Whether you're a lifelong collector or have only just gotten hip to the vinyl revival
navigating the vast landscape of rock albums can be a daunting prospect. Enter Mike Segretto
and his mammoth 33 1 3 Revolutions Per Minute a history of the rock LP era told through a very
personal selection of nearly 700 albums. Beginning with the birth of rock and roll in the 1950s
Segretto moves through the explosive innovations of the 1960s the classic rock and punk albums
of the 1970s the new wave classics of the 1980s and the alternative revolution of the 1990s
always with an eye to both the iconic and the ephemeral the failed experiments and the
brilliant trailblazers. It's all here: everything from the classics (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band Purple Rain Nevermind and countless other usual suspects) to such oddities
as albums by Johnny Guitar Watson P. P. Arnold The Dentists and Holly Golightly. Throughout
Segretto reveals the perpetual evolution of a modern art form tracing the rock album's journey
from a vehicle for singles and filler sold to kids through its maturation into a legitimate
self-contained medium of expression by 1967 and onward to its dominance in the '70s '80s and
'90s. Whether you read it from cover to cover seek out specific albums or just dip in at
random and let the needle fall where it may 33 1 3 Revolutions Per Minute is a fun
informative and unapologetically opinionated read.
