SPIN Alternative Record Guide (1995) Top 100 Alternative Albums (1-50)

I knew you were gonna swan in here and defend his honor. Is he yr pal or something?

The one name that comes to mind is Neil Young--he got a more sympathetic writer in the first blue one, no?

He's my Robert Christgau.

xp

If we're doing worst on the list as well, it's this

28 Television Marquee moon 1977

― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever), Monday, March 13, 2017 2:11 PM (one hour ago)

I agree Johnny, "Marquee Moon" should get the vote for most overrated album ever. Hardly ever has guitar play sounded so boring and uninspired. I hate that album and all the critics who made me buy that rubbish.

― it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Monday, March 13, 2017 3:33 PM (seventeen minutes ago)

is this some late-emerging backlash or just you two? mm may not live up to its rep, but it's at least half a great guitar album. side one's flawless.

PERE UBU
✸Dub Housing / Chrys.1207
Art rock with a New Wave face is no less pompous, pretentious or irrelevant because of its claim to association with Johnny Rotten. Anti-rock for anti-rockers. Boo. DM

^^^This is the totality of the Pere Ubu entry in Red. Filed under U, which is not where I would file it. He's no Christgau. Boo.

I thought we all got "overrated" out of our system already

For the love of god

is this some late-emerging backlash or just you two?

heh Alfred doesn't like it either iirc

Boo Ubu.

I got my first copy of Marquee Moon when I was probably 17 or 18 and I've tried to figure out why people like it for the last 25-ish years and idgi sorry

Murmur was loved by critics the moment it was released. Christgau’s write-up that year in Pazz & Jop (where it came in second to Thriller) was titled “Who Else? A Goddamn Critics’ Band, That’s Who Else”. It feels like it has the best aspects of both the enigmatic sound of Chronic Town and the more straightforward rock of Reckoning

Marquee Moon is one of the best albums on this list imo

It seems like very little I hear these days sounds iconic in the way that so many of these records did…

One of my favorite reviews in those RS record guide is for the first three U2 albums and the writer calls them "one of the freshest new sounds of the decade." It must've been really exciting to be alive in the early 80s.

Also, Chase: "Flee."
Also, Pyramyd: "Wyse gys."

PSB - Discography isn't an album and shouldn't have been included in this list, but since it was, I voted for it.

Since I'm nitpicking, I've probably only listened to Horses a handful of times since I first heard it. My go-to Patti Smith album is always Wave, but it's never on any lists. :(

It must've been really exciting to be alive in the early 80s.

It was a joy just to get out of bed every day.

dark blue in like 82/83 still was marsh's work in the main. red one in the 90s ("dogshit") was the work of like four writers, one of whom has been a very active ILM-nik over the years. Light blue was in 04: me and several ILM dudes are therein.

i have absolutely no memory of the existence of light blue, and i apologize to you and the other ilm dudes within. is it good?

"dogshit" edition, besides being not good, was riddled with more factual errors than the average sean spicer press conference.

Puzzlement over Marquee Moon and Horses is one of ilm's most charming running jokes

why do people like music

I found good records out of all of those guides. I had the Trouser Press guides (blue and red), Rolling Stone (dark blue & red) books and the Spin book. I also had a zine version of "bands missed by the Trouser Press" I found somewhere that had some good punk LP reviews in it.

I'm pretty sure the Spin book led me to check out Swell Maps, Fela and probably many others. Some of the total "bullet" reviews in the Rolling Stone guides would make you wonder more about what they were like than something with two stars. I know Bloodrock was a bullet review that made me want to check them out.

the rolling stone book i had was this one

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51272EWJ3KL._SX305_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

why do people like music

I'm torn between the Ramones debut and ChangesOneBowie (though that's cheating a bit). I read SPIN quite a bit during this period of time, and it's weird because looking at the list now the choices of what to include seem rather random, but at the time it did feel like it cohered into some aesthetic one could call "alternative". Also, at the time, a lot of these things were rarities known only to true heads, whereas now of course any kid with an internet connection has heard all of these. It seems like a somewhat idiosyncratic list of the currently popular, the undeniably influential, and then a kind of personal smattering of overlooked shoulda-been-classics. I feel like any list done today would include a lot more disco and experimental krauty stuff.

While we're generally talking about it in this thread, I still can't believe there's no Melvins or Fishbone entries in this book

I was all excited to go dust off my copy of the Spin guide, but it's nowhere to be found. i must have given it away somewhere along the line.

In any case, this reminded me of another SPIN list which coincided with my first forays into the critical pantheon: Spin magazine's 25 greatest albums of all time (April, 1989)

And, d'oh, there's fucking Marquee Moon again. Couldn't agree more about that one being overrated.

