33 1/3 Revolutions per Minute: A Critical Trip Though the Rock LP Era, 1955–1999 is a history of the rock LP era told though critiques of a very personal selection of nearly 750 albums. It follows rock and roll from its earliest days in the 1950s to the explosion of the British Invasion, soul, folk rock, and psychedelia in the 1960s, on through the classic rock and punk albums of the 1970s, new wave classics of the 1980s, and alternative rock discs of the 1990s. Through reviews of albums universally regarded as classics (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Purple Rain, Nevermind, and many of the other usual suspects) and far more obscure discs (albums by Johnny "Guitar" Watson, P. P. Arnold, the Dentists, Holly Golightly, etc.), Mike Segretto shows how the rock and roll album went from a vehicle for singles and filler aimed at kids with an excess of pocket money in the 1950s to a legitimate, self-contained art form by 1967, to the only rock and roll medium that mattered in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s.
33 1/3 Revolutions per Minute: A Critical Trip Though the Rock LP Era (1955-1999) is a history you can read from cover to cover. It is a compendium of album reviews you can dip in and out of. Above all, it is a fun, informative, and opinionated read.
