Rolling Stone record guides. Anyone else get irritated???

That's some really terrible stuff. I'm more irritated than I was before reading it, if that's possible

 

John Milward wrote the red book entry on the Dead. Dave Marsh wrote the later entry in the blue edition.

Milward seemed to have some understanding of the band. Marsh was hostile to them. So why have Marsh rewrite the Dead's entry? I guess because Dave Marsh was one of the book's editors and he felt his opinion as editor superseded that of someone who was actually close to that style of music.

I generally like Dave Marsh's writing. He knows a lot about '60s soul and his book "The Heart Of Rock And Soul" turned me onto a lot of great sounds. But shouldn't have re-written the Dead's entry because it doesn't seem to be his area of expertise.

It's useful to readers when pop music writers give honest "good/bad" assessments about albums by musical artists they know well. That way we know to buy (for example) From The Mars Hotel or Europe '72, but steer clear of Reckoning or Steal Your Face.

But it's not very useful when writers take it upon themselves to just trash artists they don't like, especially when it's clear they haven't listened closely to those artists. It's like hearing the annoying high school kids in the cafeteria rant that "disco sucks!" when all they knew of that genre was the BeeGees. Anyway, this is the problem with some of the entries in that blue book...and this is why I called it "biased" in an earlier comment (which someone questioned me about).

 

It worked the other way with RSRG, too, grossly overrating truly forgettable albums. They went through a world music phase where every seemingly every world music album, particularly out of Africa, was awarded a "legendary" 5 stars. And I honestly believe all their oohing and aahing over Paul Simon's Rhythm Of The Saints did him in.

 

Here's a few nice ones from the red 78 edition:

AC/DC : "AC/DC is an Australian hard rock band whose main purpose is to offend anyone within sight or earshot. They succeed on both counts." - Billy Altman

Black Sabbath: "These would be kings of heavy metal are eternally foiled by their stupidity and intractability. In the early seventies their murky drone was all the more appealing for it's cynicism-the philosophy that everything is s##t, and a flirtation with pre-Exorcist demonic possession. Time has passed them by, their recent stuff is a quaint bore." - Ken Tucker

Elf (with Dio) : Cheap platers too incompetent for as bad a judge of heavy metal horseflesh as Ritchie Blackmore. Destined for the glue factory." - John Swenson

Foreigner, Double Vision: "Double Vision however was a myopic rehash of the first album, a formula approach that suggested the group belonged in the ranks of the simply banal." - Dave Marsh, gives it 1 star

Grand Funk: "Wretched was the word to describe Grand Funks music. The playing was never much more than energetic, and the singing was completely hopeless." - Dave Marsh

Iron Butterfly, In-A-Gada-Da-Vida: " But the album that at one point out sold everything else in the Atlantic/Atco catalog quickly became as forgettable an artifact as the group itself, so speculation as to it's worth is pointless. It's now garbage"-
John Swenson

Moxy: "The very poor man's Aerosmith. Makes Rush look like an intellectual's concept." - John Swenson

Nazareth: "Dog food. Dreadful stuff." - Dave Marsh

Queen Jazz: "Jazz was another bombastic farce." - Dave Marsh

Rush: "This Canadian power trio, which boasts a vocalist who sounds like a cross between Donald Duck and Robert Plant, reached it's pinnacle of success the day it was discovered by Circus magazine and turned into fanzine wall decoration material. Rush is to the the late seventies what Grand Funk was to the early seventies-the power boogie band for the 16 magazine graduating class." - Alan Niester ("a high school teacher in Toronto who writes for a variety of American and Canadian magazines.")

Uriah Heep: "A mutant version of Deep Purple, Uriah Heep has to be considered one of the worst commercially successful bands of the seventies. Good points: sincerity and and an organist (Ken Hensley) far more intelligent and capable than the group. Bad points: one of the most strident and annoying singers (David Byron) in rock history. The problem is Byron gets the material he deserves." - John Swenson

ZZ Top: "On record, ZZ Top was never more than a poor man's Lynyrd Skynyrd-some rural feeling but just numbing guitar drive. Rock & Roll can be mindless fun, but it never deserved to be this empty headed." - Dave Marsh

So yes, biased nonsense from a bunch of haters of anything heavy. These little write-ups speak for themselves.
Nothing but the blather of a bunch of key clacker hacks, Dave Marsh easily being the worst of the lot.

 

Those bring back memories.

 

I was (am) a big Grand Funk Railroad and Uriah Heep fan but those reviews didn't bother me at all. (And I guess I should have sent my Uriah Heep/Ken Hensley letter to John Swenson, not Dave Marsh).

I just took my pen out and added stars.

I can't figure out why some of you bought the book if it's so upsetting. The first thing I would have done in a book store is look to see what it said about my favorites. And, in my case, then buy it.

If it pissed me off so much I wouldn't have bought the guide.

 

I bought it before I knew any better. Now looking back its absurd.

