Customer Reviews

Rock: The Rough Guide, First Edition (Rough Guides)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The real strength of this book is the in-depth writing by knowledgeable fans who appreciate the music but who are also reasonably objective about the merits of individual albums. It is a welcome contrast to the Rolling Stone guides that offer the sometimes curt opinions of a handful of critics. Coverage is given to a number of British and European artists, such as Canterbury and Krautrock groups (you'll find Dagmar Krause here but not Bob Seger), that some American readers may find obscure but enlightening. Any guide that gives two full pages to Robert Wyatt (as well as two more to his former group Soft Machine) is OK by me. Be sure to check out the mock-serious Spinal Tap entry.

I own the 1996 edition, and recommend this book with some reservations. While I learned about a lot of bands I never would have heard of otherwise (draining my bank account as a result), there does seem to be a bias toward newer artists, particularly British (perhaps they could have included Wanda Jackson?). Also, there is a definite tendency toward artists who have yet to prove themselves in the long run (Alanis Morissette???) or artists of questionable merit (Meatloaf?). It is interesting to compare this book to the Trouser Press review guide, as their opinions are sometimes diametrically opposed to each other regarding specific albums.

I've looked through lots of "rock history" books over the years. What makes this one different is that it was truly a joint venture by hundreds of different people and done mostly over the Internet. While most bios were done by fans, they still maintain objectivity. They aren't afraid to comment on a specific band's strengths and weaknesses and where a band did something great or not so great. They also give accurate bios of virtually every group that did or still does exist. Not only that, this book chronicles histories of hundreds and hundreds of bands, and not just the most popular ones, but also a lot of the more obscure bands around. While there are a few groups (mostly ones that are extremely obscure) not listed here, the books' editors took great pains to include as many essential bands as humanly possible. As for the ones missing, well there's always the next edition to include them in.

Indispensable for any serious rock music fan's library.

I love this book and I have spent a great amount of time dipping into it since it arrived in the mail. I'd already seen a fair bit of it online but the print version with irreverently captioned photographs and whatnot is certainly an improvement.

The editors have made some interesting choices, granting equal space to relatively unknown bands such as the X-Ray Specs as they did to The Eagles. This book is basically about bands "that mattered" and record sales don't really influence the amount of space granted to any individual act. The editors cheerfully admit that they didn't really get around to including the Moody Blues (I can't complain!) The perspective is pretty much what you'd appreciate and agree with if you are interested in Indie Rock and enjoy the Britisn NME rock magazine. I am, so I love it.

Furthermore, the book seems to be pitched to rock fans in their thirties: there is a wealth of entries on late 70s UK punk bands and their influences and American counterparts. If I were a few years younger, I don't know if I'd enjoy this book as much as I do.

The fact that a lot of it was collected from contributors to the Internet means that there is less of a geographical bias than might have been expected. There are several entries for 80s bands from New Zealand that would have made ripples in England (such as the Chills, the Clean, etc).

The book's only problems as far as I can see is that it's only one of a series of "Rough Guides". For example, there is no entry for Bob Marley, who presumably has been included in the companion volume on Reggae. They could have included some colour photographs, especially when dealing with album covers, but I suppose that'd jack up the price.

All in all a great, fun read if you're into that sort of thing and I'm sure I'll be dipping into it for a long time to come.

This book was an experiment: thousands of fans were asked to write something about their favourite band, and these aricles were collected. Thus, some focus on the music, others on the history and some are just gossipping, but altogether they make up a great work, containing thousands of reviews and record recommendations. You need this book absolutely, it is the only one I know that gives so much information about such a lot of artists in one single volume.

After the 1991 Rolling Stone Album Guide and Robert Christgau's 1980s guide, "The Rough Guide to Rock" was in my early days as a music reader my most important source of information.

In my early days of reading it, I felt that it did not possess the ability to justify its choices as well as Rolling Stone's guides did (though I now know I was fitting my own experiences to criticism too much) but quite quickly I found that I could learn a good deal about bands who were largely unknown to writers in Rolling Stone and even Q (which I first read in 1997). As a result, I began to take far more interest in "The Rough Guide", and over time I can say there is quite a bit to recommend it. Most especially is the amount of detail given to the critically-neglected genres of progressive rock and heavy metal, which fans of those genres will most definitely welcome and which should prove very valuable to those curious. I can in fact say this even with the omission of Slayer, one of the most important heavy metal groups, because the information on such bands as Pantera and Van der Graaf Generator is refreshing for fans or non-fans. Even for better-known bands like Genesis there is information that those without expertise on rock history are not likely to know. There are also interesting sections on bands from the late-1970s post-punk era and 1980s hardcore, which I had overlooked when I was first reading music criticism - though i will confess that they did not teach me much about genres my experience with violence had taught me to be suspicious of.

The problem with "The Rough Guide to Rock", however, is that too many bands of considerable significance are either ignored entirely or (more often) done far too poorly to be of value to somebody trying to re-consider (as I was when reading the book) the opinions on music I had acquired as a child listening in Melbourne suburbs cloistered from major musical trends. Such bands as the New Fast Automatic Daffodils are far too insignificant to be included in a book of even "The Rough Guide"'s considerable size. There are also far too many minor bands from the 1990s that were included, one would say, merely to be up-to-date. Another sign pointing towards "trendiness" is that again and again latter-day albums by bands beyond their prime are praised quite needlessly, for instance with Dylan. Joe S. Harrington and "janitor-x" do seem right in my experience that it is very rare for artists to produce their best work late in their career, even though some can definitely keep producing worthy work.

All in all, "The Rough Guide to Rock" can be described as a mixed bag. Its selections are biased unnecessarily towards Europe, which makes for some interesting choices but some that should never have been made, and its recommendations are of inconsistent value.

The author's disdain for progressive rock negates the book's credibility as a resource for all music fans. One star.

I don't know enough about the other bands presented to adequately judge the accuracy of the entire book, but if the entry on U2 is any indication, this book is entirely unsubstantiated. The author notes, for example, that U2 have "never inspired universal acclaim" and that the voices in favor of the band are "matched by the equally vocal contempt of a legion of detractors." Other than this author, I have never read any contempt. I have read occasionally unimpressed reviewers, responding to such albums as, say Rattle and Hum, or to the pretentions of the PopMart tour, but U2's grammy awards, sold out concert tours and extensive coverage in magazines (almost always praising the band's music) indicate that this author has an ax to grind. The very sentence "...in spite of their success, U2 have often found themselves out of step with the prevailing zeitgeist of pop" is ironic. Is being "in step" notable? Is that the condition which cues the contempt of the "legion of detractors" that the author never really names? At a recent series of U2 concerts, I spotted Elvis Costello, Bush, Gwen Stefani...are those the "fashionable" for which U2 are "anathema" according to the author? Maybe I'm simply offended...but it seems the author is presenting his own views in the shroud of real research. The opening word is even spelled incorrectly.