Greatest Hits, Volume 1

Full disclosure: I am reviewing this book but I did not read the whole thing. And I don't want to. Forget it. See, this is a greatest hits collection, and I only liked that record, that record and that record. Not that record. 33 1/3 is a series of books written about influential or legendary music albums, and while this anthology does contain many extraordinary pieces about great old albums (e.g. Stones, Kinks, Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, Neil Young and others), I won't read an essay, however well-written, about albums that I don't care about. Okay, maybe I will. But I am a musical snob. Don't you remember me from college? I was the guy with the rock & roll posters all over the walls, the one with the great stereo, who waited reverently for the next issue of Rolling Stone like it was a letter from home. To quote Homer Simpson, "Everyone knows rock attained perfection in 1974. It's a scientific fact." That little Homerian nugget was in the article about Radiohead's OK Computer (1997). See, I'm not mired entirely in the distant past. Who should read this book? Certainly not my wife. Or my brother-in-law. They weren't or aren't obsessed. This isn't for my kids, either. My kids are of the wildly fragmented mp3 generation, and they don't buy albums. They buy songs. Nobody knows actual song titles anymore, just track numbers. "Play number 5!" The idea of the complete statement, the album, and the old 33 1/3 RPM vinyl record is a baby boomer anachronism. Like the Concept Album, you know, a record with a unifying theme or idea or even a narrative. Gone. Loved and revered by some graying elders like me, but a relic of a bygone era. Here's what I don't like about this book: it's got a lousy, dumb cover. I'm the target market and I'd flip right by it based on the cover alone. It's like Tony Orlando and Dawn for crying out loud. So if you read it, try to get past that. Another thing. Who are these authors? There's no quick little "who's who" in the book, so there's no way to determine slants and angles, biases and, of course, age and credentials. This is important stuff when dealing with dusty old records such as these. Despite that, I'm impressed. I suppose if I really cared, I could Google them. What this book is, at its core, is a loving, obsessive inquiry into music that is terribly important to certain people. The essays are like New Yorker in-depth profiles - inventive, quirky, well-researched and fun. Hell yes, I'll read a long cozy article about Exile on Main Street on a cold autumn night. And I learned a thing or two. And not just inane who-played-what-guitar sorts of things. These writers have thought long and hard about old records and, as we age, if the music produced by these masters is truly art and remains valuable, we can continually be nourished by the depth and heart of that cosmic American music that is rock & roll.

As the disclaimer at the beginning of this book advises, the 33 1/3 series is not for everyone. People who canonize their favorite albums, feeling that their commitment to and investigation of said discs (i.e. the search for the actual recording speed of The Cure's The Top and the reason that Robert Smith didn't catch this before mastering) gives them some sort of ownership, eat these books for three squares and a snack. Others will find the dedication of an entire tome to one record a tad heavy-handed, pedantic and verbose. With that in mind, this collection includes a chapter from each of the first twenty volumes of 33 1/3, just enough to get you started. The editor's genius behind such a gesture is two-fold. He knows that those who aren't already addicted and own each book will shortly do so after reading a few slices; you might only own those covering Meat is Murder and Unknown Pleasures, but the geek in you will even care about Abba Gold and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn before you're through. Second, those with even a modicum of interest in the music-making process (those who only glance at magazines for their source of music info) will be able to sustain their interest with these Reader's Digest portions. At the very least, the hot pink cover - and the featured cartoonish hot chick - will provide a nice contrast to your theory library and impress the girl you manage to bring back to your lair...

It's amazing to me that it took the world this long to produce something like the 33 1/3 series. It's such an obviously great idea for a series of books, and these guys are experts on the follow through, from the albums they select to the writers they got to cover them. The "Greatest Hits" is the perfect introduction to the series and distills some of the best passages from the first books into a nice accessible package. There's nothing better than sitting down in a comfy chair, putting on the headphones and setting the album to repeat. I get the feeling a few of my friends might get some of these this christmas...great stuff!