All Music Guide to Rock: The Best CDs, Albums and Tapes: Rock, Pop, Soul, Randb and Rap

by Michael Erlewine

Book Overview

Lists, rates, and reviews 15,500 recordings by 2,500 performers. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 087930376X
• ISBN13: 9780879303761
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Backbeat Books
• Length: 973 Pages
• Weight: 3.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.0" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

this is the one

The amg books are quite exceptional but this one is really something. There are a few omissions I noted (Rotary Connection and Fanny)yet the proof is in the pudding. Prove it to yourself by finding an artist with several works you have a view on and see what their writer says...often the observations are right on whether you fully agree or not. The reviews and bios are quite interesting, and it is a volume to get lost in...a real treasure. A few artists will get more attention than you might like, but it leaves all other volumes like it in the dust.

Last month, this book paid my electric bill...

I've found the "All Music Guide" to be such a useful research tool, that I start lapsing into an "info-mercial-esque" tone when I begin extolling its virtues: "Hi. My name is Alan, and I'm a freelance music writer. When I'm assigned to write about a band that I know next-to-nothing about, I always turn to the 'All Music Guide'. This mammoth music encyclopedia is not only useful, but a ton o' fun! Let's say that I need a quick factoid about some rock group that I despise--like, I dunno, The Scorpions. I just pull out my 'AMG', turn to page 329, and voila; I quickly learn that Scorp's, co-founder Michael Schenker quit the band in 1973 to join fellow metal-meisters UFO. Wow...UFO! But they don't call it the 'All Music Guide' for nothin'; flip over to page 1351, and you'll find incisive reviews of almost every available record by legendary jazz saxophonist/heroin addict Art Pepper. If you only buy one music research book this year, make it 'All Music Guide'." In all seriousness, this thing has saved me hours of net-surfing, in addition to helping me avoid a few hundred research sojourns to Tower Records trying to find out what year Buddy Guy's first record was released.