Customer Reviews

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

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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.