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

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

so many good records here but only one changed the course of my life and i'll bet you can guess which one (i'm 40)

Surfer Rosa is in second half of list, which is even crazier

Worst album here imo is Murmur

Voted VU&Nico, grail record for me, still 100% listenable and great.

Also, that record turned 50 years old yesterday too, amazing!

I'd love to pull out my copy of this book but it literally fell apart on me after 5-6 years 'cause I read it so much. Just a massive influence on my teenage listening years. Weisbard's reviews probably most important for me, but Sheffield's are probably the best purely as writing (they're certainly the funniest).

Murmur remains my favorite R.E.M. record. It was only the third or fourth I got, but I instantly understood why critics fell over themselves to praise it from the moment I first listened to it. They were one of my favorite bands for years and years, and probably would have been even if the debut didn't exist. But that album is sui generis - they never made a record as mysterious or romantic again.

Most unforgivable omission from the spin guide: Frank Zappa/Mothers of Invention

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)🔗.

This issue and its lists had a similar impact on me that the Spin guide seems to have had on others. Totally altered my thinking on a number of things, but also a much sharper corrective to RS listy hegemony than the Spin guide.

I don't know that Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock were even mentioned in RS prior to 1989, and here's Spin picking "It Takes Two" as the greatest single of all time.

But that album is sui generis - they never made a record as mysterious or romantic again.

It sounds contrarian, but some days my favorite R.E.M. album is Dead Letter Office, so mystery was never an important part of this band's enigma to me

hard to figure out what to vote for here tbh. a lot of these records were very crucial to me in college but my taste has drifted since. daydream nation is probably the canon record here that i'm most indifferent to; i way prefer the surrounding sy albums and i wish i could approach daydream in the same way but after x years of trying it still doesn't work

the psb and madonna records feel like cheating but the immaculate collection figured into very different points of my life (like the 6/7-year-old me who absolutely loved the dallas austin-era madonna singles and the college-aged me who was trying to reapproach pop music after being a dick about it for years and finding, of course, that i loved pretty much everything madonna did all along up to a certain point). it's v flawed bc it's brutally remixed and truncated but the songs survive the process.

sign of the times is probably the album that i love the most here but also i feel extremely inclined to vote for parallel lines bc of its perfect economy

I'm leaning towards Pretenders because it's often my favorite and favorite sounding album

" I still can't believe there's no Melvins or Fishbone entries in this book"

this may be down to the fact that Weisbard (and to a certain extent C. Marks) may not have been too keen on the aggro/testost-y aspect. Somewhere in the book, the MC5 is referred to as quasi frat boys, I don't believe there's any am rep shit or Misfits, and more or less metal was still at this time very present in the culture and in no way had metal culture and "alt" culture made peace.

Yeah, they hated industrial too iirc (which I very well may not)? Kind of funny to remember this supposed rivalry. I remember wondering who this book could have been meant for. The mainstream alt-rock listening kids I knew were just as likely to listen to Metallica or RHCP or NIN as Nirvana; the punk kids were mostly into hardcore (or crust punk) and extreme metal; the goth kids listened to industrial, synthpop, and female singer-songwriters. I think I figured it would make sense when I went to university.

(Obv answer: it was meant for me.)

yeah, me too

I never owned this book, but this is reminding me that Spin's top 50 punk albums list from 2001 had a big impact on me. My first exposure to a bunch of post-punk bands.