Rockcritics Podcast: Chuck Eddy (Part 1)

Some time back I started running through the music titles on my bookshelf (which you can catch in progress here), but I’ve decided to open things up somewhat by chatting with some other critics — to get their thoughts on some of my favourite music books. Or to delve into some of the music books that matter to them. Or maybe even to discuss books which they themselves have written. Or something.

To kick things off, I gave Chuck Eddy a call in New York to talk about record guides. (You may recall that Chuck himself is the author of a highly regarded — and oft-disputed — record guide of his own.) Chuck and I shared lists beforehand, and I think I told him we’d talk for 30-40 minutes and that I would commandeer the conversation. Of course, we went thrice as long as that, and I completely messed up on the commandeering part (as you’ll note in the discussion, I basically provide zero context as we go along… all those years studying Radio and Televison Arts were clearly a waste). I’ll post parts of our discussion in two or three different segments (there’ll be more hopefully next week).

In this part of the conversation, we chat mostly about four books:

• The Rolling Stone Record Guide (first edition, 1979, edited by Dave Marsh & John Swenson)
• New Rolling Stone Record Guide (second edition, 1983, edited by Dave Marsh & John Swenson)
• The Heart of Rock & Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made (Dave Marsh, 1989)
• This is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk and Disco (Gary Mulholland… whose name I neglect to mention in the conversation)

We also detour into some other areas, including the strange fate of pop singles and, um, Sarah Palin.

Two things to note:

1. the sound quality here is lo-fi, at best. You may need to occasionally crank the volume on Chuck
2. extreme geek indulgence ahead… But you figured that already, right?

CLICK TO LISTEN (29:21)