The Best Music You've Never Heard 1 (Rough Guide Reference) [Paperback]

Nigel Williamson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 2008 | Series: Rough Guide Reference

The Rough Guide to the Best Music You’ve Never Heard is a winning collection of amazing stories of tragic mavericks and unlucky contenders, with hundreds of lost classics and hidden gems. The guide traces the musicians that fell by the wayside from the bands that could have been The Beatles to the acts that were better than the acts that made it. Find out why David Ackles is the Elton John that never was (and why Elton John agrees). Frank and opinionated, the guide is packed with playlists, includes stylish archive photos as well as contributions from music industry insiders including Bat for Lashes. Clue-up on the infamous lost albums from some of rock’s biggest stars and discover the tales of the famous-name side-projects that got away, not forgetting the cult albums reviled at the time… that are actually really good. If you’re looking for great new music, this book will show it to you.

Editorial Reviews

Review

In its chapter on Nick Drake the ethereal British folk singer who died at age 26 in 1974 without his three albums making any commercial impact whatsoever Nigel Williamson's "The Best Music You've Never Heard" pinpoints why there's such a growing market for knowledge about the overlooked "hidden gems" in recorded music's history.
Advocates for someone anyone who has ever recorded to little avail now have an instant global soapbox to champion a perceived injustice. "In the age of the Internet, long-forgotten classics are being rediscovered, reappraised and reissued on an almost weekly basis," writes Williamson, the primary author (with contributors) to this music book from Rough Guides. "But it was Drake, who unknowingly created the template."
In 1986, Drake's work was posthumously released as a four-CD box, prompting a renewed interest that has now made him one of the most respected British singer-songwriters ever. "Nick Drake is in a sense the patron saint of this book," Williamson writes. "The first of rock music's Van Gogh figures, his talent was almost totally ignored in his lifetime and his greatness only recognized long after his death."
This book makes a case for other musicians who history has forgotten, overlooked or chronically undervalued. There is a moderate British orientation Williamson was a former news editor for The Times of London as well as an experienced music writer but there is plenty of room for Americans like the Brecht-Weill-influenced singer-songwriter David Ackles and psychedelic folkies Holy Modal Rounders.
The back stories can be fascinating, revealing just how interconnected this global village of a world can be. The book touts the "Ethiopiques" series of hip, rockin' contemporary Ethiopian music that a French devotee named Francis Falceto has been assembling and releasing. --Denver Post

About the Author

Author Nigel Williamson is a regular contributor to the magazines Uncut and Songlines, and is the author of The Rough Guide To Bob Dylan.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Rough Guides; 1 edition (October 20, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1848360037
• ISBN-13: 978-1848360037
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 7.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #279,191 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Has some exceptional albums, but could be better-written, May 22, 2009

By 

mianfei - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Best Music You've Never Heard 1 (Rough Guide Reference) (Paperback)

There are so many books about advertising "best music never heard" that it is certainly possible to call the phrase cliched. Moreover, when one looks through books of this type repeatedly it is apparent that what may not be praised lavishly by Rolling Stone could in fact be very well-known to serious rock critics who understand the history of the music as a critic is supposed to.

As guides of this sort go, "The Rough Guide to the Best Music You've Never Heard", however, must be judged quite well for the presence of some undeniably classic artists who are not as well known to the general public as they should be. The way in which Laura Nyro, ESG, Can, Slint and Godspeed You Black Emperor, all unique artists possessed of music with unique qualities beyond the radar of people who only read mass-circulation magazines, are discussed is impressive. Most surprising as a fan is the information on Godspeed which is unavailable even from sites like Pitchfork or All Music!

Then there is the section of the many lost psych-folk classics of the early 1970s that have only very recently become known to the general public. It's a slight pity they did not mention more songs on Parallelograms, for the description of how a quite inaccessible record came to be released by a major label without touring is very interesting. There are a great many other interesting stories within the book, for instance those on Handsome Family, which were a married couple for decades before playing music.

For people with a different musical taste to mine, I am sure the section on lesser-known heavy rock bands like Blue Cheer and Kyuss will be very valuable: even to me it is quite impressive. The chapter on non-anglophone pop, a genre which experience has told me to be sceptical of because it really is almost never original compared to songs sung in English, is another surprise even if it rarely fires with utter completeness. The section of the lesser-known figures in 1960s and 1970s black music is also pleasing because for decade after decade that genre has been picked clean in a manner rare in popular music. The story of Minnie Riperton is one in particular I never suspected: a black soul singer who inspired Kate Bush!

On the other hand, I can definitely find enough faults with "The Rough Guide to the Best Music You've Never Heard" to prevent myself giving it the full five stars. For one thing, the biographies of the artists discussed could follow a much tighter template than they do. It often seems some are given much more detail than others and that the reasoning behind what is written could be better. Then there are artists like Pavement and albums like Neil Young's Tonight's The Night whom readers of even the most mainstream of rock magazines will be familiar with and whom, as Richie Unterberger told me half a decade ago, are not in any sense obscure even though not mass sellers. The sections on "alternative Americana", progressive rock and blues could also have been done better to match the rest of the book.

All in all, "The Rough Guide to the Best Music You've Never Heard" has both valuable information and a large number of interesting sidelights that make it well above average as music guides go. It should help even experienced music listeners like myself find out more, and for those less experienced, even if uneven, it might tech them a great deal.