Customer Reviews

Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide (Musichound Essential Album Guides)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Sure, album guides can always be criticized for one reason or another. Someone's left out, someone rated your favorite album too low, an album you hate is rated too high, etc. But the bottom line on "Musichound Rock" is that it does what it does very well. Nice scope of coverage. Nice writing. Nice pictures. Nice value. (This book weighs more than my first child and costs quite a bit less!!) Get the idea? Then get the book.

This was the first album-review book I bought, and as such I had no basis for comparison, but looking back I have to admit, it's really pretty awful. Instead of reviewing an artist's discography album by album, we instead have scattershot recommendations of a few albums (perplexingly glossing over a group's best work at times), and then a section citing albums the reviewer considers "bad"--interestingly, all artists in this world seem to have exactly one or two albums that are "bad", and very often perfectly good albums are condemned. Also, there's the unfortunate supercilious dismissal of artists whom the reviewer personally has something against. And of course omissions abound.

I'll admit I got SOME useful information out of this, but you can to SO much better. Get the AMG Guide to Rock instead; it's a MUCH better book.

At the tail end of the 1990s, I was an extremely eager reader of music criticism and looked for any new artist in genres I was interested in at the time. I was very familiar with The Rolling Stone Album Guide and the guides of Robert Christgau but wondered whether music I at the time was finding interesting would be covered in better detail than I had found in those books.

When I first read "Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide" I had very much mixed feelings about it. On the one hand there was information about a great many artists who were and are not covered in much detail or at all in the previous record guides I had read. In many cases, I devoured this and wanted to find out more (I will confess without mentioning names that I feel with hindsight I was as so often rather reckless).

However, with hindsight I can find many faults with "Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide" and all other guides released by the firm. For one thing, their rating system is ridiculously inconsistent: for many artists they will rate albums much more highly than would be consistent, whilst others are rated much less so - and one cannot predict what they are going to do. For another, it is fair to say that my own experience shows that some of the artists included were dubious and that others, like Talk Talk were not listened to carefully. The consequence is that the reader - and even me when I read the book - was left rather too far from the important part of the history of music and onto (relatively) modern threads therein that are frequently of little value. Some of the criticisms made of albums such as The Serpent's Egg do not hold up to serious listening.

All in all, "Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide" is a rather dubious piece of work that might introduce you to bands not found in Rolling Stone or similar guides, but will do nothing to help one get a good grasp of music history. Moreover, it is seriously dated now.

this book contains a full dozes of information on rock musicians, bios, discographies. More than that, the informations are conveyed with a lethal sense of humour, which is quite rare to be found in guidebook.

I was able to find most of the artists that I was looking for. The book mostly has artists from the past not many from the present. It listed all the albums that the person had ever made and that was a plus. If you need to know a little something about a well know artist than this is your book.

I have to say that I enjoy books like this, but they are, as with any criticism, subjective. Many times their reviews are right on target, but I have to question whether they actually reviewed some of the albums listed. Example: If I Were A Carpenter is given a terrible rating. It's probably the best CD to come out of the tribute album wave earlier this decade. There are many questionable choices, but all in all this is a cool book, useful for helping build your collections.

The book itself is more than worth the cover price. Only complaint is a minor one--the CD that comes with the book would be better if it had some more "major" acts on it. John Hiatt and Megadeth are nice, but I've never even heard of a few of the other bands. Other than that, it's a perfect package.

I love rock 'n' roll, and I won't be putting any more dimes in my local CD store without consulting this incredibly awesome book first. Everyone's in here. And the "what to avoid" information is very valuable. Long live Music Hound Rock!!!

Maybe the reason Ozzy fans are ticked off at Graff and Durchholz is because the biographies and reviews in MusicHound Rock are brutally honest. Sure, a lot of people will disagree with (probably) a lot of the artist write-ups and reviews. But I've found the material in MusicHound to be quite legitimate and very well written. MusicHound doesn't just pass bones out for the heck of it...you've got to EARN them. If you like straight-to-the-point writing that tells the truth and nothing but the truth, pick up MusicHound Rock. It's a great resource, and a bargain at twice the price.

...but this book should be considered its bible. Best album guide I've ever bought, and I've bought 'em all. Nice design, great information, and very up to date. I'm buying more to give them as gifts. You should too!