The New Rolling Stone Record Guide

The New Rolling Stone Record Guide edited by Dave Marsh and John Swenson, 1983.

On the cover it says "Revised, updated and more complete than ever, this indispensable book reviews and rates over 12,000 rock, pop, soul, country, blues, folk and gospel albums."

I bought this book in 1983 and for many years it has sat on our bookshelves with the many other music reference books. I took it out recently and spent some time reading the entries and reviews and having a good laugh. I thought this book was a joke at the time I first looked through it and I wasn't subscribing to Rolling Stone magazine at the time although I would take a look at the reviews now and then.

Last year I read the biography of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone magazine and wrote about it here where I described my love hate relationship with that magazine. I also had the first edition of this book from about 1978 but this is the one they re ally tried to be the record bible for collectors and failed miserably. I can pick and page in the book and find something that they got totally wrong and I can do that over and over again all night long. This book was good for seeing what albums were in print and currently available and that was about it.

At the time I bought this book in 1983 I was spinning records at the Pastime Lounge and was always in the market for new music.

This is a page from the book that details their ratings system. When I look through the book I am constantly seeing reviews and ratings I don't agree with. There are lots of bad reviews of incredibly good albums that have stood the test of time and good reviews of awful albums and bands. Some of my all time favorite albums have that little black box rating on their reviews here.

And of course as a librarian I have whole shelves of music reference books.