The Rolling Stone Album Guide, previously known as The Rolling Stone Record Guide, is a book that contains professional music reviews written and edited by staff members from Rolling Stone magazine. Its first edition was published in 1979 and its last in 2004.
First edition (1979)
The Rolling Stone Record Guide was the first edition of what would later become The Rolling Stone Album Guide. It was edited by Dave Marsh (who wrote a large majority of the reviews) and John Swenson, and included contributions from 34 other music critics. It is divided into sections by musical genre and then lists artists alphabetically within their respective genres. Albums are also listed alphabetically by artist although some of the artists have their careers divided into chronological periods.
The first edition included black and white photographs of many of the covers of albums which received five star reviews. These titles are listed together in the Five-Star Records section, which is coincidentally five pages in length.
The book was notable for the time in the provocative, "in your face" style of many of its reviews. For example, writing about Neil Young's song, "Down by the River", John Swenson described it both as an "FM radio classic" (p. 425), and as a "wimp anthem" (p. 244). His colleague, Dave Marsh, in reviewing the three albums of the jazz fusion group Chase, gave a one-word review: "Flee." Marsh's review of a then-current rock band called Platypus stated simply: "Lays eggs."
Table of contents
Introduction
Rock, Soul, Country and Pop
Blues
Jazz
Gospel
Anthologies, Soundtracks and Original Casts
Five-Star Records
Glossary
Selected Bibliography
Rating system
The guide employs a five star rating scale with the following descriptions of those ratings:[1]
Indispensable: a record that must be included in any comprehensive collection
Excellent: a record of substantial merit, though flawed in some essential way.
Good: a record of average worth, but one that might possess considerable appeal for fans of a particular style.
Mediocre: a record that is artistically insubstantial, though not truly wretched.
Poor: a record where even technical competence is at question or it was remarkably ill-conceived.
Worthless: a record that need never (or should never) have been created. Reserved for the most bathetic bathwater. (A square bullet (▪) marked this rating, as opposed to stars for the others.)
The New Rolling Stone Record Guide was an update of 1979's The Rolling Stone Record Guide. Like the first edition, it was edited by Marsh and Swenson. It included contributions from 52 music critics and featured chronological album listings under the name of each artist. In many cases, updates from the first edition consist of short, one-sentence verdicts upon an artist's later work.
Instead of having separate sections such as Blues and Gospel, this edition compressed all of the genres it reviewed into one section except for Jazz titles which were removed for this edition and were later expanded and published in 1985 Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide (ed. Swenson). Besides adding reviews for many emerging punk and New Wave bands, this edition also added or expanded a significant number of reviews of long-established reggae and ska artists (such as U-Roy, Prince Buster, Ijahman, et al.).
Since the goal of this guide was to review records that were in print at the time of publication, this edition featured a list of artists who were included in the first edition but were not included in the second edition because all of their material was out of print.[2] This edition also dispensed with the album cover photos found in the first edition.
Table of contents
Introduction to the Second Edition
Introduction to the First Edition
Ratings
Reviewers
Record Label Abbreviations
Rock, Soul, Blues, Country, Gospel and Pop
Anthologies, Soundtracks and Original Cast
Index to Artists in the First Edition (omitted in this second edition)
Rating system
The second edition uses exactly the same rating system as the first edition, the only difference being that in addition to a rating, the second edition also employs the pilcrow mark (¶) to indicate a title that was out of print at the time the guide was published. Many albums had their rating revised from the first edition; some artists had their ratings lowered (notably The Doors, Yes and Neil Young) as the book now offered a revisionist slant to rock's history, whilst others, such as Little Feat and Richard Hell And The Voidoids, garnered higher ratings from a re-evaluation of their work.[2]
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide was published in 1985 and incorporated the jazz listings omitted from The New Rolling Stone Record Guide with additional reviews edited by John Swenson. It included contributions from 16 music critics and featured alphabetical album listings under the name of each artist.
Table of contents
Foreword
Preface
Ratings
Contributors
Record Label Abbreviations
Reviews
Bibliography
Rating system
This jazz edition uses the same rating system as the first two editions.
The Rolling Stone Album Guide was a complete rewrite of both 1979's The Rolling Stone Record Guide and 1983's The New Rolling Stone Record Guide. The title change reflects the fact that by the time this edition was published in 1992, records were almost completely replaced by cassettes and CDs. This edition employs three new editors and reduces the number of reviewers from more than 50 as seen in previous editions to a mere four. This edition also included reviews of Jazz albums, which had been removed from the previous edition for the sake of publishing a separate Jazz guide. Unlike both previous editions, this edition did not include comedy artists.
Table of contents
Introduction
Ratings
Contributors
The Rolling Stone Album Guide
Anthologies
Soundtracks
Acknowledgments
Rating system
Similar to the first edition, it employed a five star rating scale (without the "zero stars" (▪) rating), but this edition had new definitions of what the number of stars meant, and employed the use of 1/2 stars in the reviews. The descriptions of the markings used in the third edition of the guide are:
Classic: Albums in this category are essential listening for anyone interested in the artist under discussion or the style of music that artist's work represents.
Excellent: Four star albums represent peak performances in an artist's career. Generally speaking, albums that are granted four or more stars constitute the best introductions to an artist's work for listeners who are curious.
Average to Good: Albums in the three-star range will primarily be of interest to established fans of the artist being discussed. This mid-range, by its very nature, requires the most discretion on the part of the consumer.
Fair to Poor: Albums in the two-star category either fall below an artist's established standard or are, in and of themselves, failures.
Disastrous: Albums in the range of one star or less are wastes of vital resources. Only masochists or completists need apply.
The Rolling Stone Jazz & Blues Album Guide was first published by Random House in 1999, with John Swenson as the editor.[1]
Reviewing the book for All About Jazz, C. Michael Bailey regarded it as a consolidation of the 1985 jazz guide and the blues coverage from other Rolling Stone guides. He recommended it to novices, calling it "a worthy addition to any serious jazz/blues collector's library", even though it was not as comprehensive as The Penguin Guide to Jazz or All Music Guide to Jazz, in his opinion.[2]
Approximately 70 writers contributed to this edition. Text on the back cover of the fourth edition claims that the guide had been "completely updated and revised to include the past decade's artists and sounds", and offered "biographical overviews of key artists' careers, giving readers a look at the personalities behind the music".[3]
Artists omitted from the fourth edition
Some of the artists included in the previous guides but omitted in this edition include:
^aThe Rolling Stone Record Guide. Ed. Dave Marsh and John Swenson. New York: Random House, 1979. (Note 1, see p xiii) (Note 1a, see p xv-xvi)
^abThe New Rolling Stone Record Guide. Ed. Dave Marsh and John Swenson. New York: Random House, 1983. (Note 2, see p 645-648) (Note 2a, see p xv) (Note 2b, see p xvii-xix)
^aThe Rolling Stone Album Guide. Ed. Anthony DeCurtis and James Henke with Holly George-Warren. New York: Random House, 1992. (Note 3, see p vii) (Note 3a, see ix)
