Rating: 
Summary: The Biggest Regret in My Life Is Buying This Book....
Review: Chuck Eddy certainly seems to know alot about rock music, but he doesn't really seem to understand it. While dismissing the music of Bruce Springsteen,Sonic Youth,and Pavement, he extolls the virtues of someone named Frank Kogan on what seems like every other page. More an excercise in showing off his arcane musical knowledge than an insightful criticism, Eddy rattles off obscure song titles page after page, trying to find ridiculous links in their subject matter such as "working women" or "memories." Does anyone really care though? Gee, thanks Chuck, I was just wondering how many song titles contain the word "popcorn." He even seems to consider the vomit enducing power ballad a legitimately interesting genre while dissing Nirvana as purveyors of the "boring loud-soft thing." This probably all sounds more interesting than it really is. All in all it seems like he would make a good librarian as long as he never read the books.
Rating: 
Summary: If real people wrote rock crit books, they'd be like this.
Review: Chuck Eddy is a hoot. An intellectual hoot, and a hoot you may have to read two or three times to get, but a hoot nonetheless. If real people wrote rock crit books, they'd be like this. But Chuck isn't real. He's that nerd from high school who turned out to be smarter, funnier and cooler than everyone else. The thing I like best about this book (with the possible exception of the cover) is that he doesn't hand the thesis to you on a silver platter. He makes you work for it. And if you don't get it, you'll be doomed to a life of reading reviews in Rolling Stone and thinking that they're good--and that they aren't bought with record company money. If I had to fault the book at any level, it does get a little "samey" from time to time, but then some brilliant Eddy-ism will pop up and you'll be laughing...or running to your stereo to hear something you'd missed. And the cover is just too brilliant! But then, I'm biased...
Rating: 
Summary: Chaotic and opinionated, but enjoyable and witty.
Review: Chuck Eddy is a Shakespearean Fool, a Court Jester, whose witticisms, stream-of-consciousness critiques and anally-retentive lists sit side by side with a thorough knowledge of musical and cultural history. Not a book for the faint-hearted and the musically or culturally illiterate - he's too savvy for that. The reader might be overwhelmed by his tidal wave of facts, opinions and critical barbs - but dipping into the mind of Chuck Eddy is fun and stimulating.
Rating:
Summary: Good fun, but credibility glaringly missing.
Review: Chuck: Maybe "Me and the boys are playing all night" means that the band Kiss are playing music. He mentions that some of this book was written while sitting on the toilet bowl; unfortunately, it shows. Tho I admire his honesty saying he only owned 4 albums in college, it painfully adds to my conclusion that he is hardly an authority on the subject and that there are lots of gaps in his knowledge. He actually admits that he had never heard any Tricky before, while dissing stupid critics who praise him. But if he never heard any Tricky, then he never heard any of Massive Attack, arguably creators of the best cd of the 90's. Here is a clue: 11 pages talk about Debbie Gibson, but there is only one mention of the Marshall Tucker Band, 3 mentions of Creedence. So if he can flip off comments about brain-dead hippies, what the hell does he think he is? Totally tasteless is the way he raps about his own ideations about suicide while knocking Kurt Cobain. Unbelieveable. Positive side: Not many people are going to know who the Louvin Brothers or Andrea True are. This book is really packed with trivia, so rocknroll fanatics should really enjoy the memoribilia. And chapters about players who are missing various appendages are fascinating for anyone interested in this arcana.
Rating:
Summary: Good fun, but credibility glaringly missing.
Review: Chuck: Maybe "Me and the boys are playing all night" means that the band Kiss are playing music. He mentions that some of this book was written while sitting on the toilet bowl; unfortunately, it shows. Tho I admire his honesty saying he only owned 4 albums in college, it painfully adds to my conclusion that he is hardly an authority on the subject and that there are lots of gaps in his knowledge. He actually admits that he had never heard any Tricky before, while dissing stupid critics who praise him. But if he never heard any Tricky, then he never heard any of Massive Attack, arguably creators of the best cd of the 90's. Here is a clue: 11 pages talk about Debbie Gibson, but there is only one mention of the Marshall Tucker Band, 3 mentions of Creedence. So if he can flip off comments about brain-dead hippies, what the hell does he think he is? Totally tasteless is the way he raps about his own ideations about suicide while knocking Kurt Cobain. Unbelieveable. Positive side: Not many people are going to know who the Louvin Brothers or Andrea True are. This book is really packed with trivia, so rocknroll fanatics should really enjoy the memoribilia. And chapters about players who are missing various appendages are fascinating for anyone interested in this arcana.
Rating: 
Summary: He's Da Bomb!
Review: In a book that reads like casual couch conversations between you and your best bud, Chuck Eddy points out the recurring patterns that make up rock and roll's big and not so big hits. Everything from train songs to sound effects to all sorts of nonsensical bits appear and paint a very interesting picture of modern pop. His prose is perfect for pop fans who love all sorts of music; they'll get both the in-jokes and the hidden subtexts. This book is loadz o' fun! A breath of fresh air when compared to the stuffed-shirt "New York Times Critic" approach of so many pop music writers. Long Live Eddy!
Rating:
Summary: Another slice o' genius from the anti-critic critic
Review: Only two books published -- three if you count the updated and revised edition of _Stairway to Hell_, which you also need -- and Chuck Eddy clearly is just about the only worthwhile rock critic out there at all. The first review in this list says it all, but to add to it a bit more -- when it comes to challenging some of the stupidest preconceptions about enjoying music, especially the two real problems (making up your mind before actually listening to the music and staying locked in predetermined 'genre' categories), Chuck is The Man. More worthwhile than the collected works of _Rolling Stone_, _Spin_ and _Q_ combined, and a damn sight funnier than all of them as well.
Rating:
Summary: Carducci's antithesis
Review: Reading the other reviews on this page, one might well be confused: Some complain about Chuck Eddy's weak grasp of his subject matter, others delight in the obscurity of his numerous references. So what is it? Well, all of these reviews are accurate. Chuck slings names all over the place, and shows laudable contempt for genre classification (sure, he spends a lot of time on Debbie Gibson, but not everyone would compare her to, say, Von Lmo). But if you're actually going to him for information, you'll be disappointed, as there seem to be very few albums Chuck has actually LISTENED to. References abound, but are restricted to trite observations about song titles; in fact, he doesn't even make observations so much as group songs by some common word in their names. He doesn't seem to have any grasp of his subject matter because he doesn't seem to have grasped the notion that those plastic things inside album covers play music if you put them in a special machine. Rock criticism has always been pretty grim, being dominated by hacks who prefer to deconstruct song lyrics than listen to the music. (Just look at the praise lavished on Bob Dylan's "poetics" over the years, qualified by blushing "admissions" that "he's really not a great singer": If only these people realized that Dylan's VOICE epitomizes the rock aesthetic, his stoner ramblings being mere frills!) Chuck Eddy, while relatively unpretentious, represents the absolute lowest form of this tendency. This book is truly abysmal.
Rating:
Summary: Waste of time...
Review: The other negative reviews pretty much spell it out, why did I not listen to them. There are some critics that create heated debates as to the weight of their opinion (Bangs, Marcus, etc), but this guy is just bad. I think this book is made for teenagers who can't read more than a page or two without getting bored. I traded it in for a good book on Marvin Gaye, so the experience wasn't all bad.
Rating:
Summary: How could anyone possibly like this book?
Review: This is the worst thing I have ever tried to read. I can't believe anyone would give this guy a book contract.
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