Ray Bayles <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>The Penguin Guide is hardly the place to get your recommendations, in my
>humble opinion.  Remember that this guide is really just the opinions of
>two men with scarce help from a few others.  There is absolutely no way
>they can listen to everything they recommend.

As I brought up on this list before (and caused a bit of a controversy in
doing so), I find *starting* with the Penguin guide pretty reliable, but do
view some recommendations with skepticism/grain-of-salt outright because of
past experiences...  on the whole I think it's fine, though.

I think it's possible that they listened to all those discs, or at least
the material contained on them...  The majority of recordings on the
shelves right now are recordings that were released several years ago and
have remained totally unchanged, simple reissues under new numbers/price
brackets, and a few recouplings.  All with basically the same sound or at
most with perhaps some minor changes (like state-of-the-art remasterings).
So as far as the actual new releases that they include with each new
edition, as it is their job to just listen to disc after disc, I think
they have a reasonable chance of keeping up.

Albie