"Marquee Moon" on paper sounds like something I should be totally into, yet it's never really clicked with me. Lots of people whose taste I respect seem to love it though.

Though to be fair, about 40% of this list is stuff that's never really clicked with me, though I can see why it's admired.

also had a zine version of "bands missed by the Trouser Press" I found somewhere that had some good punk LP reviews in it.

Badaboom Gramaphone, they did a great job of it. The Trouser Press guides were invaluable for me, and remarkably reliable in (most) calls on which records were bands best work.

Before the Trouser Press, the NME Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock was where it all started for my buying. I still find myself buying records whose covers featured there.

Marquee Moon is great.

Julian Cope's "Krautrocksampler" was another book of the same time period that was hard to find even then that led me to search for many records.

I can't see going for any other Husker record but Zen Arcade. That record was raising the bar big time on what a punk band could try to do I think. Flip Your Wig is more pop and more the future sound of grunge to come. New Day Rising is buried in reverb and while intense, is only part of what they pulled off in Zen Arcade. Kinda doubt it would be #4 in any similar list now. Meat Puppets seem to be perhaps just as less known now although I saw some pretty cool live semi-recent stuff by them on line a few days back. Too High to Die is out of print.

The thing that really stands out looking at that list 20+ years down the line is how little electronic music is in the list, considering all that was going down at the time and still resonates now. It seems like there "should" be something Detroit techno or from Warp on that list, but you know post rock and electronic music really blossomed some in popularity really in the year or two after this book came out.

Yeah, this thread inspired me to pull Marquee Moon out again and the first two songs still sound like magic.

Title track is obv unstoppable.

No Spacemen 3 is kind of weird.

I think Can was probably the band that {all of these various record guides] led me to listen to, in spite of all obstacles. Faust would be #2.

shags
Fugs
Elevators

just felt like posting those bands' names

These days I'm feeling the banana album pretty hard for some reason

Those Spacemen 3 records were pretty obscure in the US I think. Pretty sure they got an entry in the book. It seemed to me that the Spaceman 3 stuff got reissued around the same time Spiritualized records were getting out there a year or two later.

The Birthday Party was also a band where you had to look to find their records for a while that Hits comp was the only thing 'easily' found in the US. They all got reissued around the mid 90s by Mute as Cave's profile rose.

Sometimes I forget and think spacemen 3 are from texas

Rolling stone alt rock book had goo goo dolls list of worst bathrooms in America

I used to browse this book endlessly at the store but never bought it, which I still regret. Love all 50 albums, basically.

(Spin guide that is.)

Fun House or Marquee Moon

or uh Loveless

If we're doing worst on the list as well, it's this

28 Television Marquee moon 1977

― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever), Monday, March 13, 2017 5:11 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

damn, son!!!!!!!!!

Those Spacemen 3 records were pretty obscure in the US I think. Pretty sure they got an entry in the book.

...The Birthday Party was also a band where you had to look to find their records for a while that Hits comp was the only thing 'easily' found in the US.

― earlnash, Monday, March 13, 2017 7:15 PM (thirty-six minutes ago)

The Perfect Prescription and Junkyard seem like obvious omissions. Along with The Fall, Can, Sex Pistols. Maybe bottom 50?

And I'm kind of holy shit at no Pixies

Did I miss something with '90s Spin that would make people expect to see the Spacemen 3 in a top 100 list?

I read both spin & Forced Exposure in the mid/late 80s into the 90s, along with the British weeklies and various "underground" "zines". Byron Coley pushed S3 hard in his writing for both (iirc). I had the sense at the time, perhaps delusional, that they were as central to American indie/alt as SST, Touch & Go, and the Seattle sound. But I'm often on wrong planets, browsing wrong feeds, so what I know?

But there are only three SST albums and a Nirvana album on this list. I don't think Spacemen 3 were very big at all in the United States, though they had a little carryover beyond their lifespan. The albums were mostly available as imports or on small labels like Genius.

Bomp and Sympathy for the Record Industry

I'm glad I'm not the only one who was deeply impacted by this book. I remember first reading it
a few years before the advent of Napster and discovering Mark Prindle's blog. It was a perfect
convergence for a neophyte rock fan who wanted to get serious about music.

I still can't stand Rob Sheffield's contributions, though. He's like the Dave Eggers of Rock critics; a smug
prick with no talent

Ha, although looking now, they had an album released by RCA in the U.S. (Recurring)??? That's news to me.

xp

just weighing in on Marquee Moon. never heard it until I was 29, and it knocked me over completely. I feel like Adventure is almost better which is challops but it's got such a vibe. both records inferior to Seven Churches