The Best Rock and Roll Records of All Time: A Fan's Guide to the Really Great Stuff

You can learn a hell of a lot about rock & roll and rock roots music by reading this book and listening to some of the albums Guterman lists here. He takes an interesting slant on the subject, different from that of many other best-of music books that I've read. I would definitely call Guterman a rock purist. He tends to look down on sub-genre's like psychedelic, punk, disco, and rap. The only punk album represented here is by the Clash and rap gets one old school compilation. The psychedelic genre gets nothing; though it's well represented in Guterman`s other book, Worst...Records of All Time. Although Guterman gives short thrift to rap, many black artists and genres are included. You get a healthy dose of blues, soul, rockers, pop, and reggae. I consider that to be one of the book's greatest strengths. Some best-of books cover black or white artists, but not both. Others, like the Rough Guides, separate black and white music into different books. I don't like segregation on the radio so why should I put up with it in books. Here black artists are linked and compared directly with white artists and given their due, about half the book. Guterman also does a good job covering the decades. No particular era is over represented; I never got a sense that Guterman preferred one over another. The albums and musicians in this book span the 50s, 60, 70s, & 80s. An appendix in the back lists some records covering music that preceded these decades and influenced rock. As you might have guessed, Guterman is a big country fan. As a purist, Guterman seems to prefer retro groups and ignore innovators. No Kraftwerk here. But you do get a lot of fun stuff, sleepers by groups like Rockpile and the Morells. These groups were neither popular nor influential, but I sure am glad Guterman let me know about them. Now that I think about it maybe "Best of..." isn't the best title for this book. Calling a lot of the retro music represented here "Best of..." is like saying the pre-Raphaelite painters were better than the impressionists. But you know that the pre-Raphaelite's put out some charming paintings.