Rating: 5
Review:
An excellent guide
I have enjoyed and benefited from Mark Barry's excellent
reviews on Amazon for years so I thought I'd be in safe hands with this – and I
was right. It's a really good resource
as well as an enjoyable read.
Mark has worked in rare recordings for decades so he really
knows what he's talking about, as well as having a genuine love of this
music. It shows; each album gets a
thorough analysis which is a pleasure to read and often an inspiration to go
and listen. I'm pleased to say that quite
a lot of these albums are in my collection (although my wife isn't quite so
enthusiastic about the number of old LPs in the place) and just a day or two
after buying this book I've already been sent back to several of them with
great pleasure – and with bemusement that I haven't listened to them for so
long. There is also detailed and really
useful information about which issue to buy and what is included/missing from
various editions.
Naturally, in a book of this magnitude, covering the best
part of 400 albums, Mark's opinions and taste don't always coincide with mine; I
regard I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight by Richard and Linda Thompson
and Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left, among quite a few others, as genuine Classic
Albums rather than overlooked ones, for example. But that's only natural; I agree with the
great majority of what he says, and even where I don't it's interesting and
stimulating.
The formatting is OK: you can access each article via the List
of Contents in the Menu, but there are no live links in the text. The titles in the Contents are long, so it's
not always easy to se what's going on in the Menu list, but I've got on pretty
well. I understand that Mark is working
on the formatting to improve this.
Nonetheless, this is a book to cherish for me. I can see it sending me off to listen to an
awful lot of music I've never heard or haven't listened to for years (and also
trying to smuggle more purchases past my wife).
Very warmly recommended.
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