Product Description

Compiled by the staff and contributors of "Mojo" magazine, "The Mojo Collection" tells the stories behind the greatest albums of all time and the artists who made them.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #649170 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1040 pages

Review
"If you like to listen to a bit of everything, this is the book for you."

Customer Reviews

An expansive review of the best albums over the last 45years
It has become increasingly popular for the music press to compile "best of" lists of popular music. Perhaps the recent lack of original musical direction has lead to the necessity to recall our popular musical heritage. Predictably Mojo is not alone regarding this trend and have periodically published lists of the best albums and singles compiled by both readers and "experts". This review covers the last 45 years and is truly expansive in its ambitions. It is an essential read for those who value the evolution of popular music - spanning works by Frank Sinatra to Fatboy Slim. It is peppered with many fascinating anecdotes and astute in its critical appraisal of the 600 albums reviewed. Perhaps the most valuable asset of the book is to stimulate the readers' interest to search and discover unfamiliar music. These days the appreciation of music is much less tribal and one can quite seriously combine a following of a band like the Clash with a pop group like ABBA. This book has already galvinised me to search out music I've heard of but never had the chance to truly explore. I received this book as a Christmas present but had little chance to read it as someone else always appeared engrossed in it. I wholeheartedly recommed it.

Frankly, I wouldn't bother
This is not to denegrate Mojo, easily the best music magazine we have and essential reading each month, but this book distils everything which is insufferable about the magazine in one place.

Naturally taking their cue from the rightfully successful Revolution in the Head - angling for roughly the same audience and hoping a bit of lustre will rub off (fat chance) - Mojo's multitudinous writers merely show how smug, simpering and conceited a bad music hack can be.

Each of approximately 600 "enduring and important" albums gets a page, including a column giving track listings, personnel etc (you'd do better getting a discography book for this, say one of Martin Strong's, which are excellent). The bulk of the page, however, is aforementioned hack's funny little anecdotes, irrelevant noodles, snorking in-jokes or that Mojo-specific habit of "backwards importance". In other words, if a contemporary band says that a band of the past was an influence, that previous band suddenly gains some kind of importance. Yes, we're talking "hip because today's bands say they are". Which is hardly the way to choose the best 600 albums of all time - and it shows.

It's not all bad news, and you're bound to learn something, especially if you're a novice in musicology. Any book which promotes interest in the history of rock and pop (going right back to the 1940s) has to have some not insubstantial merit to a novice, though exactly that kind of reader is hardly likely to be enthused by this big, black, sombre book. Which is a shame; if you've only listened to contemporary music before, this might well have you scurrying off to the reissue racks.

For the rest of us, the subtitle, "The ultimate music companion", should give you some idea of the pitch. Beach Boys and lounge heavy (of course, being Mojo), the only really satisfying thing (to this reader, at least) is that the horrendous 1980s only get about 150 pages.

But of course, the 1980s are out of style at the moment.