Spin: 20 Years of Alternative Music: Original Writing on Rock, Hip-Hop, Techno, and Beyond

I have been reading SPIN magazine off and on since I picked up my first issue at age 15. It has been one of the more compelling periodicals available about music that tends to adhere to a non-biased approach that all journalists claim but none practice. When I heard of a book from SPIN commemorating 20 years in the alternative music scene I was very excited. When I bought and read this book I was even more thoroughly pleased. Mixing big name staying-power acts lie Prince and Modonna with live-in-the-moment scenes/groups like Nirvana and NWA, this book finally gives a great perspective on music and it's effect on American culture, just like SPIN magazine has been striving to do for decades (but not always succeeding). I felt it covered all pertinent points of alternative music throughout the past several years and was well informative on music movements that I had missed out on. I especially enjoyed reading about hip-hop legends like Run DMC, Public Enemy, NWA, and Tupac as I can be easily classified as a southern white boy sheltered from the extremities of rap music. I also enjoyed the essays written about outside-music influences like ecstasy, heroin, and MTV (all equally mind-numbing) Things I did not like was the fixation on Nine Inch Nails as the sole pioneers of industrial music (have we never heard of Ministry, KMFDM, or My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult). Also thought the piece on Radiohead was a bit much, I think they can easily be classified into Britpop along with Blur and Oasis. This is definitely a great read, something new at each turn of the page to fuel both excitement and nostalgia.

i just got this the other day and have already spent a fair amount of time browsing thru it. sure it would have been great to have collected the best articles from the last 20 years; however the problem with that (and something the book acknowledges) is sometimes what is viewed at the time as important and groundbreaking turns out to have been not such a big deal. the great thing about this book is the advantage of perspective, being able to go back and identify what really turned out to have been influential and then weeding out the chaff. in the appendix section the editors show some magazine covers that in retrospect demonstrate that sometimes the "next big thing" often ends up in the "where are they now file" ie Lisa Stansfield, Creed, etc. i found the book to be immensely readable, one you can pick up and start anywhere, jump to whatever interests you, and even learn about music or artists that at the time you didn't care about. a great book about a great magazine, and should be of interest to any music fan, especially one like myself who when i was younger read SPIN religiously.