New Rolling Stone Album Guide - changes in 2nd printing?
Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 1:09 am
Amazon.com says there's no entry for George Harrison, and I recall checking a copy at Borders and confirming this for myself, but I was flipping through a copy at another Borders and there WAS an entry for Harrison. I checked the inside cover and it's a second printing (numbers counting down from 10 stop at 2).
Did Rolling Stone make any announcement regarding changes to their guide? I'm guessing it may have been an accident.
Anyway, they basically say ATMP is a four star record, not five, and that it's overrated by people who forget about the crappy jams at the end. Then it goes on to say something like it's overrated by people who underrate the rest of the catalog. Of course, the reviews for the rest of the albums aren't that stellar. The last album was given three stars and deemed unremarkable without singling out any songs - I personally liked the first two tracks, the instrumental, the standard George covers on ukeleule (sp???), and maybe the last track.
There's a couple of things that felt like glaring bullshit, but you always find that in every guide. EC's Armed Forces is a 4 star record and Trust a 5? Should be the other way around. Beck's Mutations a bore and only a 3? Most of Aretha's Atlantic catalog is docked a star but still bears the same description of being 'essential r&b albums'? The Stones' Flowers is a 5 star record, even when other comps are slagged with the justification that there are better comps? Etc...
The Prince reviews are improved among others. A lot of the reviews felt like an improvement over the '92 guide. If you're curious, go to amazon and type in searches in the book browser. It lets you look at only certain pages, but if you type in the right words, say, an album title, the brief snippets that come up on the preliminary search (on which there are no limit) may give you at least the album rating.
Did Rolling Stone make any announcement regarding changes to their guide? I'm guessing it may have been an accident.
Anyway, they basically say ATMP is a four star record, not five, and that it's overrated by people who forget about the crappy jams at the end. Then it goes on to say something like it's overrated by people who underrate the rest of the catalog. Of course, the reviews for the rest of the albums aren't that stellar. The last album was given three stars and deemed unremarkable without singling out any songs - I personally liked the first two tracks, the instrumental, the standard George covers on ukeleule (sp???), and maybe the last track.
There's a couple of things that felt like glaring bullshit, but you always find that in every guide. EC's Armed Forces is a 4 star record and Trust a 5? Should be the other way around. Beck's Mutations a bore and only a 3? Most of Aretha's Atlantic catalog is docked a star but still bears the same description of being 'essential r&b albums'? The Stones' Flowers is a 5 star record, even when other comps are slagged with the justification that there are better comps? Etc...
The Prince reviews are improved among others. A lot of the reviews felt like an improvement over the '92 guide. If you're curious, go to amazon and type in searches in the book browser. It lets you look at only certain pages, but if you type in the right words, say, an album title, the brief snippets that come up on the preliminary search (on which there are no limit) may give you at least the album rating.