recordings!
Moreover, whilst my experience makes me have not the slightest doubt that ratings of albums can and should be revised with time, the way this is done compared with previous guides is too cliched and predictable to be in any way effective. It's as if Rolling Stone's judges have trouble even thinking for themselves about how good albums are - or that if they did do so, the Guide would be even more insonsistent.
Whilst I can have a soft spot for earlier editions, this book is really laughable in 2007. Read instead Joe S. Harrington, Piero Scaruffi or even Richie Unterberger. If you want something that is a genuine record guide, try The MOJO Collection, even if its latest edition suffers from the flaw of being much too British. Rolling Stone's newest guide is just too dated - not in its tried-and-true ratings system, but in the way in which it is written which cannot deal with the now-lengthy history of popular music.
Get the previous editions!!! October 30, 2007
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Think about a classical music guide that omits Mozart, claims that Bach is a mediocre composer, and tries to make you believe that Richard Clayderman's recordings are underrated masterpieces. The guys at Rolling Stone try to remind you how cool and intellectual they are, and how stupid and naive their readers are. The previous editions are less pretentious and much better. Don't waste your time and money with this one.
don't believe the hype March 20, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
reviews are off the top of head throwaways...and you'll be disgusted to find that METALLICA and NINE INCH NAILS have no entries. go look! unbelievable!
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