 

I got the red guide in college and bought the blue guide in a discount bookstore in the late 80s. I like the writing and criticisms better in the red book, but the blue book rated the Beach Boy albums higher (as a rule) and I thought they were fairer. But as a rule I used them for relative information. I knew they did not like Yes or the Moody Blues, so I looked at the albums they rate more highly ignoring the fact they rated them lower than some other groups. Still have them, but don't use them much now, more for trivia.

 

I hope you got rid of it, then. Still, I always leaf through a book or a magazine before I buy it (or did back in the pre-internet days).

 

If I recall correctly, the only album that may have gotten a couple of stars was Closer To Home.

 

Yes, for some reason I'm Your Captain elevated it above the " square" or 1 star mark. You have to commend the generosity.

 

Those are great and sometimes hilarious reviews. We all can't like the same things and being mad over a 45 plus year old album review isn't worth it.

 

No it's falling apart but I still have it. I bought it when I was 13. My dad had a subscription from '75 to '79 so I used to read the magazine as well.

 

I'm not mad I'm irritated. Probably the most bothersome aspect of this is that some members actually respect these writers and in some cases defend them.
I can't understand it.

 

Love that that rate your music article.

 

OK, irritated. Maybe the members here respect the writing talent of the reviewers.

 

Sounds like bashing RS is as popular as bashing politicians. I have the 4 copies and as I can grumble when they put down some of my favorite artists (Gene Clark). I have to give them credit for spotting some off the middle stuff you would never hear on classic rock such as Love, Mott The Hoople, Gram Parsons and Drive By Truckers.

 

Someone mentioned that because they hated Rush and Black Sabbath but liked Elvis Costello that somehow made them wrong, but in my view those are the correct opinions. So, I guess it just has to do with whether they like the same things as we do.

 

The main thing is that these critics purport to be musical historians, yet they get many basic facts completely wrong. Facts that are easily verified. Where I work as a historian these folks would be terminated toot sweet.

 

Disagree. I agree with nearly all of this. AC/DC and Black Sabbath are jokes (save for Sabbath's first, which I kind of like). Foreigner, Queen, Grand Funk and Uriah Heep are all varying degrees of awful. I like Rush from 1977 onward (as does the Blue RS book, which praises Hemisphere-through-Signals), but if someone wants to make fun of pre-1977 Rush I've got no objection.

So it looks like these guys really *did* know what they were talking about after all.

 

Just because you don't like something -- and perhaps can even provide good reasons for it -- doesn't necessarily make that music bad or "a joke." If some people like it, it's good to them. Who is to say they're wrong? Who is the authority?

AC/DC isn't everyone's thing. But for people who do like them, critics of these guides should be able to explain which of their albums is good and which ones are bad. And tell about the impact they had on other metal bands or the rock community in general. Maybe that impact was negative to some people...but what did they do right that got millions to groove to "Back In Black?" Critics should be able to see past their personal tastes and explain both sides.

I happen to like a lot of music that's considered Lite Jazz (i.e. Basia, Michael Franks, Swingout Sister). There are people who absolutely loathe this stuff (my ex is one of them). They talk about how it's not really jazz, or it's a watered down version of jazz, or it's "music to pay your bills by." But I play it all the time and when I hear a Basia song like "Cruising For Bruising" in the local supermarket, I'm dancing in the aisles.

Again, who is to say I'm "wrong" to like this? Or that it's "a joke?" As with AC/DC, good critic's job would be to rank Basia's albums and explain her place in the jazz scene. And if the phrase "dentist's office music" comes up within that context, well, I'll accept it. But I'll still be dancing in the supermarket.

 

Hmm, I tend go agree with those reviews, at least the acts I know something about.

But judging from HEART OF ROCK & SOUL, where Dave Marsh writes about the music he loves, our tastes have a lot of overlap, so it's not surprising we'd also tend to agree on stuff we don't like.

As you say, were I writing a historical tome with hindsight and an eye to acknowledging albums its listening community had elevated to classic status, I'd probably rate BACK IN BLACK five stars, and maybe Sabbath's debut for influence. But I'd probably still rip Grand Funk.

 

I've owned and discarded the RS guides. They just seemed like they were created by snide folks who want to lord their taste over other people. (Christgau, on the other hand just wants to lord his intellect over you to the extent that his review often just become self-satisfied celebrations of the fact he has an education and a thesaurus).

I think music criticism, traditionally, was a refuge for a lot of unhappy folk who feel better putting others down. I think if you want to use music critics as a source to set you off on a quest for albums, you have to go through several different resources and take a lot of what they say with a grain of salt. I tend to like British resources like the Mojo guide or the Guardian's attempt at the 1000 best albums of all time, but even then, there are a few instances where you just scratch your head.

But I do recall one review of an obscure R&B artist named Jeffree in the Blue RS guide that (I think) Marsh wrote that talked about the artist as if he was a group and very strongly indicated Marsh didn't give the album a listen because he somehow was dismissive of songs that were very much in the Gaye/Mayfield mold.

 

Allmusic is okay, but Richie Unterberger really should not be reviewing R&B/soul for them. He has no feel for or understanding of it, and his biases are such that he cannot remotely be trusted. But then, I don't care for his writing in general.

 

He's usually right and reasonable when he reviews psychedelia.