New Rolling Stone Album Guide - changes in 2nd printing?

[MK]

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.

[Rspaight]

I can confirm no Harrison in my first printing. Judging from the search results on Amazon, though, Metallica is still AWOL in Printing II.

Ryan

[MK]

I think Metallica WAS in that 2nd printing I read. I have a hazy memory of the entry, but I seem to recall being surprised at a really good rating on one of their most recent albums. I'd have to check again, though.

Interesting, I wonder if some printing or typesetting mistake was made that left them off?

[Alexander Keith]

Does this new printing have the same style cover?? I did not know it existed.

[MK]

I think it has the exact same cover. I didn't read about this, I stumbled on this by pure accident. I was there to buy MOJO Magazine, and then got some coffee and decided to finish it there. I saw the book on the table, read that instead, and as I was flipping through it, I saw the Harrison entry, et al, and thought "Huh, I could've sworn this was left out." I half-heartedly checked for a correction notice, and then saw it was a second printing. You know on the first page where it lists copyright, publisher, card catalog info, etc., there's a set of numbers that ping-pong back and forth as they count down to the lowest number, which in this case was 2.

[Alexander Keith]

Thanks for the info. I am going to look for it tomorrow.

[MK]

If it's in resaleable condition, maybe you can exchange your old copy for the new one. You may have to lie a bit to make sure it goes through, but hey, why the hell should you pay for the same book twice just because the publisher, printers, whoever fucked up the first time?

Just make sure they have the new printing first, then exchange it.

[Bennett Cerf]

I could have sworn I read somewhere, possibly the Steve Hoffman board, that the second printing removed other artists' entries to make room for Metallica and Harrison.

[Alexander Keith]

If it's in resaleable condition, maybe you can exchange your old copy for the new one. You may have to lie a bit to make sure it goes through, but hey, why the hell should you pay for the same book twice just because the publisher, printers, whoever fucked up the first time?

Just make sure they have the new printing first, then exchange it.

I thought about that, you are so correct but the book stores in town are still carrying the previous version and their database does not list whether the corrected version is available.

I will watch for the new version but they are going to have to sell 6 copies of the bad version first

[MK]

Check this out:

http://www.tomhull.com/ocston/arch/rs/index.php

One of the contributors posted his work as well as a little insight into how they do these 'guides.'