This is the thread where you ask for help in parsing one of Robert Christgau's sentences.

700 actually

Oh, don't be so literal (or arithmetical, or something)! That's so back in the day.

Damn!

''Oh, don't be so literal (or arithmetical, or something)! That's so back in the day.''

well frank if you keep looking at every single word using that microscope of yours I'm sure we'll get to 800 posts in no time at all (I enjoy the looking at every word through a microscope thing that you do BTW)

Candi Staton: Maybe she really is a victim of the very songs she sings - though not that one, or "Young Hearts Run Free." But her reputation for stiffing onstage makes me think there's something radically self-effacing about her - something the richest and sexiest voice can't quite make up for.

This was a cross-reference that worked very well for me - but I knew the reference. I'm wondering what those of you who don't know the reference would make of this. Does it work fine, does he lose you completely, does it bother you?

I think there are two problems when he writes for the Voice. (A) He's got a built-in audience willing to go the extra mile that most readers won't, and good for him and them (us), but at the same time it encourages his most gnomic tendencies. And (B), he's largely being edited by people who are essentially his proteges to some degree or other, and there's this mixture of awe and fear and respect and personal friendliness (I think this is true to some extent of pretty much every Voice music editor since Christgau himself) that allows those tendencies to pass through nowhere near as unchecked as they would in say, The New Yorker. The piece he wrote for TNY on Charles R. Cross's Cobain bio one of the best things he's done in a long time, and I'm guessing it wouldn't have been as good as a Voice piece--partly due to space considerations, but at least as much because of someone making him explain himself whenever he falls into gnarled autopilot.

And the truth is, Christgau has been writing about rock steadily longer than basically anyone--he knows his subject deeper and better than anyone I can think of. Hands down, he should be writing for The New Yorker--they've got Arlene Croce writing about dance, Anthony Lane about movies, Roger Angell on baseball, the architecture guy writing about architecture, etc., really good writers covering subjects they know well. Instead they give the job to novelists or the listings guys. And Christgau does himself no favors by essentially writing a portion of his Consumer Guides in, as this thread started out being about, the print/cultist equivalent of cave painting. Really fucking sad.

also, "cave painting" is probably too harsh, but I think it gets across what I'm trying to say.

Frank, that was brilliant. Want to be my ghostwriter?

Xgau Lives!!!!

Jesus, Frank, I just read everything on my site and it is INCOMPREHENSIBLE. I disavow everything I ever writ.

(Note: I am slightly drunk.)

I'm standing inside the bell and the phrase "it is possible to die; it is possible to die" seems impossibly beautiful as it unfurls in reems of streamers around me, carrying musical instruments and looking for sockets under the greyed-out carpet to plug into.

Coz, "incomprehensible," if it means "the reader has to work," is not necessarily bad. It might limit your income, though you can't assume that there aren't some readers who enjoy the work and might pay you handsomely for the opportunity you give him. (And when you might this guy, send him on to me.)

re: Candi Staton - what reference? Without actually being able to see that there is a reference there I can go to work unpacking it. So I treat it like a non-reference-including bad boy and ask for the next sentence.

I can piece together the joke, but I don't laugh, because I've never heard the song where she claims she's a victim. I also don't get how someone can have a rich and sexy voice and be radically self-effacing, and his hesitant language tells me he's not sure either. This confusion is most acceptable in "Subjects For Further Research," which is all about uncertainty, but it's definitely an example of Christgau writing for people who've at least heard her singles. Since I haven't, I'm not even sure what type of music she does. His rich & sexy sells me on her a lot more than his radically self-effacing scares me off, probably because I'm not sure how you can be radically self-effacing.

I assume you meant "can't go to work unpacking it." Anyway, I think the intention (what I would try to do, anyway) is to write the sentence so that someone who doesn't see the reference nonetheless gets enough else from the sentence to go onto the next. So I think the sentence works.

Also, good forbid that authors be allowed the last word on the meaning of their writings, but has anyone thought of emailing it all to Robert Christgau? I'd love to know how he would parse his own sentence and whether he thinks that 'back in the day' is a noun, adverb or adjective.

Yeah, but the word still implies bubbly something; otherwise the expression would just be "bubbles."

I've just looked up a book definition of metonymy. It says: 'A figure in which the name of an attribute or adjunct is substituted for that of the thing meant.' Bubbly is an attribute of champagne and is substituted for it. I don't believe that it's a contraction of 'bubbly champagne'.

And why can't anyone explain the meaning of 'back in the day' to me whether as a noun, adjective, adverb or phrase. I'm a forty-one year old Britain/Australian and I don't know much about hip hop. You can explain the English and the Irish phrases too if you like.